#c: israel hands

[a-sassy-bench]

what does being disabled mean to me?

it means i get to answer my phone like this for the rest of my life

[sensationseekng]

“Ed…?” he asks, “Ed, are you mine?”

He deserves to fucking know.

part 4/? of illustrating this fic (mind the content warnings)

[audiovisualrecall]

Btw what is happening, Israel's actions, whatever, is no excuse for antisemitic behavior and comments and I will not tolerate it. Make sure what u say is actually about the situation right now and coming from a place of genuine caring abt the ppl and not bc ur antisemitic and want to jump on the bandwagon and pretend ur hate is about current actions and have other ppl agree w u and make them antisemitic.

And if ur not being antisemitic, don't get defensive and insist on explaining how what u said is not antisemitic! U are not who I'm speaking about or to, clearly, but also usually attempts to do so end up being antisemitic in the end :))) no need to explain urself if u don't feel guilty abt something :)

[i-am-aprl]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop funding genocide! Ceasefire now!

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

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

Free, free Palestine!

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

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

ALJAZEERA: Biden speech interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

/End ID]

[sayruq]

A new investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals that the Israeli army has developed an artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender,” unveiled here for the first time. According to six Israeli intelligence officers, who have all served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip and had first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination, Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war. In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military’s operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine “as if it were a human decision.”

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all. Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.

The Lavender machine joins another AI system, “The Gospel,” about which information was revealed in a previous investigation by +972 and Local Call in November 2023, as well as in the Israeli military’s own publications. A fundamental difference between the two systems is in the definition of the target: whereas The Gospel marks buildings and structures that the army claims militants operate from, Lavender marks people — and puts them on a kill list. In addition, according to the sources, when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as “dumb” bombs (in contrast to “smart” precision bombs), which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” said C., one of the intelligence officers. Another source said that they had personally authorized the bombing of “hundreds” of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as “collateral damage.”

Remember, the Israeli occupation government considers all men over the age of 16 to be Hamas operatives hence why they've claimed to have killed over 9,000 of them (which matches the number of Palestinian men killed according to the Ministry of Health). So, when the article speaks of 'low level' or 'high level militants' they're likely speaking of civilians.

If Israel knew who Hamas fighters are, Oct 7th wouldn't have caught them off guard and they wouldn't still be fighting the Palestinian resistance every single day.

[germiyahu]

This phenomenon of so called Leftists throwing up their hands at the tiniest pushback, or criticism, or suggestions on how to not actively be antisemitic needs to be studied. Because what do you mean instead of just accepting that an antisemitic troll claiming to be on your side said "Zionist Occupied Government" and denouncing this and moving on with your life... you double down, defend, and deflect. It's classic DARVO, but like, when people are very patiently and slowly explaining how this is a literal KKK Nazi white supremacist fascist phrase, it's not enough? You don't care?

It's clear that the "pro Palestinian" left have been fully infiltrated by fascists, both Western fascists who have always been nakedly antisemitic and are finding the perfect avenue to mainstream their Jew hatred... and Islamist fascists who simply never cared that Jews are a global minority group that has faced oppression and violence in multiple different continents, they don't care about social justice or fundamental human rights. It's not part of their intellectual tradition.

The "pro" Palestine movement has been captured by people who have decided that a) Palestine is emblematic of all of the problems of the world, and that b) every Jew is worth sacrificing to correct these problems, because c) if Palestine is emblematic, aren't Zionists responsible for everything then?

Now the prevailing thought is that someone should be able to call for violence against Jews, someone should be able to harass or even assault Jewish Americans, because bringing it up, complaining, taking a stand, that's the equivalent of telling them you like children blowing up, you like hundreds of thousands of people being homeless and food insecure, you like prisoners being detained in Guantanamo conditions without due process, where anyone can torture them as revenge even if there's no proof they're an actual Hamas member.

