#muslim run countries doing anything

[killa-trav]

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[matan4il]

Update post:

The biggest thing everyone's talking about on the news in Israel right now is the finding of a MASSIVE Hamas compound underneath UNRWA's main headquarters in Gaza, and finding proof that UNRWA were supplying the compound with electricity and internet services, supply which allowed Hamas to develop their intelligence, used during the Hamas massacre among other things. When Israel published the finding of the compound, the head of UNRWA claimed they found nothing up until October, and weren't able to check anything since. Israel responded by pointing out that a compound so developed most likely took no less than ten years to dig and build, and that UNRWA was repeatedly told that Hamas is operating under its headquarters, but chose to ignore this. What I think is most telling is a tour taken by an Israeli journalist in the compound, where they showed him that the server farm in the Hamas compound is found directly under the server farm of UNRWA, and that cables from the latter were running down into the terror tunnel compound directly beneath it (source in Hebrew, here's a vid in English giving viewers a tour of the compound, I'll attach the vid itself below, too). Something like that doesn't happen by coincidence, and without the knowledge of those in the server farm above groud. Some of the cables were also cut in the UNRWA server farm, like someone realized the IDF was coming, and tried to hide the link between the two server farms. As one officer pointed out, if you're an innoncent, interenational humanitarian aid organization, you have no reason to cut the cables of your own server farm, or remove the name tags from the doors of the rooms inside your headquarters. You only do that if you have something to hide.

Israel's army has been fighting Hamas in all of Gaza, except the southern city of Rafiach (Rafah in English). There are a lot of Gazans there, who have been evacuated from other zones. There's also 4 Hamas regiments there, which means Israel will have no choice but to fight there. So the only question is how to fight in that city, in order to minimize the harm to the civilian population. There are reports that Israel's Prime Minister has asked the IDF to present plans both on how to fight Hamas in Rafah, and how to evacuate the civilians.

In that context, I got to hear a radio interview with an Israeli minister, who used to be the head of Shabak (Israel's equivalent of the FBI). When asked about the US warning for Israel not to fight in Rafah during the upcoming month of Ramadan, Avi Dichter said that it has never been a month during which Muslims have not fought in wars. In fact, in 1973 the Egyptians and Syrians (with soldiers from even more Arab countries fighting alongside them) chose to attack Israel on Oct 6, despite Ramadan that year starting on Oct 4, causing the war to be known in the Arab world as "The Ramadan War." More than that, in Israel Ramadan is always a time of peak alert, because so many terrorist attacks are carried out during it (here's an example from Mar 2023, when Hamas was encouraging individuals to carry out terrorist attacks during Ramadan, and here's another from 2022). Dichter suggested that if Muslims can carry out terrorist attacks during Ramadan (and it has happened outside Israel, too), the war in Gaza which was started by Hamas can continue during it.

On an Israeli TV news panel, someone shared the estimate that over 100,000,000 dollars (one hundred million dollars!) is the sum of money that Hamas made just since the start of the war from selling to the civilian population the humanitarian aid that was allowed into Gaza, and which Hamas stole from the Gazans (more than once, by using violence).

This is Chagit Rein.

She lost her son Benaya in the Second Lebanon War, back in 2006. I got to hear an interview with her following the fact that during this war, she decided she would try to visit the shiva (the mourning week following a burial) of every fallen soldier. According to her, she has so far visited the families of 400 soldiers killed on Oct 7 or since. "If they see me, then it's living proof that there can be a life alongside the loss. That was our kids' last will and testament. They died so we could live. So we have to live." When asked what she's asked most often when she visits the families, she said it was what she did first after her son's shiva. "My other son was being drafted into the army, so the first thing I did was to accompany him in that." She was asked whether there were moments when she was overwhelmed herself. She replied that she's seen wounded soldiers making incredible effortrs to come to the shiva of others who were killed, to offer their families some comfort. In one case, an injured soldier recognized her, and told her that it was thanks to her son Benaya that he was an officer in the armored forced. He tried to hug her, but was at first unable to get up or reach her from the stretcher he was on. Chagit recounted that she tries to make sure her visits would be about the families she's conmforting, not about herself, but that's when she broke down and cried.

This is Doctor Elai Chogeg-Golan with her husband Ariel and their baby daughter, Yael. On the right, their house in kibbutz Kfar Azza.

On Oct 7, due to Hamas' massive rocket attack, Elai was inside the bomb shelter in her home with her family from 6:30 in the morning, when Gazan civilians got in at around 1 in the afternoon. The Gazans tried to get the family to come out, but it wouldn't. Then, those invaders set the house on fire, probably thinking that would force the family out. Instead, Elai and the family tried to keep themselves safe using water. At some point, she recounts they even fought face to face with the Gazans, who tried to beat them with sticks from the outside. She said she managed to grab a stick, and beat them back. These Gazans then threw in two gas balloons into the burning house. Elai says that most of the burns she sustained were from the fire ball that that created. At some point, the Gazans moved on, and that's when the family got out, because the whole place was on fire, they were choking from the smoke, and even the roof collapsed. They hid nearby, but then baby Yael lost consciousness, and the parents decided to try and get out of the kibbutz. At the entrance, they met soldiers who helped get them to a hospital. Elai had severe burns on over 60% of her body. She was in a coma for 53 days, but incredibly, they all survived.

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

[newsfromstolenland]

it's becoming increasingly obvious that white people just can't bring themselves to care about people of colour

it's not like it's anything new, or anything I didn't already know, but white so-called leftists who have spent years telling us that they're not like those white people are just showing their true colours right now. and that true colour is white.

you don't care about palestine. or sudan. or congo. you don't care about muslims or Indigenous people or black people. you think everyone in china or north korea is evil or stupid and brainwashed. you think voting for one racist white man instead of another is necessary and yell at people of colour for not wanting to do that. you think rap music is scary and violent. you think people need to shut up about racism and focus on homophobia instead. you think brown people all hate gays. you think aave is funny. you think colonial states can be good if they're just run by the right kind of colonist. talking about racism and genocide is just too 'tiring' for you. you call black people who say they don't want to vote for biden psyops. you don't think of queer people of colour as part of the lgbt+ community. you only care about what happens in western countries.

you don't care about us.

so what exactly is it that separates you from the conservatives that you claim to be better than?

our lives aren't important to you. our rights aren't a worthwhile cause. what is a worthwhile cause? one that impacts white people, of course!

it's infuriating and exhausting, listening to you rattle off all the ways that you're marginalized to prove you're not racist, while you ignore and talk over people of colour

you don't know what racism is like. you might know what homophobia is like, or transphobia, or misogyny, or ableism, but that doesn't mean you understand. you will never understand. so the least you can do is listen to us. or at the very least, leave us the fuck alone.

[nimas-li-kvar]

well, why not exactly like south africa? why not like any other arab country where muslims and christians and atheists and hindus live side-by-side just fine? why not like the diverse western nations that finance your state's existence? what exactly about palestinians is so Inherently Evil And Irredeemable (bc that is honestly how you sound) that they would not have the humanity and morality to treat people like people?

it's always the same fear of the day after. white south africans are alive. white american colonisers are fucking thriving. same in australia, in new zealand. immigrants to arab countries lead entire lives there. why not like any of them?

What an exhausting, insulting question... that truly has nothing to do with anything I said. I was speaking about Hamas and leftists who support their aims to dismantle Israel, not the Palestinian people.

I have never said that it’s impossible that Muslims, Christians, Jews, (and Samaritans, Druze, etc.) will live side-by-side. They already do, in Israel. There is discrimination, but they do indeed live side-by-side. What I said was that it will not happen under Hamas rule. Which is an objective fact. The Gaza strip, by the way, is currently 98% Muslim.

