#and fuck netanyahu's extremist government

[thegayhimbo]

The Times of Israel: Biden: PM hurting more than helping Israel; Gaza death toll contrary to what Israel stands for

[navree]

You keep saying refusing to vote for Biden on moral grounds because of Palestine is ineffective because Trump would be worse, but that really isn't the point. Largely (with the exception of a few extremists and a contingency of people who wouldn't have voted anyways) the philosophy of a movement that has people withhold their vote is to force a significant policy change that wouldn't have changed otherwise. Its a form of protest. I understand from your perspective, election-focused and pragmatic, it is a threat to whoever is running, but if Biden had wanted the votes being withheld he would have capitulated.

Not that this isn't a moot point since he's out, but whatever.

See, this is intensely fucking dumb.

"force a significant policy change" it would not. One, because Biden is the president of the United States, and Israel is not one of those states. Short of sending the CIA to, idk, assassinate Netanyahu in his bed, which most of these people would be against I think because of how much they bitch and moan about US foreign policy at any given opportunity, he cannot actually make an independent foreign power do what he wants and what is electorally convenient for him. Like, I'm very sure Biden would love it if Netanyahu and his partisans stopped acting like fucking freaks for five minutes, if only so that it would stop being a PR nightmare for him. But that's not happening, because he cannot control what Netanyahu does. He could vastly reduce the support the US is providing Israel, and in my view he should, but that's not going to stop what Netanyahu and the Israeli government is doing. Because, I hate to break it to you, but the reason they're carpetbombing Gaza is because they want to be carpetbombing Gaza, and even without US aid they will continue to do it, even it just means with older and less effective weapons. Ultimately, the change that leads to a ceasefire and an end to the war is going to come from the actual parties involved, not Joe Biden.

Two, you've already gotten the significant policy change. Biden has, on multiple occasions now, come out in favor a ceasefire. He has actively been working, along with the Qatari government, to try and broker some kind of peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, but those two keep on fucking it up because they're both run by bloodthirsty psychopaths who don't care one iota about the people they're meant to be governing and only on killing whoever they want. That's been open fact for months now. And it has meant fuckall. The people doing their moral purity about how they'd never vote for Biden were still doing it, just moving the goalposts on what they wanted. First it was ceasefire, then it was 'no ceasefire until [insert impossible demand here] is given', because moving goalposts is what these people do. It's the same mentality as people who saw that Biden was doing COVID stimulus, or cancelling student loans, or reclassifying marijuana, and decided that the issue now was that he wasn't doing enough of it. It's a movement that's been consistently comprised of dogs that caught the car, and are angry that they caught the car because now they can't complain, and they don't want to actually affect meaningful change, they just want to complain because that's easier. And if that's what these people have been doing for his entire presidency, why on Earth would any reasonable person suddenly believe it's different on this one specific issue?

Three, cool you're protesting, then what? Your protest is utterly unserious and completely meaningless if it's not going to have any tangible effects, so what's the next step? You've decided to make your moral purity stance an issue that the vast majority of you learned from infographics on Instagram rather than listening to the voices involved (which is why the red triangle brigade is still a thing on Twitter), so what happens now? No political party is ever going to capitulate entirely to it, because the constituency is just too small (that "uncommitted" gambit was only getting like 10% of the vote wherever it was happening, Biden won over it as a literal write-in candidate in at least one state), so other than the compromise that's already happening, the goalpost movers are gonna withhold their votes because blah blah blah my morals. And their next step is, what? Trump gets elected. And their movement, which has no thought or serious effort put behind it or any actual attempt to provide material aid to the people actually suffering, has helped put a man who is going to be far worse for it in power. The "significant policy change" is going to be that Trump gives Netanyahu whatever he wants and he proceeds to wipe Gaza off the map. The "significant policy change" is that President "Trump Heights" actively makes things worse for the people this protest is supposed to help, as a consequence of that very protest.

