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izzyspussy · 25 days

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@fanficfanattic you will regret this

okay so. it wouldn't be the revenge specifically because that is its own story and i think the whole general Thing is really dependent on the characters in it (as it should be! most of the time) and the shameless characters really don't mesh well with it (as it also should be! most of the time). HOWEVER. if the characters of shameless were put into a plot/setting framework of a golden age pirate romcom with a defining theme of self actualization especially regarding gender expression and/or trauma recovery...

the milkoviches would be the ranking crew on one ship, with terry as the captain. the gallaghers are also the ranking crew on their ship, and frank is the captain. very early on in "canon" or perhaps pre-"canon" they mutiny and elect fiona as captain instead. kev and vee own a bar at a pirate port. i wouldn't pick nassau because like. that is reserved for real life and black sails. to me. maybe tortuga or maybe port royal. anyway one day the bar was owned by some guy. the next day the bar was owned by kev and vee. nobody knows how that happened. every "episode" the bar features in there is a new version given. none are ever confirmed.

i like the families knowing each other/having close enough experiences that a main relationship conflict with any of them is each not understanding that their circumstances are actually not the same (i.e. how ian can't quite grasp that being gay is a much bigger deal for mickey than it is for him; they live in the same town, they went to the same school, they're in the same tax bracket, they both have a shitty dad who hates them personally and no mom, ian was in the closet too, etc, so there's kind of this disconnect there where i think ian expects mickey's experiences of homophobia to be at least similar enough to his that it shouldn't make that much of a difference - but of course there is actually a huge gulf between a shitty dad who hates you because you were conceived through infidelity and shows it by insulting you but mostly is absent anyway and a shitty dad who is. a fucking neo nazi and organized crime boss who regularly beats you blue. and i think the same is true for other members of each family, like how fiona judged mandy, and i guess in later seasons i didn't watch [insert gallagher] says some kind of something implying gallaghers are better than milkoviches and mickey points out if that's true it's only true by an insignificant margin. not that any of that was ever textually explored because the writers weren't actually interested in exploring anything. who said that).

and also! i always love a character or characters that are famous, or infamous as the case may be, in-universe. EveryoneTM knows who the milkoviches are. EveryoneTM knows who the gallaghers are. and they each have a distinct reputation that comes with their name. and! i also like the knowing Of each other for a long time before getting to Know each other dynamic that the canonical milkovich and gallagher kids have via having gone to school together and buying (or bullying) goods and services from each other. love childhood Ugh This Guy Again to lovers waaaaayy more than childhood friends to lovers. personally. not to mention the capulet and montague vibe.

anyway so i'd want to preserve that as much as possible. so idk maybe frank and terry used to be whalers for the same company or even on the same ship, and the kids lived in an isolated island whalers' families ghetto (which would also preserve frank's and terry's frequent long absences). wait wait yes. okay. here it is i've got it.

they are employed/indebted to the same company but actually work on different ships, and they generally dislike each other because they are both supremely dislikeable, but there are limited socializing opportunities in a whaling community so they are extremely bitter frenemies because it's either that or nothing. and obviously they hate whaling because who doesn't, but terry hates it out of anger toward the company (reasonable) and frank hates it out of laziness (also reasonable tbh). anyway so at some point they start talking about mutinying and going pirate, and frank thinks they're talking shit but terry's serious. and terry's also scary and frank's a coward, so alright looks like he's going to mutiny and go pirate because he said he was going to and terry said yes he sure was.

so terry starts (drunkenly) strategizing, and his strategy is the very peak of violence. and frank is not exactly a paragon of compassion, but violence is pretty high risk and you know once you kill a guy you can never get a loan from him again. and maybe a little tiny itsy bitsy weensy ickle part of frank just doesn't want to do murder because it's murder. so for once in his pathetic little loser life he puts up a fight, kind of, and argues with terry that all that isn't necessary and it's possible to unlawfully secure a ship through other means. and he actually manages to not back down about it until terry gets too annoyed to keep the discussion going, and because he's already piss sloshed and frank is the only man he's spoken to outside of work in like twenty years, terry doesn't kick the shit out of him for being an annoying pansy or whatever and instead makes a bet with him that terry will get a ship his way and frank's way will fail. they obviously don't have any fucking money or literally anything the fuck else because they are fucking whalers, and anyway it's more to their style to bet years of service on the other's ship instead. so if frank fails to take over his ship, he and his family will be indebted to terry instead. and if terry fails to take over his ship (or doesn't have enough survivors left to sail it back), he and his family will be indebted to frank.

unfortunately, they both successfully mutiny and take control of their respective ships, so the wager is void. frank doesn't press the issue for real but he constantly bitches and moans that technically he didn't lose so terry owes him. terry makes it Well Known that if he ever runs into frank off neutral grounds and not on a job he will kill him extremely dead since, you know, technically he didn't lose so frank owes him.

anyway fast forward. the milkoviches and the gallaghers both become Big Name pirates. they make port at the same place and frequent the same bar and do business with each other, but they are ENEMIES. (i think i like port royal for this, because it was not quite as definitively a pirate port for a lot of the age, so it's more believable for the bar to be neutral ground that terry would actually honor since offending the colonials that also hang out there would ruin it for everyone - and most importantly would fuck up his business in addition to putting a black mark on his reputation.)

okay so. positions. terry is the captain. they don't have a quartermaster at all because terry is a tyrant and won't allow it. mickey is the closest they've got, as the only one who is brave, angry, and informed on everything enough to occasionally challenge terry. don't get it twisted, it's definitely not often. the general rule of the ship is that everyone is subservient to terry and nobody looks out for each other in a way that might get in terry's way. but just. every now and then, mickey will make a fuss about something or redirect terry's anger (sometimes he ends up as a whipping boy in the latter case, but never intentionally. yet! ☝️). mandy is also brave and angry enough to challenge terry, and she does sometimes, but she's at an extra disadvantage because she is not informed or (pseudo-)respected like mickey is. yet.

his official position is bosun, but really mickey is a jack of all trades. he does a little bit of everything, and is the understood second in command despite terry not allowing for a real quartermaster or first mate. mickey keeps the inventory, ensures that everyone gets their correct percentage of rations and loot shares, assigns whatever duties terry couldn't be assed to, and carries out discipline for whatever offenses terry doesn't take personally (sometimes obeying terry's orders including the method/severity of the punishment, sometimes punishing someone terry said to but didn't give specifics on how so mickey can decide that for himself, and sometimes completely of his own volition; usually the latter is either for neglecting a duty, endangering one of the milkoviches in some way, or of course something mickey took personally lol). (compare to izzy hands)

iggy is the navigator/pilot, has good control of the boat, can read currents, winds, and stars, but mickey reads the maps. he's happy with this position and is one of only two brothers who never enter into the power struggle. he likes sailing, he likes the frequent semi-solitude, and he likes not having to be involved in on-ship discipline or in making any hard choices. (compare to fang)

in what i watched the other brothers really didn't have much personality so idk about them, but they each have some level of rank/leadership over the non-milkovich crew members. one is in charge of commanding the gunners, one is in charge of commanding raiders, etc. mickey will give them a general "this is what terry wants" guideline and mostly leave them to it unless what terry wants is something particularly (and needlessly) dangerous, in which case he does his best to give them more specific orders that will hopefully lose less crew without them getting pissed off he's stepping on their toes, which would of course make them make the situation worse out of spite/power display.

