#the thing is that no civilians should be fucking massacred)

[suswous]

It’s sorta funny (not funny) sometimes you’ll see an absolutely atrocious take on Israel-Palestine, and not even know which side they’re supporting.

[bogleech]

Guess I have to make a main thread about this. Someone decided to fight with me in the notes on this post just yesterday about Gaza and made select responses of mine into a callout thread here, where they say my anger towards the IDF is all a cover for antisemitism. This didn't make any sense, because they said they were also against the IDF killing civilians, and I repeatedly said that Jewish people aren't to blame for the IDF or represented by the IDF in any way, putting us supposedly both on the exact same page. What gerry leaves out of their own screenshots, and I'd actually forgotten, is that at first they came at me from an angle that I was disrespecting the victims in Gaza.

So this implies they feel gaza is being subjected to a genocide, and a pretty big one, since they're upset my language made it sound "smaller and tamer." When it becomes obvious that I do in fact consider it a serious genocide, that's when they switch over to saying that my criticism of Netanyahu or the IDF is inherently an attack on Jewish people.

Notice I never actually said "zionists" in this screenshot, even, but that I defined "regular humans" as humans who don't want to kill innocent families. That would automatically include Jewish people since they overall do not wish to kill anyone, but have in fact spent quite a lot more time trying not to get killed. I believe there may be entire books about this fact! I think there's even whole museums about it, if I'm not mistaken?!

So then they pivot to saying I'm an antisemite because I said the IDF and its supporters can "burn in hell," and they say "invoking hell" is an antisemitic dogwhistle, which is definitely news to me?!

So I tried to clarify, again, that I'm only angry at the people who are themselves killing civilians and the "pro-genocide maniacs" who defend the killing of civilians, which they responded to as if I had "lumped them in" with those. You can just see right there that I didn't make any assumption that they were a part of that at all. Thanks to their earlier comments I still thought I was speaking to someone 100% against the IDF's actions, but every time I said that the killers and their advocates alone are bad, they've framed it in some new way as me just not liking anyone Jewish. So now that you have that context:

...In a response to an ask, they finally just say they hated me to begin with and set out with the intention to "bait and sealion" me (their own words!!) into saying something they hoped would be antisemitic, which they believe was successful despite me never saying anything about Jews other than "this isn't their fault." They saw what they admittedly wanted to, so strongly, that they show me saying "this isn't the fault of Jews" as evidence that I blame Jews. But speaking of people "going mask off"

In multiple more recent posts and asks, this person appears to say that they simply do not believe the IDF is really targeting children or ambulances or relief aid, that "none of those are true," and the deliberate targeting of any children is supposedly just a conspiracy theory??? So I guess they did successfully troll me and I feel like a real gullible dumbass, because the only reason I continued responding to this person in the first place was that they said they were in fact against the ongoing massacre. Instead, these comments sound like they think the IDF is being unfairly vilified by dishonest propagandists, and that's why they hated me enough to try and fish for callout fuel. That's the nastiest fucking thing anyone's yet pulled on me about this and it's not one that I'm just going to ignore. I should have smelled a troll early on and just blocked them, but it's SO hard for me to suspect ulterior motives. I always go in thinking people mean well, and that there's just a miscommunication we can work out. I almost feel like this individual noticed that and tried to exploit it?!? Unfortunately I'm sure this kind of thing will happen again simply because I don't intend to obediently shut up about what's being done to Gaza. It's not logistically possible for the death and destruction to all just be accidental collateral damage. Don't let anybody ever fool you into thinking the IDF is the face of the Jewish community or vice-versa, just as you can't let anyone fool you into thinking Hamas represents all Palestinians. Especially don't engage this person, stop doing so if you have been, and block them.

[hedgehog-moss]

I've received some absolutely deranged anons since reblogging that post saying celebrating mass slaughter of civilians is fucked up no matter what. One ask saying "wtf are you talking about, no one is celebrating anything, people think Israel is the victim as always" was sandwiched between two other asks, one cheering for genocide, one confused and uncertain as to whether or not going house to house slaughtering entire families is always a bad thing. Not using the word genocide lightly btw, the first ask was like "death to colonizers, all colonizers should die, there are no civilians in Israel, the death toll should have been higher." Another ask was 3 paragraphs that amounted to a clearly satisfied "reap what you sow." What did the murdered babies sow exactly? Or the abducted grandma who was a lifelong peace activist, who regularly drove people from Gaza to Jerusalem for medical care? I've seen lots of such comments in the notes of one post the other day, bonkers levels of dehumanising antisemitism, which was what prompted me to reblog a post by someone with a moral compass.

For a lot of progressive social media 'activists' the question of whether or not to condemn child murder is a really complex moral dilemma when it's being done by the right oppressed group or, let's be honest, if it's Jewish children being murdered for a good cause. It's repulsive. The idea that you can "side" with the children trapped in Gaza subjected to war crimes by hesitating to condemn war crimes against children on the other side is repulsive. The adults at that music festival and in surrounding villages didn't deserve to be massacred either but it's hard not to keep focusing on the children in the process of desperately trying to find a line in the sand with people who claim to care about justice. I wasn't going to make any more posts because the last thing social media needs is more unaffected people giving their 2 cents on this topic, but yeah I'll just say, if your moral stance is that being oppressed and persecuted long enough gives you the right to fight for your land at any cost, including costs borne by innocent children, then you are ideologically aligned with Israel's current government. Not everything is justifiable if done by / to the "right" people in the "right" circumstances. Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what absolute (not relativistic, not contingent on context, incentives, or purpose) moral values you hold—any at all—if you can't draw a line in the sand with "rape" and "child murder" always on the other side of it.