It's not about me only being concerned with being "election focused" or some cold hearted bitch. It's about me, as a person who thinks what Israel has been doing since the start is godawful and deeply horrendous, realizing that this entire "protest" is not only asinine but will result in deeply negative consequences and very real harm for the people this protest is purported to be for, and being sickened by that. I live in the real world, and in the real world action speaks far louder than intent. I don't have to acknowledge that the protest wants this or that outcome or what the hypothetical impossible asks that are never going to be answered are, because I understand that they will not matter. What matters is what you get out of your protest, what gains are received, how that protest actually affects change, not the change it gives wishy washy lip service to.

[macaronitrash]

it’s just so fucking infuriating how stupid the whole world is!!! israel holds all the power in the region. palestinians are barely able to fight back. hardly any israeli hostages have been rescued because netanyahu genuinely doesn’t give a shit about them. he and his government are hell bent on genociding the palestinian population. it’s so fucking blatant to anyone with a brain.

and the worst part is how, since israel holds all the power, they’re able to terrorize palestinians knowing that when palestinians fight back, israel can make some stupid false equivalence argument like “see? they hurt us too! so our violence is all completely justified!”

israel knows damn well this war is just making more extremists in palestine. they hold all the cards. and they’re counting on it so they can further justify the war.

i know im not saying anything new here. i just still can’t believe we’re almost a year into this genocide and the vast majority of the world is either complicit or directly funding it.

[vintageseawitch]

to those leftists who are "uncommitted" or will vote third party: what exactly is your alternative? you know goddamn well your "protest" vote isn't gonna change shit & may help trump win. you scoff & claim that "OBVIOUSLY i don't want trump to win 🙄" but you're working harder to make sure Harris loses than he does.

i can't get over how y'all know "so much" about far left theory... but you know jack shit about how the American government works. you already act like the president is a monarch. i NEVER hear y'all talk about how important local & state voting is because most of you spew the bullshit that is "my vote doesn't matter."

the extremist Republicans have been playing a long fucking game. a few genocides will happen on our own soil if they gain all the power they want - that of immigrants, specifically brown people, & LGBTQIA. they will destroy them & anyone who wants to help them. this has been a long game because they can count on their voters actually participating in every election & mostly old people are the ones doing the voting.

we all complain about old people being selfish, how "they had theirs & will work to make sure younger generations don't." young people however are NOTORIOUS for not showing up at the polls. where the fuck are you leftists complaining about all the horrible bad things? y'all almost act like shocked Pikachu faces when piece of shit politicians get power then do horrible things. WHY AREN'T YOU ADVOCATING FOR LOCAL POLITICIANS.

if anything, Republicans live more in the real world than leftists who want their precious, magical, instantly-fix-everything revolution. Republicans have been patiently playing a long game & it's been WORKING. leftists get mad that changes they want don't happen instantly so they just give up on the system altogether. y'all want politicians to check ALL of your goddamn boxes or they get no help from you.

your protest vote in this election is selfish. you're not being smart about this. for fuck's sake, you're not marrying Harris, you're thinking of the long game. we need to work hard to make sure trump loses. the likes of jill stein, who is also a traitor, will not save us. she will hand us over to Russia on a platter. you want the US to collapse? you are so fucking foolish that you not only remain ignorant of how our government works but also geopolitics & all the delicate nuance. YES, the United States is fucked up, but world leaders are more nervous about a trump second term than not. HE FREED THE FUCKING TALIBAN.

you think things will be the same as ever? you're as bad as MAGA. you want us all to fail & all it will cost is LGBTQIA folks, immigrants (including those who have been here for decades), any woman who needs some kind of abortion care to save her life, children as more get gunned down, the elderly & disabled & anyone else who qualifies for social security & Medicare, veterans, indigenous folks, the environment since they don't believe in climate change WHICH AFFECTS THE ENTIRE DAMN PLANET, etc. but at least you're conscience will be clear.

please be smarter than Republicans & think this through. in another election in 1995 in Isreal a protest vote occurred & as a result netanyahu won by LESS THAN A WHOLE PERCENT. they were protesting AGAINST him. your "principles" could aid in harming us all. "they should have chosen a better candidate" our system led us to either choosing Harris or trump. for now it sucks but one of them will govern us. if you're so unsure then you might as well look forward to trump winning. he's not long for this world so jd fucking vance will be president instead. he's much younger & more evil, horrible, & psychotic. THINK ABOUT THE LONG GAME. vote locally & at state level, not just during thr general election. y'all don't sound smart to me; you sound prideful & short-sighted.