mandy is the cook/surgeon when terry is around, but she's a strategist and raid leader when mickey's in charge (compare to roach) - which happens because the milkoviches have a fleet, mostly just due to their reputation and the fact less established pirates and sometimes merchants will surrender once the flag goes up and bargain to be annexed into terry's command rather than slaughtered (which works maybe. 30% of the time), and terry is so power hungry and paranoid that he can't stand to let any of the other captains in the fleet actually captain one of his ships for too long at a time. he's always going from ship to ship just to undermine his captains and exert his own power over each crew, leaving mickey to head the flagship.

mickey ends up with all the responsibilities of a captain but not much respect; everyone knows he's not the real dad boss and he has to fight for every single order he gives. the real reason(s) he's the understood second in command is because 1: nobody else wants to be that close to terry (again, compare to izzy hands lol) and 2: none of his brothers are as (realistically) ambitious as he is (they want power but aren't aware of or willing to put in the work to gain/maintain it + they don't jump on opportunities as fast, etc). so nobody ever calls mickey 'captain' or 'sir' or anything else that denotes or implies a higher rank, both to keep him cut down and out of superstition that terry will somehow Know and take offense to anyone except him being given even that much authority.

and of course all of the milkoviches including mandy are general enforcers of the milkovich rule on the flagship. they all participate in mutiny-busting, routine intimidation, etc. and they all give unofficial punishments for insults or just for pissing them off. manny, who i assumed is an uncle and have no interest in being corrected on if i'm wrong, is a fence.

sveta (and yevgeny) would be included Later as a prostitute working at a brothel near port, with the same general Circumstances of Meeting mickey (and ian) as in canon, marrying mickey for financial/social status reasons while he's forced (which i kind of assume is the canonical situation since she seemed genuinely happy on their wedding day), and then the same plotline of mickey having a problem with her madame but instead of the madame turning all the girls out she gets killed by definitely mickey for sure ("i kill, you take credit." "why the fuck would you not want credit?" "don't want precedent you kill boss get promotion when i will be boss." "..." "you should be happy, this give me good reason to not kill you." "...jesus, you fit right in with this fucking family.") and svet buys the brothel property under mickey's name (since she can't legally own it herself) and becomes the new madame while he keeps pirating, so now he (and mandy) has somewhere to go separate from other milkoviches while at port where he can actually fucking relax for once in his fucking life. & ig if you really want sandy to be here she can be a fence too, but tbh if i ever do write anything in this fandom again i have no intention to include her or any other characters introduced past season four :)

on the gallagher ship frank is captain for a while, at least in name. he is usually both drunk and seasick in addition to his natural laziness and inability to work with others, so a lot of the time he doesn't even try to captain and lets fiona handle it without interference. every now and then he gets some kinda fucking bug up his ass and goes banging on about his rightful authority or whatever and sends them on some deeply stupid and pointless farce and/or will say they're doing something and then give orders that absolutely will not accomplish that thing. for a while, the gallaghers follow along with this, then they start just not obeying him/quietly belaying his orders to other crew, then they start telling him directly they're not going to do what he wants, then actively preventing him from giving orders in the first place (usually fiona locks him up, or lip knocks him out, and debbie got to knock him out once too, but if it ends up being left to ian he'll do something more creative and lowkey humiliating like shoving a gun rag into frank's mouth or dunking his head in the pickle barrel), and then finally they officially commit mutiny and kick him off the ship entirely.

the gallagher ship doesn't include any extended family. no aunt ginger, no uncle clayton, no whoever the fuck else was in there. their non-gallagher crew is all the mentioned neighbors and etc that they're friendly with in canon, minus kev and vee.

fiona is captain, lip is quartermaster, ian is navigator and he likes to correct and expand maps and has big dreams of going straight (ha ha) and becoming a chartered cartographer/expedition leader. lip and ian also lead raids. carl is the master gunner. debbie is officially bosun but has a pretty in between job. she assigns shifts and chores and supervises and all that, but she doesn't ever handle discipline, and she also does the more i guess administrative is the best way to put it quartermaster duties that lip is too bored by to do. she also is always on the up with the rumors and can typically be relied on to know who's who and where they are (*mickey mouse meme* this is a tool that will help us later).

liam is the surgeon. several non-gallagher crew members think he's a witch because he is way ahead of his time wrt medicine (simply because he treats based on evidence lol) and because he so very rarely talks. he has no strong opinion on this perception as it usually doesn't interfere with his ability to do his job and often keeps strangers from approaching him uninvited (the boy. is autismal. and also has selective mutism. which really should be called something else by now but i digress).

ian knows all the myths and legends, though he doesn't really believe any of them, and frequently regales the crew with them. lip doesn't really like the stories because he suffers from a whimsy deficiency, but when he has the patience for it he'll back ian up on the lute (Later, mickey will play for ian too, or sometimes for his girls to sing/dance to).

so the milkoviches and the gallaghers both use port royal as their port of call, and they both spend a lot of time in kev and vee's bar. kev and vee are personal friends with the gallaghers, but as said their bar is neutral ground so they keep civil relationships with literally anyone who abides by that neutrality, including the milkoviches, other pirates, merchants, fishers, pirate hunters, naval officers, natives, colonials, anyone as long as they pay their tab and don't cause trouble.

sheila and karen are merchant class but seem like gentry to ex-whalers, especially since actual gentry nearly never deign to go somewhere so close to the docks, and even tho technically after a while being quite successful pirates they are richer in terms of material wealth (but still not in social wealth). karen loves to come to the bar whenever she hears pirates are in town. she loves the thrill of the baddest boy a bad boy can be (and also the thrill of bad girls who are proud about it), and she loves the attention she can get when she dresses up in something classy just to go slum it with a bunch of society-fringe sailors. lip is her favorite, sure, but he gets it in his head that she's his shore wife or whatever and that she'll eventually tearfully beg him to retire and stay on land with her (extremely loud buzzer noise).

jimmysteve is a fence. and a drug runner. and a semi-pro snitch. he (in some ways, much like frank) thinks he is much cleverer than he really is and that he can play multiple sides at whim. he gets himself in trouble with the pirates for breaking neutrality, and gets himself in trouble with more than one royal navy for thinking he could snitch but only when he felt like it lmao. he somehow always manages to weasel his way out of trouble and back into good graces (again, much like frank, except frank gets his hundredth chances through pity or trickery and jimmysteve mostly just uses daddy's name and plantation money).

kash and linda are also merchant class and have a little curio shop and bakery. ian likes to do basically the opposite of karen and 'sneak' away from the lowbrow area of town that caters to sailors to shock and impress all the not-poors with how Just Like Them he is, which is how they meet and start hooking up.

but of course it IS a romcom about self actualization and. you know. comedic romance. so the Main Plot is actually just gallavich and not as much of an ensemble here.

the Plot in question happens because mandy gets sick of shit and decides she wants to just fuck off. she just has to figure out where to fucking go instead. she doesn't want to just run away. she doesn't want to be alone. the gallaghers just kind of seem like the only real choice. she knows them by reputation to be damn good pirates but as kind and generous as pirates can reasonably be. they don't torture, they don't rape, they don't hurt young kids or pregnant people, they don't kill unnecessarily (and yet all of them are still alive, so like. for Real they must be fucking good pirates), etc. she figures if she seduces one of them on the last night of their leave, they'll take her back to their ship to fuck her and then in the morning the chaos of making way will make them forget to make sure she disembarks.

