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antianakin · 3 months

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@theneutralmime

I've gone over a lot of my thoughts on the sequels in my responses to the last two asks you've sent me about them, so I'm going to skip ahead to my thoughts on Luke at this point since I think my feelings on the Sequels in general are pretty clear. I'm glad you enjoyed them, but I've seen the entire trilogy through twice now and I WAS trying to be more generous the second time around to see if my opinion would change and it uh. Didn't. I still don't like them and I still find them a massive mess of squandered potential.

Luke's quotes about the Jedi in the sequels (which are really ONLY in TLJ, he never has anything bad to say about them in TROS) are pretty clearly intended to be seen as symptoms of Luke being traumatized and letting that pain and loss and fear consume him to the point that he's placing the blame on an easy target rather than actually acknowledging what happened and how he feels about it and the part he played in it. Luke in TLJ is hiding from his fears, hiding from his own reality, refusing to step up and do what needs to be done and face his own mistakes. So he turns to "the Jedi were weak and need to die" as a way of basically excusing the choices he's currently making. He's not RIGHT, the things he tells Rey aren't TRUE, and that's the whole point behind his arc in TLJ. His last words are to say that he won't be the last Jedi, and he's clearly not upset by that, he says it like it's a TRIUMPH, which indicates that he no longer believes the Jedi need to all die out. Even earlier, he's upset about losing the Jedi texts, indicating that even though he was arguing for the Jedi to die and about to burn them himself, he didn't ACTUALLY believe any of those things he said or want the things he said he wanted, he was just desperately trying to convince himself that he did because it was easier than doing the emotional work of facing what he'd done wrong.

I will say that I think this was a ridiculous and foolish arc for Luke to even HAVE, I think it's unfortunate that most of Luke's screentime in this trilogy is dedicated to him bashing the Jedi and blaming them for their own genocide, and I don't think that the storyline is handled very well in general. But the point of the story IS that Luke is wrong and the Jedi SHOULDN'T die out, so, you know, credit where credit is due here.

Getting into your question about the Jedi, though. I THINK you're asking me what the Jedi actually DO. Which, fair question, it's not something they discuss very much in the films or show (and the show is focused on them during war which makes it harder to figure out what they'd normally be doing during peacetime). I imagine there's a LOT of things the Jedi probably did before the war, it wasn't one job that they all did. But the general idea I got is that the Jedi work as a branch of the Republic Senate that can be called upon to provide aid like treaty mediation and conflict resolution for planets and systems that ask for it. I'll list off as many examples as I can think of where we see Jedi doing work that isn't related to the war in high canon.

In TPM, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are sent to try to NEGOTIATE with the Trade Federation about the blockade of Naboo, but they end up having to quickly adjust when the Trade Federation tries to kill them and sends in armed forced to INVADE Naboo.

Once that happens, their primary goal switches to getting Naboo's leader to Coruscant so she can make her case and plead for aid directly to the Senate because it just became a LOT bigger than two Jedi could actually do anything about.

In AOTC, it's mentioned that Obi-Wan and Anakin just got back from some kind of border dispute.

In TCW, Obi-Wan mentions that he spent a year on the run with Satine during the Mandalorian civil war, presumably called in by Satine's father to just... protect her until the war was over and Satine could take up peaceful leadership or something.

In TCW season 7, Trace and Rafa sort-of imply that the Jedi used to do a lot more work ON CORUSCANT to help poorer people on the lower levels.

Also in TCW, we hear that the Jedi once managed to basically overthrow the Zyggerian slave empire, something the Zyggerians still hold against them.

In TOTJ (if we choose to take that as canon), we see Dooku and Qui-Gon sent to help resolve a dispute where a senator's son has been kidnapped by his people (Dooku ends up siding with the kidnappers when he realizes why they did what they did and how corrupt the senator has become).

In AOTC again, we see Obi-Wan and Anakin act as bodyguards for Padme when an assassin comes after her.

We also routinely see the Jedi doing their own investigations that seem completely independent of the Senate, like Obi-Wan going off to find Kamino and Jango. When he makes his reports, he is clearly reporting directly to the Council, not the Senate or the Chancellor. During TCW, we see Plo Koon, Obi-Wan, and Anakin get involved in an investigation into the clones' creation and Sifo-Dyas's involvement in it and reported death, something that clearly isn't being run by the Chancellor or the Senate.

So what do the Jedi do? They keep the peace, whether that means acting as a temporary bodyguard for a planetary leader, taking down slave empires, or negotiating treaties and conflicts of varying kinds. Presumably, before Palpatine took power, the Jedi had enough time and independence that they were able to do a lot more work of their own that didn't necessarily directly involve the Senate, too, which could be anything from investigating corruption in the galaxy to providing aid and services to the poorer populations on planets in the Republic.

I don't think it's made clear whether the Jedi actively SEARCH for Force sensitive children or if they're just so established as a group that they're often MADE AWARE of Force sensitive children by parents calling for help somehow. That list they have of children is of presumably people whose parents have said maybe or not yet (rather than parents who have firmly said no) because I believe Mace refers to the holocron as the future of the Order. These are children who could potentially become Jedi or who are PLANNING to become Jedi but whose parents wanted to wait a year or something. This doesn't indicate to me that the Jedi actively sought them out, but that these were probably children whose parents sought out the Jedi themselves when it became clear their child was Force sensitive. We see something like this happen in TOTJ when Ahsoka disappears off with a massive wild cat and comes back RIDING said wild cat and the entire village is made abruptly aware that she's Force sensitive and meant to be a Jedi. If the Jedi come and confirm those suspicions, but the parents are uncertain or just explicitly ask for more time, the Jedi seem inclined to give it to them (up to a point, presumably, they obviously usually don't accept kids over a certain age so they can't wait forever).

The reason the Jedi have that rule about training children early is because the Jedi lifestyle requires certain sacrifices that can be difficult to adjust to if you weren't raised in it. For a lot of people, their friends and family are always going to be their first priority because they care about them more than any random stranger. And this is totally fine, this is natural and normal. The Jedi cannot do that, though. They can't prioritize the people they care about above their duty to the galaxy at large. This is the promise they make by choosing to be Jedi and it is generally incompatible with the promises you make to people like spouses and children (this is for a myriad of reasons like the amount of time a Jedi would have to spend doing work vs being with their family and the ways this would ultimately impact their relationships with people who are relying on them). The Jedi have to be willing to sacrifice the people they love for the greater good if it becomes necessary. And while the children who are raised among the Jedi can still ultimately decide this lifestyle isn't for them and walk away from it (and can do this at any age, even after they've made their oaths and become an adult), it's a lot EASIER to life this way if you ARE raised in it from a young age and don't already have a bunch of connections with other people to overcome.

This is why Anakin struggles so much. He was raised with his mother until he was nine and so he has this connection with her where the two of them were always going to be more important to each other than anybody else. That's just how that relationship worked and that's fine. But when he became a Jedi, Anakin had to stop thinking of his mother as more important than anybody else, and he CAN'T. He ultimately abandons his duty as a Jedi, his duty to protect Padme, in order to go protect Shmi because Shmi is more important to him than anyone else. Had Padme gotten assassinated as a result of him abandoning that duty, it could've had some repercussions for a lot of people, but Anakin DOES NOT CARE because Shmi is more important. And of course, we see him then make the exact same mistake with Padme herself after Shmi is dead. He prioritizes Padme above everyone else because he legitimately just CANNOT live any other way, he CANNOT not prioritize Padme more than everyone else, ESPECIALLY when she is his wife, and he ultimately is willing to sacrifice the Jedi, the clones, and the Republic to save her.