I also never said that Palestinians are “inherently evil and irredeemable,” nor did I imply it. You lie in order to paint me, as an Israeli, as hateful. I am not. I spoke only of Hamas. Your conflation of a militant terrorist group with civilians is unfortunate. Hamas has proven time and time again that they do not have the humanity to treat people like people. I said nothing of the Palestinian people.

While I owe you nothing, I'll have you know that I am absolutely in favor of steps towards a peaceful solution and mutual recognition of both nations. I think it is outrageous that there are Palestinian detainees held without charge. I find the number of deaths in Gaza an unacceptable collective punishment. I am supportive of cultural and economic efforts towards reconciliation (e.g., bilingual Arab-Jewish schools and summer camps, joint activism efforts, organizations that promote dialogue and cross-cultural events, shared efforts to help victims of violence, cultural exchange and language learning initiatives). I think the current government is a disaster. I want to see a world where Jews, Christians, and Muslims—and Samaritans, Druze, and Baháʼís—live in peace together in that land. The fact that you saw me saying that Hamas would enact genocide if given the chance (which is true) and interpreted that as me saying Palestinians are “inherently evil” (which I did not say) is truly sad.

The reality is Hamas is not a resistance group. It is an Islamic ultranationalist militaristic dictatorship that has kept its citizens as prisoners by stealing international aid and running military operations to commit war crimes from under schools and hospitals. It is a terrorist group that rapes, murders, and tortures civilians, including children and infants. Peace in the region will not be possible without a demilitarized Gaza. Hamas rule is incompatible with peace. If you support Hamas, you support the violent expulsion or genocide of Israeli Jews from our homeland. You can (and should) be in support of Palestinian self-determination. This belief is also incompatible with support for Hamas. Israeli war crimes do not absolve Hamas's war crimes.

Another thing I find interesting is that you refer to a dismantled Israel as “another Arab country,” and in the same breath claim that Jews would continue to live there. I wonder, was it a coincidence that you failed to list Jews in your list of religions living side-by-side, or are you aware that there are very, very few Jews living in Arab countries today? In case you are unaware, the absence of Jews from the Arabian peninsula, the Mesopotamian region, and North Africa is a result of diasporic Jewish minorities fleeing, being expelled, and/or being ethnically cleansed. Prior to that, they lived with second class status (dhimmis) under Islamic rule. As an Israeli Jew, I cannot set foot in many Arab countries today. Is that your version of coexistence?

And let us be clear: The remaining ethnic minority groups do not live in peace in the Muslim-majority countries of the region. The examples are endless. The genocide of the Yazidis by the Islamic State. The Houthi persecution of Yemenite Jews and Baháʼís. The displaced Christians from the Syrian civil war. The Middle East is rife with examples of radicalized religious extremists being entirely incompatible with coexistence with minority groups.

Yet, in your list of co-existing religions, you picked Hinduism: a minority religion that, while practiced in some Middle Eastern countries, is not indigenous to the region. Perhaps you did this in ignorance. Perhaps it was an attempt to support your point that some immigrants and migrants can indeed lead reasonable lives in Arab countries (e.g., Indian expats in the Emirates or Saudi Arabia), as ethnic minorities with a homeland to return to. Needless to say, it's an irrelevant and feeble attempt to claim that religions currently coexist well in the Muslim-majority countries. As a whole, they do not.

Let's talk about your list of colonizers next. White South Africans being alive has nothing to do with Israel. White people thriving in the USA, Australia, and New Zealand have nothing to do with Israel. Those examples are particularly bizarre anyway, as, excepting South Africa, you’ve picked countries where the colony essentially remained in place and became the ethnic majority. But none of these colonies have anything to do with Israel, because Israel is not a colony.

Jews are indigenous to Israel. We are one of a small number of indigenous Levantine ethnic groups who call that land home. The word colony requires a context we do not have–a colony for what country? What existing country is expanding territory? We are a 4000 year old nation, many of us displaced by the Romans, and who, after 2000 years of oppression and genocide both in the diaspora and in our homeland, won our independence from the occupying force in power at the time: the British. We have nothing to do with European colonizers. You cannot colonize your own homeland.

Again, that does not mean I support the Israeli government or the IDF's actions. I fully believe Palestinians also deserve self-determination in our shared land. Our status does not change the Palestinian story. It does not undo their suffering. The situation in Gaza is untenable and an outrage. Our status does not change the inhumane conditions that Israel, along with other countries (like Egypt) have placed on the population of Gaza.

But Jews being indigenous to the region matters—because the context to understand Israel is not one of colonizer-colonized. Ours is an ethnic conflict in the context independence after a long history of many colonial powers (British, Ottoman, etc.), a wider political context of Arabization and oppression of ethnic/religious minority groups in the entire Middle East, as well as a global context of hatred of Jews and Arabs, and of Western meddling.

It also matters because it highlights the fact that Palestinians are our cousins—both because many Palestinians are likely decedents of Jews, Samaritans, etc. who were Arabized and forcibly converted Islam—but also because the Arabs are our cousins too. It is important to remember that this is an ethnic conflict, and not a situation in which one group can "go home." We have to find a way to coexist. Hamas is not that way.

Is “leading a life,” as you say, enough? Well, we wouldn't be able to, under Hamas. They have made that clear. But even if a Hamas-led state made room for dhimmi-status Jewish Israelis, then no, it would not be enough. (Remember, it is not even enough for many Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship to live under our state with full rights.) Self-determination is important. Maintenance of language and culture is important. Statehood matters, for both Palestinians and Israelis. I do not believe we are ready for a fully unified state. Perhaps we never will be. But whatever the solution, it is imperative that both people have self-determination in their homeland.

And be it a unified democratic binational state, a single federal government with autonomous cantons/states that govern themselves, a "two states, one homeland" two state confederation, a fully-realized two state solution, or any other solution: the violent—and yes, evil—Hamas regime can play no part.

[old-school-butch]

What do they think Hamas wants? What do they think Israel is supposed to do? Do they seriously think Israel is supposed to be like sure here you go we are all going to leave Israel and you can have everything? Do they think that would bring about peace? I’m serious. Like really do they think there is anything Israel could do that would stop any of this? Do they think Israel should’ve done nothing and this situation would’ve just disappeared? Americans are the dumbest fucking people on the planet. Hamas wants compliance or death, that’s how terrorism works, that’s war.

Whoever is running the information warfare at Hamas is truly brilliant. The ideology of Islamists has been run through some kind of autotuner so it sounds like it came from a chapter in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Western liberals are eating it up. While liberals are still catching up on which river and which sea the chant refers to, they still don't grasp that the end goal here is the elimination of the state of Israel entirely. And while 20% of Israelis are Arab Muslims, there are zero Jews in Gaza. The PR people are saying Zionist these days instead of Jews, so maybe it doesn't sound too bad when they say Kill All Zionists but that's just the English translation. Zionism is the creation of a Jewish state. Hamas will call it the 'Zionist entity' because they don't recognize it as a state. They don't recognize it because all states should be Muslim. Israel is occupying territory that should be Muslim. When they say 'end the occupation' it sounds like a call for liberation of an oppressed people, instead of the desire to destroy Israel, kill or expel the Jews and create a Muslim state in its place.

Yemen's Houthi rebels (who are currently attacking Israel) have a slogan "God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam" and I think it says a lot that they take the time to double down on how much they hate Jews/Israel instead of a single 'Houthis are great!' thrown into their own slogan.