[anli-rambles]

No bc the 18th century assassins were actual shit and I'm not just talking about the Colonial branch, like-

The British brotherhood let a Templar GRANDMASTER run off with the son of one of their master assassins after his death and never did anything to save him. Years later that boy grows up to be a Templar, climbs up the ranks of the Order at lightning speed, and kills one of their assassin masters after stealing his hidden blade. And how do they respond to that ? They send one of their novices after him on a ship to Boston to kill him. Alone. And that novice, instead of going the assassin way and stab Haytham in the back or something, tries to defend him from getting killed by some other guys on deck before engaging him in a fucking sword fight during which he gives Haytham, A MASTER SWORDSMAN, HIS OWN GODDAMN SWORD, LIKE WHAT IN THE-

Then you have the disaster that was the Colonial Brotherhood. Achilles, the last student of Ah Tabai, goes on to do the one thing Ah Tabai spent the entirety of Black Flag warning Edward against (tampering with Isu sites) and becomes mentor to absolute psychopaths. They were working with gangs who were harassing civilians for protection money and developing chemical weapons that they planned on unleashing on entire cities, not to mention that they caused two earthquakes that killed hundreds of thousands and were going to do it a third time (and probably would never have stopped) had Shay and Haytham not intervened. Also, instead of talking shit out with an obviously traumatised Shay, they demonised him, shot him off a cliff, and left him for dead without even checking if he'd died or not - they were so bad that they made Shay, the most un-Templaresque person ever, defect to the Templars, which inevitably led to their downfall and you can't even blame the Templars for massacring all of them bc they were an absolute menace to society. Plus they were allied with the Fr*nch and it should be common knowledge that this is the worst crime one could ever commit

AND SPEAKING OF THE FRENCH ! Those bitches were also completely brain dead !! Like, they knew what happened to Haytham and how the man turned out, but they still let the Templar Grandmaster adopt Arno, the son of one of their master assassins, just like the British had done with Edward. Like, they should have known it could end in an absolute disaster. And they banished Arno, probably their most promising recruit since Charles Dorian's death, for doing his fucking job as an assassin just because he broke some rules, which is so dumb coming from people whose motto contains the lines "everything is permitted", I just- ☠️

Ratohnhaké:ton was legit the only 18th century assassin with a functioning brain cell istg

[decepti-thots]

☕ MTOs & specifically what do you think they were going for with that?

MTOs are an interesting narrative thing to me in the sense that they really are so localised to only one part of the canon; they're very clearly Roberts' idea and only really matter, inasmuch as they do matter, in MTMTE. It's pretty clear to me that's the case for one specific reason: they'd actually fit SUPER well into the narrative arc of exRiD, especially early-to-mid RiD, but they basically never come up! You'd think 'neutrals and soldiers stuggling to cohabit socially and politically' would be prime fodder (lmao) for taking advantage of a narrative about mechs born of and into war coming back to a civilian life on a planet they really don't know. And yet.

What they're doing in that comic, in MTMTE, is a little headscratching to me at times. It feels, to be honest, somewhat like worldbuilding put in to make the texture of the backstory of the war feel grander than IDW had really managed up to that point in actual on-panel stuff, without a lot of thought when doing so in the moment as to the knock on implications going forward. MTMTE does this a few times, tries to use vague gestures at important sounding stuff to bring a greater sense of history and depth to the war in the face of the actual stuff we saw in phase one being. Mmmm. Basically just twenty dudes we already know shooting at each other across parking lots. LMAO.

(Sidenote: I know for a fact Roberts watched original flavour nuWho, and this is PEAK Russell T Davies doing worldbuilding when he was on Doctor Who, and I fully believe he was cribbing from that playbook. Every damn episode RTD would make them just sort of say stuff about the Time War that made it sound incredibly vast and textured and complex but which, crucially, never made any actual fucking sense. Good examples of stuff like this would be the Crucible, the Simanzi massacre, etc. This is, to be clear, a neutral observation, not praise or criticism per se.)

I say this because MTOs should probably be a bigger deal in terms of the impact on our cast, and their outlook on life and reasons for joining the quest, than they wind up being. An MTO is a character with no experience of living in peacetime at all, likely no experience of Cybertron, no sense of kinship or home necessarily to the planet they came "back" to. All of this provides a really clear motivation, given the implication most surviving non-neutral Cybertronians are now MTOs due to huge numbers of deaths, to join a quest like the Lost Light's! But it tends not to come up much, and I think it's because it wasn't really part of the plan. Later on, there's room to slot in some details here and there- Riptide talking about his experiences with being infodumped at by the 'training' comes to mind- but it takes a while for the comic to come back round to that.

The two big exceptions, of course, are Getaway and Brainstorm. The idea is definitely interacting with their characters more, though again, it... tends to come up later. Especially for Getaway, who I'm not convinced was originally conceived as an MTO, but had it slotted in a bit later as 'well that works' stuff tbh. (And it does, so that's fine!) Which leaves Brainstorm, who lies about being forged to throw off suspicion, who it's implied never got the time of day from Quark in a way I wouldn't be surprised we're supposed to assume is some kind of remaining bias, perhaps. Who didn't see a future for himself 'back on Cybertron' and so concocted a very weird plan to avoid having to. Who never got a choice about his 'side' in the war, and wound up with no real loyalty for anyone.