We even see him blatantly TELL Padme this in TCW where he says that ideals are important, but they'll never be more important to him than how he FEELS about Padme. He clearly tells Padme that he EXPECTS her to prioritize him as her husband more than once, something Padme usually TRIES to push back on but ultimately usually capitulates to. Even Padme ends up getting jealous and upset once when Anakin can't stay the night with her upon returning from the war because he has to go make a report to the Council. Padme and Anakin have clear expectations of each other as husband and wife that seem to be in contradiction to what their respective careers require of them that cause them distress in their relationship more than once.

Anakin struggles with this and my personal interpretation of Anakin is that he'd ALWAYS have struggled with this because he wants to be able to prioritize the people he loves, even before it gets to the point where he's willing to murder millions of people to do it. His desires are just incompatible with the way the Jedi choose to live, but if he'd been adopted by the Jedi before he was old enough to really make that kind of connection, he'd have had an easier time managing that because he just wouldn't necessarily have ever HAD those kinds of desires. He would've grown up learning about love and family in a very different way that would allow him to prioritize his duty to the galaxy because he WANTS to prioritize his duty to the galaxy and no one person would be more important than that. But in canon, Anakin WANTS to be able to prioritize the people he cares about, more than anything else this is what he wants. And he wants those same people to also prioritize HIM in return (it's one of the reasons his relationship with Obi-Wan is both one of his healthiest ones, because Obi-Wan refuses to do this and expects the same of Anakin, but also one of the ones most easily discarded and replaced because Anakin knows that Obi-Wan will never give him what he wants).

So yes, it's GOOD that the Jedi insist on training their children early because it helps them be better Jedi with fewer struggles, even as they always keep the door open for their members to make a different choice as they grow and change if this life isn't one they want to live still. It's why they let Ahsoka walk away after the Wrong Jedi arc even though they also brought her into the Order when she was young. Being raised a Jedi gave Ahsoka a really great foundation, but things changed as she got older and she ended up deciding she had to leave the Order, even if temporarily, to figure out some things for herself and manage her mental health. The Order was happy to support her no matter what she chose, whether she chose to leave or stay, and would've supported her if she'd chosen to return, too.

The Jedi take children whose parents give them up so they can have a better life, they take children who might not HAVE parents anymore, they take children whose parents don't WANT them, and they give them a wonderful supportive life that gives them incredible amounts of education and resources so they can live their life in service to the galaxy and the Force, using their abilities to help others. They provide the children they take in with everything they could need or want to be able to live a happy, healthy life, whether that life ends up being as a Jedi in service to the Republic and the Force or not.

There's also what's been called like a "call to destiny" that the Jedi have, where becoming a Jedi is, in some ways, a destiny for them to fulfill. But much like Anakin's prophecy, it is choice they have to make, not something entirely predestined and chosen for them. The path is THERE, and it calls to them, but they can absolutely ignore that call or misunderstand it or have circumstances keep them from it. But it means that nearly everyone who becomes a Jedi makes that choice because they hear and feel that call to this destiny and have chosen to ANSWER IT. Helping people, serving the galaxy, this is what they were meant to do, and they know it and find joy and satisfaction in that knowledge.

So when the war starts, they obviously know something has gone wrong, they've known it was going wrong for YEARS, at the very least since Maul popped up as the first confirmed Sith in 1000 years, but they are 10,000 people (and whether this number referred to only those Jedi that were in the field and the actual total was much higher or whether this was in fact the ENTIRE TOTAL of Jedi is unconfirmed, but either way they're a small group so the point remains) in a galaxy of TRILLIONS. People have done the math on what this would mean adjusted to the population of the Earth and it's like expecting a church group of 70 people to somehow solve the whole planet's problems. There's only so much they can do. So while they're very cognizant of the growing issues in the Republic even before the war starts, they can only put out so many tire fires at once. Once the war DOES start, they're immediately required to try to put out this one raging wildfire and all the other regular tire fires have to go by the wayside until the wildfire is dealt with. So what are they doing? They're putting out the damn wildfire as quickly as they can with as little loss of life as they can and just hoping the rest of the galaxy can keep itself together long enough for them to DO THAT.

I don't even necessarily agree that they should've been "more involved in politics" because, quite honestly, they seem more aware of how bad things are getting politically than ANYONE ELSE IN THIS STORY (aside from the dude making the situation worse to begin with). It's the JEDI who are actively arguing with the Chancellor about not sending them to war and saying they're not supposed to be an army, it's the JEDI tracking down Kamino and Geonosis and figuring out some of what's actually happening there, it's the JEDI who continue to investigate that even while the war is going on and actually figure out that the clones are a Sith trap, it's the JEDI who ultimately figure out Palpatine is too corrupt to stay in office and then actually DO something about it before anybody does. They might not be active politicians, sure, I'll grant you that, but they're very very clearly aware of what's happening politically and are responding to it more than anyone else we ever see. I'm not sure what more they could've done besides, like, BE politicians which clearly just isn't the role they want to play in the galaxy anyway and wouldn't be good for the kind of work they want to do.

A lot of people like to say things like that, that the Jedi should've been more political and whatnot, but what would that actually have accomplished? What could they have done if they were "more political" than they were already doing? At BEST, the Jedi might be able to get a representative into the Senate and provide one more person capable of speaking out against the Chancellor and the corruption in the Republic, but Padme at a delegation of 2000 Senators with her that were apparently willing to at least recognize Palpatine's corruption and that STILL wasn't enough to stem the tide. One more politician wasn't going to make that big of a difference. So could they have been more political? Yeah, sure, they could've more literally been politicians I guess, but how does that help them more than what they were ACTUALLY doing? Would this somehow have prevented Palpatine from enacting Order 66 or starting the war at all? Or would it have led to the same conclusion no matter what they did because the Jedi's genocide wasn't about the choices the JEDI were making at all?

#star wars #jedi #pro jedi #luke skywalker #anakin critical #anakin skywalker critical

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viv-hollande · 5 months

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As Promised, The Israel-Palestine Megapost of Doom

Content Warning: This post discusses both the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the current Israel-Gaza War. As such, it contains frank discussions of apartheid, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocides both past and present, racism, antisemitism, colonialism, terrorism and more. As an additional tone warning, I guess: I am by nature a pretty flippant person. I’ve been criticized for that in the past, and probably will be again in the future. I don’t know if it's just who I am, or if maybe I need a therapist. I have tried to reign in some of my worse impulses, especially when talking about the actual events themselves, to try to give due respect to those affected. Nevertheless, if that kind of attitude offends or disturbs you, maybe sit this one out.

This post is brought to you in its current form thanks to the generous actions of Dr. Henry Kissinger, whose untimely death many decades after it was deserved nevertheless brought me joy great enough to drag me out of angryposting mode and into hopefully more coherent essay-writing mode. So here is the partially revised, partially rewritten, and greatly expanded post that I promised.