Is there a reason they argue like Republican Fox News addicts? I guess that kind of explains how easily the "movement" is falling apart to literal fascists.

They say "nobody cares about your hurt feelings ZIONIST!" if you mention literal stabbings and firebombs. They say "but we should talk about how pervasively synagogues indoctrinate the vast majority of Jewish people with Zionist ideology." They roll their eyes because "don't you know Palestinians are suffering 200x what these cushy American Jews could even imagine?" Facts don't care about your feelings uwu~

But at the end of the day, they care a lot about their own feelings, much more so than the facts. They feel entitled to hate all Jews all over the planet, to secretly revel in antisemitic rhetoric and acts, to want to take out their impotent frustration and despair on any and all Jews they'd like. This is very much about their feelings and not any Jewish people's feelings.

They've been waiting for this, or many of them never cared at all. Now it's finally Leftist to quote Nazis and openly make fun of Jews who are getting stabbed. Now it's finally Leftist to call for incinerating all of Israel and maybe we should consider a lot of Diaspora Jews too, you know they can't be trusted! Oh but don't forget to honor the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, innocent civilians should never have been targeted by America's vicious imperial violence!

The fact that it took this substantial contingent of watermelon twitter less than a year to go full mask off like this... is that revealing or troubling?

[the-library-alcove]

One consistent insistence by Antizionists that has repeatedly puzzled and confounded many Jews and Israelis over the last few months since 7/10 is the often-repeated assertion that there are "Jewish Palestinians under attack by Israel in Gaza" in its full formulation, or more concisely, that there are "Palestinian Jews".

At first, most of us waved this off as simply an indicator of complete ignorance of the conflict and history of the region, and assumed that they were referring to A) "Jews who are part of the Palestinian nation-people", who exist in extremely, extremely limited numbers through intermarriage and the like, B) some kind of misconception on pre-1948 Jews who were residents of the British Mandate of Palestine, and before that the Ottoman province, or C) Jewish residents of Gaza who self-identify as Palestinians.

C seemed to be the group that was most understood as correct upon cross-examination of people making these assertions, but, being blunt...

There are no members of Group C.

All Jews were removed from Gaza by Israel in 2006, many by force, and the territory was handed over to the Palestinians entirely. There are approximately 1000-2000 Palestinian Arab Christians in the Gaza Strip, with the remaining 99.8% of the population being Sunni Muslim. The only Jews currently in Gaza are hostages held by Hamas and the IDF soldiers who are deployed there, and none of them identify as Palestinians.

But despite this topic being repeatedly and easily debunked, the claim persists among antizionists. The question is why? Not that there is disinformation in play--this entire conflict has been the subject of concerted disinformation campaigns that can be easily disproven by a glance at Wikipedia without any need for deeper research. The "why" here is "what propagandistic/narrative purpose does this claim serve?"

And the primary reasons we can come up with are less than great.

First, claiming that there are "Palestinian Jews" in Gaza allows for the invention of a perfect ideological victim being persecuted by the "racist, White Supremacist, fascist" state of Israel--i.e. they undermine the Israeli claim that the state exists for the protection of Jews.

Second, related to the first, they allow for the Antizionist promoting the theory to avoid facing the antisemitism endemic in the Antizionist movement--by positioning themselves as acting in defense of or advocacy for a (fictitious) Jewish Palestinian, then they can't be antisemitic, just "antizionist".

Third, by claiming that there are Palestinian Jews, it means that Jews are welcome and free to practice their religion in Palestine (and ties into the belief that Judaism is "just a religion"), meaning that "Zionists" are overly paranoid White Supremacists moaning about "the Great Replacement" and "White Genocide" like all other White Supremacists out there, and their concerns about Jewish survival in a hypothetical post-Israel Palestinian state under the governance of Hamas or the PFLP are unfounded and thus there is no need for Israel.

