#it's impossible to think what people in Gaza are going through

[redvelvetwishtree]

[mariamlovesyou]

tuned into Plestia's live with Rahma Zein's second account (she got shadowbanned). key moments:

plestia talked about her adjustment to living in australia. "it's 1:30am now and it's normal for me and many palestinians who live abroad to be awake hours into the morning. i am scared of sleeping. because of the time difference, i'm scared if i sleep i will wake up to bad news. in gaza i was scared of the sound of the bombs, here i am scared of the quiet."

contacting family and friends in gaza is near impossible. "sometimes i feel like a crazy person, calling 20 times in a row hoping that on the 21st time the call might go through."

on the destruction of entire communities and neighbourhoods: "i'm scared when i go back to gaza i won't recognise it anymore. someone sent me a picture of my neighbourhood, and i couldn't tell it was mine at first. all my favourite places, cafes where the aunties used to give me extra food and ask about my day, have been destroyed. i dread looking at my gallery or seeing snapchat memories because most of these people in the pictures are no longer alive."

rahma asked plestia to talk about one story that stuck with her. plestia said "i remember walking one time on the 'safe corridor', that's what they called it anyway, and i saw an older woman clutching onto a donkey cart where her son's body was, refusing to let go of it. i asked my colleague what the smell was, he said it's dead bodies under the rubble. it was the first time i familiarised myself with the smell. the son's body was decaying and the woman told me about cats and animals eating away at it. i've had children talk to me about birds eating away at their parents' decomposing bodies and not being able to chase them away."

"it seems so silly to go to hospitals for minor sicknesses now. i can't even think about how many palestinian children are going to be terrified of hospitals now. there was a girl who was taken to the hospital to get treatment for injuries by one of the bombs, and while she was in the bathroom another bomb landed nearby. the impact from that sent the ceiling crashing down on her.. she got another injury while getting treated for her first one."

"i hate how people talk about our resilience - as if it's okay that this is happening to us. we are only surviving because we have to, because we have no other choice."

rahma brought up the way family homes are set up in palestine and asked plestia to elaborate. "basically, there are floors. someone will live on the ground floor, and then their married son lives with his children on the floor above them, and then their successors above them and so on. so when family homes are targeted, they wipe out entire families. many families officially no longer exist."

"i used to wear my journalist helmet and vest all the time, felt naked without it, even slept with the vest on sometimes until i realised it only made me more of a target. they didn't give me any protection, only headaches and back pain."

"i am an optimistic person, i loved covering sweet sentimental things, like at my graduation asking parents of top graduates how they feel about their children graduating. that's what i love reporting on. i wanted to cover things like that when i came back to gaza, show the beautiful side of gaza that the media didn't really show, but i didn't have the chance." "do you think they'll give you right of return?" "i can only hope."

plestia mentioned how hard it was being a journalist with limited access to the internet, charging facilities, no mics, lack of equipment and how difficult it was uploading things. rahma asked her what's one story that wasn't really recorded or posted due to these constraints; plestia said "the evacuations. sometimes they informed us about them, sometimes they didn't. you have no idea how hard it was, everyone looking for their family members, making sure every one was there, taking to the streets in 5 minutes and not knowing which way to go. i remember i went to my friend's house for shelter for 30 minutes before the first evacuation was announced and we ran to another family's house, stayed there for 2 days before another evacuation was announced. me, my friend, and that family all evacuated together to another family's house. there were already so many people there seeking shelter, it wasn't just one family staying there. none of us knew how long we had in any place."

before october 7th, palestinians were used to limitations on electricity. plestia used to plan her day's tasks around when the electricity was working. "for example when the electricity was on from 12 to 4, i would say i will do my laundry and charge the phones during this time. life wasn't exactly 'normal', but all of us pray to have those days back in comparison to what we are experiencing now." plestia also said that cars are running on cooking oil now because there is no fuel.

on hygiene: "many pregnant women have to give birth without any pain medication or medical attention. once we ran out of medicine, that was it. women who had to get C-sections couldn't stay to recover or get followup treatments because someone else needed the bed. we have no water, no tissues, no pads, barely any bathrooms. in the shelter schools you have to wait an hour before even getting to use the bathroom because of how many people are there."

"something you don't hear about is how many people die because of sadness. there's so many ways to die in gaza, because of the bombardment, because of starvation, the lack of resources, but i also know many elderly people who died because their hearts couldn't take it anymore. i have been in gaza before and lived through 4 aggressions, but nothing compared to this one."

a recurring sentiment that was echoed in the video: "sometimes i thought to myself: who am i recording this for? because we've already shown everything, we've already talked about everything. everything has already been said, the proof is everywhere, nothing i talked about today is new." rahma said the first video posted about what's happening in palestine should've been enough.

she is 22 today. plestia's closing words: don't stop talking about us, don't stop boycotting, don't stop protesting, please don't get bored of fighting for palestine.

[foggyscholar]

thinking about the healthcare workers in gaza. i mean, i'm always thinking about them, it's impossible not to, but in the light of the 4 day ceasefire. 4 days, man, that is. that is nothing. they're not going to sleep, are they - barely, if at all. they've already been risking - and many losing - their lives to treat people, and they're going to try to make the most of those 4 days. because how could they not.

the Right to Rest for healthcare workers is something i'm very passionate and vocal about, because it's absolutely vital and in an absolutely dire state almost everywhere. i talk about how it's an easy profession to exploit because we go into the field because we care. governments and corporations use that care against us. understaffed, underpaid, overworked and burnt-out - those words describe most healthcare systems around the world. that's in peacetime, though. what if you only had 4 days? every doctor i know would work themselves to literally collapsing from exhaustion rather than risk wasting any of that precious time

i'm not saying this to call anyone to worship them as heroes, to commend their bravery. sure, it takes incredible bravery but the point is, no one should be asked for that much bravery. no one should be asked for this much sacrifice. no one should go through this kind of thing. it is not their bravery i want you to see (because that is obvious), it is their humanity.

they deserve safety to treat their patients in, they deserve proper aid, proper supplies, they deserve the ability to Rest - and the only way to have that is a Permanent ceasefire and sufficient aid - at the very least. that is the bare minimum

[mariacallous]

Why disinformation experts say the Israel-Hamas war is a nightmare to investigate

The Israel-Hamas conflict has been a minefield of confusing counter-arguments and controversies—and an information environment that experts investigating mis- and disinformation say is among the worst they’ve ever experienced.