I think if there's any avenue I'd have liked to see more about MTOs via, it's Brainstorm. I wish there'd been more room to focus on that instead of (I'm so sorry shippers) his thing with Perceptor as the way to talk about his sense of inadequacy, tbh. What did it feel like, lying to Chromedome about remembering a pre-war life he never got a chance to experience? Being made to shoot people and be shot and escaping the fate of having that be the only thing he ever knew by the skin of his teeth? Not being able to imagine an end to the war, so all he wants to do is save one guy and run off with him as a pipe dream? That seems like the character where a lot of this stuff should naturally lie, to me. And I think it's a shame I've seen very little talk in fandom about it!

[watermelonsloth]

Itachi and the Uchiha Massacre

This might be one of the most controversial posts I’ll ever make.

I find myself very undecided about how I feel about Itachi’s role in the Uchiha massacre. It fills me with the same moral indecision and disgust of the trauma olympics (aka the comparing of “who had it worse”). Every time I try to come to a consensus, I immediately doubt my conclusion and question whether I’m giving Itachi too much of the benefit of the doubt or I’m not taking his circumstances into account enough. It’s like asking if him being a child outweighs him killing children. And that makes me uncomfortable.

On the one hand, he did something very very very bad. He killed an entire clan of people, including who knows how many innocent civilians and children. He then proceeded to psychologically torture his seven year old brother with the memories of him doing so. Prior to being met with this specific conundrum, I would’ve said without hesitation that this is a black-and-white situation with Itachi being solidly in the wrong. Even if he wasn’t the only perpetrator, he still would deserve much of the blame for being one of the executors of such an abhorrent act.

I cannot stress enough how terrible the massacre would’ve been in practice.

However, and this is where I might lose a few of you, as more information is revealed, one question nags at my entire fucking central nervous system. How much of a choice did Itachi really have?

To understand the full circumstances, first you have to understand that the context falls under two categories: who Itachi is (and his perspective) and what position he was in when he made the decision he did. First, who he is:

Itachi grew up in a militaristic village that normalizes violence, especially violence being used to solve problems.

This village has also normalized putting the village’s survival over oneself and one’s friends/family.

He was alive to see the very end of the third shinobi war and the nine tails attack, two events that have solidified his belief that war is the worst thing ever and should be prevented at all costs.

Hiruzen, Danzo, Kakashi, and Shisui encourage his belief that war should be avoided at any and all costs. Three of them are authority figures (see the Milgram experiment for why that’s relevant) and one of them is his first and only best friend.

He is a very introverted and closed off person. He’s so closed off that not even his immediate family can read him. Because of this, his inner circle is very small (meaning he has a very small support network).

He grew up with a strict, authoritarian father and entered the anbu at a young age, meaning he grew up being expected/pressured to obey those in positions of power without asking questions.

He’s an introvert who’s scared of conflict and keeps his head down.

Second, his actual position when he was told to kill his clan (I might be missing some, so feel free to add any others you remember.):

He was thirteen. That is a child in grade 8. That is the age of most genin.

Tensions between his family and village are implied to have been rising for a while and are now at the point that, for whatever reason, negotiation is deemed impossible.

Tensions are so high that if the village doesn’t act soon, the Uchiha’s coup will spark an all out civil war.

The Uchiha clan has little to no chance of winning the conflict and will likely have most (if not all) of its members killed in it. Plus, the conflict would’ve also resulted in many casualties on Konoha’s side as well, including civilians, children, and shinobi who had nothing to do with what was happening.

Tensions between him and his father are extremely high as well with the two of them being implied to regularly argue.

His best friend, possibly only friend, died by jumping off of a cliff in front of him after giving him one of his eyes and left the responsibility of handling the entire situation to him.

He’s being suspected for the murder of said best friend (and was flat out accused of it in front of his younger brother by three adult police officers) and is suspected as being more loyal to the village than to his clan, making him even more of an outcast to his clan.

He's aware that his best friend was attacked and mutilated by Danzo, one of the village leaders and his superior. If he wants any action taken against Danzo, he’ll have to fight a solo, uphill battle against all of the village leaders and risk losing all sway over the Uchiha situation (which would still be a ticking time bomb) in the process.

If he doesn’t want to fight a two sided war or lose what little power he has in the situation, his safest option is to follow orders while pushing for a plan where casualties are minimized.

Did Itachi have other options? Yes, I’m not gonna pretend that genocide was Itachi’s only choice. But a lot of people seem to forget how difficult or flawed a lot of his alternatives would have actually been in practice.

For example, I’ve seen a lot of people throw around the idea of Itachi just grabbing Sasuke and leaving the village. First of all, the massacre still would’ve happened, Itachi and Sasuke just wouldn’t have been there for it. Second, Itachi would’ve had to remove Sasuke from the village without being caught by the village or the Uchiha clan when he was under the scrutiny of both. Itachi is a good shinobi, but I don’t know if he’s that good. Third, how would he even get Sasuke to go along with him? Itachi may not have been close to his clan, but Sasuke loved his clan. Yes, Sasuke also loved Itachi, but it’s a pretty big stretch to say that seven-year-old Sasuke would’ve just gone along with it, especially when he wouldn’t have been able to understand the true scale of the situation. (Itachi would pretty much have to kidnap Sasuke for this plan to work.) Fourth (and similarly), people don’t tend to like uprooting their entire lives to leave the home they grew up in, even in emergency situations or when it’s the objectively better/safer option. Itachi and Sasuke, who were both raised to be “lay down their lives” loyal to their home, would’ve been especially averse to this idea. Fifth, even if they got over all of that and got out of the village, Itachi would have to raise his younger brother alone at thirteen years old while being on the run from a world power with no protection in a world where they’re at risk of being killed or getting the attention of creeps like Orochimaru simply for having kekkei genkai. It’s not like Itachi had outside contacts (beside Obito but Obito would not have helped them even if Itachi trusted him enough to trust Sasuke’s life to him) or there was a benevolent nation to take them in. Even if they managed to one day settle into a peaceful life, it would’ve taken years of fighting to survive before they’d have gotten there. Cool fanfic idea, but making Itachi slightly more innocent isn’t a solution.