she picks ian because fiona is busy with jimmysteve, lip is busy with karen, and the other three are too young for her. and also. she thinks ian is cute, and she's seen him act like a whole gentleman with her own eyes more than once. she like. actually kind of wants him. and he's sitting alone. so she goes over. at first he seems into it. he's not intimidated by her even though she knows he knows who she is. he listens to her when she talks and has relevant things to say. he's funny. he's charming. he doesn't treat her like a whore. it takes like half an hour before mandy's goal has changed from "seduce him to get onto his ship" to "fuck him so much forever and maybe have an epic romance or something". but of course when she starts really putting the moves on, he just flat out rejects her. he does it gently, but still. just a straight-up full-stop no.

so then. mandy's plan changes to "get mickey pissed off enough at this guy that he ends the stalemate and kills his whole family and then convince him to give the damn ship to her". and well, the best way to do that is to make mickey think ian hurt her (which also will later provide them all an excuse to give terry as to why they blew up his legendary status's structural support rivalry from his backstory - they started it).

so she makes a scene in the bar, and she uses some very skillful body work to make ian look like he's aggressing her - which only works on him despite him also being very skilled in that area and usually very tactically observant because he's unnerved to have been hit on so boldly by a woman.

as it happens, at least two of her brothers (notably NOT mickey himself) are in the bar when she does this, and she kind of thought that would be enough to at least start a fight if not the war she's planning to work them up to. but. they don't really do anything. maybe they cuss at ian or throw something at him or whatever to warn him off or let him know it's time to leave if he knows what's good for him, but like. they don't even get up. so now mandy is humiliated from being rejected by ian AND humiliated to have made a scene, to have publicly positioned herself as a victim, and nobody caring enough to put down their fucking grog.

so now she really doesn't know what to do. she's upset, she's embarrassed, she doesn't want to go back to her own ship almost doubly as much as when she sat down at ian's table. in the end, mandy makes it onto the gallagher ship regardless, by stowing away. she does recognize that it's their ship when she carefully tucks herself away in the farthest corner of the hold, but really... where else could she go? on any other ship she'll be treated even worse than on her own, at least in a day-to-day sense, and that's only if she manages to convince someone else to take a woman crew member in the first place. and if she's caught as a stowaway, which she inevitably will, any other crew would put her to death. when she's caught on the gallagher ship they might whip her and put her in the brig, but they won't hang her or toss her overboard, and she thinks she can probably plead her case to them given enough time. she'll just have to try to stay hidden until they're well out to sea to buy that time in distance back to port.

the only problem with this is that terry is off on another ship just now, and mickey is in charge-ish. and unlike terry, or even like some of the other brothers, mickey 1: notices when mandy doesn't board and 2: cares. he makes them wait for her, getting increasingly pissed off until he seems almost as scary as terry, until finally one of the brothers who was there steps forward to fearfully admit he saw ian gallagher mess with her.

first, mickey punishes that guy. he gives up the other brother who was there pretty easily, so mickey punishes that one too. they are both expecting a terry-level It's Personal punishment - everyone knows mandy is mickey's favorite - but it's not even quiiiiiite on the level of a mickey-level It's Personal punishment. he's not holding back on purpose, and he absolutely is taking this so fucking personally, but. they're family too. he wouldn't torture them unless they tortured him first. or made too credible of a threat that they were going to.

anyway, when that's done mickey immediately assumes ian has kidnapped mandy and is certainly forcing himself on her at this very moment, or else he murdered her for bruising his ego last night and mutilated her body so no one would know to tell mickey someone needed to be return-killed. so uh. well. mickey is officially pissed off enough that he orders the ship off course to hunt down and kill ian's whole family. and for once he's not contested on it, even though it's against terry's preceding orders, because first of all. he is so so evil right now and no one wants to breathe too loudly at him, let alone argue. and also secondly... mandy's family. none of them would want her dead unless she killed them first.

so the milkovich flagship hunts down the gallaghers, and they make no secret of it. terry catches wind, but the teller includes mandy's presumed fate at ian's hands, so he's pissed at being disobeyed and double pissed at mickey for daring to take initiative, but he approves of the reasoning enough that he decides not to catch up with them and crush them back underneath his thumb until after they've razed every last gallagher from the earth. insert atla book one style imminent redemption arc anti-villain misadventures here (perhaps even complete with manny purposely giving mick bad intel to keep him sailing around in circles lmfao).

meanwhile. mandy gets caught as a stowaway. luckily, it's ian who finds her. like in canon, he impulsively confesses that he's gay - or whatever euphemism or obsolete term they were using for that back then - and asks her to pretty please call her brothers off. mandy, having been hiding in the bowels of a ship at sea in the 18th century, had no idea that her brothers were on. whoops! together, she and ian explain a severely abridged version of what happened to fiona and convince her to let the milkovich flagship catch up to them. mandy swears up and down that her brothers won't sink the ship while she's on it, and she can convince mickey to board so she can explain before leaving the gallaghers without her presence's protection. (fiona had never had any personal beef with any of the milkoviches, beyond just thinking poorly of them as people as a whole and having a particular distaste for many of terry's best known atrocities, but now mandy is definitely on her shit list and mickey is on the thinnest of thin ice.)

so the milkoviches catch up to the gallaghers. they do some damage to the ship before they notice mandy on deck, but it's just warning shots anyway. they had every intention of exploding them into a billion pieces, but a warning shot is just the proper thing - even if you've got no plans to accept a surrender or give any time for return fire before you obliterate them into viscera and sawdust. but then it turns out mandy is right, and mickey orders an immediate (slightly panicked) ceasefire, and thoughtlessly boards when mandy asks him to even though that's objectively tactically very stupid.

as privately agreed, mandy tells mickey it was a misunderstanding. that ian hadn't actually menaced her. he'd just been clumsy with his words and actions and she'd taken offense, but he'd apologized and then she perfectly willingly went back to his berth with him where they spent the whole night thoroughly and consensually enjoying each other's company. they simply slept through the morning bells, and by the time they did wake up it would have been such a horrible inconvenience to take mandy back to port, and she'd figured mickey would have left without her by then anyway. she didn't realize it would cause such a hubub, and btw she and ian are courting now.

mickey is pissed obviously - not least because now he's going to have to face biblically apocalyptic wrath from terry - but mandy is really really his favorite, and he's relieved she's okay, and maybe he's a little bit relieved he doesn't actually have to vaporize like twenty people too but that is for absolutely fucking nobody to know up to and including mickey himself fuck you very much. so all she gets is the milkovich pirate captain version of Go To Your Room Right Now Young Lady. she is unconcerned, and offers her hand to ian so he can make a small production of gallantly kissing the back of it before she goes over the gangway.

mickey stays just long enough to give ian the milkovich pirate captain version of a shovel talk, which involves a lot of disturbing kraken imagery (it's kind of homoerotic too, but surely that doesn't mean anything haha. unless...). for some totally unknowable fucking reason, ian seems to be entertained by mickey's uh. way with words, more than he is threatened. at the end of mickey's speech he's even smiling. he offers a reasonably chilling rejoinder, and then fucking bows like he's some kind of bougie rich fuck seeing a guest out of his big bougie fucking house. fucking... dickhead. fuck.

anyway so yeah. it's so over for mickey. cooked! and soon to be stuffed and basted ;)

#jack facts #jack chats #shameless #mickey milkovich #mandy milkovich #ian gallagher #gallavich #hc #my fic

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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 8 months

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by Elchanan Poupko

For centuries, rabbis around the world get up on Shabbat Zachor and speak about memory, never about violence. Not once in the past 2000 years of Jewish history – and that is a vast record to draw on – was the Biblical account of Amalek used to evoke revenge. It was always used to evoke memory. The imperative to remember the unprovoked atrocities committed against our own innocent communities.