In the time since Hamas launched its terror attack against Israel last month—and Israel has responded with a weekslong counterattack—social media has been full of comments, pictures, and video from both sides of the conflict putting forward their case. But alongside real images of the battles going on in the region, plenty of disinformation has been sown by bad actors.

“What is new this time, especially with Twitter, is the clutter of information that the platform has created, or has given a space for people to create, with the way verification is handled,” says Pooja Chaudhuri, a researcher and trainer at Bellingcat, which has been working to verify or debunk claims from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the conflict, from confirming that Israel Defense Forces struck the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza to debunking the idea that the IDF has blown up some of Gaza’s most sacred sites.

Bellingcat has found plenty of claims and counterclaims to investigate, but convincing people of the truth has proven more difficult than in previous situations because of the firmly entrenched views on either side, says Chaudhuri’s colleague Eliot Higgins, the site’s founder.

“People are thinking in terms of, ‘Whose side are you on?’ rather than ‘What’s real,’” Higgins says. “And if you’re saying something that doesn’t agree with my side, then it has to mean you’re on the other side. That makes it very difficult to be involved in the discourse around this stuff, because it’s so divided.”

For Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), there have only been two moments prior to this that have proved as difficult for his organization to monitor and track: One was the disinformation-fueled 2020 U.S. presidential election, and the other was the hotly contested space around the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I can’t remember a comparable time. You’ve got this completely chaotic information ecosystem,” Ahmed says, adding that in the weeks since Hamas’s October 7 terror attack social media has become the opposite of a “useful or healthy environment to be in”—in stark contrast to what it used to be, which was a source of reputable, timely information about global events as they happened.

The CCDH has focused its attention on X (formerly Twitter), in particular, and is currently involved in a lawsuit with the social media company, but Ahmed says the problem runs much deeper.

“It’s fundamental at this point,” he says. “It’s not a failure of any one platform or individual. It’s a failure of legislators and regulators, particularly in the United States, to get to grips with this.” (An X spokesperson has previously disputed the CCDH’s findings to Fast Company, taking issue with the organization’s research methodology. “According to what we know, the CCDH will claim that posts are not ‘actioned’ unless the accounts posting them are suspended,” the spokesperson said. “The majority of actions that X takes are on individual posts, for example by restricting the reach of a post.”)

Ahmed contends that inertia among regulators has allowed antisemitic conspiracy theories to fester online to the extent that many people believe and buy into those concepts. Further, he says it has prevented organizations like the CCDH from properly analyzing the spread of disinformation and those beliefs on social media platforms. “As a result of the chaos created by the American legislative system, we have no transparency legislation. Doing research on these platforms right now is near impossible,” he says.

It doesn’t help when social media companies are throttling access to their application programming interfaces, through which many organizations like the CCDH do research. “We can’t tell if there’s more Islamophobia than antisemitism or vice versa,” he admits. “But my gut tells me this is a moment in which we are seeing a radical increase in mobilization against Jewish people.”

Right at the time when the most insight is needed into how platforms are managing the torrent of dis- and misinformation flooding their apps, there’s the least possible transparency.

The issue isn’t limited to private organizations. Governments are also struggling to get a handle on how disinformation, misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories are spreading on social media. Some have reached out to the CCDH to try and get clarity.

“In the last few days and weeks, I’ve briefed governments all around the world,” says Ahmed, who declines to name those governments—though Fast Company understands that they may include the U.K. and European Union representatives. Advertisers, too, have been calling on the CCDH to get information about which platforms are safest for them to advertise on.

Deeply divided viewpoints are exacerbated not only by platforms tamping down on their transparency but also by technological advances that make it easier than ever to produce convincing content that can be passed off as authentic. “The use of AI images has been used to show support,” Chaudhuri says. This isn’t necessarily a problem for trained open-source investigators like those working for Bellingcat, but it is for rank-and-file users who can be hoodwinked into believing generative-AI-created content is real.

And even if those AI-generated images don’t sway minds, they can offer another weapon in the armory of those supporting one side or the other—a slur, similar to the use of “fake news” to describe factual claims that don’t chime with your beliefs, that can be deployed to discredit legitimate images or video of events.

“What is most interesting is anything that you don’t agree with, you can just say that it’s AI and try to discredit information that may also be genuine,” Choudhury says, pointing to users who have claimed an image of a dead baby shared by Israel’s account on X was AI—when in fact it was real—as an example of weaponizing claims of AI tampering. “The use of AI in this case,” she says, “has been quite problematic.”

[matan4il]

Update post:

First, on a personal note, I started my day by calling my family that lives outside of Jerusalem to tell them I'm alive. Two terrorists, residents of an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem (i.e, not Palestinians, who would have to go through a checkpoint, giving soldiers the opportunity to stop them), started shooting people standing at the bus station at the entrance to the city, using a gun and an assault rifle. Three people were killed, one of them a young woman, 24 years old, one is a 73 years old rabbi, and the last is a 67 years old woman. At least 9 more people were injured, 3 of them are still in serious condition. The two terrorists were neutralized at the scene thanks to three people who fired back, one of them was a soldier who was on a 12 hour leave from Gaza, he was at the bus station on his way back to his unit. The terrorists were brothers, affiliated with Hamas, and both had been jailed for terrorist activity in the past. Some of the convicted terrorists who had been released in the past few days, to free innocent Israeli civilians, are residents of the same Jerusalem neighborhood.