The idea that Itachi should’ve just told the Uchiha clan what was going on and got help from them is similarly short sighted. The Uchiha clan were the victims in this situation, but they weren’t perfect angels either. Itachi was not close to, or particularly well liked by, his clan. Save for Shisui (who is theoretically dead in this scenario) and Sasuke, he had no emotional connection to the clan, only vague respect and a waning sense of responsibility towards it. And even if he did go to them, Itachi telling them what was happening would’ve just sparked a civil war, the one thing Itachi was desperate to avoid and the thing that would’ve gotten them all killed.

So…

What was the point of all this?

I’ll admit that I hoped typing out my thoughts would somehow end in me settling on an opinion, but right now I’m still just as undecided and significantly more depressed. Because, like, it’s just a depressing, shitty situation where there were victims and perpetrators and Itachi who just so happened to be both. Maybe trying to ask if Itachi is either “good” or “evil” is asking the wrong question. Maybe the entire discussion about how moral Itachi is as a person or all of the other choices he could’ve made is missing the point.

[hero-israel]

The lies and mistruths that Jews "invaded" and "colonized" Palestine, coupled with the lies and mistruths that everyone lived together in harmony with no violence, combine to say that therefore any Jewish anxiety about a post Zionist landscape where there's a very real possibility of Jews being a minority is illegitimate. It is indistinguishable from white Boers fearing retribution, or Americans discomfort with the idea of indigenous sovereignty.

But when you whitewash your own history and gaslight Jews from dawn till dusk, of course you can make them look like whiny entitled brats who just don't want accountability and are fearing "war crime tribunals" (ok girl). But Jews are unique. This would be the one time where the "colonizer" actually has a basis to fear being the minority. There's historical precedent for it, not just from Europe. It's undeniable.

And yes, Israel's Arab neighbors probably have no intentions of wiping it off the map (Iran is a different story), and Hamas is not powerful enough to massacre all Jewish people in Israel no matter how hard they try. The West Bank is not nearly as violent as it used to be. The situation is not hopeless, and regardless Israel can mobilize millions of well trained well armed reservists with state of the art weapons the backing of most Western powers and of course nukes.

Israel is safe... but even with the knowledge that Israel is safe it doesn't matter if we're talking about a peaceful negotiated Right of Return for Palestinians and they are the majority without a single bullet being fired. And also, think of the Jewish People like abuse survivors. Someone can be physically safe, but they still do not feel safe. They need constant outside assurance that what they're experiencing is real and that they have support. Trauma takes time to heal, a long ass time on an individual scale and who knows how long on a societal scale.

It's not "centering ourselves" or being whiny or duplicitous or crying antisemitism when Jews request over and over and over again that Palestinians and their allies do the simplest fucking task of calling the murder of Jewish civilians the atrocity that it is. They can't even do that, let alone say they embrace having Jewish neighbors, that they see Jews as equals, that they would protect Jews, that they view the Jewish People as their cousins who should share the land and all its abundance with them.

They never stop and think about why these are not really concerns for 8 millionth generation German Americans, and why they are for Jewish people of all colors and backgrounds. If they're not putting in that barest baseline of work then at a certain point we can say we tried and we're going to prioritize our safety at all costs.

Excellent comment. Thank you.

I would just say that it absolutely is about centering ourselves, that centering ourselves is a wonderful thing and we should do it more, there's a reason why "The Giving Tree" is sad and disturbing.

Probably the most tragic element of this awful October is that it was all based purely on psychology, not on politics. Hamas is not actually going to destroy Israel. It was meant to trigger Israeli Jews (and I deliberately use a word that has been eroded to snotty meaninglessness by Internet trolls, since that is the mentality of these ISIS-style groups; the cruelty is the point) and shatter their sense of safety, and then put them into a position where they had to respond with overwhelming force so as not to look weak in a rough neighborhood. It will gain nothing real, nothing tangible, for Hamas, for Palestinians, for anti-Israel dead-enders; it was an act of pure spite. And the West's Useful Idiots for death and racism sign onto it eagerly, because of their psychological need to see Jews get taken down a notch (via lots and lots of dead Arabs).

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Ya know. I'm sick of seeing the Palestinian flag everywhere.

No for real. I'm tired of it. I've said this a number of times but fascists, communists and socialist, as well as anarchists, hate jews. And all of them believe the Nazi propaganda about them.

What's even more sad is watching people call for the death of an entire country because they view them as "White" when MOST jews in Israel are arguably not remotely white. This includes Arab and African Jews. But it's funny watching the Rhetoric of the KKK and Neo Nazi's show itself in the group I will now refer to as the FCSA.

"Jews control the world", "Jews are making everyone gay", Jews control all the money", "Jews are all rich and white". Yeah yeah yeah we've seen the Hitler talk for years. We know the bullshit you stupid fucks believe. War is bad but what is going on now is retaliation for a MASSACRE. Hamas and even the people of Gaza, those you call "Palestinians" are VERY specific about who they point the finger at too. So I hear nonstop the idea of "Colonizer" meanwhile this is what the Arab conquest looked like:

Interestingly, before this happened, Judah was a place. Israel in fact was mentioned in the Koran a number of times. Meaning it predated even the Muslim faith. Muhammad, was the purveyor of this faith. So if anything, the progressive should be on the side of Israel. BUT do you know why they aren't? Because in their view? Jews are "White Oppressors".