The name of Amalek was invoked to remind us of the ubiquitous nature of antisemitism, the only hate in the world directed against people who are unknown to those seething with hate for us. People like the Houthis in Yemen who never saw a Jew in their life, yet are determined to destroy the Jewish state; Nazis in Germany who traveled hundreds of miles away from home to kill Jews in Belarus, Lithuania, Hungary, and Morocco even though they had never seen or known much about those Jews, that is the kind of evil we speak about when invoking the memory of Amalek.

In our generation, when speaking about that kind of senseless hate, we speak about the Hamas terrorists who woke up on the morning of October 7th and were willing to gable away their lives and futures to murder and burn alive people like Canadian peace activist Vivian Silver, someone who spent her life driving Palestinians from Gaza to medical appointments in Israel’s best hospitals. We invoke the memory of Amalek when we encounter something so evil it defies any logical explanation.

It is appalling to see how many people rushed to the Bible to judge Israel’s use of the memory of Amalek before looking at its use for the past 2000 years, most notably during the Holocaust.

While Germany starved to death and killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews secretly published a newsletter called Kol Hamidbar in which the emaciated Jews wrote: “Many nations waged war against the Jews and did bad unto them, but Amalek, that is something absolutely different. Amalek put the destruction of Jews as a goal, a program, a method; premeditated, in cold blood, sadistically, according to a plan, organized, and with laws… Amalek and their grandson Haman are not satisfied with the killing of individual Jews…they would like to destroy the entire nation and eliminate Judaism.”

These words ring powerfully to any Jew who has seen what Hamas terrorists did on October 7th. The senseless hate that defies any logic or pattern of human conflict is simply unexplainable. The kidnapping of grandmothers from their homes and burning of babies and little girls alive with no reason whatsoever has no other language.

Jews invoke this language of Amalek when we encounter the world’s oldest hate, acted on with cruelty no human can explain. Jews have done so countless times while remembering the Holocaust and also did so while seeing the evils of Hamas on October 7th.

Like Jews after the Holocaust, the memory of Amalek’s unforgivable horrors reminds us of the need to take action. How does that action look? Years ago, speaking to congregants in synagogue, here is what I said as I spoke of the story of Amalek, and I was not the only one:

“The greatest heed to the call ‘Yidden, Nekama – Jews, Revenge’ inscribed in blood in Slabodka, Lithuania, is not going back to that town and place or to those perpetrators; it is that there are today thousands of students in Israel learning in Yeshivas named Slabodka. It is that we are undeterred in leading proud Jewish lives, laser-focused on the future while refusing to forget the past.”

Jewish revenge never looks like the acts of our enemies. We never follow in the inhumane footsteps of those who committed the unthinkable against us. This is true also concerning the horrors of October 7th.

#amalek #amalek libel #jews #revenge #october 7 #hamas #gaza #shabbat zachor

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barbarastreisandof · 1 year

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There is no supporting Palestinians while calling for peace or condemning Hamas or refusing to address that Israel is a colonial Jewish supremacist ethnostate that sees everyone who opposes it - from anti-occupation Jews to Palestinians to diaspora against genocide - as enemies of the state and enemies of the extremist Judaism that the Israeli government and its backers proposition as not only just, but propagandize as being necessary for the survival of Judaism.

Israel is enacting a genocide. Peaceful resistance does not work. Has never worked. Cannot work. It's been 70 years and the genocide has only continued to hasten and escalate.

People being exterminated by a genocidal regime and ethnonationalist religious supremacist ideology cannot be treated or named as terrorists for breaking out of their prison and fighting back.

The violence of the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion was not terrorist violence.

Hamas' actions on Saturday were the actions of people resisting annihilation in the only manner they can. These are not terrorists and labeling them as such is to concede ground to Zionist propaganda that treats this as two nations at war, as oppose to a single state government engaging in an extermination operation against the people native to the region, with the backing of an international community set on antagonizing and killing the Arab populations with cold deliberate intent.

There is no shortage of reading material for those wishing to learn more but to be honest, you don't need to learn more. You can read the propaganda and learn nothing else and still use your own principles and common sense to recognize that something is gravely wrong about framing this as a war when one side can shut off all access to food, water, and electricity to the other side while destroying every bridge and escape route for anyone seeking to flee the bombings.

There is only one side using white phosphorous. This is the closest we've come to witnessing a second Holocaust since the Holocaust - it is ethnic cleansing using chemical weapons and the world is cheering it on. If you are afraid of being labeled antisemitic for calling this what it is you would do well to look yourself in the mirror and ask why your anxiety over being judged by bad faith genocide apologists is more important to you than speaking out against the extermination of two million people at the hands of global nuclear powers.

#israel #palestine

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not-goldy · 2 months

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You see lemme tell you something bout Tae, no one's truly happy with any of the ships he is in. Not 100 percent of the time. Some of us know that and we are okay with it cos we know hes not fully on board with the idea of shipping him with anyone. He's wishy washy about it and that's fine. Totally understandable shipping gets messy and dirty and borderline invasive and he hates having people make up things about him that aren't true or judge him based on the curated life he presents online online shit like that. It does make him feel violated misunderstood and lowkey traumatized. I've always said this about him.

These desert vultures are screeching like a witch on fire now but half of the time they just as depressed as fuck like any other ship he is in. Half the time they screaming and complaining about their ship and what they are not getting from him and this and that and then he'd come along and breadcrumb them and gas them up yet again. Just a little flicker to keep the ship going.

I still like vmin but turns out he's just as ghetto in there like the other ships he is in and boy do I hate that. Count me out. I'm done with all his ships at this point. Imma pray for yall. Yall some strong soldiers.

God's greatest warriors.

Mini moni shippers please take me back

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the-cat-and-the-birdie · 1 year

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Writing a piece on Miles Morales, Brooklyn and Trap Music

In literal tears at how trap music, aka the 'really really vulgar violent materialistic' rap music is actually like... The purest and most radical form of black art in the recent decades.

Like I genuinely think songs about guns and money and trap houses and diamond chains are incredibly radical because it's a medium made to appeal COMPLETELY and only to black people.

It's made to be so vulgar that it CANNOT be censored. You can't censor WAP. Half the lyrics would disappear.

Trap music and scary black music about guns and gangs and struggle and money and sex and excess - it all COMPLETELY rejects the white ideal. White morality and politeness.

That's why FOX hates it so goddamn much.

Black people openly saying "We're going to be ghetto and loud and sexual. And you're gonna drive the same cars as you. Live in your neighborhoods. NOT ASSIMILATE."

And I know most nonblack people may not take interest in it or might openly judge it but like.. it really is entirely radical and punk as fuck.

And it's a big part of where Miles and ESPECIALLY MILES!42 is from.

Trap music is like Miles!42. Unflinching, full of culture, intimidating to the uninitiated, and DOPE AS SHIT.

Nonblack people - scary violent rap music with 'bad morals' and gangs and stuff is not really scary and it's a vital part of our culture that is censored entirely from modern media.

That's changing and I talk about that in the post, and how ATSV is getting better at it - but we are in no way all there.

I know there might not be an interest in it but I love trap music as an art style and I hope that at least 1 person will be less scared when they hear music like that you know.

Like yes I genuinely think everything Cardi B has released is better written and more important than anything Ed Sheeran could convince ever.

A black woman singing about damaging sex and fellatio on a international scale is extremely radical and something only a black woman in trap music could get away with.

Like - they would not let Christina Aguilera say that. They are not gonna let say dick and pussy and actually put the track on an album censored or not.

Because sexism.

But black women can do it. And that's a radical act.