Then there was a second terrorist attack today in the Jordan Valley, in this case the terrorist tried driving his vehicle into a crowd, he was neutralized, a few people are injured lightly.

This is Kfir Bibas.

He's the baby who was 9 months old when he was kidnapped together with his 4 years old brother Ariel, his mom Shiri and his dad Yarden. Hamas first said that the Bibas family was handed over by them to another terrorist organization to hold them. Yesterday, Hamas said the Bibas family had been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza. Hamas had previously said that 19 years old Noa Marziano was killed by Israeli fire, it later turned out that she was murdered by a Hamas terrorist in the basement of the Shifa hospital in Gaza. Hamas also said Chana Katzir was killed by Israeli fire. She was released alive. We're all hoping that Hamas is lying about the Bibas family, and that we will see little Kfir and Ariel again, that this is just another part of Hamas' psychological warfare (i.e, psychological torture).

This is 17 years old Aisha al-Ziadna.

You can tell from her hijab, that there is no way Hamas didn't know they were kidnapping a Muslim teenager when they took her, her dad, and her two brothers captive. We know that on the list of hostages to be released today, there are 2 kids. It was just confirmed that it's Aisha and her 18 years old brother Bilal. I'm so glad for Aisha and her family! I'll also admit that as a woman, I've been more worried this whole time for all the girls and women held captive by rapists. I've heard an Israeli Bedouin saying he believed Hamas was keeping her to be released among the last of the hostage kids, to drive a greater wedge between Israel and its Bedouin population. If Aisha and Bilal will finally be freed today, that would mean 38 of the 40 kidnapped kids and teenagers have been released, and the only two remaining in Gaza are Kfir and Ariel Bibas.

We've been hearing more and more about the conditions of captivity the hostages were held under. I'll emphasize that they were kept separately, so what's true for one, is not necesarily true for all, but the overall picture is grim.

Most hostages were kept underground, without fresh air and sunlight. They slept on benches or on plastic chairs. They were not given the medications they need, or they were given unsufficient doses of them. At least one hostage was released in critical state because of this, 84 years old Elma Avraham. One of the doctors fighting to save her life said that had she been released even just one day later, it would have been impossible to save her. She could have been released on the first day of the deal. She was released on the third. For the most part, hostages were not allowed to shower, they were only given new clothes once, on the day of release, and they had no privacy when using the toilettes (again, think about what this meant for girls and women), when asking to use the toilettes, they were sometimes forced to wait for hours for that. At least one kid (12 years old Eitan Yahalomi) told his family he was forced to watch the horror movies Hamas filmed on Oct 7 under gun threat. I'm terrified for what this must have done to him psychologically. All of the kids are having trouble speaking normally, they were threatened with violence if they do anything more than whisper. The Thai captives who were released said they were abused as well, but that the Jewish hostages they were held with, were treated worse (one Thai man mentioned Hamas beat the Jewish captives with electric cables). All of the hostages were malnourished, some of the adult hostages lost up to 15 kilograms (roughly 33 pounds) over 7 weeks, which doctors said amounts to being starved.

(this is Elma Avraham when checked by the Red Cross during her release. I can't not mention that the Red Cross was supposed to give Israel a heads up if any hostage was in a life threatening condition, which Elma was, but the Red Cross didn't say anything, so it was only after a second check by Israel that Elma's critical condition was diagnosed, and she was rushed to the hospital by helicopter)

(speaking of the Thai nationals who were released by Hamas, they were also taken to an Israeli hospital to be treated there until they can go home. Something that really moved me is that the hospital bought a Buddha statue so that these people could pray, even before they're well enough to be discharged)

One Israeli hostage, Roni Crivoi, managed to take advantage of Israeli fire in Gaza, escape his Hamas captors, and he tried to make his way back. Unfortunately for him, he was captured by Gazan civilians, and handed over back to Hamas. Gazan civilians are also some of the people holding Israeli hostages. One kid hostage recounted that he was locked in the attic of an UNRWA teacher (just a reminder, this is a UN employee), who barely give him food, and didn't provide him with his medication. Another was held captive by a Gazan doctor, a man who provided medical care for Palestinian kids, but betrayed his hypocratic oath when it came to an Israeli kid. And it's been Gaza civilians showing up every night, screaming, banging on the jeeps in which the Israeli hostages were being driven to their release, or even throwing rocks at those vehicles. In fact, as hostages were not told they were being freed, many of them said the violence of the crowds made them think they were being taken to be lynched.

Hamas has been violating the hostage deal repeatedly. There's the rockets fired into Israel 15 minutes after the fighting was supposed to stop, there's the promised Red Cross visits to the hostages not freed, which have not yet happened, there's the separation of kids from their mothers (such as Hilla Rotem... Hamas claimed they couldn't release her mother with Hilla, because they didn't know where the mom is. Hilla indicated this was a lie, as she was held together with her mom up until a day before her release. Or another example is Maya Regev, who was freed without er brother Itay, even though he was 18 years old and they were supposed to be released together), there's the Hamas terrorists who fired and threw explosives at IDF soldiers while the fighting is supposed to be on break (starting on day 5 of the deal, we're now on day 7), there was an attempt to offer kidnapped bodies (Israel was able to confirm that three hostages, were actually killed on Oct 7, and Hamas is holding their bodies captive) instead of living people to be released today (which Hamas tried to claim they had to do since they had no more women and kids to release today... when Israel insisted that wasn't true, and if Hamas doesn't rectify the list, the fighting will resume this morning at 7, suddenly Hamas was able to add 3 more women to the list of released hostages for today)...