[gingerswagfreckles]

Hey, sorry to bother with this, but I see that you are a very smart human with a deep understanding and knowledge of things. You have probably seen that the main argument for bombing Gaza among Israeli government and pro-israeli people is "They are bombing outer cities, what choice do we have? What other way is there to defeat hamas and ensure safety?".

So I wanted to ask, what do you and your followers think could be the way to solve this?

Thankyou in advance.

@azhdakha Thank you very much, but I really don't know much more than what I feel like anyone who follows the news does. It's just that people on this website staunchly refuse to do that lol. But I honestly don't know how they can defeat Hamas and ensure safety at this point. I'm just sure that the IDF is doing nothing right now except killing thousands of civilians and ensuring the next generation of terrorists becomes radicalized.

If we could go back in time a few decades, I would say that the total blockade of the Gaza strip was inevitably going to lead to terrorist attacks as the people became more and more desperate. I would say that the aggressive increase in the settlements of the West Bank under Netanyahu was also always going to end with this, because it showed that the Israeli government obviously had no intention of respecting any sort of two state solution. They've also had an apartheid state for decades in which Palestinians literally have to follow completely different oppressive laws and face a different judicial system. That also definitely did not help.

But all of this being the very predictable precursor to increased radicalization and eventually terrorism from the side of an extremely oppressed group doesn't change that we can't go back in time and are in a really bad position now. I don't really see any good ways to resolve this at this point that could end well for the Palestinians, which is part of why I've been so angry at people celebrating these terrorist attacks like they are freedom fighters starting the #revolution. They aren't. This is an extremely lopsided war and I have no idea how anyone can be so blind that they don't see that this is going to end terribly for the Palestinian people (and already is).

I guess the only thing I can say for certain is that there needs to be an immediate ceasefire while someone somewhere figures out a more specific way of dealing with Hamas than indiscriminately bombing an extremely densely populated civilian area. And before that can happen, Netanyahu has to fucking go. His approval rating is at rock bottom for a good reason. This is what he and his hard right religious extremist faction have been driving the region towards for decades with their aggressive settlements of the West Bank and refusing to respect the rights of the Palestinians. So. I really don't know what could be done to realistically de-escalate this situation beyond an immediate ceasefire, but Netanyahu is absolutely not the person who's going to figure it out. That's all I feel confident about.

[sourcreammachine]

so the UK government is planning to change the definition of extremism after NINE people were arrested at the London Palestine march, out of one hundred thousand attendees

yeah, if the charges against the arrested are correct then those were hate crimes, unambiguously - chanting about a historic massacre of jews. but with the Tories’ abhorrent PCSCA on the books and in force, which treats fundamental acts of protest as crimes, it’s remarkable that this event ended with that few arrests. this was without question a peaceful and honest outcry in a democratic society

so, the met and Braverman’s draconian powers failed this time. so Gove announces they’re changing what extremism is defined as, ie so the PCSCA acts better next time. fucking hell

i cannot stress this enough. the UK government must not be given this enabling act, not for Cruella, not for Rishi, not for Keith, not for no one.

the main point of the PCSCA was to stamp out climate protests and other bothersome groups. if the government gets to redefine extremism, protesting in this country is going to be far more difficult. not to mention the monitoring that comes along with the extremist label. the climate protests, the Sarah Everard protests, BLM, the republic movement, central strike demonstrations, pride, trans vigils, they can all end with far more mass arrests, criminal records and monitoring. no Princess can try to sanitise that

and if the label is broadened far enough for this measure to achieve what it wants, then it’s crying-wolf. antisemitism IS roaring high in this country, and we need community solidarity and state action to counter it to save lives, livelihoods, and the British Jewish communities that mean so much. by swamping the definition of criminal antisemitism with criticism of the IDF and Israeli State, via the definition “support for Hamas” [citation needed], congratulations, it’s far harder to recognise, counter and fight the actual antisemitic problem in this country. it’s dead-catting every jewish person in britain