The Islamists have noted the 'anti-colonial' rhetoric in Western universities and capitalized on it by positioning Israel as a proxy for the West and thus a scapegoat for the West's sins of imperialism. It does rely on some very old anti-Semitic tricks - because Jews assimilate fairly well (because they don't have an evangelical aspect to the faith) they are both within a culture and othered from the culture - the perfect scapegoat. Many liberals shrugged when the Nazis marching in Charlottesville chanted "Jews will not replace us" but the suspicion that Jews control the media, capitalism, also socialism, Hollywood (and any other center of power you can imagine) runs very deep in Western cultural anxiety. Imagining Israel as a prowerful villian is all too easy when you're primed to believe that.

A wild example of this is how Westerners view Israel as a colonialist power rather than a gathering point for religious refugees. The reality that Jews originated from the land of JUDEA should not be hard to grasp, but is conveniently ignored. The fact that they've negotiated with colonial powers like Britain and the UN is viewed as a sign of political power, even though the main goal of those colonial powers was to prevent Jewish refugees from flooding their own countries. And the memory that the post WW2 boost in political heft came at the price of the Holocaust in Europe, seems to have been lost. The reality that most Israelis are Jewish refugees expelled from Muslim countries, is conveniently ignored. There are enough white faces and dual citizens in Israel for guilty Westerners to find a convenient scapegoat to do all that decolonizing and let themselves be destroyed for our sins. Not that anyone is thinking that hard about it, it just feels right, because it's safe and convenient to accept blame and then shift it to someone else - no matter how many land acknowledgements they crank out.

I guess Westerners think colonizing is something only white people do, and they are blissfully unaware of the size and scope of the Arab Islamic Empires of the past. And also apparently unaware that Islamists explicitly say they want to recreate that empire. Zionists want a single state - and I have a lot of issues with the idea of a religious state at all, but no one can accuse Jews of ever having or wanting to create an Empire. Israel might be criticized for not having a more liberal democractic state, but Hamas isn't even trying to create one. It wants a single Muslim state occupying their entire region, where Jews are killed or expelled and Islamists can consolidate regional power - that's their goal. But the slogan is 'end the occupation' which sounds way nicer than 'end the occupation of land of Israel by Jews so we can make an Islamic state in its place and kill all the Jews who don't run away fast enough.'

Maybe it's that most Westerners don't live in a theocracy, and have no sense of just how controlling and energetic theocratic societies can be, that they can't grasp the idea of global jihad and what that really means. "The Caliphate is the answer" is written in Arabic on protest signs, flying under the radar of English-speakers and certainly not seen as hate speech, but when people tell you they want to establish a global world order under Islamic rule, and are actively coordinating their efforts between states and regions - you should believe them. Moderation is apostasy, punishable by death. Anyone negotiating with Israel faces opposition from more radical Islamists ready to take their place. This is why Islamists spend most of their time attacking more moderate Islamic states and leaders. And by 'moderate' I mean the Taliban, which can barely set up a state in Afghanistan - because it means diverting resources from expanding and conquering other areas. A group called ISIS-K is trying to overturn the Taliban to bring back the glory days of the Khorason, an entity so sprawling it would involve invading China, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, which would undoubtedly spark a global conflict. That doesn't phase them. Hamas can barely control the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which rejects any peace accords with Israel including the Oslo accord. Dying as a martyr is the highest achivement - eternal war is not a problem. The Islamic world is failing to contain radical movements it created and supported for its own interests.

The Palestinians are a good microcosm of this. When Israel declared independence in 1948, the region was invaded by its neighbors. The war ended with Jordan occupying the West Bank and Egypt occupying Gaza and normally the people living there would have been absorbed into these countries, or created a self-governed state. Instead Palestinians, as a group, were created as a stateless people. They didn't want to form a state within the boundaries determined by the war, but instead remain as refugees from a war and promised the 'right of return' i.e. that Israel would be returned to them. Importantly, the war didn't have a declared end. It's still happening, which is how they are still refugees 75 years later. And they live in 'refugee camps', otherwise known as buildings and towns, but it's all temporary in this narrative. Does no one wonder why the pro-Palestinian rallies call for a ceasefire and not for peace? Peace is not desired, just a pause in fighting until they can regroup and try again.

A separate reality was created where the 1948 war is still happening, Israel is not real, it's a 'Zionist entity' occupying the land and that refugees includes everyone displaced by the 'ongoing' war, and all their descendants are refugees too because they have nowhere to live - because where they are living is just temporary. And ‘all they want is to go home’ (but not their current home for 3 generations, the home back in Israel ofc). In this world, they all have to right to live in the region that the zionist entity is occupying, where their duty is to establish a Muslim state. The purpose of this fiction is to create a perpetual problem for Israel, a stateless population whose entire existence is focused on them eventually overthrowing Israel. But it's had unexpected effects.

Palestinian refugees have been more than willing to bring violence to any country that has taken them in as immigrants. Their nationalists have a long list of assassinations of anyone who supports a peace treaty with Israel, including the King of Jordan, the former prime minister of Lebanon, Robert F Kennedy and more. They've also started a civil war in Jordan until they were expelled to Lebanon, where they hijacked a series of international flights and started a civil war there that lasted for 15 years. Palestinians living as refugees in Kuwait aided Saddam Hussein's invading army until they were expelled when his regime fell. These are the reasons none of Israel's neighbor's will accept any more Palestinian refugees, but the Islamist problem remains for any country in its path. What I have found most disturbing among feminists on Tumblr, however, is the complete wilful ignorance about Islamist ideology and its relationship to women. You think you’re ok with the Quran? Read it. There aren't many religions founded by a conqueror who wanted to rule the world. Read what it says about conquest, murder, torture, raping and enslaving non-Muslim women. Arab slave traders castrated men and bred female slaves who were kept as captive wives. Using sexual violence as a tool of war and as a reward for Islamic fighters is long documented and continues today. The birth rate in Gaza is about 5 children per woman and frequently exhorted to be higher. Why? Arafat said it most clearly ‘the womb of the Palestinian woman is the weapon that will defeat Israel.' Population and fertility are part of the political landscape and Islamist strategy. It's how Lebanon went from being a Christian majority country to a Muslim majority country today. There is no reason whatsoever that feminists - who have not shied away from criticizing the sexism of Christianity or Judaism - should mince words when it comes to criticizing Islam in the strongest possible terms. Islamists - who combine Islam with a goal for global dominance - should ring every alarm bell we have.

[jedi-enthusiast]

Honestly I’m so confused why people are so upset that Israel was included in Eurovision, like…my dude it’s literally a music contest for a bunch of countries---that Israel has already been included in before---not an actual political statement.

It’s literally insane to me, especially with how people were treating the Israeli contestant---protesting her, forcing her to change her song, other contestants saying shit like “talking to her doesn’t mean I support Israel,” etc. etc.

And I feel like that’s a reoccurring thing with all this mainstream pro-Palestine bullshit: y’all don’t actually care about Palestine or want to help anyone, you just want “good person points” socially, but don’t actually care about your impact.

You'll post shit like "stan Hamas" and ignore the fact that they're literally a terrorist organization dedicated to killing Jews, and that they're literally hurting Palestinians too, as well as the fact that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is only ongoing because Hamas keeps breaking the ceasefire and won't give back hostages.

But you'll ignore all of the organizations that actually help Palestine because they're run by Jews/Israelis, or even just supported by Jews and Israelis.

(And how much do you want to bet that the same people who cry- "Hamas is only doing this because of Israel's actions regarding Palestine, so it's justified/reasonable/understandable, etc." -would never say that if it was a group like, say, ISIS that was kidnapping/killing/waging war on Americans because of the US's actions in the Middle East?)