On a personal note, one of my two kidnapped colleagues was released yesterday, Liat Atzili, and she's been reunited with her kids, but her husband is still in captivity. We've heard through the released hostages that my other colleague is still alive. That's a bit of a relief, since we didn't even know if there was hope for that, given the fact that he had undergone a surgery not that long ago, and is till need of medical care. This is Liat:

This was a perfect reaction to an American projecting American social concepts onto Israel, where the whole history of the conflict is completely different:

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A post shared by HAVTAM (@efi_lefi)

"Israelis get to be white"

Just a reminder that while Jews come in a variety of skin colors, as the above vid nicely points out, no Jew is a part of the social construct of "being white."

This is Liora Argamani, a Chinese woman, who fell in love with and married an Israeli man. Together they had one daughter, Noa. She was kidnapped to Gaza. Liora is dying from cancer. This is the message that she wanted to share:

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A post shared by Hen Mazzig (@henmazzig)

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[putnamcapital]

this is how it is

So I’m definitely not being able to turn on my analytic brain about YR season 3. I really feel for the folks on here who are disappointed or angry about how the show it ended. It must really suck to feel invested and then to feel crestfallen. I have been interested and excited to read people’s analyses and reactions. But I just thought I’d share why, I think, it’s not the ‘mode’ I’m in, in case this resonates with anyone.

I realized even before season 3 was released that it wasn’t ‘just a fictional universe’ – it was a universe I was wholly committed to, because I saw myself in it. I see myself in the characters and their strengths and weakness but also in the story’s inflection points and its overall narrative journey. I had a tremendous amount riding on ‘what happens to these people I love’ because it had become a container for holding ‘what happens to me who I love, after all, despite everything’. To give you a sense of the level of blurring between fact and fiction, I realized I had my eyes closed during the “was it like your dream” scene in the palace because it felt so real and hence private and so I definitely shouldn’t be watching – whereas as them kissing in front of everyone at school, “in public” I was absolutely fine with. And my brain fully melted when they ended up sitting in the same position I had put them in during the actual walls-breaking-down-at-last conversation in my aged-up ten-years from now pre-season 3 story.

Anyway, this is background to explain that people’s meta about “I didn’t like how it turned out” or “it wasn’t realistic” or “it was corny” just ---feels--- to me like the same level of incoherence as ‘fish riding a bicycle’. Because of course I might not like how life turns out, or I might wish it was otherwise, or I might wish I had said something different, or he had not said that all (looking at you, ‘tent scene’) but that is just absolutely not how life is. In fact life can be the pure crystallization of something you do not want, something so horrifying you cannot even imagine it in order to imagine not wanting it. I found episode 5 unbearably difficult, I was triggered in basically every way possible. It was really only then that I was willing to acknowledge there was a moving hand behind all this – a god torturing the mortals. That it was Lisa doing this to ‘them’ and also to ‘us’. It felt like, if I had seen Lisa on the street, I would have screamed at her, and it was would have been as effective as shaking my fists at the sky, the same skies which rain death on the people of Gaza.

I am still not sure whether I feel okay about the decision to drop people off the cliff of episode 5, and then leave them there for a week. But it was masterful, if what you’re interested in is the felt experience of trauma – the way that time seems to stop and then dry to a sludge – while the world goes on but it seems impossible that it *is* going on given how much has been broken.

Anyway sorry if this is a bit much for your lunch break / coffee break but I know I’m not the only one on here who has spent more than a year living in and through the hopes and fears of a handful of Swedish teenagers. So I wanted to share how and why I came to experience season 3 simply as “This is how it is. This is what happened.”

[phoenixyfriend]

Suggested Listening

I've heard a few distinct takes on the UN vote and the comparison of the US and Israeli actions in light of it. I don't fully understand everything about the politics around this vote, because it's a complicated dance and trying to understand what people are thinking is close to impossible when we don't know what's going on behind the scenes and what's just political theater... but I think listening to multiple perspectives might get us closer to understanding than just listening to one.

I have provided approximate bias/political spectrum position for each, as well as giving my reasoning or summary of why I think it's a useful listen.

This post includes The NPR Politics Podcast, Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera: The Take, and the BBC Global News Podcast.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post.

The NPR Politics Podcast - March 27, 2024 - Left-leaning, though not as far as some of the others. This contextualizes the relationship between Netanyahu and Biden among the history between Netanyahu and multiple past presidents, including Trump, Obama, and Clinton. It focuses in part on the domestic political dynamics and ramifications that Biden is facing, the question of funding, and the apparent self-contradiction of the US government when it comes to the possibility of conditions, sanctions, or other reprisal if Israel continues to disregard US concerns about the ground invasion of Rafah.

Democracy Now! - Several parts of the March 26, 2024 episode were focused on the UN vote and results - This is a far-left radio broadcast show that gets repackaged for online video and podcast dissemination. This coverage is much more critical, without 'well, maybe they're trying to [action]' as we see in some others, of the United States and its handling of the UN vote and subsequent fallout. The interview with Craig Mokhiber gets into some nitty-gritty details of something called the "General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace," which I didn't really understand. I can't speak to supporting that we take that part at his word, because it's not something I understand enough to endorse. He also refers to the United States as not only Israel's principal sponsor, but also its co-belligerent.

Short section: U.N.-Commissioned Report Lays Out Evidence of Israeli Genocide in Gaza

Short section: UNSC Approves Its First Gaza Ceasefire Resolution Ater U.S. Abstains

Full story: Ex-U.N. Official Craig Mokhiber: Israel Must Be Held Accountable for Violating Ceasefire Resolution

Full story: Jeremy Corbyn Applauds U.N. Ceasefire Resolution, Says World Must Prevent “Another Nakba”

Al Jazeera - March 26/27, 2024 (timezone-dependent, it was the 26th for EST) - I hesitate to place Al Jazeera on the standard left-right scale since it's outside the Western framework, as an independent Qatari news organization with some degree of funding from the government of Qatar. What I will say is that Al Jazeera provides a vital non-Western lens, even if some of the reporters are Western, when viewing politics in the Middle East. In this particular case, it also appears that they had a reporter much closer to the action in the UN than the others, as Al Jazeera has an office in the UN headquarters in NYC.