i’ve been silent about this month’s events so far. i’ve been disgustingly silent. because i saw 1,400 innocent people slaughtered in the Simchat Torah Massacre, and 200 kidnapped, and i felt the need for justice. in a just world, this would be a just cause, one of the most just you can imagine. the planners and perpetrators of this horrific attack would’ve needed to be dragged to The Hague and left to rot forever. i kept silent because of cognitive dissonance, no more no less. i was outraged and in mourning. i wanted justice, and i wanted it so bad that i could put aside the fact that this is not justice, and it never would have been with an IDF pursuing its everyday atrocities

the Simchat Torah dead are never going to be done justice. they are being used. the IDF, SOI, Netanyahu, Likud and their enablers are waging something beyond retribution. this is genocide. Gaza is being blitzed and butchered. annihilation and death is the end goal. and my government is planning to define believing that fact to be extremism. they couldn’t move their arses about hate law after Brianna Ghey, or the Plymouth Incel, or Finsbury Park, or Jo Cox, but apparently not wanting 2 million people to be bleached off the face of the earth needs to be stamped out

[originalleftist]

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls for new elections in Israel.

"Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S., on Thursday for the first time called for the Israeli government to hold an election, calling it the "only way" to determine Israel's path forward after its war with Hamas."

"Schumer's 40-minute remarks, delivered from the Senate floor, come as frustrations with Israel's approach to its war with Hamas have reached a boiling point among U.S. leaders amid concerns over a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The New York Democrat acknowledged that the U.S. cannot dictate the outcome of an election, but he said that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current coalition remains in power after the war "and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies," the U.S. will have "no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy."

Schumer, who has been a staunch supporter of Israel, called Netanyahu a "major obstacle to peace," saying he has "all too frequently bowed to the demands of extremists." He said Netanyahu has "lost his way by allowing his political survival to take the precedence over the best interests of Israel."'

This is really a stunning development, and shows how thin Democrats' patience with Netanyahu and his government has worn. Schumer is not some anti-Semitic extremist. He is a long-time, strong supporter of Israel, and is about as mainstream/Centrist a politician as they come- and as Senate Majority Leader, one of the handful of most powerful elected officials in the US government. And he is making it clear that Netnayahu is actively harming Israel's interests for the sake of his own political gain.

The government of Israel is already complaining about interference in its domestic politics, but since Netanyahu interfered in America's domestic politics to help Republicans way back when Obama was President, he can go fuck himself.

Fuck around and find out, Bibi.

[yakityyaku]

yall will be like "stupid fucking leftists can't use critical thinking skills and only care about the oppressors of Palestine and don't care about context" but then ignore that Hamas has been funded by people like Netanyahu, that Hamas attacked Israel knowing that the Palestinians in Gaza had 0 way to escape retaliatory attacks while Hamas hides in its tunnels, and that Hamas is literally a holocaust denying super antisemitic terrorist group who ALSO supports ethnic cleansing

Slicing the heads of infants and posting videos of it online isn't justified by the absolute evilness that Palestinians have endured. Sorry, it just isn't. The only good guys in this scenario are the civilians of Israel and Gaza. Israel's government and Hamas are both corrupt and disgusting.

Hamas is the result of the apartheid, but not in that they are an inevitability or a justified group. Rather, they are the result of people who exploit the victims of apartheid and ethnic cleansing by feeding off their anger and fear and using it to further the groups interests and hunger for power.

Israelis and Palestinians do not deserve what's happening to them. They're not alive to be pawns for their governments and the terrorist groups that use them. They're not cannon fodder. Stop fucking acting like they are and refusing to call out extremists because you care more about looking like you're on the right side than actually supporting human beings.

[fierceawakening]