"But she calls herself a whore that's degrad-"

She's reclaiming a slur.

Trap and rap music isn't scary. It's actually radical simply by existing. And it may seem unrelated to ATSV and Miles -

But Miles and Miles!42 are black guys from NYC. Like... Come on. Trap Music is Miles!42 experience.

#i hope ppl care enough to read the longer post #idk I just really enjoy it and it makes me emotional #cause it's so widely hated #there is no 'oh but we're the educated black ppl pls be nice and ignore the bad ones'#there are no bad ones #all black art tells the story of racism because it is the reality we live in everyday #spiderman #atsv #spider man #marvel #across the spiderverse #miles morales #miles 42 #earth42 miles #the prowler

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skymoral · 10 months

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✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧

So my GRAND MISTRESSES have spoken! That is a fan name I’m creating for us for those that love them some Bi-Han!

So now let’s build our black baddie grandmistress OC for Bi-Han! You will be given a prompt choices on the baddie we’re building together, and she will even have a name choice near it. She will be married to our Grandmaster! So you baddies READY!

✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧

Prompt 1 - Box Braids, Bronze Skin, Brown eyes, Thick Girl, average size, and she’s ghetto but classy. (Name: Jalissa Thompson - Married Name: Jalissa Lin Kuei)

Prompt 2 - Curly fro at shoulders, Almond Skin, Light brown eyes, Slim thick, Tall, and she’s spiritual and a book worm. (Name: Anairis Philips - Married Name: Anairis Lin Kuei)

Prompt 3 - Frohawk, golden brown w/vitiligo, white eyes, slightly chubby, short, and she’s very active and outgoing. (Name: Naomi Wilson Married Name: Naomi Lin Kuei)

Prompt 4 - Locs at the butt, Honey skin, green eyes, skinny w/ an ass but small titties, fun size, and she’s an introvert but a secret freak. (Name: Veronica Morgan Married Name: Veronica Lin Kuei)

Prompt 5 - short curly bob cut, espresso skin, blue and green eyes, hourglass figure, average height, and she’s a shy girl but strong willed. (Name: Sierra Hartfelt Married Name: Sierra Lin Kuei)

A/N: I may give more time, for every baddie to vote. As to be fair, to feel like everyone got a chance to build this OC baddie.

You ladies have a week this time, also I’m using Lin Kuei as a last name(don’t judge me lol) 💅🏾

✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧✧*̥˚ type *̥˚✧

#fem reader #reader insert #mortal kombat #bi han sub zero #black reader #fanfic #bi han mortal kombat #bi han is sexy fight me #bi han x you #bi han fanart #bi han mk #bi han #biracial #black girl oc #oc art #bi han x oc #grandmistress

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 1 year

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I feel like miraculous will just do the most bare bones use of the Multiverse with evil heroes and good villains, Miraculous is a Franchise in which the multiverse is a great idea

They’ll probably just make say “they’ve always been evil” without making a explanation of why Hawkmoth is good and the Duo are bad, imagine if they gave the Re-verse a cool backstory like “marinette parents died in a accident and she became the worlds youngest top criminal which discovered about the miraculous, she stole the Ladybug and cat miraculous but master fu misinformed her about which miraculous granted the wish and instead making her go after the two miraculous Master Fu knows nothing, the butterfly and Peacock miraculous, and so Ladybug rampages trough paris trying to get her hands on the miraculous and even discovering Adrien agreste is a sentimonster in her pursuit for the Peacock miraculous making him he’s pawn which will use the cat miraculous [see that play of words? Paw-Pawn?] and Gabriel agreste has to fight Ladybug and save not only the world and the miraculous but also he’s son” but I doubt they’ll do that

Heck with the obvious Spider-verse inspiration I would have wished they would have gone through actually interesting Universes

Post apocalyptic universe in which the akumatized villain are like zombies and only the miraculous users are inmune

A world in which Queen bee got her redemption arc

A world in which Marinette got the butterfly miraculous (a fan favorite)

A world in which Marinette had the bee miraculous and Chloe the ladybug (scarlet lady reference?!)

A world in which Adrien is a Healthy teen with a happy family and nothing went wrong and nothing of the super hero related events of the series happen

A world in which the kwamis are evil and the Duo has to fight the eldritch monsters trying to take over their body’s meanwhile they try to find who is the poor man being used has a puppet by Nooroo which is trying to free the other kwamis to end the world

Chat blanc universe

A super futuristic world in which magic is dying and the villain is the order of the miraculous trying to resurrect magic even if that comes to a high price so they can keep existing and have meaning on their lives since they wasted hundreds of decades of their lives guarding the miraculous which will soon stop existing

A world in which humans don’t exist and instead the characters are creative monster designs

A world in which Marinette was bitten by a radioactive ladybug and Adrien has a eldritch horror alien goo named plagg which gives him super powers (yes like venom and Spider-Man)

A world in which Lila/Chloe and Marinette Swap places

The world of the movie!!! (which is very different from the series world might I mind you)

And the world of the comics (although the only difference I can remember is the American heroes and yes before you ask this is the comics the infamous Ghetto blaster came from)

There’s so many options yet I know they’ll only do the Evil universe trope instead of actually using the potential the world of miraculous has for parallel universes

You'd think for a special that seeks out to explore the multiverse, they'd do more than just your generic dystopian mirror universe where all the characters aren't made evil are part of some resistance faction judging from the trailer. There may be a chance that we'll get glimpses of other universes, but there's still going to be more focus on the "Re-Verse".

The idea of a world with Ladybug and Cat Noir being villains could work if you decided to focus on the circumstances that causes them to snap and turn to a life of crime (sort of like Spider-Carnage's backstory from the finale of the 90s Spider-Man cartoon), but given how the show handles the morality of its characters, there's a good chance that this universe's version of Ladybug and Cat Noir will just be evil for the sake of being evil. Either that, or the writers pull a cop-out and make them completely different characters, like Chloe and Lila.

#immaturity of thomas astruc #iota #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug salt #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #adrien agreste #cat noir #chat noir

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0prettygirl-jay0 · 10 months

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~•little stalker•~ dabi x reader

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context~ your dabi’s little stalker, and one night on your usual following him around…he catches you.

•warnings• delulu reader, stalking, obsession, blood, dabi is five years older then reader, cutting is kinda mentioned.

•reader is kinda like toga but her quirk is blood manipulation (means she can use blood to make a weapon or anything.)

•highly recommend listening to: the red means i love you by madds buckly. ;)

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four months ago, i walked past a dark alleyway on the way home from work, blue flames lit up my eyes and blue light lit up the alleyway. my ears heard the screams of two men, begging and pleading for their life as they burned alive in the beautiful flames. i stood there expressionless, looking at the culprit, with black hair, blue eyes, and purple scars. who was smirking back at me with a raised brow. the smell of blood filled my nostrils, along with the smell of burning flesh, my eyes turning red. i ran and ran until my legs gave out, chest heaving from fear of my quirk and exhaustion.

for four months i kept seeing the black haired villain, whether it be by accident or on purpose. he intrigued me, the way his flames gave me that thrill, just like the way the blood trickled down my thighs, down my arms….that was a once in a lifetime feeling, the feeling of satisfaction or thrill or something else, not like i can describe it.

info ive found so far on mr. hot villian. i smiled as i look down at the notepad, going over every ounce of information ive gotten over the past four months. not a lot…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

•name: dabi

•height: 5’9

•age: 23

• purple scars that surrounded half of his body due to the heat of his quirk. name: blueflames.