Fourth, and most disturbingly, if there are Jewish Palestinians in Gaza under Hamas' governance, then that proves, to the antizionist, that Hamas truly are freedom fighters working to expand and free their idealized multi-racial, multi-religious democratic Palestinian State from the White Supremacist Racist Zionists who are oppressing everyone, including Jews. (Instead of, you know, terrorists who oppress Gazans and want to kill all Jews everywhere).

In essence, it's a Big Lie. It seems absurd, outrageous even, to just... make up an entire demographic of people for political/ideological purposes, but the fact is, there are concrete and understandable reasons for why people both make it up in the first place, and spread it afterwards...

And those reasons boil down to, "Because we want to believe it, and it fits with the way we want the world to work."

[zvaigzdelasas]

Life in Zanuta, a Palestinian village atop a windy ridge in the desolate south Hebron hills, deep in the occupied West Bank, has never been easy. The community [...] have steadfastly refused to leave their homes despite the mounting difficulties posed by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers on one hand and radical Israeli settlers on the other. But after weeks of intense settler violence in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, Zanuta’s 150 residents have made a collective decision to leave. Armed settlers – some in reservist army uniforms, some covering their faces – have begun breaking into their homes at night, beating up adults, destroying and stealing belongings, and terrifying the children. After decades of a desperate fight to cling on to their land, the community has decided they have lost[...]

“It is a new Nakba,” said Issa Ahmad Baghdad, 71, referring to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 after the creation of Israel. “My family are going to Rafat. But we don’t know anyone there. We don’t know what to tell the children.”[...]

Masafer Yatta, a collection of shepherding hamlets including Zanuta, is in area C, the sparsely populated 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control and under threat of annexation. Palestinian water cisterns, solar panels, roads and buildings here are frequently demolished on the grounds that they do not have building permits, which are nearly impossible to obtain, while surrounding illegal Israeli settlements flourish.

Israeli settlers herding sheep had in effect taken control of 10% of area C in about five years, according to research by Kerem Navot, an NGO monitoring settler activity, but in the last year alone, about 110,000 dunams, or 110 sq km (42 sq miles), of the West Bank has been annexed by settlers on herding outposts. By way of comparison, the entirety of the built-up Israeli settlement areas constructed since the occupation began in 1967 cover only 80 sq km.

31 Oct 23

[nimrochan]

No disrespect, and I want to say that jewish people should absolutely be safe and feel welcome and happy everywhere in the world. But how can you talk positively about moving to Israel, paying taxes to a government, that has been confirmed to have killed 13.000 children? Do you not see an issue with moving to a state that has been determined by the ICJ to be committing a genocide right now?

Thank you for your question. I’ll do my best to answer this as an Israeli-American with a more inside perspective than most people who haven’t been in the area.

Incoming novel.

First off, I encourage you to read my pinned post.

Second, I believe Israel is a tiny country that as being held to an impossible standard. The situation there is very unique and I ask you to not compare it to others.

(I promise I’m going somewhere with this) in the past ten years, half a million Syrians and half a million Yemenis died in civil war in what I think are actual genocides. Millions more are refugees. China forcibly puts its Muslim citizens in “re-education” camps, another form of cruelty and cultural genocide. There are other genocides actually happening in Congo and Darfur and other places. There are humanitarian crises in Arab countries regarding the horrific treatments of women. And in North Korea, the situation has always been dire - it contains a concentration camp the size of Rhodes island.

This leads me to ask- why is the hate for Israel so widespread and deep? I’ve never seen protests addressing these aforementioned issues so passionately. I almost NEVER see them addressed on social media. I have never seen Russian, Chinese, Afghani people etc in places OUTSIDE of their countries being harassed to the extent that Jews and Israelites are. Jews outside of Israel have been harassed and attacked, some have even been murdered. Our synagogues and graveyards have been vandalized. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people openly march for our deaths rather than to condemn terrorism or condemn far more horrible governments. I can only come to the conclusion that it’s antisemitism. It’s not a coincidence that the only Jewish country in the world a) has such a microscope over it, b) is one of the most terrorized countries in the world, and c) has so much widely-accepted misinformation regarding it. Including the whole “white colonizer” narrative - most Israelis are brown.