I think -- and this "I think" is very much an "I might well be wrong" disclaimer -- that it's helpful here to look at "Zionism" as an umbrella term, or the name of a category, rather than a single ideology, even if it can be summarized in one line like "Jewish national self-determination in their historic homeland". (The first analogy that comes to mind is the well-known "Feminism is the radical belief that woman are people": a fantastic one-line description, but building it into a set of principles or plan of action has enormous space for disagreements, even quite fundamental ones.) There are a lot of Zionisms. Some of the early ones even looked seriously at territory that wasn't anywhere near the historic Land of Israel -- the Uganda plan is probably the best-known one -- so that even the "in their historic homeland" part wasn't necessarily part of the bedrock. Theodor Herzl, considered the founder of the modern Zionist movement (and who at one point considered the Argentina as a possible alternative to Ottoman Palestine), wrote about a secular and socialist utopia, with seven stars on its flag for a seven-hour working day. The form of contemporary Zionism that takes a hard, theocratic, xenophobic, authoritarian, aggressive, militaristic, neo-fascist, ethnic-cleansing... well, basically all the nastiest things you can think of a political movement standing for... line, is Kahanism, which had no official presence in the Israeli government (its original political form, the Kach party, was proscribed in the 80s shortly after its founding when Israel's supreme court held that a party that incited racism and promised to do away with democracy could not, constitutionally, run for office) until a couple of years ago, when the egregious Netanyahu reached even further right than he'd ever reached before in an effort to shore up his support and brought the ideological heirs of Kahane into his government. I'd like to say here that a lot of people say "Zionism" when they mean "Kahanism", but unfortunately in most cases there isn't even that much nuance; I get the impression that Tumblr is full of people who wouldn't be interested in learning the distinction and would not only deny that such a distinction exists but accuse anyone who tried to explain it of being a genocidal fascist themselves. :/ But there a lot of different Zionisms. Hell, there are an awful lot of Israelis who disagree very strongly with the version promoted by Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir (his Kahanist security minister and possibly the single most unpleasant person in the entire current situation). One of the main incentives for Bibi to prolong the war is that it keeps him in power; mass protests against his interference in the judiciary were mounting before October 7 and the subsequent horrors. Is Kahanism or something like it a necessary result of Zionism? Quite possibly. Even at the beginning of the independence struggle of modern Israel there were movements and militias that we would easily recognize as supremacist or fascist. But they weren't the only ones, and they weren't a majority, and they exist today as part -- the worst part, by most standards -- of a wide spectrum of views, and part of the reason for the far-right's political dominance in Israel is the far-right's own efforts to bend and subvert democratic institutions to keep itself there.

(deleted: a couple paragraphs about extremists using and causing violence to keep themselves relevant/in power, which was mostly very obvious stuff and turned into an amateurish and disorganized history essay) Trumpism or something like it was probably inevitable in the United States. (It has obvious roots in the militia movement and Gingrich radicalization of the early-mid 1990s, and of course farther and farther back beyond that for as long as one can stomach tracing it; don't get me started on the fucking Confederates) That it succeeded and rose to power, however, seems to me very contingent; something like that was bound to happen, but the day after Election Day 2016 had a dog-caught-the-car feeling: they hadn't actually expected to win! What the hell do we do now? (the answer of course being to burn the country down for the insurance money while putting the worst possible people in charge of everything) And militant and brutal ethnonationalism with no qualms about how it treats "The Enemy" was probably inevitable in Israel, but here too I think it wasn't at all inevitable that it came to power and stayed there for so long. Basically, a lot of shit had to go wrong in the 1990s-early 2000s for things to get as bad as they've eventually gotten, y'know? I think a lot of the pushback or stonewalling you're running into is with people who've been frayed and left hypersensitive from months of commenters who assume that "Zionism" is one, monolithic Thing (which is also inherently ontologically Evil, which is itself The Enemy which it is the duty of all Good People to fight). I have seen Jewish and Israeli bloggers talking about Zionism's history and philosophy and implications in very much a detailed, complex, "hell no for thing x, but we can push x off to the side while working on y and then deal with it once y is achieved" way -- but mostly just among themselves*, with people who have, if not the direct experience, then at least the vocab, and whose good faith they feel able to assume. My read is that you're running into people who aren't willing to assume anybody's good faith anymore because of the sheer volume of bad faith they get, from every direction. I feel like (and it's only a feeling) at this point anybody left who can discuss this stuff is going to be very, very hesitant about discussing it at all, and tragically I don't think I can blame them.

Still wildly admire your quest for answers and willingness to talk, though, and earnestly hope you can carry on and find answers and a point of view that seems right to you! <3

* which as an outsider I have not contributed to, but read with interest, and some people I agree with and some I don't, you know how it goes

This is exactly the kind of answer I was actually looking for with that post.