While I don’t have a cohesive thesis, I have written this with the intention of addressing/responding to the state of conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict, and around the ongoing Israel-Gaza crisis. I am focusing substantially on the online discourse because it’s the only thing I have even a chance of changing. I’m a soon-to-no-longer-be-teenage college sophomore without a lot of disposable income. I’ve already called my Senators and House Rep. I really don’t have much influence beyond my power to try to persuade random internet users to be less bad.

I’ve tried to restrain my tendency for purple prose, self-righteousness, and gratuitous moral judgements; you can be the judge of whether or not I succeeded. I know that I am definitely not an expert or authority on this topic, but neither is most anyone else on this fucking website. It didn’t stop them and it won’t stop me.

But before that, some brief words on my previous post. Unlike my usual angryposting where I tend to regret everything I say and do while in the anger spiral, I can actually say that I stand by more or less everything I said in that post. I do have one correction and one clarification though. Clarification: the “Stealth Echoes” I am referring to are instances where the word Israel or Israeli are placed in quotation marks specifically. Example: As per a spokesperson of the “Israeli” Defense Forces, “Something something ceasefire violation.” Used as such, the “Stealth Echoes” around Israel or Israeli are used to signal belief in the illegitimacy of Israel. It’s literally just (((echoes))) revived. A few people thought I was talking about the use of quotes in quotation marks. Now, the correction: in my anger, I believe that I overstated the prevalence of the “Stealth Echoes”. I said 20-40%, which upon reflection was too high, brought on by seeing a long string of said posts in rapid succession. I would now say that the figure is closer to 5-10%, jumping up to 10-15% if you include instances of censoring Israeli like I*****i and the use of words like Isntreal. I feel that as a practical matter they are indistinguishable; they serve the same purpose. Whatever the number, it is too damn high and should not be going unchallenged. If you’re using them, stop. If you see someone else use them, either in a tweet or on Tumblr, don’t share them.

That done, on with the post!

To start with, I want to establish some important concepts and ideas that I’m going to expand upon later so that you are aware and thinking about them going in. Some of these will seem pretty basic, but they are important. Trust me.

Words mean things. Seriously. Words have meaning, both in isolation and as part of sentences. Many words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use them correctly. Incorrect usage of words deprives language of its utility and power. At certain points in this essay, you might think that I am being overly pedantic, but that specificity is important.

Humans possess a strong drive to create narratives, especially out of history. This is normal; almost all humans do it. However, the tendency towards narrative creates a pitfall where the narrative begins to supplant the actual events in discussion and popular consciousness. Actual history is reshaped, often through omission or erasure, to fit the existing narrative. It is this narrative, not the actual history, that informs attitudes and debate. This is a problem for all history, but especially with a history as long, divisive, and deeply emotionally effective as the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Pragmatism and idealism are broadly speaking two competing approaches towards making plans and decisions. Pragmatism is generally concerned with evaluating the state of reality and making decisions based on their objective practical effects. Though they are not necessarily incompatible, pragmatism possesses no inherent obligations to concepts like justice, morality, or good. Idealism, by contrast, is concerned with defining what the world should look like and aims to achieve that goal. This ideal world can theoretically be informed by anything, but is usually defined by morality. I generally believe that what is is more important than what should be. Whether in matters of politics, diplomacy, or war, it is better to evaluate the state of reality as best you can and tailor your goals to what is practically achievable rather than trying to force reality to conform to your idealized future.

In general, I will try to avoid ascribing intent to any individual or action, except where I feel that concrete evidence of intent is publicly available. Astute readers may know where I am going with this.

Rivers of ink have been spilled teasing apart the differences between Israelis, Jews, Zionists, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and more, and between Palestine and Israel. This post is long enough without retreading all of that here. Nevertheless, I will do my best to use specific, accurate terminology where applicable.

The past is not the present. There are many facets to this point, and they will come up fairly often. For now, just keep this in mind.

With that over with, on to…

Anti-Colonialism & History

The Israel-Palestine conflict is usually characterized by the pro-Palestinian camp as an anti-colonialist struggle. In isolation, this is not a statement that I would disagree with. The modern history of Israel and Palestine is a history of colonialism, or near enough for government work. However, as I mentioned earlier, the actual history of Israel and Palestine has been reduced to a simplified narrative of righteous anti-colonialist struggle. That narrative erases the genuine complexity and nuance that is present in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I have not the time, patience, nor expertise to explain the 100+ year long history of this conflict; for a reasonably comprehensive, and as far as I know, accurate summation of the origins and course of the conflict, see this video. However, I do want to note some things that I see as important to the conflict or my arguments about it.

The Jews, whether defined as a group ethnically or religiously, have a historical connection to the land of Israel, and thus possess a potentially (we’ll get to it) legitimate claim to the land; this is, in my opinion, an important intellectual and practical difference from other examples of colonialism.

The ideological motivation behind Zionism was and still is complex, but an important and undeniable part was a desire for a safe haven from antisemitism. Keep in mind, Zionism as an idea first began to spread in earnest in the latter half of the 19th century, during an aggressively antisemitic period in European history. France experienced a surge in the popularity of antisemitic, pro-Catholic revanchists, monarchists and proto-fascists after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War; this would culminate in the Dreyfus Affair. The Catholic Church itself was a powerful institutional advocate of antisemitism. It took until the Second Vatican Council, in the 1960s, for the Catholic Church to declare as official church doctrine that Jews, literally all Jews, past, present, and future were not in fact categorically guilty of the death of Christ, as had been church doctrine for literal centuries. The 1960s. Russia experienced wave after wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms that lasted well into the 1920s, only really ending after the Bolsheviks victory in the Russian Civil War (though this would not be the end of Russian, and later Soviet, antisemitism). The rise of German nationalism was intimately and irrevocably tied in with antisemitism's rise to cultural ubiquity in the German Empire and later Weimar Germany. Even in the United Kingdom, which in the 19th and 20th centuries was positively tolerant by contemporary European standards, reflected in to appointment of Jews in prominent political positions up to and including Prime Ministers, was facing a resurgence in antisemitism. It may seem that I'm harping on the point for far too long, but a) I want to emphasize the truly dire straits facing the Jewish diaspora even before the Holocaust and b) while I would like to believe that the historical threat of antisemitism is accepted as common knowledge, I have been wrong before. See also: previous angry rant.

This point is possibly the most important: many Zionists, before and after the Holocaust, believed that the only way to secure the safety of the Jews in Israel was the creation of a Jewish majority state. Back when the land that was to become Israel and Palestine was believed to be mostly empty, this would have seemed easy to achieve by simply settling the area with a new Jewish population. However, after it became known that the land intended for a Jewish state was in fact inhabited, and by a substantial population no less, any intelligent Zionist would have known that the creation of any substantial Jewish majority state would require the forced eviction of the land's extant, mostly Arabic population.