The UN has a history of not accepting Israel as a country and disregarding the years of constant terrorism against it. It has not acknowledged 10/07. The voters of the ICJ include Bashar Al Assad who is the president of Syria. Yes that same Syria that kills its own people. Another voter is from China. Same China with countless human rights violations. Another voter whose name escapes me now made motions to deny humanitarian crises in other Arab countries. So between the UN and the ICJ voters, the parties are extremely biased and ignore far worse issues. So I am not going to take them seriously. I hope you ask yourself what else may have skewed your perspective on the war, if such big international organizations are demonstrably biased.

Genocide is done with intent. In the last 50 years, the Palestinian population has grown FASTER than the world’s Jewish population. I can tell you first hand, as someone with many family members who have served in the IDF, and who knows how strong the Israeli military is - genocide is not, has never been, and will never be the intention of Israel. If it WANTED to commit genocide, I guarantee you that absolutely far more Palestinians would have been slaughtered and I would tear up my passport in that case.

When the LEADERS of a county cross a border into ANOTHER country, unprovoked, and personally slaughter and rape thousands of civilians, that is genocide and that is declaring war. It’s a very small scale genocide, but technically it is. If you read the charter of Gaza, it actually states the goal of killing all Jews. Hamas killed the maximum number of Israelis that was in their power at the time. Including people that my own family were close to.

Growing up in Israel, among some Arabs, I can tell you that no one EVER taught me to hate Arabs. In fact they taught us Arabic in school along with English. All street signs are in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Meanwhile across the border, their government put guns in kids’ hands and teach them that Jews are pigs. And I don’t think they’re considerate enough to put any of their public signs in Hebrew.

You can see pictures online of Hamas dressing up their kids as child soldiers.

I don’t know if you ever saw the footage of Hamas driving around Gaza with dead bodies after the 10/07 attack and many Gazan civilians celebrating and dancing with their kids and handing out candies, mutilating the bodies further. Look up Shani Louk.

While a handful of Israelis are openly racist (just like there are racists everywhere else on the planet), you will NEVER see something this horrific on Israeli streets. NEVER.

Obviously, not all Gazan civilians are this heinous and nobody should be punished for where they were born (and anti-Israelis are lost on the irony of calling all Israelis kid-murdering genocide-lovers who deserved what happened to them including rape and infantacide). But I want you to ask yourself, If this was My country, how would they respond? I don’t think Israel is responding WORSE than America or other strong countries would. Again that leads me to ask why the hate is out of proportion even for their strong response.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that about 30-40K casualties by Israel. Now that organization is run by… Hamas. But okay, I’m willing to believe that number. I’m willing to believe that that number is double. And I’m extremely saddened by innocent Gazans suffering because of the carelessness and evil of their leaders. But let’s look at the number for now.

Israel reports that about 17,000 of the people killed in Gaza are Hamas militants. That leaves a civilian-combatant ratio of 1:1.2 - 1:2. That’s… average for war. For a dense urban area like Gaza? That is LOW. That does not fit the definition of genocide. It is war, and it sucks, but it’s not genocide.

As for children dying - We do not yet know exactly the number of children who are militants. A baby is counted as a child, but so are the 15-17 year old child soldiers that Hamas recruits. So now the line is blurring.

Not to mention, Hamas has been caught altering birth dates on records of dead Gazans to bring their ages down. Some 18-year-olds are falsely reported as being 17 at death to falsely increase the numbers of killed children on paper.

To go a little off topic, Al Jazeera has also been caught numerous times censoring Gazans criticizing Hamas and reporting biased news. Heck they even reported the rape and murder of my people as “a necessary step.” Look up Howidy Hamza, a Palestinian reporter who talks about Hamas. Hamas is unbelievably cruel to their own people. Yet protests in the US and around the world praise them.