•has hidden anger towards the now number one hero, endeavor. i have to admit their eyes have a similarity…

•dabi allies with the league of villains, but even then…he doesn’t seem to fit in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

looking back up and at the southside view of musutafu, wearing all black for my usual stalk my man who doesn’t know he’s my man. i sat and huffed out of boredom on the edge of the roof building with my legs dangling and kicking back and fourth was where i spent my friday night, in the ghetto, across from me, the base of the league of villians where dabi had entered a few hours ago. leaving me to my thoughts and the cold night breeze of musutafu.

“unusual..” my cold breath hit the night air as i softly breathed out. ive never understood human society, they split the world in halves..heros and villains..what makes a hero? and what makes a villain? what right do people have to split the world by hero quirks and villainous quirks. what right do they have to judge? all my childhood, people had judge me, my life, my choices. my father told me the reason he left on my seventh birthday was because he couldnt handle living under the same roof as a monstrosity that killed his wife, my mother…he told me during childbirth i had stripped my mother clean, every last drop of blood was sucked dry. a monster is what “my family” called me, for good reason…what kind of child kills her mother, their creator.

“they say, strange fascination and..infatuation….a lunatic.” my hands rubbed down my face as i mumbled into my hands. all my life, due to my quirk i was pushed aside by society and looked down too…blood manipulation..the sound my vocal cords being produce makes sound waves which allows blood to flow and move at my command, thats as far as i know. ive always had this craving for his blood…for people’s blood.

“tell me whats suits your taste?…i just wanna taste.” i softly said as black hair and blue eyes filled my vision from afar walking out of the bar and onto the quiet dark street…finally. dabi’s steps were quick in pace with a blonde school girl trailing behind him. i hated her and that stupid annoying voice… not like im jealous of her, our quirks are almost alike but we’re definitely polar opposites. the cold breeze surrounded my body again as i started walking along the building ledges right along side the two. the thoughts of red liquid filled my mind. shit. i lost them.

“ouuu dabi! she’s pretty, can we keep her?! she’ll be my new little toy, and sucked dry!” toga’s squealing was heard from behind me. how the fuck did they get here so fast? my hair blew in the wind as i turned my head to look over my shoulder and my hood blew off.

“who do you work for? why have you been following me?” dabi’s calm voice was heard speaking now as i turned around fully. shit, he looks even finer in person…my daydreams came to an end as i saw blonde buns come into my view, i also felt the knife that went straight into my stomach. twisting slightly to the left and right, my face scrunched up a bit…finally. my blood drips from my bare waist down to my hips and into a puddle of blood, down at my feet and with a smile i looked up to stare at toga who yanked the knife back and took a few steps back.

“and ive always heard its whats inside that counts…” the two looked at me in shock as i walked towards toga, while blood continued pour out on the floor. bubbles rose to the top as if heating up.

“cause my insides are red, and yours are too, and the red on my face is matching you.” the blood formed behind me as i shaped it to be a knife similar to toga’s, a wound appeared on her cheek and arm, walking past dabi who stood silently with a smirk, my hips swayed and blood spikes impaled toga, her blood drip down on the floor as she heaved and tried to hold her body up to continue fighting.

“fuck….goodness your bleeding…what a wonderful feeling, your down and your pleading, my head is just reeling.” my eyes admired the blonde being struck with fear and covered in blood.

“your so pretty…covered in your own blood..” my soft voice spoke in the cold air, my red eyes looking down at the teenage girk, looking back at dabi who stood behind me with a hand around my throat.

“think you can handle me, doll?” his ego filled his words with venom, his hooded blue eyes staring at me and a smirk on his stupid, handsome face.

“the red means i love you, tasting your blood means i love you…”i whispered as my hips swayed side to side and i started walking the both of us backward, backing dabi into the roof wall. red blood spikes pinned dabi’s arms to the wall concrete of the roof. my red eyes looked up at dabi’s scrunched up face that tried to hide the pain he was feeling. my hands gripped the back of his nape to look down at me.

“dont follow me dabi..” i hopped off the roof ledge and went running into the darkness of musutafu.

—————————————————————————

part two????🤷‍♀️ sorry if its ass, im so high rn.

#mha dabi #dabi x reader #touya x reader #touya todoroki #my hero academia #mha fanfiction #bnha fanfiction #dabi #bnha dabi #dabi smut #dabi todoroki #bnha touya #mha touya #mha smut #mha x reader #todoroki touya

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s1ckh1mb0 · 6 months

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Hey I have been following you for a while now and I really like your work I saw that you made a post talking about how black reader acts and how they are stereotyped by the writers and as a poc I reader a lot of black reader and I can see why people are saying that because you may have grown up around people in the hood that act like that because I have too but that doesn’t mean everyone else has and I’m not saying you have to change the way she acts because it’s your work and it’s good I’m just saying I don’t always wanna be a dumb ass who wears little pick skirts and dating the “plug” because you can reader a non poc story and it’s not her dating a rapper or the “plug” and a lot of poc writers make the characters that they are writing for “hood” like the aot fandom is really bad at doing that and I hate that they make the characters “hood niggas” or the plug or even a rapper and I know what it’s like growing up in the hood and I sometimes act like that but not everyone does.

Okay well respectfully just find someone else to read LMAO. Like I make regular fics and I make “hood nigga” fics. Just ignore the ones you don’t like. Non hood fics got the reader being ditzy and wearing short clothes as well so idk what that point was💀. Non poc wont write like that because one they just don’t want and two they don’t know how to. “Not everyone acts like that” well a good majority of ppl do and that’s why they like my work. And what’s wrong with them characters being rappers like you don’t even have to be hood for that😭. Like I said before if you don’t like then just don’t read it, or write your own stories. It’s not even like aot fandom is mostly made of these “hood nigga” Au’s, cause that exactly what is it a AU. Literally there’s a bunch of “regular” fics out there. But y’all are choosing to come on to ppls page, read the works, and then choosing to criticize us about what WE wrote. Like we want representation too. Not everyone gets this soft life that you guys want written so badly. And I don’t make reader dumb sooo, if anything “regular” fics make her this dumb crybaby that will literally go back to the characters after being played and cheated on over and over and just call it toxic! (Character). Another thing ppl seem to forget that this “stereotype” ppl have for us is still how ppl are. Like yeah ppl are loud and “ghetto” but y’all think just cause that they violent and toxic. Y’all are just pushing more stereotypes onto us and judging us for not being able to conform to everyone else’s norms. Like yeah you’re not like us good for you ig but that’s not gonna change that we are what most (white) ppl call ghetto or rachet. So yeah. Again like, I make regular fics as well so idk why when I started making hood fics is it’s suddenly a problem. Let ppl write what they want. Because this is for MY entertainment and ppl happen to like it, and I happen to be good at it.

Fr it’s basically like the girlies that get it just get it

💋

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alicent-vi-britannia · 10 months

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How Suzaku ended up being very validated at the end of season one

Today it's time to break a spear for Suzaku. The truth is, I feel safe talking about Suzaku in this space, despite the considerable number of haters he has; but I see that most publications about him focus on his ship with Lelouch and I think they lose sight of his role in the story and his narrative arc, which is a shame since I sincerely think he is one of the best characters in the series and anime in general.

What will we talk about today specifically? We are going to elucidate Suzaku's mentality and in the process we will discover that, contrary to what most fanboys think, he has his fair share of points in his arguments. Even the series grants it.

To start, keep in mind that Japan is one of the areas that has shown the greatest resistance against Britannia since Suzaku forced his country's surrender by murdering his father (which is partly why he in the present doubt whether he did the right thing at the time). That's why Britannia is tougher on Japan than any other area, from Suzaku's point of view.