Now is killing civilians bad? Yes. Is war bad? Also yes. But sadly when it comes to war, civilians die. Except in this case, it's because Hamas are willing to do whatever it needs to, to both protect themselves, (including human shields) which also helps them spread propaganda that the Israeli military are hunting the people of Gaza for sport. See.....fog of war is a shit thing and everyone is going to have their own side. Me? Hamas is a radical sect of Islam. We see them when they do videos in LAVISH places with trinkets that would make the Vatican blush. Why? By stopping aid into Gaza, taking money from Iran, and then selling the aid for a HUGE markup, to get more rich.

What happened to eat the rich? OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH RIGHT when they are brown or black it's fine if they are rich right? Because you arrogant fucks don't actually believe anything at all. And none of your views are consistent. Hamas admitted the "Death count" it was sending out was GROSSLY inflated and every single country took it at face value and has yet to correct it. And now, the leaders of Hamas are some of the single richest people on earth. What's more, they want more people from Gaza to die because it makes them (Hamas) look more oppressed. And makes Jews and Israel, look evil.

Then there are the anarchists who I love hearing from *Sarcasm* who want to abolish Israel, but will outright deny that Islam sees Judaism as a slight against their god. Believe me when I say that if Israel left the rest of the hostages to die or be tortured.....this conflict would not stop. Hamas would strike again and again, and anarchists would say, "Well that's just what Israel gets for existing. If they just gave it to the Arabs everything would be sunshine and rainbows". OH so Arabs get to own land and have a theocracy where they commit humans rights violations but Israel can't exist? Sounds to me that the issue you have is the Jewish homeland there sir. Oh and if you think the Jewish people would be safe? Nope. They'd have to escape to other places around the world, knowing it's only a matter of time before those other countries turn on them.

Like the Leftists in the West, who are hunting and harming/threatening Jews with ZERO ties to Israel over this conflict. Enough that a number of students got trapped in a library because a mob formed outside chanting "From the river to the sea". A phrase both created by Hamas and used as a genocidal chant.

Civilian deaths are bad. We get it. But why does NO ONE seem to give a fuck about the massacre? "Oh it was bad but~", No there is no BUT. IT WAS FUCKING AWFUL. And Hamas has stated it's goals over and over. Yet the cult of activists in the west will just dick suck actual terrorists so long as they aren't "White" or "White adjacent". It's even funnier when you consider shit like "Queers for Palestine". Bro they would stone you nearly to death, castrate you then throw you off a fucking building. The LAW in Gaza as enforced by Hamas, was 10 years MIN jail if you were caught being a homosexual. Assuming you lived to SEE jail.

And it actually gets more weird. Seeing the far right say, "Jews are helping create the gays" while the far left is saying "Jews HATE the gays and Islam actually loves them". Have you assholes READ the Koran? Or any related books of the faith? It expressly FORBIDS homosexuality if I recall, and sees it as a slight against Allah. And for slights against their god, they can and WILL kill you. (NOT ALL but enough of the countries that follow it that it's an issue).

My point is. I don't really have a dog in the fight of this conflict. It's just funny watching the FCSA all come together and pretend they don't hate Jews while TARGETING Jews. And I'm tired of influencers, Bands, Actors, and Activists pretending they know what's going on when all they are actually doing is swallowing Hamas propaganda whole. Again. A leader of Hamas has openly said they want more civilians to die because it makes them look more sympathetic. Many have tried to escape only to be blocked off by Hamas. And given their track record for propaganda I would not put it past them to kill an IDF member, take their uniform, and go execute some civilians and then use their Hamas journalists who were on GREAT terms with the UN to film it and create a fucking puff piece worshiping these terrorist fucks. Who DO NOT care about civility, rights, or peoples lives.

[brazenautomaton]

a big effort post that was going to be a reply because I originally started making it on desktop where I couldn't see who the OP of any post was, and only after looking on mobile did I see OP was someone who has specifically lied about me in order to do me harm because they find it emotionally satisfying to lie about me to do me harm:

using a human shield isn't "supposed" to make everyone put down their guns, either legally or informally. if it is, then you are creating very very bad incentives and saying "the secret to defeating our forces is to put innocent lives in danger, you should go do that way more."

it is permissible to attack someone using a human shield, and it absolutely has to be. if it isn't, you reward terrorists by placing the responsibility for their actions on their opponents.

...and when you ask people "why do you think it is productive" or "why do you think it is a good idea" for the Israeli military to be shooting through those human shields, the response you get is "it is permissible for the Israeli military to do that."

pro-israel people are correct that it is a tragic fact that waging war will have large numbers of civilian casualties. they are correct that this cannot be the only relevant factor in the decision to go to war, or else we're rewarding the worst and most violent people for their actions. they are not correct in the assumption that, because war will inevitably have civilian casualties, the civilian casualties should not have any impact on your assessment.

if israel were making significant gains against hamas as a military organization, if they were liberating places under unwilling hamas rule, if they were claiming swathes of territory, and Hamas's primary means of stopping them was chucking civilians at them-- then would be the time to talk about how the civilian casualties are the fault of hamas's intentional actions. Ukranian resistance has killed civilians as collateral damage, and that doesn't mean they aren't right to defend themselves, it means Russia is wrong to throw civilians in the way.

But that's not what's happening. The Israeli campaign isn't gaining ground or making progress. It has accomplished nothing and could not possibly accomplish anything. They've killed thousands upon thousands of times more people than Hamas did, which did not accomplish any goal. They're not safer because of this. Hamas is not struggling because of this. Hamas does not have any less resources or power because of this. you do not have to sit there and let others hurt you because they're more willing to be evil, but you do have to avoid killing people when it accomplishes absolutely nothing but killing, even if you think striking back is justified.