You're probably right that what I thought "Zionism" meant was closer to what's actually "Kahanism." Some of that might be internet osmosis, but some of it's probably that Zion is a specific name, and every time I've personally heard said name it's been, like, in the Psalms. This land is special, this land is promised, this land is ours.

So I'd react differently instinctively to "my project is to make a country for these refugees" than to "my project is to recreate Zion." Recreating Zion sounds almost by default like there's at least dollops of exclusion mixed in there that you've gotta take back out.

And it DOES sound to me like some of the early Zionists, at the very least, DID see themselves as doing something like recreating Zion. "A land without a people for a people without a land" seems like you have to at the very least be pretending VERY HARD that the people who are already there aren't. That... SOUNDS like terra nullius, for all that people say analogies shouldn't be drawn.

"If we're not in Zion nobody real is in Zion" is what THAT sounds like.

So yeah, it's definitely my HOPE that as time has gone by, that colonialist rationale has become distasteful in the same way it's distasteful for me to hear someone talking about terra nulluis.

But... eh. On the one hand, I don't wand to cite that viedo someone sent me, as i'm SURE it's from a biases source since its aim is to prove to people that Israel's founding is unavoidably racist. But on the other hand I kind of do still want to anyway, even knowing that, because the footage of people screaming "We will kill you all, all of you, one by one, fucking Muslims!" *is*, from what I gather, real.

Which implies that Israeli nationalism IS a thing, and the question isn't "is it a thing" but "is it common or uncommon."

Which I'm pretty sure is what animated me to say "so is that crap part of Zionism, or isn't it? If it is, then that implies that those of us who think the Jews *should* have a land to go to should be not Zionist but post-Zionist, whatever that might turn out to be."

[the1975attheirverybest]

Honestly I'm appalled. Not at Matty but at the general public. When Russia invaded Ucraine I distinctively remember tons of politicians, influencers and average people sharing ways to help. Just in my own town (which is small) there were two different places collecting items that refugees might need. Everyone was ready to give up spare rooms or houses to anyone come to Italy from Ukraine. One of our minister, a horrible racist man who wants to close borders, said Ukrainians were welcome in Italy.

Why isn't the same happening now? I'm so ignorant on so many levels but it's pretty clear that the Ukrainians are white and middle Eastern people are not. I know I'm not saying anything new and I mostly, as a white person, I try listen to people who know and understand more than I do. But I'm furious. People (once again Italian politicians) bringing antisemitism into this when they have a fucking Mussolini statue in their home, people "not wanting to take a side", politicians all over the world condemning Hamas as if Netanyahu hands were clean...

I'm rambling and feel free to not post this if this is a mess. And apologies if I offended you in any way bc I know this issue is deeper than my ranting but I just wanted to say that I read what you say on here, I see it and I'm listening.

No no it’s 100% true. It’s also a false assumption to say that if someone is rejecting Israeli occupation then they’re angry with ALL Jewish people or that they automatically support Hamas. Hamas is an extremist religious organization. It doesn’t make sense to compare them to Israel anyway because they’re not a goverment. They also don’t have their own army and shit (except for what they smuggled from, yep, you guessed I, Russia). And the overwhelming majority of Palestinians don’t support Hamas. There hasn’t been an election in 17 years so Palestinians haven’t had a chance to choose s government anyway. Makes absolutely no sense this rhetoric that the west is selling us on. What does make sense is that only white lives matter to them and the rest of us should go to hell I guess.

It’s weird, I mean, I’m pretty used to people being racist and Islamophobic to me and usually I can deal. But I guess I figured we were moving away from the “all Arabs are terrorists” stereotype post-9/11 now that millennials and Gen z are growing up and becoming politically aware. So I had this weird idea that this time around, in 2023, the world would give a shit. Guess not. Lol.

[nosouphere]

Leftist Jewish American counterpoint:

You have no stakes in this, and also, mostly just nod along in agreement to, "Free Palestine", right? Because thats one of the many generally agreed upon rules of being progressive? We generally condemn colonialism, oppression, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, etc.)