They also address a few curious things about last-minute negotiations on the floor of the UN, the immediate consequences of the US ambassador referring to the resolution as 'non-binding,' and asserts that the US warned Israel that they would be abstaining this time, which is why the US is seemingly confused at how upset Israel is about it. I'm not sure how intentional it is, but the message I got is that Israel tried to call the US's bluff and was then upset when the US followed through, because the US... wasn't bluffing. And did in fact abstain.

BBC Global News Podcast - March 27, 2024 - Dead center, variably left or right depending on the issue - This is a twice-daily podcast and generally contains three or four separate stories. Their coverage of Netanyahu walking back the cancellation of his officials' trip to the US is first, however, and I'm not sure how much it adds to analysis of the vote, but it is the most recent and has the latest of the updates.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post.

[kitconnor]

i truly truly truly believe that the apathy around the world will be the thing to end all. to think so many people can not ache at the thought - at the reality - of what palestinians face as the rest of the world continues on is shocking. now, even as things progressively grow more dire for palestinians trapped in gaza, it seems the world tries to pretend all is fine even more determinedly than before. so many people in so many countries are crying out for everybody, anybody to look, to open their eyes and watch the reality and do something to help, absolutely ANYTHING to help palestinians, but the manner of the world is following these idiotic and disgusting countries who are complicit in genocide or those same countries they're just too scared to go against for stupid, irrelevant reasons means so many people do nothing. and that apathy is letting so many people die in this genocide. literally the most important thing we can do is share the stories, make sure palestinian voices never go unheard or that their aid is never unanswered while we fight and fight and fight for them no matter what in holding isr*el accountable in every way. apathy cannot and should never, ever be aimed at a literal genocide, towards a place of suffering civilians where they fear through the night and through the day and have to live in a place that is being turned into a prison and which has conditions that are growing more and more impossible to live in - no-one is more or less human; everyone is flesh and bone. should it not be human nature to do everything to stop another person who needs it so utterly desperately? it's sickening that people can sit with themselves through this genocide, that they could have a clear conscience or not feel the weight of palestinian suffering and not want to do something, to not want to yell for this to end, for palestine to be free.

[doukeshi-kun]

hello! it's been a while. haven't worked much for any future work but i hope everyone's been fine and well.

in the meanwhile, i'd like to say my piece about the current issue 🇵🇸 in the world. my heart always goes to the Palestinians since long ago (peak of being born in an environment of pro-Palestinian people). i strongly encourage you guys to go educate yourself about the situation and do your best to support them in any way—donating, going to rally, praying, educating, sharing, etc. it is not too late to change your perspective and learn. it is not shameful to still educate yourself now. there's a lot of materials out there on TikTok and Twitter (which i think is impossible to look away by now) and you can definitely do your own research without being ignorant.

if you want to donate, please check the sources first because sometimes they aren't going through or unreliable. if you can't donate, the least you could do is to educate yourself and speak up or post about it or be their voice or boost the posts by reposting/reblogging/retweeting/etc. be their voices.

there's a lot of posts you can find just by going through the Palestine tags on twitter and tiktok. here's one of them. you can just click on the 'View on Twitter' to see the thread. if you have free time, please just put some effort to learn.

lastly, if you're against what i'm standing for, get the fuck out of all my blogs. and i don't want stupid ass asks in my inbox that can be done with simple search because honestly, there are a lot of answers to your questions by now.

keep boosting and interacting with posts regarding Palestine in social media. imo, tiktok is one of the platforms where you can access to videos of the situation in Gaza well. while you're educating yourself, you can also spread awareness to the people. that contribution is already great enough.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Keep the News Cycle Focused!

Resist, resist, resist - because, sometimes, it gets someone to report. And then more people see it and resist! And the cycle continues - but only if you keep pushing to make it go.

Don't pull back because Trump. They are not taking meaningful action on this because they expect you to pull back because Trump. We're playing election chicken right now and it is not to the benefit of the voters, or the non-voters being killed on our behalf. Oh, I don't doubt Trump would try to make it worse, and he'll flog it to his gullible base, but he's also an idiot who has a very hard time getting results and he is not the President. You say, "But he could...!" Ah-ah! But he isn't. Biden is succeeding at making it worse right now, and banking on your fear of Trump to insulate him from the consequences.

The only way to hold these people accountable is to threaten their power. If this continues and we all vote for it anyway, I don't wanna know what the political landscape is going to look like forever afterwards. Genocide is being included in the sensible, moderate solutions the sane party offers. Historically, it has been! We have a long and terrible association with genocides! But I don't want it to stay like that!

The best way to move the Overton Window back towards human decency is to stop the genocide NOW, before the damn election. But they're still trying to shut the objections down. They redefined this event twice, trying to make it look like NBD, and then they tried to keep the story as quiet as possible. It still is relatively quiet! But it's there. The people resisting got it covered.

I come from a food-centric culture too. This is an ice cold rejection and I hope like hell the folks on Team Biden who agreed to sit down and eat for the damage control told him that. This is almost as bad as throwing a shoe. This is trouble.

And I'm grateful. I want trouble like this now, because it's a lot better than what could happen later. Even a few weeks later. Gaza is STARVING, y'all, and we could stop it. Think long and hard about why we're not. I'm gonna tell you right now, it's not "because democracy!" (ie "but the guy who can circumvent congress and the law to sell more weapons and build more border walls isn't powerful enough to do this!") or "because antisemitism!" (ie "well, Israel and Judaism are the same thing and Jews have been through a lot, so Israel can have a little genocide") it's "because POWER!"