The rivers of blood from Hamas's massacre did not somehow justify, redeem, cancel out, or even protect a single drop of Palestinean blood that ever has been or would be shed. And the rivers of blood from Israel's war have not redeemed, justified, canceled out, or protected a single drop of Israeli blood. All they have done is kill people and make sure more people are killed. Both parties would be immeasurably better off if Israel just stopped their campaign and didn't replace it with anything. Actually operate your security instead of not doing that, because your security systems were keeping you safe until you just fucking ignored them. That would be useful! But this attack is doing nothing but killing people. Don't do pointless things that result in massive death even if you're technically allowed to.

[nhaneh]

wait shit I just realised where I recognised the soul orb VFX from

the attack on Tuliyollal didn't just massacre a bunch of civilians wholesale, it also actively took their souls to feed into their little extra life brain dongles!

yeah okay extra fuck these guys and their little Google Gaol in the Cloud™. Query Sphery might act like she cares about people but honestly I don't think she's really all that much better than Zoraal Ja, lmao

Nevermind the fact that for all she says about caring about her people, she doesn't seem to actually understand... well, people. At all. It's like... she kind of gives me LLM vibes? Like she has information about people, she has data about individuals and their preferences and behaviours and has, out of all that data, compiled a statistical model of how social behaviour tends to look and is basically just mimicking it, ChatGPT-style. Like she's a computer simulation that someone fed a bunch of data and told to act as a benevolent ruler should and that's what she's doing - it's all behaviour without any understanding of it. Her out of the blue use of the nickname Lamaty'i stands out in particular - it's like her data model shows people who are close and personal to Wuk Lamat use the term, and she's supposed to be close and personal, so she used it with no understanding of what it actually means to use it, of the process of kinship that needs precede it.

Plus those awkward moments where she kind of pauses before going into the next set of behaviours. Like yeah the cutscene animations generally have a bit of that by default, but this is very deliberate emphasis. I feel like I could literally hang a big display saying "PROCESSING, PLEASE WAIT..." in front of her entire face.

It's also such a stark contrast to Cahciua who shows up controlling a robot body but is so starkly and vibrantly alive in a way that Quere Sphere is very much not, and that choice feels extremely deliberate to me.

Kinda getting the sense that this part of Dawntrail was definitely inspired by the recent obsession with "AI" - and maybe just a tiny bit about how it depends on the consumption of things both fundamentally human, and things that humans need in order to prosper - in reality by the vast amount of data needed to feed the models, the underpaid workers from poorer countries put to continuously adjust the models, and the amount of potable water needed for cooling, while in XIV... the system literally eats souls to maintain itself.

[slotumn]

Hot(?) 3H take is that I don't think the commoner students of different houses would necessarily get along with each other on the basis of being commoners, or show more sympathy/mercy to commoners of other nations (or even their own) once the war breaks out.

Because the thing is, they're not really the median commoner anymore once they've gone to the Officer's Academy and made connections with the ruling class of their respective nations, who they presumably aid by default throughout timeskip and war. They're class traitors, if anything, and given the opportunity I think they're likely to be even more vicious during war to climb the ladder and secure their own positions next to their ruling class friends.

I think this goes double for the Golden Deer's commoner trio. Leicester seems to have more social mobility compared to the other two; Leonie and Raphael entered the Officer's Academy with the explicit personal goals of climbing the economic ladder, and Ignatz's family also wants him to further secure their position/wealth by gaining connections with the ruling class.

Like yeah war sucks because it fucks over the powerless commoners and all... but for some commoners, it's a great opportunity to step over others and climb higher, and I think Leonie + Raphael + Ignatz are exactly the "some commoners." (Ignatz not necessarily by his own will but also, being an artist is the kind of thing that requires socioeconomic security and/or wealthy patrons)

What I'm saying is that I want to see GD commoner trio committing massacres and going on kill streaks that overshadows their Crested classmates, because the only thing stronger than magic dragon blood is the desire for socioeconomic status and security lmao. And their noble friends should absolutely reward them for it, giving your friends lots of money and land for doing your dirty work (silencing/intimidating the opposition, murdering civilians, etc) is what friendship is all about!

[infiniteglitterfall]

How are you holding up? I ask because I'm only, like, addressing antisemitism that leaks to my dash with every term related to Palestine I can think of blacklisted. And i'm like. Barely crlinging to fragile sanity. I hope you are better equipped to handle the stresses of this ongoing disinformation campaign. You're doing good and important work, which you must know, but I want to re-emphasize it.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

i swear to god I thought there was a way to reply privately to asks, but apparently either there isn't or I don't have the patience to find it again.

I think that you're describing how most Jews with any connection to social media feel.

The good thing, in a way, is that researching and fact-checking is my major coping mechanism. Researching and rebutting and arguing with people until I understand everything well enough to be pithy about it. Creating ways for other people to defend themselves and to push back. Doing the research to know when I'm right helps me a lot.

I'm probably as well-equipped for this as I can imagine being (that's not really true, I should be talking to people more about it and using 12-step tools to deal with it and gosh some therapy would be nice), and like... there have still literally been times when I've been triggered for an entire week by this shit.

Most notably: the time when I saw a clip on my TikTok fyp from some podcast where some journalist fully got all dressed up and prepared to go on camera, to say that she could imagine there were a few individual rapes on Oct 7 -- although she wasn't aware of any -- but that certainly there was no evidence of systematic rape, and that saying there had been systematic rape was dehumanizing propaganda.

Like. If you can't even take one minute to google whether there had been individual rapes before you go on camera. And you haven't heard of them two months after the fact. Then you don't know enough to talk about this, period. That makes you the very opposite of an expert on the subject. And yet, that is who gets platformed. Ignorant randos who have no personal connection to any of this.