So really quick information:

Hamas is funded by Hezbollah, an islamofascist terrorist group much like Al Qaeda, in Lebanom, funded largely by Iran, and other dogmatic, alt right, conservative sharia-law led factions. These people hate you, you liberal, queer, atheist, feminist infidels) These people are dangerous, radical, antiwestern extremists and literally starving and victimizing the Palestinians to use as their puppet martyrs, hijacking humanitarian aid and donations to them from Israel, the US, UN and NATO, while actively trying to create violent conflict in order to promote their narrative that Israel is actually the great colonialist oppressor ruining their lives. They literally don't give a fuck about the Palestinians and radicalize them with false narratives and blatant lies and propaganda to get their support and garner sympathy and concern from the western world, when their true, unapologetically blatant, factually spoken objective is to eliminate every last Jewish person from the face of existence.

There is a reason they were invading Israeli houses and shouting for "Jews" rather than "Israelis'" to come out from hiding to kidnap, kill and rape innocent women, children and elderly. They are literally Nazis. But you've bought into their narrative, and it's so easy to hate Jews, isnt it? so here we are. (You dont hate Jews, and condemn antisemitism though, right?)

What many of you think of as your "antizionism" is actually straight up antisemitism remarketed for your simple, surface consumption! BECAUSE, you dont care enough, it doesn't effect you.

So you're not actually well informed on the complex geopolitical history of the land over the past 2500 years.

Of course we all condemn colonialism, segregation and bigotry, but thats the history of humanity. We are in general, tribalistic at core, and only naturally altruistic to our own kind. We, as progressives do our best to overcome that base human instinct for the betterment of humanity.

Personally?

Fuck Netanyahu, fuck Israel's conservative government, their violence, their rampant human rights violations, their tacit avoidance of peace accords. the majority of Israelis, who also regularly demonstrate and join in rallies to Free Palestine, have nothing but criticism for their fundie leaders and want peace and integration with their Palestinian neighbors desperately. I agree, FREE PALESTINE. Give them their own state and tear down the walls and fences and tightly policed borders, allow them and help them to build self supportive infrastructure, let them into their common shared religious sites without apartheid like segregated territories preventing this. The vast majority of Palestinians are not the enemy. MOST WANT PEACE. Progressive Israelis are not the oppressor colonists, as youve been spoonfed by the vocal corrupt in charge of these terrorist organizations to believe. Most Askenazi settlers fled pogroms from Eastern European countries to the only safe haven that would accept them in. There are also many Sephardic Jews who are indigenous to Israel and lived peacefully for centuries alongside Palestinian neighbors.

Why does this have any affect on you, western progressives?

People are dying and suffering. They may not be in your country, but you can at least have some compassion for that fact.

Also this will effect the global economy, which, guess what? Will very much hurt you, and gas prices, and groceries and imports and taxes.

Before you form opinions on this very complicated subject, you should probably study the last 2500 years of the geopolitical history of the middle east, it might help.

Also, if you don't actually care because it doesn't have any bearing on you or your life, then why do you have any opinions on any global, international events? It's just a very odd take and raised a flag or two about your true biases.

[hero-israel]

I mean, it’s bad for Israel that Religious Zionism as a party is going to be such a big part of the Knesset, but I do take comfort that Bezalel Smotrich must be so frustrated that everyone talks about his second in command like that guy runs the party!

Itamar Ben-Gvir is an evil-hearted racist homophobic piece of shit, and goes beyond that into being just the sort of unrepentant former high school bully who parks his car illegally then pulls a gun on the garage attendant who told him to move (really, look it up). He should be unacceptable as a mail carrier, let alone a legislator. We can just hope that he isn't given enough power to fuck things up too badly before the next election, and that the next time around the normal-right, moderate, and center parties learn how not to eat each other so they can actually keep seats and form a government. That is part of the job, if they can't do it then they don't get it.

While highly disappointed, I am trying to keep perspective in that people have been freaking out over Israeli election results for 50 years. Begin, Sharon, certainly Avigdor Liberman... they were all supposed to be these out-of-control extremists who would start a race war and crash the country. We were repeatedly assured that Netanyahu was always just about to destroy democracy, sometime when he wasn't winning elections fair and square or losing fair and square and being replaced. I think some of the people tsk-tsking at Israel should start to consider whether they rank liberal political outcomes as more important than democracy. Sometimes the other side wins. I was gutted when W was re-elected. America let me down and I don't think I will ever forgive it. There is no debate club judge for me to appeal to, no voice from the clouds validating that I was right. Sometimes the other side wins and we have to cope.