If politicians don't see a threat to their power, they don't listen. There is an entire crazed, fundamentalist religion DEMANDING that Israel exist so God can come back and destroy it, among many other awful things, it is damn near impossible to reason with them, and Democrats want their votes. Democrats want everyone's votes, but they've decided to move towards the fundies on the right and abandon the critical thinkers on the left. (If you think they haven't, PLEASE turn your brain back on and start looking and listening to them!) It's safe to ignore us because we have no other option. We have to get louder and scarier to see results. Hell, we have to get louder and scarier just to slow down the decay.

Keep it in mind when pushing back against all the awful shit that's going down right now.

And keep resisting!

[charleslebatman]

End of a story 💔

I've decided to stop the blog, everyone, for the sake of my sanity, my personal life and all that lies ahead. I've loved talking to you, sharing ideas, introducing you to art and having the blog as a little chill moment of humor, a sort of very French local PMU but with lots of besties of all origins. I don't think many people will miss me, but one thing I'm sure of is that I've met some extremely intelligent, kind-hearted besties with strong convictions who understood my lame sense of humor haha.

Remember, this sport or whatever celebrities are not your family, friends or anything. You have the right to have opinions on what you think they reflect through social networks, their speech, their gestures etc… And to say it when it doesn't suit you, it will never make you bad fans contrary to what the fanatics love to say.

Anyway, I don't really know how to end it all. It's very instinctive what I'm writing, but just take care of yourself. You've helped me through great periods of my life without even knowing it, just to have a laugh and share like girlies. I hope that was the case for you too. I've thought about deleting the blog entirely to really close it all down, but it's impossible. Just for Palestine and the genocide in Gaza it would hurt too much, then all the sharing and the time so many have taken to share and publish asks. So I'll leave the blog as it should be.

Take care of yourselves, your mental and physical health. One never goes without the other. Don't get hung up on networking and all that, live your life is important too. The more you lock yourself into this world that reeks of superficiality through the phone, the more your mind is going to be impacted if you hang on to it too much.

I don't have any farewells, so I'll just say goodbye and that it's been a pleasure sharing these months with you. I feel like it's been years. I beg you though, keep your critical mind, don't become fans who don't even know how to think for themselves anymore.

See you soon besties, love you. 🫶🫶

[inaweek-project]

March 23, 2024                                      

About the “‘In a Week’ Project”

I get stuck every time I try to write this because all the details beside the main message seem so frivolous.

The song “In a Week” has always elicited strong images whenever I listened. The same movie would play in my head, but with slightly different details each time: skeletons laying peacefully in an open grave at the top of a hill; no, there was a picnic first, then the slow decay; actually, the scene should play in reverse, so the bones grow flesh and skin…

Two months after October 2023, I was getting high in a bath on my birthday and listening to the song. The story was no longer about the passing of time or decomposing next to a lover. The persistent imagery that played in my mind from then on morphed into a story about a choice a young fictional couple made while facing a horrific situation that no one should ever have to go through, but many real people did and many still do.

Everything in my life is now about Palestine.

I’m Palestinian, born and raised in America after my grandparents (that’s how recent this all is) were displaced due to settler colonialism during the Nakba in 1948. I gave up on the dream to visit the area where my family is from a long time ago. (In fact, I don’t think I ever seriously dreamt of it because it felt so impossible.) Gaza has reignited that dream and gave me the determination to dedicate my life to fighting for our right to return. I will do anything to take advantage of this unprecedented support we now have from around the world.

I’m constantly learning horrors, both new and of the past. There is always something new to learn in the worst way possible. There is nothing Zionists can do that will shock me; they have shown they are capable of doing things rooted in the deepest levels of evil. What makes everything so much worse is the lack of accountability and how they have the audacity to act like the victims. I often get frustrated in my efforts to help on the American front; I let my shyness and anxiety get in the way of doing even the simplest of things to help. This project is a way to use my strengths (writing) to help spread the truth about our history and show the abject horrors that have been overlooked for decades. They benefit from the denial of the Nakba and from the overall lack of knowledge.

I hope this “‘In a Week’ project” is interesting enough to get people to read it and at the same time learn the details of what ethnic cleansing looks like (and the deplorable people who do it with pride.) The one takeaway I want to make sure is known is that even though this was inspired by a heartbreaking love song and has elements of the romance genre, it is not a romantic story.

The reference page (to come) that lists what parts of the story are based on real events that Palestinians have gone through is the most important part of this whole project.

The true face of Zionism is rearing its ugly head and is finally starting to fall, all by their own doing. There is no argument to be made; I only have to show what has already been done.

Again:

This is not about romance or romantic love.

Every detail shows a bit of truth.

The Project:

I call this a “project” because I wrote this story two different ways, a short story and script. The similarities will be obvious at first, but then the script goes deeper into the horrors of ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism. This is where the majority of the historical context comes in. I think I went further with the script than the short story because I see this project in terms of imagery that should unnerve people, and I think the best, most direct way to do that would be on-screen visuals.

I will probably do 3 versions of each: one with no callouts or notes, one with endnotes and references, and one with annotations where I explain everything (just because I love to do that.) There are 3 important dates coming up that I will (hopefully) use as my deadlines: March 30th is Land Day, April 9th is when the Deir Yassin Massacre took place, and May 15th, the day the Nakba is commemorated.

What’s making me drag my feet on this project is having to look up the sources and read more about the Nakba. I don’t know how much more I can take.

Fears:

I’m actually not helping.

This story only comes off as romanizing the Nakba and fucks up the narrative of Palestinians and the history in a way I didn’t see, and I become a disgrace.