You'll harass random people on college campuses just because they're Jewish, even though they clearly have no fucking say in what a country on the other side of the world does, and barricade yourselves inside a building and be shocked when you're suspended or expelled for property damage/harassment/etc.

But you won't volunteer at any organizations that are dedicated to helping Palestine, or donate money to those organizations, or donate food/clothes/etc., or actually do anything besides whine and cry because you helped destroy a campus building and your college doesn't want you there anymore.

(Hell, 99% of y'all don't even bother volunteering for your own communities, so I know you're sure as hell not volunteering to help anyone else's---again, you just want the "good person points")

Everyone that was so gung-ho about "oh yeah, let's punch Nazis!" a few years ago are now spouting Nazi rhetoric.

Everyone that preached that bigotry is never ok, even if someone from a minority does something bad, are now the same people chanting- "Jews are shit!" -and spreading blood libel.

Everyone that was calling for solidarity between minorities and oppressed groups are now the same people ostracizing Jews because they won't condemn the only country that will actually protect them- (or rather, they'll condemn the Israeli governments actions, but won't stand side-by-side with antisemites or say that Israel should be destroyed).

Everyone that said that it wasn't okay for people to be racist towards poc because some of the BLM protests were getting out of hand/violent are now the same ones going- "oh, it's fine to be antisemitic because these disgusting Jews Zionists aren't agreeing with me on everything."

Everyone that was posting shit about being aware of misinformation and doing your research before posting something are now the ones that have no idea what Zionism actually is, don't even know which river and sea their chant means, has no clue what Israel has actually done to Palestine and is just calling it a "genocide" as a buzzword despite all the evidence stating otherwise, etc.

Like...you guys are really just proving that you don't actually have morals beyond what's socially acceptable.

"Never harass random Muslim/gay/trans/black/etc. people just for a cause or because they did something you didn't like...unless they're Jewish, then you can stalk them on campus and be physically violent towards them."

"Bigotry is never okay, even if someone from a minority does something you don't agree with or something awful...unless they're Jewish, then spread blood libel and call for the "final solution" all you want."

"Not everyone from the US/Republican states/Christian churches/etc. agrees with what their government/state/religious leaders are doing, so it's not fair to blame and ostracize them for it...unless it's Jewish people or Israelis or, G-d forbid, Jewish Israelis, then you can hate them and blame them for everything!"

Like, genuinely, fuck off.

You aren't good people, you aren't "making a difference" or "on the right side of history," you don't give a shit about morality or justice or doing any good for anyone---all you care about is your fucking popularity and the social norm.

So keep your stupid, hateful, misinformed hands off of the I/P conflict---you've proven that y'all clearly can't handle having opinions on it.

[moonlayl]

This...got super long and to be clear nothing I have experienced nor will ever experience will come close to the horrors that Palestinians are facing right now. I just need to say that and make that clear, but these are just things I've been wanting to say for a while now.

Just a thought that came to my head, but I remember arguing with lots of liberals before about how I don't really support the idea that people shouldn't be able to say anything they want (except obviously spreading misinformation especially if you're in certain professions), even hate speech not because I ever want to hear hate speech, but because I can't trust any government to decide what hate speech is, and I was told to give an example

I remember at the time saying "what if one day, me speaking about Palestine starts to become classified as antisemitism or terrorism?"

I was told that was silly and would "obviously never happen" (I didn't believe them and called them naive at the time)

well....looking at certain countries right now, trying to ban Palestinian flags, ban common Palestinian/muslim sayings, ban any peaceful protest in favour of Palestine, even looking at imprisoning/fining people etc.... is kind of just proving my point.

Like most of us don't feel included or part of any western communities even if we're lived here our whole lives for so many reasons and it almost always boils down to us being Arabs/muslim.

can't speak for non Arabs and non muslims, but a lot of us feel this way.

seeing how fighting for the people who need it the most (2000+ Palestinians have been killed. 800 of them being children. 45 families completely wiped out, entire bloodlines, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, children, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, etc....like this is actual genocide. their entire family tree has been completely wiped form existence) is being banned or branded as "terrorism", or we're losing our jobs, or we're being silenced, like it says a lot about theses countries and the governments that run them.

They tried to suspend humanitarian aid to innocent people of Gaza for the love of God!! Thank God there were 5 decent countries who voted no!

Israel gets away with every goddamn crime and ANY "condemnation" of any warcrime it commits is just talk, while they continue to aid and support it.

How am I supposed to trust these governments, and MY government to decide what's acceptable and what's not when I know that during the most critical moments that matter the most, they won't be on our side, and they'll side with oppressors because they themselves are just that? That the little I can actually do for Palestine and any other country could be completely taken away?

These are "democratic" countries by the way, or they're supposed to be, and sure we can challenge all these things but there are things even we can't do. the onslaught of propaganda shared everywhere by the same news stations that refuse to invite Palestinians (and refuse to air the few times they do) and refuse to fact check their content, or report on what's actually happening in Gaza, can't really be stopped. We can do our best to spread what's actually happening, and to correct false information, but the damages have been done.

And its getting harder and harder to hear form the people of Gaza because of the bombs, cut of electricity, cut off internet access, and also, you know, the fact that the people sharing news are being killed one by one.

There's also many social media platforms completely erasing anything about Palestine. suspending our accounts and hiding our posts. I can't believe I'm saying this but maybe it's a good thing Elon Musk took over twitter because at least I've been able to talk about Palestine as much as possible without nay censoring and I'm still able to. Palestinians are still able to share their stories and the reality yon there. And sin't that crazy? Elon musk is kind of doing something right???

And you know something else? Israel killed one of their own journalists, and those people weren't able to properly report on it. They couldn't directly say it was Israel that killed one of their own workers. Like....its crazy (and they're cowards). Israel also killed 12 UN workers.

That crime is not making as many headlines as the fake stuff did. Those "journalists" and "reporters" who repeated false information (that resulted in far too many people believing them and suddenly being okay with genocide) are still working. they still have a job and they're still out there spreading more propaganda.

this post isn't well written because I'm just putting out my thoughts and what I've witnessed but to make one thing clear, I won't ever silence my voice or allow anyone to silence my voice when it comes to something like this, and i'm not afraid of what they'll do, but isn't so fucked that I could actually lose my job and have trouble finding another one for supporting the oppressed? Like isn't that just..disgusting?

Like what's that supposed to tell me other than majority of western countries are against us? It's not exactly surprising because I've known this, but everyone being VERY open about it is kind of tough to witness ngl.

Like this is not a complicated issue. if you have any morals and you're not biased against Palestinians/arabs/muslims already, then this is a very clearcut case. Israel is an apartheid state. Israel is and has been committing genocide and ethnic cleansing for literal decades and its been doing it long before Hamas came into the picture. Israel's war crimes and treatment of Palestinians is the reason Hamas even exists in the first place. you can condemn Hamas while also recognising that Israelis have no right to that land and that nothing justifies their never ending crimes. Palestinians are demanding for their rights ot live, be citizens, have rights and freedoms, and have their land that was brutally taken from them. None of those things are unreasonable.

You know what is unreasonable? the world deciding Israel is suddenly gonna be a thing and expecting Palestinians to just be okay with it. You know what is unreasonable? Palestinians being painted as the bad guys for "not wanting to share" when they literally shouldn't have to (especially because of the obvious scams of all those "treaties" and "agreements" that all gave every benefit to Israel)

Like the whole world literally let this happen and supported it and cheered for it. Some stayed silent but are showing their real colours (which those of us who haven't been blind have already seen) now.

We've got girls crying about how "they want to kill us T-T" at a university campus because people were protesting in support of Palestine, while a six year old boy was killed in his own home for being Palestinian. In the same country.