I was struggling to find a place for this, so it’s going here. I have thus far avoided the use of a popular term used in relation to Israel; settler-colonialism. I have avoided its use because I see it as overused, poorly defined, and ahistorical. According to Wikipedia, accessed 30 November 2023, “Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers.” If defined as such, I argue that the term settler-colonialism is practically useless because it describes literal millennia of human history. Using this definition, I have compiled a non-comprehensive list of examples of settler-colonialism, in roughly reverse chronological order: Israeli settlements in Gaza, Russification of Kaliningrad, Russification of the Crimean Peninsula, Sinicization in Xinjiang and Tibet, started by the late Qing and restarted by the PRC, British conquest of independent Boer states, Boer conquest of modern day South Africa, Ottoman colonization of Greece and the Aegean Islands, Russian conquest of Siberia, the Japanese colonization of Korea and Taiwan, centuries of successful and failed conquests of Cambodia by Vietnamese and Thai kingdoms, conquests by the Inca Empire, European colonization of the Americas, Venetian colonization across the Ionian and Mediterranean Seas, Turkic migrations into Central Asia and Anatolia, the Mongol conquests, the maritime empires of Indonesia, the Muslim conquests and subsequent Arabicization of North Africa and the Middle East, the entire history of the Roman Empire, any of the dozens of examples of Classical Greek colonies in Greece, Anatolia, Sicily, and southern Italy, the Achemenid conquests. Hell, the Phoenecians were so into colonization that one of their colonies eventually became a colonial empire in and of itself, and if you believe that all of those colonies were established on empty, virgin land then I got a seaside condo in Almaty to sell you. Though I don’t have time to go through them all, all of the above examples have either been cited by academics as examples of settler-colonialism, or share substantial commonalities with cited examples in my opinion. My problem with settler-colonialism as a term is that it is fundamentally based in modern concepts of indigeneity and nationalism. To put it bluntly, applying ahistorical modern concepts to a time and place that knew nothing of them is stupid. The vague definitions and overuse of the term compound these problems and threaten to misrepresent a near-universal human practice as an exclusively Western European phenomenon, and serve to complicate and frustrate conversation around instances where a more specific definition would be useful to meaningfully distinguish between it and other colonial projects; South Africa being a prime example. Specific language used accurately is important. All that being said, modern European colonialism more broadly and the effects thereof are important fields of study, and due to both temporal proximity and geographical reach, colonialism as it was practiced by modern European empires has had an outsized negative impact on the living conditions of billions of people currently alive in the year 2023. Sorry for all that, I just had to get it off of my chest.

So, back to the problem at hand. The point of view that sees Zionism as simply another expression of European colonialism is, in my opinion, oversimplified or even outright wrong. The fundamental problem with viewing Zionism as just another European colonial endeavor is that European Jews were generally not seen as European, but as either foreign invaders or domestic subversives. European Jews were generally excluded from the national identities developing across Europe, with very few exceptions. Where Zionism did recieve gentile support, it was secured through moral arguments and intellectual persuasion, not sinister influence. Zionism, while it was influenced by colonialism, Orientalism, and even aspects of white supremacy, was an intellectual idea and practical endeavor primarily advocated by a subset of the Jewish diaspora. In contrast to European colonialism, which was motivated in part or in whole by a mix of greed, national pride, white supremacy, and the belief in a ‘benevolent’ civilizing and christianizing mission, the intellectual underpinning of Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people possess the most legitimate claim to the land that is now Israel and Palestine as their historical homeland. That belief beggars an obvious question: do they?

Maybe?!

This is a large part of the reason why arguments about Zionism get so tangled and ugly and GAHH!. Zionism is the product of applying late 19th century concepts of nationalism and a people’s right to a homeland to a people exiled from their homeland over a thousand years before. Except it’s still more complicated than that, because the return of the Jews to Israel is an idea that is as old as the exodus itself. So the end result is that who you support is often decided by your personal answer to any number of thorny, complicated questions. Are the Jews indigenous to Israel? Are the Arabs indigenous to Palestine? If a people are expelled from their land, do they have the right to return? If yes, does that right expire? If it does, then how long does it last? Should special privilege be afforded to a people without a current homeland? What about a people who have experienced suppression, violence, and social rejection? Is it possible for a land to have multiple indigenous groups? If so, what about the right to return? Can one indigenous group act in a colonialist or imperialist manner towards another?

These questions do have answers, but even a simple yes or no requires additional explanation, elaboration, and will inevitably conflict with opposing answers. The concepts they rest on are complicated and nuanced. One that I’ve mentioned before, and one that you’re probably sick of hearing about at this point, is indigeneity. The reason I harp on this is because it is another modern idea, overused and poorly defined, that is useful, but whose applicability is less universal that an America-centric conception would suggest. Unlike in the Americas, where the dividing line between indigenous and immigrant is fairly clean cut, the Old World’s long list of conquests, migrations, depopulations, pandemics, and famines make the concept of indigeneity really fucking messy. As an example, consider the Turks. The Turks live in Turkey, or at least most of them do. Turkish nationalism, as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, considers Anatolia to be the homeland of the Turkish people. Do you know where the Turks are from?

Mongolia.

Or at least that general area. Archeological evidence is a little vague. I had a summary of that whole process here, but it was too long and I cut it. Summary2, the Seljuk Turks came to rule over Anatolia in the 10th century, starting a roughly 1000 year long process of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic conversion. In the late 19th century, the multiethnic but Turkish-ruled Ottomans began to develop and promote Turkish nationalism, partly in response to European nationalism. Because the Turkish people lived mostly in Anatolia when Turkish nationalism was developed, modern day Turkey adopted the status of homeland to the Turks. In conclusion, shit’s wack.

This is just one of literally thousands of examples of ways in which the concepts of nationalism and indigeneity are, seriously, I’m not just saying words here, complicated. They just are. These questions don’t have simple, satisfying answers and the discussion around them should reflect the nuances of the situation, but usually don't.

I have seen people expressing sentiments along the lines of, “Sitting back and debating the inexhaustible complexity of the Israel-Palestine conflict ad nauseam is obscuring the active suffering of the Palestinian people.” This is a sentiment that I understand, but do not agree with. It is important to talk about the abuses that Israel is committing in Gaza and in the West Bank, and to condemn them as criminal and immoral. But the discussion around the Israel-Gaza War does not take place in a vacuum. Discussions of the current war and of the wider conflict inevitably leave the realm of discussing what just happened and enter the realm of why. And the answer to that why? is almost inevitably wrapped up in narrative. There is an overwhelming tendency for the pro-Palestinian camp to reject the idea that Zionism might, in even a small way, have a legitimate argument. For most of the pro-Palestinian camp, the answer to the fundamental underlying question of Zionism, are the Jews indigenous to Israel? is no. Full stop. That is the narrative of Palestinian resistance. That is the narrative of anti-colonialism. That is the narrative that says that Israel is a European settler-colony. That is the narrative that delegitimizes the State of Israel. And that is a narrative that needs to change because that narrative makes negotiation and compromise impossible. Delegitimization is to nation-states what dehumanization is to people. Throughout the entirety of the American Civil War, President Lincoln referred to the conflict as a “rebellion” and the Confederacy as “rebels”, “insurrectionists”, or “traitors”. Direct quotes. A legitimate state possesses rights, can be negotiated with, and once recognized cannot be derecognized easily. An illegitimate entity must be crushed. Regardless of the crimes of Israel, and oh boy, are we going to get into those, an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will have to be a negotiated resolution, because Israel isn’t going away.

I have my own personal beliefs about all of the above questions and more. I won’t share them because they aren’t important, and it's not really my place. However, to reiterate some of what I have said; I do think that the history of Israel and Palestine can be accurately characterized as a colonialist history, but I feel that the narrative of anti-colonialism papers over the moral complexity of the situation and intentionally delegitimizes Zionism and Israel.