Suzaku believes that resisting and fighting for freedom is not worth it because it will only cause more innocents to die and Britannia to increase its retaliation against Japan and make life more difficult for them. And the series has been responsible for proving Suzaku right in that regard. At first, the terrorists stole "poisonous gas" and the viceroy ordered an entire ghetto to be exterminated in response. Then the leader of the terrorists defeated an incompetent general and killed the viceroy, who was one of the emperor's many sons, and Britannia responded by sending its best general accompanied by its most advanced military unit (excluding the Knights of the Round) to to resolve the matter, thus drawing a huge target on Japan. If Britannia gets this far after a small-time terrorist achieved a simple victory, what will he do next if he actually starts winning? Annihilate every last Japanese? That's what Suzaku fears and knows will happen.

He lived through Britain's invasion of Japan, saw what the empire did to his country, and realized that Britain has only gotten stronger since the war and that Japan has only gotten weaker. Hence Suzaku works within the system. He wants a free Japan. But he believes that Japan will never defeat Britannia militarily (it doesn't matter if he fights on the side of the empire or not: the enemy is a very advanced military and technological superpower), so he looks for another alternative in Britannia, one that involves less spillage of blood, and finds it in Euphemia. Larry, you can judge Suzaku as a coward who gives up before fighting, just like Kallen and Lelouch do. But, if you ask me, this is the mentality of a victim of abuse and therefore a person traumatized by war (someone who lives in fear).

It's for this reason that Suzaku has no faith in Zero. His entire rebellion is based on the fact that he will win. We, the viewers, know that he will do it eventually because he is the f*cking protagonist, but Suzaku doesn't know that. No one in the Code Geass universe knows.

The thing is, Zero's existence, his overflowing charisma, and his eloquent speeches inspire rebellion. Zero is the reason why Britannia has an iron fist in Japan and why there are many Japanese who continue to fight. And Suzaku can't see how dying pointlessly in a fruitless battle and letting innocent civilians get caught up in Britannia's wrath will win freedom for Japan.

In the end, all Japanese people, whether pro-Zero or not, will pay the price for the terrorists, who are not only wasting their own lives, but are also actively getting the people they are trying to protect killed, and herein lies Suzaku's biggest problem with Zero. He doesn't seem to care about anyone or anything other than his own goals and the battle of Narita proved Suzaku right (again). The entire city was wiped out by Zero and the Guren Mk II. Zero had no regard for the lives of civilians because he was only focused on who he was fighting. Even as Lelouch became aware of his actions, he reaffirmed his determination by blowing up the ship with the remaining members of the Japanese Liberation Front, people who were supposedly allies of Zero and his Black Knights. The subsequent Black Rebellion, which was a consequence of the massacre of the Administrative Zone of Japan, ends up completely validating Suzaku:

Ultimately, Zero caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides, Area 11 was demoted to a "correctional area", and oppression against the Japanese became much worse than it already was.

Zero's return only heralded new problems for Japan. For Zero was already the reason why Japan's bloodless path to peace is no longer possible (from Suzaku's point of view). That's why Zero needed to die. With him dead, the resistance would be crushed and his people, although oppressed, would finally stop being decimated by Britannia around the clock. The ghettos would be quiet and military units would stop shooting in those places. It wouldn't be perfect, but at least they would be alive and there we extract another of Suzaku's beliefs: "it is better to live suffering than to die in vain." Either way, Suzaku was working to ascend to Knight of One to ask for the release of his people.

Do I mean then that Japan should have bowed its head and accepted tyranny? No and the series doesn't tell you that either. Suzaku was wrong about certain things too, just as Lelouch was. The point of the post is to take Suzaku seriously, understand why he fights Zero, and reevaluate his arguments to shed light on the positive points (because yes, he has them). The series is not about who is right and who is wrong (and if you believed that, you got it all wrong). It's about two characters who challenge each other's perspectives, learn from each other, recognize their mistakes and find a solution together for a common goal. And they grow from it.

These are some posts that I already have written and would like to translate and share here:

Why is Mao the best villain in the series?

What is the narrative arc of Euphemia?

Who has the best introduction in the series and why?

Analysis of the destruction of the Japanese Liberation Front

The conversation between Lelouch and Kallen in episode 13.

The narrative of episode 17 of first season: duty versus heart.

Better understanding Suzaku's trauma.

Unraveling the final scene of the first season.

Why did Suzaku hand Lelouch over to Emperor Charles?

The reunion in episode 1 of R2 between Lelouch and Kallen.

Why did Kallen return to Lelouch, even though he used her and lied to her?

Narrative parallels between the first four episodes of the first and second seasons. And you can expect many more, which publication are you interested in reading?

#code geass: hangyaku no lelouch #code geass: lelouch of the rebellion #code geass #suzaku kururugi

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mariacallous · 4 months

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“The Hague’s Hypocrisy,” roared the headline in one of Israel’s mass-circulation dailies. “The Hague’s Disgrace,” blared the competing paper.

Outrage was the most obvious public response in Israel when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, announced that he’d seek arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of crimes against humanity. Khan’s parallel request to arrest three Hamas leaders didn’t quiet the fury.

Netanyahu, predictably, accused Khan of feeding “the fires of antisemitism.” But even Israeli legal experts who are deeply critical of the prime minister were disturbed that Khan seemed to put Israeli and Hamas commanders in the same category. “It’s unacceptable to create legal equivalence between the attacker (Hamas) and the attacked (Israel),” as one wrote.

I’m an ordinary enough Israeli to share some of that reflexive anger. The world does seem to pay outsized attention to Israeli actions, and to forget which side committed atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023, and ignited this war.

But outrage is a poor tool for judging whether Khan has a case against Netanyahu and Gallant. For me, the key to answering that question is in a name: Theodor Meron.

Before submitting his request, Khan submitted his evidence to a committee of leading experts on the laws of war. They agreed unanimously that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the suspects he identifies have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity within the jurisdiction of the ICC.” Theodor Meron—a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor, jurist, and former Israeli diplomat—is by far the most prominent of those experts.

I first encountered the name “T. Meron” in the Israeli State Archives more than 20 years ago while researching The Accidental Empire, my book on the history of Israeli settlements in occupied territory. His signature appeared at the bottom of a page in a declassified file from the office of the late Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The top of the page was marked “Most Secret.” What appeared in between pushed me to find out more about him.

Meron was born in 1930 to what he would describe as a “middle-class Jewish family” in Kalisz, Poland. His “happy but, alas, short childhood” ended at age 9 with the German invasion. Somehow, he survived the Holocaust while living in Nazi ghettos and labor camps. Most of his family did not. Soon after the war, at age 15, he managed to immigrate to the city of Haifa in what was then British-ruled Palestine.

For six years, his only schooling had been suffering. The lost years of education “gave me a great hunger for learning,” he’d say later. He completed high school in a new language, then a law degree at the Hebrew University, then a doctorate at Harvard and post-doctoral studies in international law at Cambridge.

In 1957, with no academic position in the offing, he took an offer from the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Just after the Six-Day War in 1967, he was appointed as the ministry’s legal advisor—effectively, the Israeli government’s top authority on international law—as a 37-year-old wunderkind.

A decade and an ambassadorship later, he returned to academia. As for many Israeli scholars, this meant going abroad—in Meron’s case, to New York University’s law school. His legal writing has been described as having “helped build the legal foundations for international criminal tribunals”—starting with the one established by the United Nations in 1993 to deal with crimes committed in the wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia.