We've got celebs talk about how scared THEY are while 800 Palestinian children have been murdered.

We've got celebs posting "pray for Israel" while using pictures of Gaza in ruins or Palestinian children looking at rockets in the sky.

It's insane.

We had a protest for Palestine the other day. People were telling us to go back to our country. They were telling Palestinians to go back to their country.

....that's....that's what they want? Like we're very much aware of how much we're not wanted here just to be clear, and Palestinians across the damn globe would do ANYTHING to be able to go live in their homeland. except they can't. Israel won't let them. That's part of what we're fighting for. Any jewish person can go get a citizenship easily in Israel (even if they've never stepped foot in the country and none of their ancestors had either) but people who were born in Palestine or who's family owns property there can't get it in at all. It's absolute insanity.

I'm not sure how to end this but on every level this has been horrific. But despite that, the propaganda, the genocide, the threats, the whole world being against us, that's not gonna stop us from fighting for the oppressed and standing up for them. It's not gonna stop us from going out into the streets and no words can explain the bravery of everyone who continues to stand with Palestine but especially to the Palestinians who continue fighting and resisting (despite everything they've been through). Continuing to use our voices, donating, protesting etc... is the absolute least we can do and its our responsibility. and I truly, from the bottom of my heart wish the absolute worst for everyone who disagree with this. Like you guys are gonna pay for it. Maybe not today maybe not for many years maybe only in the afterlife (because I do believe in it) but it's gonna happen and every Israeli supporter or zionist is gonna deserve every second of it.

If you're silent, if you try to throw the "two sides" bs, and if you try to act like Palestine and Israel are in any way equal, you're included in this.

You're part of the problem.

Silence is compliance.

And screw every government that supports Israel in any way. Screw the double standards, the hypocrisy and the absolute cruelty towards innocent Palestinians.

I can't speak for everyone else but no matter what happens moving forwards, I'm never gonna forget this and I'm never gonna forgive.

I'm gonna keep trying to do everything possible which unfortunately is not much and thats frustrating on every level but I'm gonna keep doing it. feel free to unfollow/block me, but I'm not gonna stay silent about this ever. and I'm not gonna entertain any bigot or zionists either. it's gonna be a straight up block.

my asks are open, and my page is currently full of information, this site is as well, but I'm not gonna entertain those who clearly care very little bout genocide, because if you haven't opened your eyes by now, I doubt anything I say will change that. you're welcome to go through my blog or send me a polite ask (can't promise I'll get to it right away but I'll try) but I'm not tolerating pointless arguments that are basically me just repeating that Palestinian people deserve to live in their own country with all their rights and freedoms while the other person disagrees. I prefer not to argue with those who are depraved.

[the-rainbow-lesbian]

Hi @menalez, you know I thought I was being courteous by keeping quiet about my grievances with you and not airing them publicly but I guess that isn't mutual, if you really wanted to have a conversation with me you could've talked to me on discord, you're not blocked there.

when October 7th first happened I was unwell tbh and very confused, I thought the world went mad when a massacre against the Jewish state and Israelis (both Jewish and Arab but the majority were Jews and they were targeted for being Jewish) somehow made them hateful against Jewish people, even the diaspora, I was also very confused when the "feminists" of the world even the radical feminists remained silent on the mass rape used as a weapon against Israeli women or tried to deny and minimize it. This is gonna sound dramatic but I haven't been the same person ever since because I lost my trust in people, I don't trust anyone who has no sympathy for others based on their ethnicity and nationality.

and when I went to tumblr I saw that you were also sharing content from antisemites, although you tried to distance yourself from it, sure Hamas did kill babies and rape women, but it wasn't as bad as the media is making it out to be, as if there is a number of raped women and murdered babies that needs to be met before we recognize this as a genocidal act by Hamas? I tried to read what you shared and honestly the people you tried to refute (badly) made more sense to me.

I spent a huge portion of my time watching content about the conflict even when I am working, reading about it, talking to my friend about it, I sought out another friend of mine who is retired professor who has visited Israel multiple times to learn from her, I listened to Jewish people and Israelis and also to Palestinians, I shared articles from Palestinian authors and a Muslim woman about the war, I am reading a book by Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas' founders, I didn't listen to the ones who cheered on October 7th which is fair, terrorists and their supporters don't have integrity. so even though you said I "admitted I don't know shit" and I am "willfully ignorant" I am really not, I am not an expert, I wish I could read and learn more than what I am already doing but I work full-time on 5-6 hours of sleep then travel on the weekends to see my girlfriend, so I am sorry I didn't know much about Christian Zionists? I'd rather not run on my mouth over something I don't know much about, it doesn't make all of my other opinions invalid somehow. I've always been the type of person who tries to do at least some research before forming an opinion and being outspoken about it.

you also said I am brainwashed by my country's antisemitism and I am "rebelling" (which is so fucking condescending I am not a child trying to prove a point) but actually I never agreed that the holocaust was good and that Hitler was a hero like the majority of people around me did, even if I had problematic beliefs I would never agree with genocide. it's also interesting that you refer to this rightfully as propaganda but do you know which news channel was funneling this and playing in my house? it was Aljazeera, and you share from them all the time without a hint of scrutiny, of course anything Israel says must be met with scrutiny but anything coming out of Hamas and Qatar is trustworthy even though both are islamofascist that don't allow any freedom of press, very interesting.

so mena, as an Arabic speaker why don't you look into Aljazeera's Arabic websites and articles where they don't sugarcoat the antisemitism for the western audience and share them with your followers? or anything from Hamas' leaders? are you intentionally misleading them or just lazy? not sure which is worse.

I do have sympathy for middle eastern women and that includes Israeli women! Which is why I'll never support an Islamic state, they are the worst for women. There is more going on in the middle east than just western imperialism, not everything is the west's fault and even if it was we should have more accountability and not just overlook terrorism and other problems we have, prophet Mohammad didn't need Zionism or western imperialism to massacre the Jews of Banu Qurayza, which was so horrific I decided to fully become an ex-muslim after reading about it and I was questioning my faith for two years at that time.

You accused me of supporting genocide which is..... wow there is a lot to say about that, but I won't get into it now, you said this isn't in character for me as an "empathetic and intelligent woman" you're right, maybe the genocide accusation against Israel is blood libel and unfounded, because why would I support genocide? have you tried to read anything besides Qatar and Hamas approved propaganda? have you listened to other opinions in good faith without plugging your ears calling them Zionists (as if it's a bad thing to want self-determination and not be a dhimmi anymore) and blocking them?

I don't know where you get the audacity to say that I am ignorant and should do the "decent thing" and shut up, do you have any Jewish loved ones? do you worry about them on a daily basis because of antisemitism and how antisemitic hate crimes have increased to an insane level? I can't go a day without seeing new incidents reported, which you have ignored of course, because the only good Jew to you is a Jewish person who just affirms your beliefs so you can delude yourself into thinking you're a good person, but after that you don't really care, do you think antisemites ask Jewish people if they're Zionists before they harass and assault them? get off your fucking high horse, I don't owe you shit and you have no right to judge me, if anyone should shut up it's you, the rhetoric and the blood libels you share is the same fucking rhetoric inciting the increase in hate crimes, sincerely fuck off :)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The Israel & Palestine Double Standard | Douglas Murray

I'm so fed up of the double standards on all of this. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been killed in the last 12 years by Bashar al-Assad and other Muslims in the civil war in Syria.

There's no one on the streets of Sydney or Melbourne. There's no one on the Streets of London. We have seen hundreds of thousands of people killed in the last decade in Yemen, Muslims being killed. There's no one on the streets of Melbourne. Nobody is standing outside the Sydney Opera House calling gas the Hutus or gas the Shia, gas the...