Now, you may have noticed that I’ve mostly been focusing on my problems with the pro-Palestian side, for several reasons. Once again, this essay is supposed to be less about the conflict itself and more about the narratives that I have been seeing online. Since this is an overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian website, addressing that narrative has taken precedence. For that same reason, posting anti-Israeli content does feel a little bit like preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, I have many, many thoughts about Israel and the pro-Israeli narratives, and I clearly have no compunctions whatsoever about screaming my bullshit into the void, so let us now talk about…

Israel & Narrative

And also a little bit more about the Palestinian narrative. Sorry, everything’s kinda interconnected and it's hard to separate sometimes.

So I know that I tagged my last post as “kicking the hornets’ nest”, but this next bit is more like throwing a hornets’ nest at a bees’ nest sitting on the back of a tiger, but here goes.

For at least 90% of the people on this site, the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is completely irrelevant, except for its utility in constructing narratives.

A bold statement, you say. Well yes, but it’s a bold statement that I will stand by. Most of the discussion on this website, and elsewhere, is being driven by people for whom the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is either an academic matter, or a cudgel to beat their opponents with. There are, as always, a few exceptions. The Holocaust is one, in no small part due to its scope and relevance even outside Israel-Palestine. The First Arab-Israeli War, and concurrently the Nakba, is another due to its status as as the opening salvo of the Israel-Palestine conflict, due to the immense suffering it caused to the Palestinian people, and due to its close relationship with the right of return, which holds importance both as narrative component and as a practical political issue directly affecting the lives millions of Palestinians. Things are messy and everything has caveats.

Jupiter the nonbinary MCR stan from Wisconsin did not buy an authentic keffiyeh from a Palestinian factory or participate in the local Free Palestine march because they’re intimately versed in and personally affected by the geopolitics of the Six-Day War.

They’re doing all of that because Israel is a colonialist Amerikkkan puppet that attacks its neighbors without provocation, and Bibi’s latest genocide just killed a few 9/11s worth of children.

David, 41-year-old 4chan refugee, closet brony, “Classical Liberal” of the Carl Benjamin variety, born and raised in Buttfuck, Upstate NY, isn’t ranting and raging about the ceasefire agitators over Thanksgiving dinner because he’s thoroughly studied and is greatly aggrieved of the history of terrorism in the Palestinian liberation movement, or because he put the work in to fully understand the 2006 elections in Gaza and wholeheartedly regrets their outcome.

He’s worked up ‘cause the bus-bombing towelheads have done it again, and he doesn’t give a hoot how many Gazans die ‘cause they shoulda known who they was votin’ for.

Tumblr user viv-hollande, pro-incest Kaeluc truther from [redacted] USA wasn’t crouched over the toilet losing his lunch studying the long, tragic history of the Israel-Palestine crisis.

He was losing his lunch because they just bombed a hospital, 500 people are dead, the bastards did it and they’ll deny it just like with Hook and Miller and Abu Akleh, shitting hells it’s never going to end-

viv-hollande jumped to a conclusion that was informed by a narrative, and proceeded to waste several hours angrily arguing with an Israeli Tumblr user and stubbornly denying credible evidence and what he was seeing with his own eyes because of a narrative, much of which he read about but did not live through. There remain many questions about what happened at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, but the preponderance of evidence has fallen on the side of a Palestinian misfire. If you think that the evidence provided by over a dozen governments, media outlets, and independent analysts was all fabricated on the orders of Puppet-master Bibi, stop. You’re being an antisemite. Please learn from my fuckup.

The above statement mostly applies to the world worth of spectators to this conflict and not to Israelis and Palestinians themselves. For those who lived through those events, or who have family who lived through them, there is obviously a direct personal connection to that history which, on a human scale at least, really isn’t that old. There are survivors of both the Holocaust and the Nakba still around.

I also want to re-emphasize, just in case it got lost in the sludge, that the above statement concerns the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, not current events. Even for those far removed from the conflict, witnessing the ongoing bloodshed in real time is still a traumatic experience that is bound to provoke strong emotional responses and influence people’s position on the wider conflict. Narrative or no, seeing dead children is going to have an effect on you.

With that out of the way, on to the actual pro-Israeli narrative. In no small part due to less exposure, I am less confident in my analysis of the pro-Israeli narrative than I am of the pro-Palestinian narrative, especially as it pertains to Americans arguing online. But, I have divined a few significant main points.

One of the most important parts of the pro-Israeli point of view is that of a siege narrative. The Israeli narrative holds that the state of Israel has existed under the threat of existential annihilation since its inception. I have also seen in many places a direct conflation of the military and political threats to Israel’s existence with the wider history of antisemitism and specifically with the Holocaust. This goes all the way up to Benjamin Netenyahu himself, who falsely claimed, among other wrong things, that it was the Grand Mufti of Palestine who convinced Hitler to order the Holocaust. This statement was roundly condemned by basically everyone, whether Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian, for good reason. It’s tantamount to Holocaust denialism.

The pro-Israeli narrative fundamentally denies the legitimacy and/or existence of Palestinian identity and a Palestinian state. In many cases, it denies the Palestinian right to a state in Palestine at all. This stance is directly related to the perceived necessity for a Jewish-majority Israel, and serves to facilitate the forced removal of the Palestinians from Israel and Palestine. In addition to being morally abhorrent, this stance represents a fundamental obstacle to a negotiated end to the conflict. While I can’t prove it, I very much suspect that some, especially the loudest deniers of Palestinian identity, are aware of this and continue to do so intentionally to undermine peace and facilitate Israel’s continued expansion at Palestinian expense.

For Americans, especially after 9/11, the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been folded into the wider narrative of the War on Terror. Israel-Palestine and the War on Terror are connected, but that connection is a lot more complicated than the American narrative, which, in its own racist, uninformed way, can’t tell the difference between Palestians, Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Afghans, and the completely uninvolved Sikhs, several of whom nevertheless were attacked and killed by racist, overzealous American “patriots”. This conflation degrades the conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict and reduces the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. And while this last bit is essentially unfalsifiable conjecture, I suspect that the collapse of the War on Terror, and the changing narratives around it, plays a part in why the reaction to the current war has been substantially more pro-Palestinian than past flare ups.

As you can see, Israel and its advocates are guilty of many of the same tactics and narrative techniques that I criticized so fervently among Palestinians. The biggest, and most infuriating, has been the consistent denial of Palestinian identity and insistence that Jews/Israelis are the one and only true indigenous people in Israel and Palestine, and the consistent delegitimization of any Palestinian state. This attitude has no doubt played a significant role in prolonging and extending the conflict, and with it the suffering of the Palestinian people. For more details on that suffering, let us now turn to…

Israel & War Crimes

“Israel is definitely committing a campaign of forced displacement, possibly amounting to ethnic cleansing, but I remain unconvinced of the crime of genocide,” - viv-hollande

The above statement in my previous post generated some pushback. I expected this, and planned to dedicate a whole section of the longer essay to supporting this claim, and elaborate on my meaning. Here is that. Oh, and full disclosure, this is probably the most pedantic that I am going to get in this, and I fully expect that that will piss people off for eminently understandable reasons. Nevertheless here I go.