Let’s go back to Israel being the most terrorized country in the world behind Somalia. Do you know what’s going on in Somalia? Of course probably not - another crisis largely ignored by the world because it’s not as exciting or interesting.

Again I grew up in Israel. In the 90’s there was a rash of suicide bombings on buses by the PLO, so I remember avoiding buses as a child out of fear. I also remember waiting in line with my family to get free gas masks because Saddam Hussein once threatened biological warfare on us. Fun times.

I went back to visit in 2015 - this time, a trend of Palestinian civilians in Israel randomly stabbing Jews or running over them or throwing rocks at them. Some Palestinian teens threw rocks into traffic and killed a 2-year old.

And in the past 20 years at least, Hamas and OTHER parties have been sending rockets into Israel. Into civilian areas. Do you think that’s normal? Do you think it’s normal to have apps to alert you to rockets and to have so many bomb shelters? Have you ever spoken to a relative overseas and heard rockets in the background while on the phone with them?

Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of us would be dead if it weren’t for the iron dome?

EDITED TO ADD: Israel responds to rocket fire to destroy the source, because the iron dome is not perfect and CONTINUED firing eventually harms Israeli civilians. Yes, Hamas makes sure to fire rockets from Gazan civilian areas. Another note I want to bring up - I don’t know how many Gazans are displaced currently, I have a hard time finding a nonbiased source, but I would guess around 750K - 1.2 million. If they are displaced RATHER then killed, that’s another contradiction to calling this war a genocide.

Do you know why Gaza has received billions of dollars in aid over the years - enough to turn it into a living paradise - only for Hamas to use it to build underground tunnels and rockets for the purpose of attacking a country that has NEVER in its history attacked first or started any wars? (Yes, believe it or not, Israel has never STARTED a war since its inception).

The other problem with Gaza is Hamas intentionally having military targets under densely populated areas. When Israel warns civilians to leave, via leaflets or alerts, many times Hamas threatens them to stay and become martyrs. On top of it, they dress as civilians and recruit children, and fire rockets from refugee camps and apartment buildings and schools and hospitals. This is neither legal nor ethical warfare.

Israel does not, has never put military targets near civilian, nor does the IDF recruit children or dress as civilians. That’s a bare minimum.

I won’t deny that members of the IDF have done shitty things, just like the American army and other armies around the world have probably done, but if I had to choose between the country with the military that wants me dead and Israel… yeah. At least rape and other torture are ILLEGAL for the IDF. Meanwhile Hamas continues to freely rape hostages as I type this. Because they make the laws there.

Yes Israel cares more about its own citizens than foreign citizens like Gaza, but again, that’s no more evil than other normal countries.

To address another stereotype about Israel being a racist and apartheid state - there are two million Arab Israelis living peacefully there. There are Arab countries who hold peace treaties with Israel.

So you tell me in your ask, Jews should be safe and welcomed around the world. The sentiment is appreciated, but this is not the case with reality, sadly. There is NO population of 2 million Jews in any other middle eastern country. Many of us left for Israel due to severe oppression. There are no more Jews in Yemen for example. My grandfather left for Israel from his home in Lebanon because some officials wanted him dead. Why? For committing the crime of smuggling Jews through Lebanon to escape the Holocaust.

My grandparents on my mother’s side escaped post-war Poland because of violent lingering antisemitism.

They would have had NOWHERE to go without Israel.

And we are NOT safe outside of Israel or even in Israel because of the intense hatred. We have been scapegoats for society’s problems for thousands of years and I don’t see it improving any time soon.

How can I talk positively about Israel? It’s the most liberal and progressive country in the Middle East. It’s the only country where it’s legal and safe to be openly gay for example, and it’s the only country there that holds annual pride.