People’s only take away is the romantic tragedy element.

[mariacallous]

Despite an ongoing eleventh-hour attempt to secure a cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Monday that Israel’s war cabinet had unanimously decided to proceed with its military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which Israeli officials say is Hamas’s last major holdout. 

Even as top United Nations officials have warned that a Rafah invasion could push the 1.5 million Palestinians who have encamped there over the border into Egypt—essentially making resolving the conflict impossible—Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops on Sunday that an invasion is imminent. 

And early Monday, the Israeli military began preparing the battlefield with airstrikes on Rafah, signaling a possible imminent ground operation; it also ordered 100,000 Palestinians—just a fraction of those sheltering in Rafah—to evacuate to an Israeli-established humanitarian zone along the Mediterranean coast. 

If Israeli troops do advance into Rafah in an attempt to eradicate the four Hamas battalions believed to be there, experts say they will face a battle-hardened enemy that has the ability to fight and resupply through a vast network of tunnels, all while Israeli troops try to get tens of thousands—if not millions—of civilians out of the way. 

In other cities where the IDF has fought since this war began, such as Khan Younis, troops were able to move neighborhood by neighborhood, sector by sector, clearing out people as they needed to. But larger masses of people will likely be forced out this time as the IDF moves in. “Rafah is going to fundamentally look a bit different,” said Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow and the director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. It “isn’t quite as clean, necessarily.” 

The Hamas battalions fighting in Rafah are “fairly indigenous” to the area, Lord said. They rely on the Philadelphi Corridor, a dense network of tunnels. The Israelis have tried to put in a subterranean wall to block Hamas’s use of the corridor but haven’t been successful.  

“Hamas is most likely dug in and prepared to fight from emplaced positions where they have access to tunnels and resupply and the ability to exfiltrate and escape and move around,” Lord said. “That becomes a little bit harder in some of the improvised humanitarian areas.” 

Michael Mulroy, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense now working with Fogbow, a group helping to set up the aid pier in Gaza, said the Israelis have told NGOs that the evacuation will take about 10 days, though aid groups believe it could take substantially longer. Mulroy said the operation could shut down border crossings into Gaza for up to three to four weeks. Rafah, which borders Egypt, is home to the only border crossing into Gaza that Israel does not directly control.

And it’s not clear that the Israelis have set up enough temporary housing, hospitals, and security to make the evacuation workable. The Israeli government has begun setting up 40,000 tents in Mawasi, a beachside area where there are less likely to be Hamas tunnels, but humanitarian groups say that number is far short of what is needed. 

“The immediate conclusion is going to be, what are you going to do with all of these people?” said Bilal Y. Saab, an associate fellow with Chatham House in London and a former U.S. defense official.

Hamas might also want civilians in the way, analysts said, and could even potentially impede their exit. Some former military officials are even worried that the militant group could take human shields.

“You need to reduce the number of civilians in there,” said Kenneth McKenzie, a retired Marine general and the head of U.S. Central Command until 2022. “The fact of the matter is, Hamas will try to make that not happen. Hamas has no interest in evacuating civilians, regardless of what they say.” 

Mulroy said the Israelis will need at least two divisions, a paratrooper and an armored element, alongside smaller detachments of artillery and special operations forces. But there are still high-level tactical arguments taking place between the Netanyahu and Biden administrations about how the campaign would be conducted. 

“It’s going to be a multidimensional fight,” McKenzie said. “They’re going to have to fight underground, they’re going to have to fight on the surface of the Earth, they’re going to have to fight in the low-Earth atmosphere, because Hamas will probably fly lots of drones. Israel will certainly fly drones. It’s going to be another tough, bloody, ugly fight, which Israel will have lessons learned from their fights [in northern Gaza]. Hamas will have lessons learned from the fights up north. Both sides will apply them.”

In a phone call with Netanyahu on Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden reiterated his opposition to a Rafah ground operation, and White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Israel had not yet provided the United States with a comprehensive plan for its operations in Rafah. 

“The U.S. would like to see [Rafah] as more of a surgical, intel-driven probe with reconnaissance [to] find the mass of Hamas fighting militants and then streamline your combat power directly to it,” Mulroy said. “The Israelis—at least from what I know—are [planning for] more like a Fallujah-type, mass movement, block-to-block fight,” he added, referencing the pitched urban battles that U.S. troops fought in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. 

Whether Netanyahu and his war cabinet will end up being receptive to Washington’s wishes or instead choose to forge ahead and do things their own way remains to be seen. But experts aren’t holding out much hope.

“Have they actually decided to further alienate the Americans?” Saab said. “We keep telling them, don’t do it, and [Netanyahu] is about to do it.”

[rosalesbeausderholle]

dude. the unrwa head acknowledges that there's something going on beneath the unrwa gaza headquarters.

https://twitter.com/UNLazzarini/status/1756377920254218556

I'm not saying it's impossible, but we know for a fact Israel has lied about supposed Hamas headquarters to "justify" bombing everything from schools to hospitals. They even called South Africa a Hamas plant for taking them to court. The president of Spain said something like "maybe a ceasefire could be good?" And Netanyahu basically threatened us. Like, I need you to understand that Israel is playing dirty here from the get go, and they have manipulated and lied the whole way through this. They lied about Rafah being a safe zone, they lied about other Hamas bases, they even planted fake Nazi props (amazingly intact and new!) in the houses of people they just bombed and murdered.

And even if they're right this time, I don't care, I don't fucking care that there were Hamas bases under the UNRWA headquarters. Hitler himself could be under those headquarters and it still would not justify bombing the organization that's providing relief to Palestinian civilians.

Just like the supposed Hamas tunnels did not justify bombing every single hospital in Gaza.