Nobody's marching for the dead Muslims in Yemen. Their co-religionists -- we're always told about care so much about their co-religionists -- don't give a damn about their co-religionists. They really don't.

Muslims do not love other Muslims. They have no love for them. They have no love for the Palestinian peoples. None. If they had any, the Jordanians would have taken in the West Bank Palestinians, Egyptians would have taken in the territory they used to run, the Gaza, and own the Gaza. And they would have taken in the Palestinians from the Gaza. Why have the Egyptians made sure that not one Palestinian is allowed to leave Gaza? Why do they make sure that their border wall is tough as anything?

What do they mind? One thing. Jews living. Jews living and Jews winning. It hits them deep in their soul, in their psyche. It's an ancient, ancient hatred. Perhaps the most ancient among the monotheisms. And the deepest and the ugliest, the nastiest. And the one that that has been least addressed.

And we've imported it. As we sit here, roughly the same population of the Gaza is being forcibly moved by the government of Pakistan. Almost 2 million Muslims are being moved by the Pakistani authorities into Afghanistan. Okay. We have a very large Pakistani community here in the UK. If their country of origin can do that, why can't we?

If it comes to that. If it has to come to that. And why does nobody notice this, why is nobody saying this is an appalling war crime by the Pakistani government? Well, only because there are so many Pakistani politicians and others in the UK and other countries who have a deep connection to their country of origin and would never want to see it looked at in a bad way. They will not criticize that. They haven't said a word about that.

So no, I think that if you are zoning in, zooming in on Israel, lambasting Israel and are basically not bothered with everything else in the world, you're not motivated by anything other than being anti-Jewish, antisemitic of course. And it just has to be said.

I mean, I've said this so many times that I tire myself with it but, it's necessary to say. Antisemitism is a shape shifter. It's a shape-shifting virus. It can come from anywhere. At times in the past, it was the case that people didn't like Jews because they were seen to be a different religion and strange and different, and so they were hated for their religion. Then after the wars of religion, you couldn't hate anyone for their religion, so people started to hate the Jews for their race. And after the Holocaust, you couldn't hate people because of their race anymore, so people hated the Jews because of their nation. On and on...

[writingquestionsanswered]

Concerned About Bad Faith Readers

Anonymous asked: Hello, I’m the anon who asked about the bad-faith readers. I'm also concerned about my own worldview or lived experiences not being the same as the bad-faith readers and them pouncing on me for that, which is something I’ve seen online. I’m an Indian Muslim who grew up in a very urban and progressive family, and my experiences with life and especially my religion are very different compared to many other Indians or Muslims (Indian or not), to say nothing about non-Muslim British/American readers who form a large part of the English-language readership. If I create a character based on my own experiences or relationship with my faith, my concern is that people would accuse me of “representing Muslims badly” or “not including X experience” or “not including Y group” in my writing because they’ve seen it in their country. But I’m not from that country and I’ve not had those experiences, so it’s not necessarily something that would be a part of my character’s story if they’re based on me. So that’s something that I’ve been concerned about. Thank you!

[Ask edited for length]

Bad faith readers go into books looking for something to hate or criticize. Their complaints can't be qualified by concerns about representation based on different lived experiences or differing worldviews. They're there only to tear a book and author down.

Bad faith readers don't choose random targets. They typically go after authors who run afoul of the reading community due to bad behavior. For example: poor response to being called out for representation issues, showing up in review spaces, arguing with or complaining about reviews/reviewers, or perpetuating harmful beliefs. If you're not out there doing those things, you have little to worry about from bad faith readers.

This is quite different from readers who take issue with your representation because it falls short of their lived experience, excludes or minimizes important representation, or is harmful in some way. This is not "bad faith." It's a qualified concern coming from someone with a different background who is demanding better representation. Without these voices, readers wouldn't have made the strides it has. And there's still so much more work to do, so these voices are just as important now as ever before.

In Anon's particular situation: consider why other Muslims might see your portrayal as bad representation. Is there anything you could do to clarify that this isn't misrepresentation but representation of a different experience? Consider why people might be concerned that you've left out X experience. Is there a reasonable expectation that this experience should be represented in your story? (For example: If I'm setting my story in a real world neighborhood in a real world city, and that neighborhood has long been populated by immigrants from a particular country, and they have been fighting gentrification for the past decade, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge and include this group of people and their fight against gentrification in my story.) Consider why people might be concerned that you left out Y group... is there a legitimate reason why people might expect Y group to be represented? (For example: If I'm writing a story that takes place in a small Louisiana town, I'm not going to feel bad for not having a character from the Scandinavian Sámi culture, because it's not reasonable to expect Sámi representation in a story based in Louisiana. However, if I'm writing a story that takes place in Arctic Europe in an area where there's a large Sámi population, there's now a reasonable expectation for Sámi representation in my story.) If the reader doesn't have a reasonable expectation for you to include X experience or Y group, don't worry about it. Just make sure your story is reflective of the real world and the time, place, and people of your setting.

At the end of the day, it really isn't possible to write a perfect book that pleases every reader, but we can try. Here are some things you can do to help minimize concerns about your representation and to avoid running afoul of trouble if you inadvertently make a mistake or fall short:

1 - Look at your story and consider how your lived experiences, privilege, colonial mindsets, preferences, and biases impact your representation of a character or situation and how that could potentially be harmful to readers from different backgrounds than yours. What can you change to be more inclusive or avoid anything harmful?

2 - Employ beta readers and sensitivity readers from a variety of relevant backgrounds to help improve representation and minimize harm.

3 - Stay out of review spaces. Reviews are for readers, not for authors. If you do see a review or rating that you disagree with, do not reply or otherwise comment. Do not message the reviewer. Do not complain about the review or rating on social media. Not even in a way that you think is subtle or veiled. Just do not comment. It isn't there for you.

4 - Avoid "hot takes," "unpopular opinion," and other knee-jerk reaction type posts on social media as you're far more likely to say something that's harmful in ways you don't realize. Instead, just as an exercise for self-improvement, write the thought down and analyze it... consider the ways in which your background, experiences, privilege, and biases might be blinding you to ways in which this mindset is unkind or harmful.

5 - If you're called out for representation issues, listen to what people are saying and learn from it. Apologize. Vow to educate yourself and commit to do better.

I hope that helps! ♥

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[harlstark]

What do you think Harley and his little sister's dynamic is?

Do you have any hc on his younger sister? (Sorry, not really about Harley, I just love abbie so much (the name I gave her)

*vibrates at a frequency unknown to man*

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GIRL EVER. that is my apple bear sugar pie honey blossom baby girl.