I would like to start by recalling the first of my establishing points: words have meanings, some words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use words with specific meanings correctly or else risk the degradation and dilution of the words themselves. Meaningless words are useless. With that out of the way:

Genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is defined as any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The five acts are:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting upon group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

So, we’ve clearly seen evidence of four of the five acts which potentially constitute a genocide, so why am I opposed to its use? The answer is intent. This is an issue that has been raised by others online, and the response is always a mix of a) harping on definitions while thousands of Palestinians are being murdered obscures their suffering and allows Israel to act unchallenged and b) here is the evidence that Israel intends to commit genocide. Addressing those in reverse order:

I have seen many posts with supposed evidence of Israeli intent to commit genocide. But when they are coagulated, they look less like an actual argument and more like a conspiracy board filled with singular quotes, out-of-context statements, and tweets from some random Israeli expressing dehumanizing, borderline genocidal sentiments. I’m sorry, but this is not evidence of intent. Neither is pointing to Gaza, saying, “Look at what is going on! This clearly shows intent”. It doesn’t. Is a genocide happening in Gaza right now? Maybe. Its unsatisfying and frustrating, but intent is something that will likely be impossible to prove or disprove without access to Israeli government documents. It is classified meeting minutes that will prove or disprove intent, not tweets from Israeli bloggers.

If you are angry at me for harping on definitions and technicalities, that’s understandable. But remember, words have meanings. I am not convinced that a genocide is happening in Gaza. But d’ya wanna know what is happening?

War crimes. Crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing. Forced displacement. Criminally disproportionate military action. Killing and targeting of journalists. Attacks on medical workers and facilities. Attacks on shelter areas. Attacks on UN workers and facilities.

All of these are crimes. In a just world, their perpetrators would be spending the rest of their lives behind bars. They are barbarous acts of cruelty that should be condemned, regardless of whether or not they meet the qualifications of being an act of genocide.

Israel’s attacks on Palestinian water sources is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent.

Involuntary detention of children without charge is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent.

Indiscriminate bombings of civilians are crimes, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent.

The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, both before and after the 7 October attacks, is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent.

The word genocide is used on this platform like a fire alarm. Pull here to warn people about oppression and mass slaughter. But genocide, like all of the other crimes mentioned above, is a word that has a meaning, a definition. That definition is imperfect, but it is what we have to work with. Using these terms specifically and correctly is important.

It feels sometimes that discussion around atrocities turns into a matter of genocide or nothing. People treat the usage of more accurate and specific, but ‘less severe’ terms as a form of denialism. It is that attitude that makes discussing these supposedly ‘less severe’ crimes incredibly difficult. ‘Cause guess what!

Every single one of the crimes listed above is a barbarous crime, and you should fight and condemn every last one of them with the same fervor as you should genocide. None of them are tolerable, none of them are lesser. They are, one and all, abominable acts of criminal violence. The overuse of the term genocide makes it harder to effectively fight all of the others and perpetrates a narrative, consciously or not, that its a matter of genocide or bust.

Hamas & Revolution

The Islamic Resistance Movement, more commonly known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, is in my estimation the most militarily and politically powerful Palestinian organization in the world. Although its stated goals have changed several times over the years, Hamas has generally characterized itself as a defender of Palestinian nationalism, an advocate for Palestinian liberation, and an opponent to Israel, colonialism, and imperialism.

Hamas is also an aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization, and every time I see expressions of support for them you should feel sick. I certainly do.

Open expressions of support for Hamas have been rare, but far from zero. Most of those who do support Hamas uncritically accept the premise that Hamas is an anti-colonial revolutionary resistance organization fighting against Zionist occupation. This post is way too long and my deadline is rapidly approaching, so instead of breaking down all of that, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that that statement is true. Even if true, none of that prevents Hamas from also being an antisemitic, aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization.

One of the basic assumptions of the anti-colonialist narrative is that colonized=good, colonizer=bad. This flattens nuanced and complicated conflicts and leads to the excusing and justifying of criminal acts on the basis that they were committed in pursuit of a just cause.

Anti-colonialist struggles are justified according to the right of self-determination. Many of them nevertheless committed criminal acts.

There is a tendency to treat conflicts, past and present, less as actual events and more like culture wars. It has become fashionable to condemn the United States by rote, to shout “Up the Ra”, without actually addressing the reality of the situation one is commenting on. As an example of what I mean, take Morocco. Last year, Morocco was briefly appointed as the symbolic standard-bearer of anti-imperialism for… winning football matches against tHe DrEaDeD cOlOnIzErS. Today, Morocco is imperialist persona non grata and traitor to the Palestinian cause. Neither of these judgments were made because of the practical, on the ground reality of decolonization, anti-imperialism, or the Palestinian cause. These judgments were made because of the narrative of anti-colonialism. If the actions of Morocco, or anyone else for that matter, work in favor of the narrative of anti-colonialism, then they are lauded. If their actions contradict that narrative, they are condemned. Are there important geopolitical implications of Morocco’s decision to support Israel in exchange for support in Western Sahara? Yes, of course. Realistically speaking, they will probably be minor and mostly symbolic. Morocco isn’t sending soldiers to help occupy Gaza, and Israel won’t be sending soldiers to support the conquest of Western Sahara. Does any of that matter to users on www.tumblr.com? No.

To the supporters of Hamas, I don’t have a lot to say here. Hamas has been open about its antisemitism, and both Hamas leaders and official Hamas statements have openly called for genocide against Israelis, and sometimes Jews more broadly. Hamas engages in blatant conspiracism and has gleefully spread stories about a Jewish-controlled globalist shadow government trying to bring about the NWO. While they did officially amend their charter in 2017 to state that their fight is with the “Zionist enemy” rather than the Jewish people writ large, I find it difficult to believe that they are being honest with their intentions, and even if they are, the 7 October attacks show that they consider Israeli civilians as part of the “Zionist enemy” and thus fair game.

River & Sea

In my previous post, I made the assertion that the popular pro-Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is an antisemitic slogan. As I expected, I got some pushback on this, but have no fear, I have a qualified justification.

Slightly modified, I uphold the statement that, as a practical matter, in the year 2023 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a de facto antisemitic statement.

To fully explain what I mean here, and to address some of the confusion that I have seen with regards to the history of the statement. Shoutout to @starsakura17 and @screaming-weevil for having a conversation about the term and trying to research the history of the phrase to better inform themselves. That’s something we all, including me, should do more often on more topics.

As far as I can discern, the origins of the “River to the sea” part of the phrase are unknown, but Zionist sentiments about creating a state between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea actually predate the First Arab-Israeli War and may predate Mandatory Palestine. The phrase first became associated with the Palestinian cause in the 1960s, when it was used to express opposition to the partition of Palestine and support for a single state in Palestine. How exactly this state was envisioned varied dramatically, but even back then, the 1964 PLO Charter expressly excluded the mostly Jewish immigrants to Palestine from their definition of Palestinians. Gee, where have I heard that before. Now, the PLO do not and did not speak for all Palestinians, and there were many Palestinians and Israelis who advocated for a single state that would be democratic and secular, thus creating a free Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Thusly, if you asked me in the 1960s whether the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic, I would say no, but I would probably note that it is used by antisemites and caution you to be careful with your usage.