It’s a middle eastern country where I, as a secular woman, can dress how I want, marry who I want, get abortions if I needed, own property, own money, have a prestigious job, and *checks notes* drive.

It’s also the only Jewish country in the world. It’s the place I’ve felt the safest and happiest, surrounded by my own people and family and sometimes I wish my parents and I never left, because I am personally feeling the antisemitism when I march peacefully and get nasty comments, or when I lose long time close friends left and right for being a “genocidal Zionist”, or when I see antisemitic graffiti and signs everywhere I walk.

My taxes in Israel would pay for hospitals that treat people from all around the world including Palestinian children for free. It would pay for the iron dome that keeps my family safe.

My taxes in America have been used to oppress women, and for horrific military actions, etc. and America itself is LITERALLY built on colonial genocide and the backs of slaves. Slightly related, most of North Africa was colonized by Arabs who ran a larger slave trade than the US. I’ve never learned that in school! I’ve never seen anyone talk about that! I’ve never seen Americans or Arabs in other countries get attacked for these things (to be fair, I’m very aware of the racism Arabs and Muslims did feel in the US after 9/11 and I absolutely condemn it).

This same America also lifted sanctions on Iran, allowing it to spare money to give to Hamas to buy weapons and slaughter my people to start this fucking war.

So you ask why I’m saving money to eventually move to Israel from America? I hope I’ve answered as thoroughly as I can. You can go ahead and fact check me through non- biased media. And go ahead and look up “list of terrorist attacks on Israel” while you’re at it too. I’d rather face rockets than continue to live in a country that lets antisemitism (and mass shootings for that matter) run rampant.

[centrally-unplanned]

Adam Tooze giving some pitch-perfect pornography targeted at me specifically with Israel's "Gaza 2035: A three-step master plan to build what they call the Gaza-Arish-Sderot Free Trade Zone", capped with an AI generated Gaza-Dubai:

I'm in love, this is so glorious. "The world if Israel could play around with Gaza like a little set of Legos" tell me this is not identical energy:

Except its not a shitpost its an actual report from the Office of the Prime Minister. And folks we have got it all! The most convoluted administration system you could possibly imagine for no reason:

The new free trade zone would be administered by Israel, Egypt, and what the Israeli Prime Minister calls the Gaza Rehabilitation Authority (GRA)—a proposed Palestinian-run agency that would oversee reconstruction in Gaza and “manage the Strip’s finances.”

A cutesy little minimalist graphic of all the brand new industries that will magically become globally competitive in export markets because Israel says so:

The beach resorts are in my beloved!! But what are the little factories you ask? Oh nothing, just electric car production facilities!

Remember, before building your first factory, you need 18 Burj Khalifas. We economists call this "infrastructure development", take notes.

It will have high-speed rail through its center, oil projects on the coast, and of course, I'm saving the best for last - a rail project to NEOM:

 🥳The 🥳Line 🥳Mentioned 🥳

The legend on the map literally just says "a mega project" like, oh yeah, one of those! See em all the time.

Now, you might be asking - Ash, if this is your goal wouldn't you have not destroyed every square inch of habitable urban infrastructure in Gaza and shredded their economy into scraps of paper soaked in blood if your plan was to Singapore-on-the-Sea the place? You sweet summer child, those apartments? They are apartments of the past, darling, you don't need organically developed urban ecologies built over time to compliment human habitation. That is for fucking libs. All of this "war" thing was just set-up to create a blank slate for the construction of The Line 2: Its Definitely Real This Time!

I am going to murder James C Scott myself just so I can hover this plan over his corpse and watch the sheer hubris of this monument to the state's desire for legibility and technocratic solutionism resurrect him from the goddamn grave.

"Well....at least after all this they would have to recognize Palestine as a stat-" Woah woah woah woah, hold on:

The final stage would be when Palestine signs the Abraham Accords signaling “Palestinian self-rule,” albeit without statehood

Lets not...lets not get overambitious here. Baby steps, you know? We have to be careful.