real talk though to answer: i think harley is definitely sort of a second if not primary parental figure to her. i think there’s no one he’d rather die or kill for than her. she loves him to death too, even though she is quite often a little shit and doubly as witty and sarcastic as he is. she might (probably) holds a deal of resentment over him leaving to new york—in works which he does, but also knows it’s what’s best for him. she’s a big sardonic goofball full of cynicism just like him and sometimes he probably hates that he influenced her in that way. she’s rowdy, unpredictable, loud and talkative, but never received the same criticisms harley did growing up—at least not most of them anyways. she knows, deep down, before harley even says anything, that her brother is different, but that never stopped her from loving him or made her love him any less; if anything, it made her twice as protective towards him with her nimble stature and noodle arms that probably don’t do much damage. their father left either when she was an infant or not even born yet so she doesn’t share that same trauma, but she’s seen the way it affects harley so she hates the man all the same. she’s got a gap between her two front teeth, freckles all over her face, a blonde bob and bangs she chopped herself that harley had to help fix in the bathroom with a pair of kitchen scissors, and she was raised running on dirt with her bare feet touching the ground, just as wild as the wolves. she’s blunt, not shy, observant as all hell, and has an affinity for music, animals, games of checkers dominos, and soap operas. and in her teen years comes to realize that, like harley, she’s a bit different too. she has a bit of a rebellious phase in high school, maybe when harley is in the city, and it throws her through a bit of a spiral. she messes with guys and girls and has her fun, before mellowing out one summer thanks to a summer-fling with a nomad girl at their local drive in theatre who stays with her family for a visit in their van. when she graduates, she attempts college but decides it’s not for her, at least not yet, so she takes a trip around europe to find herself. she smokes cigarettes and drinks wine but quits both when she comes back more rejuvenated in her life. on her trip though, she finds love, and that love comes in the shape of a young muslim woman with the most beautiful brown eyes she’s ever seen, and the two settle down in an apartment in brooklyn (because she was always destined to follow in her brothers footsteps a bit, wasn’t she?) and one day get married. they have two kids—via IVF or surrogacy, and take trips to rosehill occasionally so the kids know the life of the country that raised her. she gets a steady job, maybe at SI but that might not be for her, or in journalism, photography, or music—something artsy. in her thirties or forties, when the kids are not yet teenagers, her and her wife make the big move back to the countryside, somewhere more freeing than rosehill and all the more serene.

“He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

I have traveled to more than 25 countries, territories and regions (that should be technically considered countries). I have dealt with straight up racism traveling abroad, though the levels vary. Sometimes it’s staring, other times it’s hair touching or rude questions and comments. Most of the time it is Islamophobia that gets me stopped in the airport.

Yup, you heard that right.

I was born in a Muslim country and was later adopted by an American couple. My biological family is Muslim as far as I can tell. And I have Kazakhstan listed in my passport as country of origin. Which means I have gotten stopped in most airports for some reason or another. I was once pulled aside for a full body search in Hong Kong. When I was 8 years old. When I travel, I carry copies of my Kazakh birth certificate, American birth certificate, passport, whatever visas and travel/vaccination documents I need, because I have been stopped in transit because of these documents at some point in time.

I am somewhat protected by my dad’s last name, which is a somewhat common Norwegian last name, especially in America. The first time I traveled abroad solo was the first time I had to take into consideration how visibly Jewish I wanted to be. I didn’t bring my copy of “Ashkenazi Herbalism” to Türkiye, because my mom was worried I would get stopped and searched in the airport (like I normally do). I also left my hamsa with Hebrew on it at home for the same reason. I also took into consideration how queer I wanted to present myself. So I took my pronouns down from my social media accounts.

I am preparing to go to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan this summer, and I’m running through the same list of questions. Do I keep my brightly dyed hair? Do I leave my hamsa and Magen David at home? Do I take down anything on my social media that screams queer Jew?

I know some of this is just my anxiety talking, because I have traveled for the last 20 years with very little serious issues. I can brush off casual comments about my “not quite Chinese eyes” (actual quote from a guy on my team in Türkiye) or the typical questions about where I’m “really from”. It has to be a real good insult for me to take it seriously, because I grew up in a fairly toxic school environment. So I’m sure I’ll be fine, especially since two months of this trip, I will be very far away from modern civilization. The only people I have to worry about are the people I’ll be living with during that time and I can handle American racism and stupidity.

[books-to-add-to-your-tbr]

Title: You Truly Assumed

Author: Laila Sabreen

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2022

Genres: fiction, contemporary, social justice

Blurb: Sabriya has her whole summer planned out in colour-coded glory...but those plans go out the window after a terrorist attack near her home. When the terrorist is assumed to be Muslim and islamophobia grows, Sabriya turns to her online journal for comfort. You Truly Assumed was never meant to be anything more than an outlet, but the blog goes viral as fellow Muslim teens around the country flock to it and find solace and a sense of community. Soon, two more teens, Zakat and Farah, join Bri to run You Truly Assumed, and the three quickly form a strong friendship...but as the blog's popularity grows, so do the pushback and hateful comments. When one of them is threatened, the search to find out who is behind it all begins, and their friendship is put to the test when all three must decide whether to shut down the blog and lose what they've worked for...or take a stand and risk everything to make their voices heard.

[frida-kahl-of-the-rocky-horror]

I am very pro-Palestine (as someone who grew up in the Middle East) and while I think there are valid criticisms of how large movie studios are treating actors like Jenna Ortega who speak out in solidarity with Palestine, what is not cool or valid are people saying this is proof that “Jews run Hollywood”

Now let me be clear, this is mostly white Leftists who have no direct connection to this conflict saying this

But let me explain why Jewish Americans have such a prevalence in Hollywood

1. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, prior to the rise of the Nazis, antisemitism was still prevalent, particularly in France, Germany, and the Austro Hungarian empire. Jewish people in many places were barred from traditional jobs, with one job they were allowed to do being banking (since in the Bible, it says Christians couldn’t loan money to other Christians but it didn’t say anything about Jews loaning money and hey people need to borrow money. A similar thing happened in majority muslim countries with Christians). Because when filmmaking when to Europe after being pioneered in USA it was an unregulated market, many Jewish Austro Hungarians or Jewish Germans worked in this industry because hey, being an accountant FUCKING SUCKS AND NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO DO IT

2. As restrictions both on cinema as well as antisemitic laws became more prevalent in Europe, many of these Jewish filmmakers immigrated to the nation of immigrants USA, and, due to how immigration flows from Europe transpired, they landed in the Northeast of the USA, where the American filmmaking market was headquartered and thus were able to quickly continue their craft, especially as filmmaking was still seen as a underclass job

3. Funny Gene

4. If you aren’t a WASP in the USA, that is to say, you aren’t privileged, you’re more likely to have a drive do better and actually create talent. This extends to all minorities including Jews. And because Hollywood was still racist, minorities who were white passing enough — like Jews, the Irish, and Italians (think about how many Italian directors and actors you know of) — inevitably rose to the top

I think this scene from South Park says it all:

Kyle: My message is, we can't control what people say, so we have to be smart about what we choose to believe. If one idiot says that a certain group "runs Hollywood", look into it. With very minimal effort, you will find that "Hollywood" is a multi-tiered industry run by tens of thousands of people from all over the world. In the past, Jews were shut out of most professions, so they came to dominate vaudeville, which back then was considered too low-brow for good Christians. Those Jews eventually moved West and started the first movie studios when movies were also considered work for the underclass, and their descendents are now a decent percentage of the thousands of people of all races that make Hollywood run.