However, it is no longer the 1960s, and the usage and users of the phrase have shifted over time. The most important change is the rise of Islamic militant groups, most of whom have adopted the phrase as a call to destroy Israel and purge Palestine of Israelis and/or Jews. In addition, the geopolitical landscape of Israel and Palestine has changed. In the early 1960s, when the land between the river and the sea was under total occupation by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and when the idea of a single, secular, democratic state was at least theoretically possible, non-antisemitic usage of “From the river to the sea” was both possible and fairly common. There were individuals and organizations with actual influence on both sides that could have or did try to lead the charge for this exact solution. In 2023, that is no longer the case.

When I see people using the phrase “From the river to the sea”, my first question is how will that happen? Who will end up in charge of the land from river to sea? Remember, words have meaning, and political slogans do not exist in a vacuum. In the year 2023, there is only one organization with the political clout, popular support, and military might even hope to create a free Palestine stretching from the river to the sea: Hamas. Barring an externally imposed settlement, there is no other entity that could feasibly achieve such a state. You saw what they did on 7 October; what do you think their plan is for the rest of the Jews in Israel?

If you object to my connection between “From the river to the sea” and Hamas ruling over the whole of Israel and Palestine, then go ahead. Tell me how, exactly, a free Palestinian state from river to sea can be created without giving Hamas free access to the people they openly want to exterminate.

Regardless of its origin, regardless of your intention when you say it, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a statement that has been proudly adopted by the most virulent and violent antisemites on the Palestinian side. Whatever its intention, it is at best a slogan with a confused and muddy history that is deeply linked with antisemitism; at worst it is incitement to genocide.

SO STOP USING IT. Any slogan that has to be regularly qualified with “but not in an antisemitic way” is a slogan that you should not use. There are better, non-antisemitic slogans already in use; you do not need to cling desperately to this one.

While I’m here, I may as well address the phrase “Free Palestine from Hamas”. Like “From the river to the sea”, it's a theoretically neutral or even positive slogan. However, I see it most commonly used by those who vocally support the ongoing, indiscriminate destruction of Gaza and slaughter of the people living there. Whatever your intention, this phrase is associated with those who believe that any action is justifiable as long as it might possibly kill even a single Hamas member.

Conclusion

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter, or at least a more coherent one.” - viv-hollande

If you made it this far, you have my respect. I’ve said a lot here, probably too much. I am sure it means something; I am not sure if it means anything significant.

A lot of people are probably mad at me right now. Some of that is probably fair. Some of it is probably not.

I had someone accuse me of being “fundamentally unserious” under my last post, which is a very weird and kind of funny thing to say to a teenager.

I’m really struggling with how to finish this, ‘cause I am well and truly running low on steam, and I have French homework that I’ve been putting off. I’ve scrapped, like, three entire sections that I either didn’t have time to finish, or that I felt were even more poorly written than the rest of this incoherent mess. Maybe I’ll turn them into dedicated posts.

As a final conclusion: The Israel-Palestine conflict has been saddled with millions of uninvolved rubberneckers who all seem to have a lot to say about every aspect of it. As humans tend to do, these bystanders have created narratives of war and struggle, of oppression and revolution. It is these narratives, shaped by history, but also by biases, bigotries, personal values, and misinformation. We choose a good side, and subsume that side into our own personal in-group. We excuse the faults in our allies, and exaggerate or fabricate faults in our enemies. The Palestinian cause categorically dismisses the Jewish right to a secure homeland. The de facto leaders of Gaza are aspirational génocidaires. The pro-Palestinian cause as a whole doesn’t care to consider the fate of the Israelis, millions of who were born and raised in Israel and have nowhere else to go. Simultaneously, the Israelis deny the suffering of the Palestinian people, wherever they may reside. Many current and past leaders of Israel are war criminals, and few, if any, of them will be brought to justice. Make no mistake, this is not a case of “both sides”. As the stronger party to the conflict, backed by the strongest nation on Earth, Israel has had most of the power to choose the timeline for the end to the conflict. As it stands, it seems more and more likely that that end will result in the final, irrevocable extinguishing of the dream of a Palestinian state. That end would be a tragedy, and it would be a crime.

If you’re not sick of me telling you what to do at this point, you have the patience of a fucking saint. To those still here, I say this: condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry wherever they occur; all conflicts have long, complicated histories that get flattened by the desire to ‘pick a side’; exact language, used specifically, is a delicate, precious thing that must be safeguarded; Israel’s crimes in Gaza, whether they qualify as a campaign of genocide, rank as some of the worst committed in decades, and the western political establishment’s tacit acceptance and endorsement of that campaign of horrors is, in and of itself, criminal and immoral, and both should be fought with as much energy as you can possibly spare.

Fuck Bibi, and all those who enable him. Fuck Hamas. Fight war crimes. Ceasefire now. Free Palestine.

A Message To Israelis and Palestinians

I struggled the most with what to say here. As I’ve repeatedly said, this post is intended not for you, but for the crowds of virtual bystanders to the incomprehensible crimes being committed in Israel and Gaza. As someone with, as they say, no skin in the game, I feel uncomfortable addressing you in a way I generally don’t when confronting my peers. I don’t know if you want or need the perspective of yet another rubbernecker, especially when what I do have to say is so insubstantial. But I would feel remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the people over whose heads I have been shouting for so long. So, for the final time, here goes.

I am so sorry for what you are going through. To the Israelis, to those living in fear of rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and especially to those who lost loved ones in the 7 October attacks, or who are living in limbo hoping and praying for the release of the hostages, I express my deepest condolences. To the Palestinians of the West Bank, who have suffered the encroachment and aggression of Israeli settlers and Occupation soldiers, and who must soldier on through the ever-tightening vice of apartheid, your resilience inspires me and your suffering devastates me. To the Palestinian refugees, who have been driven out of their homeland and now must wait endlessly for a return that may never come, please know that you are in my heart. And finally to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, who have been subjected to years of indignity, abuse, and violence, who have endured overwhelming, disproportionate, and indiscriminate retaliation for every terrorist provocation, who have been starved, bombed, shot, beaten, and brutalized in ways that I, sheltered as I am, could never possibly imagine, and who are at this very moment deep in mourning over the thousands and thousands of parents, children, siblings, cousins, friends, uncles, grandparents, nieces, nephews, acquaintances, colleagues, and everything in between, I offer you have my most sincere apologies and my grief at your losses, pale as they must be in comparison to your own. I don’t know if they’ll help, but they’re really all I’ve got.

I wish I could offer you hope. I wish I could offer you a solution. I wish I could do something, anything, that would actually have a meaningful impact on any of this. But I can’t. I’m sorry.

#long post #really long post #israel palestine conflict #i/p conflict #i/p #israel gaza war #antisemitism #islamophobia #war crimes #crimes against humanity #ethnic cleansing #viv lectures #fuck bibi #fuck hamas #free palestine #ceasefire now #kicking the hornet's nest #and the bee's nest

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david-talks-sw · 2 years

Note

Why is Count Dooku's characterization vastly different in The Clone Wars then Attack of the Clones? In AOTC he's all like, "I'm sorry old friend" and "Back down", in TCW he seems to take pleasure in killing Jedi. What happened?

Okay, so I lightly touched on this back in this post where I compare the Dooku we see in the Legends continuity to the Dooku we see in Canon and in this video. George Lucas quotes used as sources can be found at the end.

To start with: there's a dichotomy to Dooku.

On the one hand... he makes good points. His concerns are the same that many Jedi share: the Senate is corrupt, and its representatives are abusing their power for their own selfish needs, sometimes even using Jedi to do so.