I literally knew there had been gang rapes by Hamas within the first week of the massacre. Because I cared enough to do a search for eyewitness testimony of the massacre, and I found an interview on PBS immediately.

Or, more accurately: it was because it slowly sank in that the attack had been MASSIVE. 22 kibbutzim leveled in one day, hands-on, without an airplane or mortar shell involved. All those people killed the way you would kill a horde of zombies: burned alive, or shot and then mutilated, or cut up and then shot. Like they needed to double-tap, to make sure no one was coming back around.

Two years of planning. Almost half a billion dollars in funding from Iran. Detailed guides even to the dentist's offices and kindergartens and grocery stores they were invading.

And it was very plain to, I think, nearly every Jew on earth that this was an attack aimed at Jews. Even before any recordings of attackers saying "I'm inside with the Jews" or "I killed 10 Jews with my own hands" even came out. Even though everyone else was denying it from the moment it happened.

And I felt compelled to learn more about what happened.

To KNOW.

To bear witness.

Even before it became apparent started to seem like the rest of the world would rather die themselves than bear witness to us. Even before it became apparent that Hamas had been telling people Israel would commit genocide in response before its fighters even left that country.

A reasonable person, imho, would ask why the fuck Hamas would commit such atrocities if if thought Israel would respond by killing every Palestinian in Gaza.

The Palestinians in Gaza are certainly fucking demanding to know why the hell Hamas thinks it gets to start a war on them, why its leaders get to hide out and evacuate their families while demanding civilians bleed and die for it, and why it doesn't goddamn turn itself in and give back the hostages.

But anyway.

But that's the thing. I looked it up because I was compelled to. I identified with the people attacked. I needed to know what had happened to us.

That's something outsiders would only do if they were allies.

We know, now, that we don't have allies on the left.

I've seen post after post after post, hundreds and hundreds of comments, on Jewish Reddit, asking if other progressives are okay. Asking, "how are you dealing with rejection by the left??" Asking if others are also shocked and confused and betrayed. Talking about how many friends they've lost who went masks-off antisemitic. So many people who've had to end long-term relationships when their partners went masks-off.

There's usually at least one politically conservative Jew in the comments laughing wryly and going, "wow, you really thought you were safe?"

Sometimes they ask why we're on the left if everyone there wants to kill us. Then we defiantly point out that it's not any different on the right. Or that we're not going to abandon our political beliefs for anyone.

Anyway.

I didn't even watch the podcast clip past that moment.

I ragequit. I went to the file of eyewitness testimonies I'd already put together, after weeks and weeks of denial. (And by "file," I mean "draft in gmail, because it saves automatically, and it's easy to find, and i don't know why it's better than google docs or dropbox paper, but it just is.")

I took the clearest, most authoritative ones and put them into their own document -- which i did make in dropbox lol.

I duetted the video, or whatever the fuck the one is in tiktok where you just take 5 seconds from one video and the rest is your own. It's not duetting. Idk.

It was the middle of Hanukkah. I recorded a video where I read each of however many testimonies I had, and lit a candle before each one. It was almost 10 minutes long, even though I made them as short as I could.

I didn't post it.

I was triggered all to hell for a whole week. I was staying up till 3 or 4 in the morning, researching horrifying rape testimonies, arguing with people on the internet, then sleeping too little and too late, then doing it again.

Watching myself lose a whole week to this. Knowing I couldn't do anything about it. Half-angrily, half-numbly thinking about how I couldn't afford to lose this much job search time, this much unfucking-my-life time. How I couldn't afford to have people I didn't even know fuck up my life even more.

And the bitch of it all is that the tone of the discourse makes me strongly suspect that if we said, "hey everyone needs to walk it back, you guys are deeply fucking up the mental health of pretty nearly the entire Jewish community," people would just respond by angrily telling us anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, mockingly saying that's what Zionists deserve.

Thanks for asking <3

[tanadrin]

Dische-Becker: The Jewish identity question in Germany breaks down into two main factions: those who believe Jewish well-being and safety derives from appeals to the moral authority of the perpetrator-heirs, and Jews who see Jewish well-being and safety in solidarity with other minorities. That’s the dividing line. You can call it Left or Right but that’s the crux of it. With respect to Germany as a whole, if the state takes a more rightward turn, via its assumption of national singularity, that will be the worst outcome conceivable for vulnerable populations, even beyond Germany’s borders. Germany is the arbiter in Europe when it comes to both antisemitism and migration. If Germany says it’s fine to drown people in the Mediterranean, then it’s fine to drown people in the Mediterranean because the people who are the most sorry for their past treatment of minorities and have learned the most from their abuse of racialized people say it’s fine. If Germany says the people trying to get to Europe are a danger to Jews so it’s fine to deny them entry, then it’s fine to turn them away. In its more extreme form, German overidentification with Jewish nationalism means that the Germans arrogate to themselves the right to project how they would feel if they were Jews. So for a particular kind of German who has strong feelings about Israel, the response to a Jew who isn’t gung-ho about Israeli militarism is one of visceral disgust. The alternative Jewish responses to the contemporary landscape that Eyal and I have been advocating violate the Jewish identity that Germans have been imagining for themselves. Faced with this German exercise in inhabiting Jewish history and sensibility, I just feel like saying, Go fuck yourself. I have no gratitude. Not for Germany, and not for Israel. Weizman: Once again, Germany defines who is a Jew, right? The irony that the German state would actually classify who is a Jew, and what’s a legitimate Jewish position, and how Jews should react, is just beneath contempt.