What you do when you have a dangerous terrorist using other civilians as shields is to send in special OPs and try to neutralize the terrorists while limiting as many civilians casualties as possible. That's what you would do if you cared about stopping terrorists, but that's not what Israel cares about, and it's deluded at this point to think that they do.

If they wanted to stop Hamas, they would have accepted prisoner and hostage exchanges, they would have accepted proposals for a ceasefire, they would have protected civilians. But they don't care about any of that, what they want is the total and complete annihilation of Palestine, Hamas is just their convenient excuse. You don't kill 30000 civilians, almost half of whom are children, to "get back" at a terrorist organization that killed 1000 people. That's not justifiable no matter how you look at it and it is not the way to stop any terrorist organization whatsoever.

Carpet bombing Gaza, its schools, its hospitals, its children and its relief organizations (which they've shown they're not above doing, the UNRWA headquarters are NOT safe!) does nothing to stop Hamas (who's leaders, as far as I know, are not even IN GAZA, and information that ISRAEL ALSO HAS) it just makes the survivors hate you, with reason, and then join up and start Hamas 2.

[twojackals]

I have a beautiful picture of an art installation with the words "Remember Palestine" on it as my profile photo on Facebook. And I had someone remove me directly after adding the photo.

I think people are being shadow-banned on Facebook by the way, for talking about "the conflict" in terms that can be filtered, because I'm sure had the person seen any of my previous Facebook posts which all talked about Palestine, they would have removed me sooner.

This person's profile was plastered with Israel flags and articles about Israel since the most recent violence began, and to be clear I think that's great, Israel's been through a tragedy -- but ultimately if you're into talking about Israel as if it is the sole victim in the Israel-Palestinian dynamic and are willing to go about your day with blinders on, then I agree: we probably aren't friends.

Israel is a victim of Hamas (just like Palestine), and they have been dealt a heinous and painful set of cards; but they also have all the planes, weapons, warnings, defense measures, bomb shelters, food, clothing, water, fuel, medicine, housing, and international support.

Gaza and Palestine are also victims: of Hamas, war crimes, and other crimes against humanity. They also have absolutely nothing.

I will continue to talk only about Palestine because I don't need to talk about Israel: everyone else is already doing it. It doesn't mean I don't feel for their loss: the murder of 1300 people is a horrible tragedy. It just means I'm focusing on what's not being widely talked-about already in the Western media.

And what's not being talked about, looks a lot like this:

To be fair to Western media, they are starting to clue in. Only took them a week, but more and more people are starting to talk about Palestine and Gaza with concern in their voices instead of disdain.

Maybe it took 600 dead children (out of 1900 total dead, still hanging onto that 30%-kids ratio I see in their search for "military targets"...), a 24-hour notice to move 1.1 million bodies (impossible), the leveling-out of reactions from knee-jerk to long-thought-out (probable), or something else... but I'm seeing more people give the humanitarian side of Palestine, slowly, as time goes on.

But it's still not enough, because Palestine has been under everyone's heel for years. There is too much ground to cover and now very little time to cover it in... so if we can't be friends while I talk about Palestine, that's perfectly fine.

Because it's just not that important in comparison with what is happening out there.

[bloobluebloo]

This is honestly the worst timeline. Ganondorf and the Gerudo are still given zero respect by the cowards that handle them, caricatures are being used more often again outside of nintendy, Gaza is a shitstorm, Hamas is a thing that exists, the actions of Hamas is being treated as a justification for public genocide... can we just not have a dogshit year?

I know this is the last thing you mentioned but it is the first thing I will address, and that is Hamas. Hamas would not be a "thing" that exists if it weren't for Israel. The plight of the Palestinian people has been exposed in the most brutal of fashions because of Israel's declaration of war on Hamas. However, even if the October 7th attacks did not happen, did you think the Palestinians were living in peace? Gaza was already under a military blockade from Israel and Egypt for over a decade; it is almost impossible to leave Gaza. If you enter Gaza to visit family, it is a roll of the dice whether you will ever be allowed to leave again or not, even if you hold a powerful passport, like an American or European one. Drones continuously patrol Gaza's skies, the sound dubbed "Zanana" by residents of Gaza as it is continuous. Israel indiscriminately bombs Gaza whenever they suspect a "Hamas terrorist" is there. Did you know that Israel bombed and effectively shut down the only airport in the Gaza strip. That ensures that anyone who wishes to go to Gaza has to pass through Israel first. This blockade and restriction of movement has caused economic hardship in Gaza as unemployment rates were high.

In the West Bank, Palestinians have to pass through military checkpoints every single day to go to school, to work, to their house. They constantly face the threat of Israeli settlers taking their land and homes. There are streets that they are not allowed to use, and will be shot at if they find themselves on them. Oh, and of course in both areas they arrest anybody for the smallest slight. A child throwing a rock or suspected of having a knife will be arrested and jailed for an indefinite amount of time. Often, children will be tried in military courts. Is Hamas the problem? Or is the continuous oppression of the Israeli Zionist state aggravating the people to fight back? Would you not fight back if you lived under constant oppression, where your brother or sister or mother or father or cousin could be arbitrarily arrested, or simply executed on the spot for no reason? Would you not fight back if your home could be taken from you at any moment and given to someone who showed up a couple of months ago claiming ancestral right to your home? As for your other points, I don't have much faith in Nintendo taking any meaningful approach to repairing the way they write the Gerudo and Ganondorf. They came close with FSA before walking several steps back in BotW. What I would like is for people to be aware of how the story is framed and to be critical of them using such framing in the pursuit of simple storytelling. I know a lot of people want to talk about all the Japanese influences that can be found in Hyrule and the Hylians, The Sheikah, the Zonai, TotK Ganondorf's design etc. However, the fact that people cannot see how Hyrule, the kingdom claiming divine right to the land, having conflict with a man from the desert who refused to bow to them and considered him evil for it does not reflect what we see in real life is troubling to me.