On the other hand... Dooku's a Sith. Which means he - like the Senators - is also after power, if not moreso. He's greedy, selfish and ambitious. Sure, he makes good points but he’s part of the problem; he knows it, but he doesn’t care.

More importantly, like Maul and Grievous, the primary purpose of Dooku, as a character, is to show us who Anakin is going to turn into:

An evil, corrupted old man. A prodigal son of the Jedi Order (with closet fascist-leanings) who, in his unquenchable thirst for power, was reduced to being a slave of Darth Sidious.

One of the big differences between Dooku and Anakin, however, is that Dooku was always more politically savvy.

Count Dooku has a public image.

He uses his past as a Jedi to cultivate this persona of a wise intellectual, a rational man with fair and just demands, one who fights for the little guy.

He is the head of the Separatist movement, a charismatic figure known throughout the galaxy for his political idealism, even giving lectures at universities.

But it is just a persona.

I mean, that's probably how he started out, sure, but by the time we see him in Attack of the Clones, Dooku is a Sith Lord, and he's been one for over 10 years, because we know he was going by "Tyranus" while ordering Sifo-Dyas' death and hiring Jango Fett a few months before the invasion of Naboo.

QUICK NOTE: In Canon, Dooku left the Jedi Order 10 years before Qui-Gon’s death. So chances are, he's actually been a Sith for almost 20 years, as we know he was already a darksider 8 years prior to The Phantom Menace because he tried to recruit Rael Averross at the end of the book Master & Apprentice.

Which means he's pure evil.

Deep down, Dooku's the guy we see in The Clone Wars: Darth Tyranus, a ruthless, sadistic killer whose only goal is to destroy the Jedi Order and bend the galaxy to his will.

But the galaxy can't know this, right? They think he's Count Dooku, a kind-hearted man whose beliefs are controversial but ultimately altruistic. Hell, even the Jedi remember him fondly.

So, like Palpatine, he keeps up the facade.

He does this with Obi-Wan, as he secretly tries to recruit him to overthrow Sidious (who Lucas compares to Vader trying to do with Luke in Empire Strikes Back):

He does this with the Jedi, calling Mace "old friend", telling him he's sorry he's about to have them executed.

He plays this charade up to the very end...

... but when Obi-Wan still won't back down, he is left with no choice but to kill him the fastest way he can: with a lightsaber.

A red-bladed lightsaber, in signature Sith fashion. One he’s been careful to keep a secret.

But Obi-Wan's seen it, he's seen the Force Lightning... he's been given a peek behind the curtains, so now he has to die.

And you see the change in Dooku’s behavior. He starts to taunt Obi-Wan, he’s grinning, there’s a sadistic glimmer in his eye. For a brief moment, he drops the mask and goes to town.

Oh and Anakin joins in, whatever the more the merrier. But then Yoda joins in... and Dooku can't beat Yoda. Crap, he's gonna tell everyone.

The secret of him being a Sith Lord is gonna get out...!

But this is Palpatine and Dooku we're talking about. Political geniuses, masters of spin and flipping the story. If the secret got out... who cares?

Seriously, who cares if the Jedi know he’s a Sith, now? The war's already started, Order 66 is right around the corner. He won't even bother pretending he's a good guy, with the Jedi.

Him playing the role of the "villain" when facing the Republic also makes it so that the Senate will want to keep the war going until he's captured or dead.

And because they're at war, he can simply wave the fiendish acts the Republic lays at his feet as "slanderous propaganda" in front of the Separatists, they'll just eat it up.

Furthermore, Dooku being his true, ruthless self when engaging with the Republic also has a second perk: it'll make the Jedi look bad.

'Cause the galaxy doesn't really get what a Sith Lord is, they think it's just some Jedi variant. So that's still a Jedi, right?

As such, Dooku's cruel actions and cruelty then feed into the anti-Jedi conspiracy theories about them "starting the war" and the growing distrust that'll make it so that - when the Jedi are eventually wiped out - the general public will just go "good riddance".

Which was the main goal of the entire Clone War conflict.

TLDR:

The guy we see in most of Attack of the Clones is Count Dooku, political idealist, AKA who he presents himself to be.

The characterization we see at the end of Attack of the Clones, in The Clone Wars and in Revenge of the Sith is that of Darth Tyranus, Sith Lord, AKA his true self.

George Lucas Quotes:

About Dooku’s valid points:

“I wanted a more sophisticated kind of villain. Dooku’s disenchantment with the corruption in the [Republic] is actually valid. It’s all valid. So, Chris plays it as, “Is he really a villain or is he just someone who is disenchanted and trying to make things right?”” - Starlog Magazine #300, 2002

“The confrontation between Obi-Wan and Dooku originally was a confrontation between Padmé and Dooku, and it was a political thing. I decided, after seeing the movie, that I didn’t need that scene with Padmé and Dooku, it was in the wrong part of the picture, and this one, with Obi-Wan, would be more appropriate. It would work better if Dooku would actually tell the truth about what’s going on and then create a situation where nobody believed him. And it also allows you to kinda have some sympathy for Dooku in that he carries the sympathies of most of the Jedi which is that the Senate is corrupt and is incapable of carrying out any meaningful actions because they argue about everything all the time.” - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

About the similarities between Anakin and Dooku:

“[In the garage scene, Anakin] sort of lays out his ambition and you’ll see later on his ambition and his dialogue here is the same as Dooku’s. He says “I will become more powerful than every Jedi.” And you’ll hear later on Dooku will say “I have become more powerful than any Jedi.” [...] And Dooku is, kind of, the fallen Jedi who was converted to the Dark Side because the other Sith Lord didn’t have time to start from scratch, and so we can see that that’s where this is going to lead which is that it is possible for a Jedi to be converted. It is possible for a Jedi to want to become more powerful.” - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

“I needed to get across the point that Jedi can leave the Order, to set up what happens with Anakin later on. Also, in the end when you realize that Dooku is Darth Tyranus, it explains what Darth Sidious did after Darth Maul was killed: he seduce a Jedi who had become disenchanted with the Republic. He preyed on that disenchantment and converted him to the dark side, which is also a setup for what happens with Anakin.” - Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of Attack of the Clones, 2002

About Dooku’s true nature:

“If you put two Sith together, they try to get others to join them to get rid of the other Sith. Dooku's ambition here is really to get rid of Darth Sidious. He's trying to get Obi-Wan's assistance in that [...] so that he and Obi-Wan could overthrow Sidious and take over. And it's exactly the same scene as when Darth Vader does it with Luke to try to get rid of Sidious.” - Attack of the Clones, Commentary Track 2, 2002

“In the midst of this turmoil, a separatist movement was formed under the leadership of the charismatic former Jedi Count Dooku. By promising an alternative to the corruption and greed that was rotting the Republic from within, Dooku was able to persuade thousands of star systems to secede from the Republic. Unbeknownst to most of his followers, Dooku was himself a Dark Lord of the Sith, acting in collusion with his master, Darth Sidious, who, over the years, had struck an unholy alliance with the greater forces of commerce and their private droid armies.” - Shatterpoint, Prologue, 2004

#dooku #Count Dooku #Jedi #QnA #Star Wars #Sith #Sith Lord #meta #long post #Anakin Skywalker #lucas quotes

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