Fuck Antisemitism. Free Palestine

[stuckinapril]

im an ex muslim who still lives in a muslim majority country in west asia and my culture is interwoven with islam deeply, and unfortunately i deal with people like your anon very often online BUT i’ve never seen anyone else whos not a muslim handle these stuff as well as you do. im really sorry you’re dealing with all this but also thank you so so much for making it such a safe space here. you are such a good person and i hope every blessing you deserve finds you 💛

you’re welcome babe!! i’m not muslim, but my mom is & it makes my blood boil that people would dare speak of arabs/islam like that. that anon literally sent an ask like “u pretend this is ur persona but ur arabic” as if being “arabic” is a personality trait to begin w?? as if arabs do not have the right to have a personality that goes beyond just their religion???? it makes me fucking LIVID for my mom who is an educated engineer/the smartest & most beautiful woman i know, my uncle who has an md/phd and plays in the orchestra, my great uncle who is a renowned surgeon etc etc the ignorance just runs so deep and it’s disgusting. it’s like being muslim (or arab even) cannot coexist with being open-minded, with enjoying things, w having preferences, w literally just having space as a person like other people do.

not that i owe that anon an explanation, but im literally an american girl who was raised under the roof of a very liberal mom. maybe i’m not a common case, but my mom is very lax / allowed me to choose between religion or no religion / allowed me to wear whatever i want / allowed me to move out at my discretion bc she knows i’m an adult who can make her own choices. so offensive that they literally generalize arabs to the point that every arab girl has to still be living w her parents / unable to experience anything. it’s such a stereotype & it icks me out beyond what words could say. not every arab girl is a caged bird. not every arab parent is a dictator. “arab” is not just one entity—people engage with the culture in different ways, to varying degrees.

i know sweet & smart & beautiful women who wear the hijab & are more than what that anon could ever hope to be & have the right to step on them. it did not pass me that the moment i revealed i had an arab heritage, that anon started sending racist asks / claiming i’m lesser than other people / making absolutist statements about how i live my life. literally an actual racist in my inbox. it’s just this one anon tbh everyone else is great, but they’ve been super persistent & that tells me it’s rooted in racism. it cannot be anything else. they do not know enough about me for it to be about me as a person—to them i’m just an arab entity that has to be made to feel lesser than.

i’m sorry you have to deal w this love :( this blog will alwayssss be a safe space. always. i love you

[mariacallous]

The Spectator asked me to write about George Galloway’s victory in Rochdale. I found it hard to feel anything but despair about working-class Muslim voters, who once again turned out in huge numbers for a white saviour and tankie[i] who had saluted Saddam Hussein, Bashir Assad and Vladimir Putin.

After all these years of exposure, no one has the right to feign ignorance about Galloway’s record. It’s not that his supporters do not know who Galloway is. It is that they know but do not care.

A large chunk of Muslim voters and an element on the white left adore him because he hates Israel and that is​ all that matters.

There’s a lot of drivel going around this morning that Galloway’s victory is a disaster for Labour. In the short-term that cannot be true.

Leave aside that Labour got into such a mess it did not even run a candidate, an analysis by Prof Rob Ford of Manchester University, and friend of this Substack, shows that Labour seats with a large Muslim vote are safe.

In the long run, though, it is a different story.

Lyndon Johnson is meant to have said that the skill you need most in politics is the ability to count. As the Muslim population grows and as Palestine becomes not one issue for the wider left but the issue, left politics will change

Here is how I ​see it

The Rochdale by-election raises a question that Labour will find hard to duck in government: can a European left-wing party survive without a pro-Islamist foreign policy? They can’t win with one, as Jeremy Corbyn proved twice. But the shocking success of George Galloway last night shows that the arguments of the Corbyn years have not been settled.

No one can pretend they do not know who the loudmouthed old ham really is after all this time. Just before Muslim voters propelled him to victory, Galloway received the endorsement of none other than Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National Party (BNP). 

To use an overused label correctly for once, the BNP is genuinely neo-fascist. And yet Griffin had no qualms in recommending that his followers ‘get out and vote for George Galloway’ and ‘stick two fingers up to the rotten political elite and their fake news media cronies’.

 Like cocktails before a dinner party, obsessions about Jews bring all the extremists together.

What better illustration could you have of the horseshoe theory?

Admirers of dictators admire each other. Galloway ‘saluted’ Saddam Hussein, whose forces killed tens of thousands of Muslims. He praised Bashar al-Assad, as the Syrian president’s forces slaughtered the country’s Sunni Muslim population, for maintaining the ‘fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs’ – the grandiosity of Galloway’s pompous language was in inverse proportion to the misery Assad inflicted.

None of this concerned Muslim voters in Rochdale. Opposition to Israel was all that mattered.

There’s an argument doing the rounds this morning that Labour’s disastrous performance was just a blip. Galloway is a narcissist, it runs, who won’t last long. Muslim voters responded to his anti-Iraq war campaign and gave him victory in Bethnal Green in the 2005 general election. He was out by 2010. He won the Bradford by-election in 2012, and the voters rejected him in the 2015 general election. The voters of Rochdale will almost certainly do the same later this year.

Labour sounded confident. ‘George Galloway is only interested in stoking fear and division,’ the party told the BBC. Labour will ‘quickly’ select a new candidate for the upcoming general election, the spokesman said, adding the party wants to deliver the ‘representation and fresh start that Rochdale deserves’.

I am sure they will. Labour’s poll lead is so great, it can afford to be confident. But Rochdale raises a question about how Labour will deal with the obsessions of a large section of the left once in power, which are unlikely to go away.

The best way to think about it is to look at the threats to MPs and the endless denunciations of Keir Starmer. They are absurd on the face of it. Labour is in opposition. It has no influence over the Israeli government or Hamas whatsoever. What it says is supremely irrelevant.

But the explosion in rage makes sense if you see the anti-Starmer campaign as an attempt to bolster the chances of independent left-wing candidates and to change party policy. (For one, Jeremy Corbyn, kicked out of the party in October 2020 will be thinking of running in Islington North after Galloway’s victory.)

To date it has been a mess. Tom Baldwin, Keir Starmer’s biographer, says​ that the Labour leader and his team had simply not thought about Israel when they gave Benjamin Netanyahu a blank cheque after the Hamas atrocities in October. My guess is that they were so appalled by Labour’s anti-Semitism scandals of the 2010s they swung to the opposite extreme.

You can see how extreme they became by watching a YouTube clip from four months ago of Starmer telling Nick Ferrari that Israel had the right to ‘cut off power, cut off water’ to civilians in Gaza. It has been played tens of thousands of times by Starmer’s opponents. 

Now he has spoken to the Israeli left, government figures in Qatar and Jordan, and the Biden administration and has embraced a standard centre-left suspicion of Netanyahu as a result.

I could go on about the Labour leadership’s naivety. How can you not have a settled view on the Israel/Palestine question when Israel so dominates leftist thinking? When, indeed, supporting Palestine is now for a large faction on the left almost the definition of what it means to be left-wing? It’s astonishing.   

It is equally astonishing that due diligence did not spot that the official Labour candidate held views about Jews that weren’t just anti-Israel but were simply racist. Now Labour has moved on, and I can easily see a Labour government offering full diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian Authority as a compromise.

But that is no more than a Conservative government is likely to do. The activists are crying ‘from the river to the sea’ on the streets, and the Labour left do not want compromise. They want Labour to be like France’s largest left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI), which is for electoral, as well as ideological, reasons pro-Islamist.

LFI repeatedly declined to call Hamas a terrorist group (a conclusion the EU came to about Hamas a full 20 years ago). Their initial communique on 7 October used Hamas’s own language about itself, calling the attack ‘an armed offensive by Palestinian forces’ that came ‘in the context of the intensification by Israel of the policy of occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem’.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party can’t win a presidential election any more than Corbyn could win a general election.

And as with Corbynism, its foreign policy is not just about Palestine but includes a softness towards Vladimir Putin and the other dictators George Galloway salutes. On the other hand, LFI captures a large chunk of the Arab-French vote because it is pro-Islamist. And no French left-wing party can succeed without that vote.

Labour is so far ahead at present it can shrug off the mess in Rochdale, and predict with assurance that it will retake the seat at the election.

It can say it has learned from its mistake in underwriting Netanyahu and his extremely right-wing government and moved on.

In power, however, things will be different. What Labour says and does will finally matter, and elements in its electoral coalition will be making their demands very clear.

Labour hopes that Joe Biden’s ceasefire initiative will work, and that Israel will just go away as an issue.

That hope, as anyone who knows the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict since 1948 will guess, is likely to be vain.

This is the conflict that never goes away.