Anyway this is the most ludicrously ill-considered and ill-presented reconstruction plan I have ever seen in my life and I shudder to think that, instead of it being an off-hand drip of propaganda intended solely to brush off nosey reporters and diplomats, it might actually be serious. Bibi hasn't let me down yet on the "thinking things through" front!

But tbc if this was fiction - instead of a ruthlessly grim reality - the Regional Deputy Minister of Trade charged with implementing this technocratic abortion would be my precious little blorbo and I would stan her to hell and back.

[opencommunion]

"If there is any country where the 'clash of civilizations' has become an official ideology that also comes close to permeating the entire society, it is certainly Israel. 'We still live in a modern and prosperous villa in the middle of the jungle,' declared former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 1996, when he was still minister of foreign affairs. This image is a perfect reflection of how Israelis view themselves in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world, as an outpost of civilization in the midst of a barbarous world whose only aim is the destruction of civilization and against which an unlimited preventive war is a matter of life and death. For the various neoconservative governments that have ruled in Jerusalem, the preventive war is a war for survival. As such, it can have no limits—in terms of time but also in terms of means. The distinguishing feature of 'civilization wars' and other crusades is the way they view the adversary—including civilians, of course—as a target to eradicate, or at least to utterly neutralize. It’s 'them or us.' The war of destruction Israel has waged against Palestine since 2000—but planned and prepared two years earlier—is the archetype of such new wars. Its bloody brutality is not 'collateral' but intrinsic to its nature as a 'civilization war,' as are the destruction of Iraq and the more than 100,000 deaths resulting from the U.S. occupation.

Throughout the Thirty-Three-Day War against Lebanon, Israeli leaders, as well as the country’s journalists and experts, spoke about 'cultures' and a basic incompatibility between 'us'—Israelis, but also Civilization with a capital C, which is assumed to be Judeo-Christian—and 'them.' This involves an utterly contradictory line of argument, incidentally. On the one hand 'those people don’t care if they die' or if they sustain casualties, whereas on the other hand the aim of the war and the massive destruction was to 'teach them once and for all' what it would cost them to dare to attack Israel. The Middle East is a central, priority objective in Washington’s unlimited, preventive global war. In consequence, Israel’s military role is more indispensable than ever before. For the Jewish state, it was a matter of both taming and 'pacifying' rebellious peoples and of terrorizing others, so they would never dream of escaping U.S. hegemony or countering Israel’s own aims. The martyrdom of Gaza and the deliberate destruction of Lebanon are both aspects of this 'pacification' and terror policy." Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski, The 33-Day War: Israel’s War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Consequences (2007)

[penny-anna]

hi! i'm kinda thinking about watching jesus christ superstar, and you posted about it again recently, so i thought to ask, what version of it you would recommend to watch, for someone who's never seen it before? in terms of like, being both a good version of it, and reasonably easy to get my hands on?

(okay technically i've seen part of a performance of jesus christ superstar before bc one time a few friends were watching it over discord anyway so i stopped by for a while, but it was in russian which i don't speak and it didn't have any subtitles, i only watched half or so of it, i was thoroughly confused the whole time, and the only reason i watched it was because the actors playing jesus and judas were ones i knew from other things and both of them were cute. So I don't exactly count it as seeing the show)

hello hello!

i'd say you have a few options here! these would be my top 2 recommendations, both are available on DVD:

Jesus Christ Superstar 1973: this is the actual movie musical version, so if you want a movie rather than a filmed stage production this is the one to go for. very ambitious (it was all filmed on location in Israel & Palestine) & has a lot of strong performances. a lot of people consider Carl Anderson and Ted Neeley The definitive Judas and Jesus. it's very 70s and personally i remember finding it kind of clunky but i haven't watched it in a long time and it is pretty Beloved by its fans.