Part 2 of the interview here:

There is another important thing that must be said about context. Context can function as historical explanation but not as moral justification. Context opens a field of possible actions but does not determine them. If there is agency there is responsibility and there is nothing in the historical context that prescribes or justifies atrocities against civilians. Palestinians have the right and duty to resist their occupiers. Israel, as any country, is bound by the duty of equality, and the massacres of civilians cannot be justified by any context, however violent. History is not the mechanical transfer of one manifestation of violence to another. There is always choice, and each owns their own violence.

[itssideria]

i just watched this video recorded by an ex-zionist, ex-israeli settler. he goes through the process of unlearning the conditioning that many israeli children are fed, and how he came to be pro-palestinian. it is a beautiful watch, and i think it is worth the time it takes to see it through. apologies, i could only get it to work using the tiktok link.

it's been a hard couple months, being arab. i'm not even palestinian, and sometimes i want to tear my hair out. i watch the iof massacre civilians, i watch libraries and universities and theaters be flattened, i watch settlers mocking the fact that palestinians have no water. and i get so fucking angry, i start forgetting that it's not about getting revenge on the settlers—it's about protecting palestinians. it's about making sure the whole world knows of the palestinians. it is about holding your tongue, being patient, having grace despite everything, so that, come the day someone asks, "hey, what's up with palestine?" you can calmly, but firmly, speak truth to the occupation's depravity. to its horror and dehumanisation of palestinians.

it sounds insane to say, sometimes, but it's never too late for anyone. it is never too late for anyone. no matter what they've believed. no matter the harm. protecting palestinians means we keep speaking the truth. it means when someone previously chanting for genocide lays down their barbs, we are prepared to accept them in our communities. it doesn't mean we forget, or even forgive. but it means that our willingness to accept change it greater than our anger and desire for payback.

may we see a free palestine in our lifetimes.

[nerdylilpeebee]

No it is collective punishment, collective punishment is when people who are not responsible fir the actions are taking the consequences of the actions fir being a part of the same ethnic group or living in the same area etc. Isreal is commiting war crimes even the un agrees

Hamas may he hiding hostages but isreal is still choosing to bomb the shit out of them killing thousands of innocents many of ehom are children just to kill hamas soldiers. Israel government is either bloodthirsty or incompetent. If there were a terrorist group who had taken hostages im America and the government decided to just bomb the shit out of them killing all of them including the hostages you would understandably livid

How many Palestinian civilians and children are you ok with dying just to kill one hamas member

Except that's not what's happening. They're being used as human shields, not facing the consequences of something they weren't involved in. That is not collective punishment.

And the number of dead is actually suspect, considering most of those numbers come from sources within Gaza, and unfortunately media outlets there have proven biased. Even the journalists who captured October 7th have proven they collaborated with Hamas, even fucking posing with the leader and taking videos of themselves holding grenades (which means they knew the attack was coming and warned no one). We cannot trust information coming out of Gaza. The death toll could be much smaller than they claim it to be.

That's the thing, tho: in America, if terrorists had slaughtered 1400 people and kidnapped 220 more, there would be no negotiation. America does not negotiate with terrorists, especially ones who killed so many. And if they were foolish enough to stay on US soil, the military would surround them. And if they did not surrender the hostages, would move in to kill them, and would not be held responsible if the hostages were harmed in the process. These terrorists killed a LOT of people, and refuse to give back their hostages. By the laws of war, you are not required to do nothing simply because they hold hostages. And yeah, as I am in the case of Israel v Palestine, I would not be happy that the hostages were harmed. But I also would not condemn the military, nor the government, for taking these people down, especially if they openly and publicly declare they will continue the massacre.

Hamas literally decides how many do. They are the ones hiding behind the civilians of Gaza. They are the ones refusing to give back their hostages, calling Gazans martyrs they're happy to sacrifice, saying they will repeat the massacre of October 7th over and over and over again at the first opportunity.

You condemning the side that is forced to kill human shields for killing those human shields instead of doing nothing and allowing themselves to be slaughtered is ridiculous. I agree that the lives lost are tragic and it should not be happening. But Israel is not to blame for what's happening, Hamas is. We should be demanding they disarm, as they openly declare any and all ceasefires that happen will be used to prepare for more butchering of Israeli citizens. Meaning more retaliations from Israel in the future. The only way to stop this is to stop Hamas.

[hero-israel]

you genuinely can’t believe there’s no genocidal intentions when there have been more bombs dropped on gaza in this past few weeks alone than have been by u.s. during the entire duration of the iraqi war. israel keeps saying “we’re targeting hamas! it’s hamas!!” and yet call palestinians animals, beasts, “the children of the dark,” and target “safe routes.” no way you haven’t observed that. from one Jew to another, you’re fucking batshit. israel is a murderous, horrific state, and our people are falling for its tactics somehow. whatever happened to our conscious is something i ask daily

You claim Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza in a few weeks than America did on Iraq in 8 years. The death count in Iraq was 400,000+, the death count in tiny, densely-packed Gaza is 10,000. By the terms you've chosen, the Israeli bombing looks astonishingly more selective and survivable - the exact opposite of genocidal. Can you grasp that there is such a thing as an outcome you don't want that also isn't the absolute worst thing in the universe?

Any military response to Hamas' actually genocidal attack was going to risk killing civilians. Should they be automatically ruled out? "As a Jew," would you live in a world where a sadistic, hellish massacre of Jews goes unanswered, obviously inviting more? Because it looks like a leftist mirror image of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" gun laws, where the last man standing after a shooting is found innocent; but in this case, violence is seen as so abhorrent and unthinkable that whoever commits the first act of violence wins.