[vomitnest]

society has made its message clear. we got the message. don't radically change the world. do not disturb the order of things, even if that so-called order is completely fucking evil. i talked to some people at the local police station about this and they said there is nothing wrong with wanting to change the world but that there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. and i do agree with that statement. however i don't think that we are making progress quickly enough. in fact i know we are not. that's not an opinion. that's science. we have very little time and have come nowhere close to meeting our climate goals among other things. such as the ceasefire everyone has been trying to get biden to pivot on and call for and stop bypassing congress to supply weapons to netanyahus extremist terrorist israeli government. we have to embark on wild tactical experimentation and acknowledge that only radical solutions will be enough.

[xtruss]

Jerusalem, Illegally Occupied Palestine 🇵🇸! “God’s Fucked-up Terrorist People, The Zionist Nationalist Cunts” chant racist slogans on march through Jerusalem. ‘Death to Arabs’ chanted by some of the thousands celebrating capture of Old City in 1967 as three journalists wounded. The Zionist Smelly Cunts wave flags during a march marking Jerusalem Day, in front of the Damascus Gate that leads to the Old City. Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP May 18, 2023

Thousands of Isra-helli Nationalist Zionist Smelly Cunts, some of them chanting racist slogans, have paraded through Jerusalem’s Old City in an annual celebratory day for Israelis that became one of humiliation for Palestinians living under occupation.

The marchers, mostly male Orthodox teens and young men, were celebrating Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967. The crowd waved blue and white Israeli flags and chanted slogans such as “Death to Arabs” and “We will burn your village”.

Authorities barred Palestinians from going through most of the gates into the Old City.

One group of marchers threw rocks and bottles at members of the press covering the event, wounding three journalists, including a Palestinian reporter for Haaretz, who was struck in the neck, the paper’s website reported.

Police said they had arrested two people and described the attack as an “isolated incident”.

Ibrahim Hamad, 28, a Palestinian freelance journalist who was covering events at Damascus Gate, said the attack was unprovoked. “We were standing here as journalists and there were also some women wearing hijabs near us. Groups of extremist Zionists started throwing glass bottles and sticks,” he said.

“I believe they were trying to stop us from showing what they are doing.”

Palestinian community leader Fakhri Abu Diab was outside al-Aqsa mosque giving a telephone interview with Israel’s Ynet news when four police officers approached him. One grabbed his phone and throw it on the ground, breaking it, he said. He was then forced out of the mosque compound, held at a street corner for an hour and a half, and told not to return to the Old City.

“This is the Israeli police. We are facing apartheid,” he said.

Ynet news editor Nir Cohen criticised the police behaviour. “In the middle of an interview, a policeman arrives and throws his phone away just for the sake of it, with no apparent reason.” A police spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war and considers it part of its “eternal undivided capital”. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as their future capital.

The flag march reflects a far-right ideology embraced by key government ministers, including the anti-Arab extremist minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who joined the marchers.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the event “a splendid day on which to celebrate our return to our eternal capital”.

But Abu Diab called Jerusalem Day “a bad day, the day they occupied us. It’s a catastrophe for us.”

[brookeolin]

Israel, the new Hungary, the new USA

Fuck netanyahu and his government of Jewish extremist zealots.

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Fuck viktor orban and the republikkkan party that lavishes his anti-democratic regime.

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Fuck this liar santos for flashing some gang hate sign at swearing in.

We all know where this is going.

The result, they say, will be a heightened risk of shuttering the government, defaulting on federal debts and grinding the business of the House to a screeching halt. 

“I think it’s a terrible decision,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). 

“If one person can push a motion to vacate, we’ll do this again. How would you like to do this every week?” he said, referring to the internal battle that delayed McCarthy’s Speakership victory for days. “I think that’s the future with a few of these individuals. … It weakens the Speaker, and it strengthens the smallest caucus of all the caucuses.”

Putin, Orban, the Republican Party, Turkey and now Netanyahu's Israel. Countries and powers turning away from full representative democracies.