Jesus Christ Superstar (2012): this is the pro-shot of the 2012 UK arena tour. stars comedian Tim Minchin as Judas and Mel C from the Spice Girls as Mary Magdalene.

i have mixed feelings about this production but if you want a stage show pro-shoot this is probably the best place to start! politically it is gloriously unsubtle which i loved. Ben Forster as Jesus absolutely smashes it musically IMO. the arena setting really works for the vibes of the musical. its also got radio DJ Chris Moyles as King Herod who also smashes it.

couple of downsides: for some reason i gather they autotuned Tim Minchin pretty heavily for the DVD release and the general consensus seems to be that it hurt his performance; there's also a lot of white people with dreadlocks in it.

& i will stop there so as not to overwhelm you with recommendations dgkjhfdkhj. but i might post a list of other easily-accessible versions if you're into that. :)

i hope you enjoy it!!

[whencyclopedia]

Rome's Response to the Spread of Christianity

During the 1st century CE, a sect of Jews in Jerusalem claimed that their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, was the 'messiah' of Israel. 'Messiah' meant 'anointed one', or someone chosen by the God of Israel to lead when God would intervene in human history to bring justice to the world. Jesus was crucified by a Roman magistrate, Pontius Pilate, c. 30 CE for proclaiming a kingdom that was not Rome's. Shortly after his death, his followers claimed that he was resurrected from the dead and was now in heaven at the right hand of God. Those who followed the teachings of Jesus ('Christ', the Greek for 'messiah') would also earn resurrection in the afterlife.

Continue reading...

[wolfgabe]

Mario and Luigi Brothership motif analysis

Having been going over the trailer for Mario and Luigi Brothership, one key detail I have picked up is that plugs and electrical sockets serve as a key design motif and likely tie into the larger overall plot.

Starting off we can see with Connie how her hat clearly resembles an electrical plug with her face being a socket. The bow like protrusions on top of her head are likely meant to resemble wires.

You can also clearly see this design motif carry other into the other NPCs as seen in this scene with Peach. The pink girls face is clearly based off the common 3-pronged Type B socket commonly seen in North America as well as Japan and Taiwan. The green fellow's face more closely resembles a Type H socket most commonly used in Israel. Its harder to say with the yellow and blue faced NPCs although the round eyes make me think of the Type C/D sockets used in Europe and India respectively.

Now taking a look at Snoutlet who apparently serves as the new Starlow. Besides the pretty obvious word play, you can also see how his/her tail clearly resembles an AC adapter plug.

With the Extension Corps who will probably serve as this game's villain trio, besides the obvious play on extension cord, you can see how their hands/weapons resemble electrical prongs and their clothing is heavily styled to resemble the body casings of electrical plugs.

We can also see this motif of plugs and sockets extend to the environments and architecture.

From Nintendo's official web site we can see that the name of the region Brothership takes place in is called Concordia an obvious play on cord and the Argentina city of Concordia

Finally taking a look at the new villain of the day while he doesn't have the plug and socket motif like the other new NPCs he still manages to tie into the electricity theme with how the top of his hat resembles a bundle of wires.

[gryficowa]

Boycott!

(I gave a link to the collection in the previous post, fuck Israel)

Now that I have your attention:

[menalez]

palestinian women have been facing hell these last two months. even if u ignore the nearly century-long history of violent colonialism: palestinian women have been deprived of food, fuel, and water. palestinian women have been getting jailed without trial. palestinian women in israel jails have been facing sexual abuse and torture at the hands of IDF soldiers. pregnant palestinian women have had to undergo hysterectomies just to survive post-partum hemorrhaging due to lack of medical resources. pregnant palestinian women have had to get c-sections without anaesthesia. palestinian women have no access to menstrual products.

palestinian women are losing their families, being sexually abused, being tortured, being jailed, being deprived of basic necessities, being killed, among other horrors and despite this, the media is not reporting on their experiences. feminist outrage at how they’re being treated is hard to find. the silence is deafening. what is wrong with this world?