By then a U.S. citizen, Meron was appointed as a judge on that tribunal in 2001. He served for several years as its president and on its appeals court. In an interview, he said he found his position “poignant” and “daunting”: the onetime child prisoner of the Nazis now presiding in judgment on crimes including genocide. He has taken particular pride in a ruling that “defined rape and sexual slavery as crimes against humanity.”

Well into his 90s, Meron is again a law professor, this time at Oxford University—as well as an advisor to Khan, the ICC chief, most recently on the case against the Israeli and Hamas leaders.

It is crucial to recall that Khan’s request for warrants is not a conviction. What Meron and the other experts confirmed is that the evidence and the law provide a basis for trying Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas figures Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh.

The experts’ report rejected any Israeli claim that the International Criminal Court lacks standing. “Palestine, including Gaza, is a State for the purpose of the ICC Statute,” they said. Unlike Israel, it has accepted the court’s jurisdiction. The court therefore can rule on actions in Gaza—and by Palestinians on Israeli territory, the report says.

In a joint opinion piece in the Financial Times, Meron and his colleagues also stressed that “the charges have nothing to do with the reasons for the conflict.” To unpack that: Israel may be fighting a justifiable war of defense—but certain Israelis, including the head of government, may have committed crimes in the way that they’ve conducted that war.

The proposed charges against Sinwar, Deif, and Haniyeh include the crime against humanity of extermination in the killing of civilians in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and the war crimes of taking hostages and of rape.

The central charge against Netanyahu and Gallant is that they engaged in “a common plan to use starvation and other acts of violence against the Gazan civilian population”—in order to eradicate Hamas, free the Israeli hostages, and punish the Gazan population. In other words, impeding humanitarian aid wasn’t a foul-up. It was allegedly an intentional means of waging war.

Khan lists the types of evidence that he gathered—interviews with survivors, video material, satellite images, and more. He did not release the evidence itself. For now, we’re left to rely on the unanimous view of the experts. And there is likely no one on earth more qualified than Meron to judge whether Khan has a solid case. To suggest that Meron is persecuting Israel seems laughable. To claim that he is antisemitic is obscene.

This isn’t a verdict. It’s a reason to take the charges seriously.

In fact, Israel would likely not be in this situation if its government had taken Theodor Meron seriously much sooner—in September 1967, when he wrote the memorandum that I found in the archives.

At the time, Prime Minister Eshkol was weighing whether Israel should create settlements in the territory it had conquered in the unexpected war three months earlier. Eshkol leaned toward reestablishing Kfar Etzion, a kibbutz that had been overrun by Arab forces in 1948. The site was between Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank, which had been ruled by Jordan in the intervening years. Eshkol was also interested in settlement in the Golan Heights, Syrian territory that had also recently been conquered by Israel.

In a cabinet meeting, though, the justice minister had warned that settling civilians in “administered” territory—the government’s term for occupied land—would violate international law. Eshkol’s bureau chief asked the Foreign Ministry’s legal advisor to weigh in.

Meron’s response was categorical: “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” The 1949 convention on protection of civilians in time of war, he explained, barred an occupying power from moving part of its population into occupied land. The provision, he wrote, was “aimed at preventing colonization” by the conquering state.

Nine days later, a group of young Israelis settled at the Kfar Etzion site, with the government’s backing. At first, the settlement was identified publicly as a military outpost. As Meron himself had noted, it was legal to build temporary military bases in occupied territory. But this was a ruse, and it quickly wore thin as the civilian character of new settlements became obvious.

So the government soon depended instead on the argument of two prominent Israeli jurists, Yehuda Blum and Meir Shamgar. They argued that the Fourth Geneva Convention didn’t apply to the West Bank. Since Jordan’s sovereignty there had gone almost entirely unrecognized internationally—so their argument went—it wasn’t occupied territory.

As Meron himself wrote in 2017, 50 years after his original memorandum, this theory doesn’t hold water. The convention isn’t aimed at protecting states and claims of sovereignty. It protects people living under occupation from acts of the occupying power.

This raises the question: What would have happened if Eshkol’s government had gritted its teeth in 1967 and accepted its own lawyer’s opinion?

To start, there’d be no settlements in occupied territory. The entire network of large Israeli suburbs, smaller gated exurbs, and tiny outposts wouldn’t exist. The Israeli military would not need to guard these communities, and Israel would not have invested vast resources in tying itself to occupied territory.

We can’t know if there would now be a Palestinian state next to Israel, or perhaps peace in some other constellation. Settlements have not been the only obstacle to a peace agreement. But they are a major one. Moreover, a portion of the settlements—the ideological exurbs—have been a hothouse for the Israeli radical religious right, utterly opposed to giving up land. The two most extreme parties in Netanyahu’s government are led by settlers and count the settlements as their core constituency. Without the settlements, the odds of Israel avoiding its current predicament would have been better.

Accepting Meron’s opinion back then could also have established a different attitude toward international law among Israeli politicians and military leaders—namely, a position of stringent observance. Perhaps such an attitude would have led Netanyahu and Gallant to conduct the current war in a different way, avoiding the acts now alleged by the ICC prosecutor.

Yet the key word is alleged. A critical element of the crimes that Khan alleges is that they were intentional—that starvation and other causes of civilian death were a policy.

It is indeed possible that Israel’s leaders deliberately prevented food and other basic needs from reaching the people of Gaza—that aid was blocked as a means of pressuring Hamas to release hostages or even to give up rule of Gaza. Hamas has used Gazan civilians as human shields; perhaps Netanyahu sought to use their suffering as a weapon against Hamas.

It’s also possible that the failure to get food to Gazans is a result of multiple factors: of the chaos of battle, Egyptian mistakes, Hamas actions, Israeli soldiers mistakenly firing on aid workers just as they have sometimes mistakenly fired on other Israelis, and of the Israeli government’s incompetence—a continuation of the miserable ineptitude that left Israel unprepared on Oct. 7.

All too many people in the world seem to be certain already which of these possibilities is true, based largely on their prior assumptions or the tsunami of media reports. If Khan ever does manage to bring Netanyahu and Gallant to trial, though, he will need to establish intent with hard evidence.

There is another lesson that I took from finding Meron’s 1967 memo: The best evidence of government intent often lies in documents that stay secret for decades. This is even more true of decisions in war, and it adds to the reasons that Israel itself should be investigating what has happened in Gaza.

It’s unlikely that the International Criminal Court would have access to classified Israeli documents. On the other hand, an Israeli state commission of inquiry into the entire conduct of the war—from the disastrous intelligence failure of Oct. 7 onward—would be able to demand such access, and to call top officials and officers to testify.

An explicit point made in Khan’s announcement is that he would defer to Israel if it were conducting its own “independent and impartial” investigation of the alleged crimes. This is the principle of “complementarity”: The ICC’s jurisdiction applies only when national judicial systems fail to act.

A commission of inquiry isn’t a criminal proceeding. But if Israel were investigating itself, then Khan would have good reason to suspend or end his own investigation.

Within Israel, however, it’s a given that Netanyahu’s government will not instigate an inquiry commission with the necessary independence and wide mandate. That can come only if the country’s intense political crisis leads to the fall of the government and new elections.

Netanyahu would like to use the reflexive public anger against Khan’s request for arrest warrants to restore some of his lost support. But the rational reaction is the opposite: The potential ICC case is one more reason to end Netanyahu’s rule and investigate all facets of the war.

Or to put it differently: In 1967, at the start of the occupation, an Israeli government ignored a warning from a remarkably young advisor on international law. Today, Israel needs to heed a new warning from a remarkably old authority on the laws of the war—the same man.

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