#want to very very clear i am pro free Palestine in every way

[bangthedoldrums]

the performative activism on TikTok actually makes my blood boil

[fairuzfan]

I have concern that I may still be technically zionist despite claiming to be pro-palestine. This is because I knew very little about Palestine when October 7th happened, so in the time since I have been reluctant to have a stance on a two-state or one-Palestinian-state solution. I know now that almost all of Isreal is stolen land and recognize Isreal only exists due to colonialism, it took me a long time to learn that but I know it now. Before I knew that, I knew that regardless of the prior history that in current day Palestine is being subjected to a genocide. However, I struggle with politics and therefore struggle with understanding how a one-Palestinian-state could be achieved and have concern about what would happen to any genuinely innocent people who live in Isreal. To be clear, Isreal as a whole is guilty and I just have concern about what will happen to the portion of people in Isreal who are just as horrified as the rest of the world at what their government is doing. I do not personally know any Palestinians, so I have not known who to talk to about this especially since I do not want to overstep in any way. Theres more context I could provide but I wont because this is roughly the gist of where I am currently at when it comes to my concerns about whether or not I am still zionist. Do you have any reccomendations as to what I can do about my concerns? I am not sure whether or not I am overstepping right now by asking you this, but I do not know any other Palestians on a personal level that I can go to.

hey thanks for sending this in. i think we all have zionist biases that we have to unlearn, even i catch myself falling for it sometimes. so it's not necessarily a moral failing if you're trying to undo the zionism you've been taught. thanks for trying to undo it!

i do want to correct you a bit thought, in that *all* of israel is stolen land because israel is a settler colonial society. until it is relabeled as "Palestine" it can't not be stolen land.

I guess my advice is that you read scholarship and perspectives on palestinian thought and heritage. i can't tell you what a free palestine will look like but i can tell you what i imagine it to be. but what i can tell you is that the state of israel is fully intent on erasing all traces of palestinian life no matter what.

i guess i can tell you why "two state solutions" don't really work because there is no.... prevention of settlement building in the west bank and they'll never really promote *not* settling in the west bank. like i really cannot imagine a world where there aren't settlers on palestinian land no matter the case. and that's even not allowing palestinians the right of return to their homes and expecting them to give up what they dedicated their lives to. many palestinians in the west bank and gaza are themselves refugees because they were displaced in '48. so no matter what, palestinians will always get the short end of the stick and told to "just deal with it."

plus, why are we concerned with the supposed future danger towards israelis when the current, very real danger towards palestinians exists? shouldn't we prioritize actual events over hypothetical ones? why should we concern ourselves with the future when for palestinians its not a guarantee? i have no idea what's going to happen to gaza, for example.... shouldn't we prioritize that gaza lives on today?

i think i would question why you think israelis are inherently in danger in a one state solution? like do you assume that palestinians will all universally commit violence on all israelis? is it because you believe that hamas wants to kill every single israeli jew no matter what? if so, i think that's where your problem lies — in the assumption that peace can only be achieved through segregation just in a lighter form (because the state of israel relies on segregation as a principal of its existence as a jewish state). what about the palestinians who fear living side by side with the same people who raped, tortured, and murdered them for 75 years, or advocated for their deaths? aren't they inherently in more danger?

i mean palestinians have consistently been painted as the villains for more than 75 years. like in every aspect. i think to really truly be antizionist you need to prioritize palestinian concerns and worries over israeli ones because of how.... unwilling much of the world is to even consider them.

approaching zionism from an idea of an inequality structure is also necessary — rather than assuming its a one off system, we examine it as a perpetuation of multiple types of systems of inequality embedded into one. i recommend the institute for the critical study of zionism (click) for more information on this. There's also this book by Ismail Zayid written in the 80's (click) about the longtime violence the ideology of zionism has done to multiple communities, not just palestinians.

Here's a great reading list by palipunk about different aspects of palestinian thought and culture (click). i suggest looking through them to help decolonize our way of thought.

i might add on to this later if i think of something else to say.

[kataraslove]

i remember a week ago in which i reblogged a post shedding light on the palestinian genocide and tagged it as “free palestine,” to which someone sent me an ask: “wdym free palestine?”

i deleted the ask because i didn’t want to deal with any trolls at the time on a topic that is highly sensitive. i thought my reblogs spoke for themselves. but then i realized that that was a cowardly thing to do on my part, all because i didn’t want to deal with any online semantics. people are literally undergoing genocide right now. it’s the least i can do.

so let me make my stance abundantly clear: free palestine from the apartheid settler-colonial state of israel, who is committing all kinds of atrocities against the civilian population, 50% of whom are children. the israeli government is cutting off food, water, electricity, and humanitarian aid for the palestinians. they are bombing hospitals, which violates all kinds of human rights laws. they are using white phosphorus on hospitals, which burns to the bone. a child is killed in gaza every 15 minutes. all across twitter, i am seeing the most horrendous, graphic pictures; of dead bodies, of mothers grieving over their dead children; infants who are buried in rubble; men, women, and children who are dismembered. israel dropped over 6000 bombs on gaza in the course of 6 days. six fucking days. then the zionist regime turns around and denies that a genocide is happening.

let me also be clear: the israeli government isn’t the only evil acting force here - all of this is possible by the support and funding it receives from the american and other western governments, who gleefully jumped at the chance to spill blood. all of the hollywood celebrities and organizations who are extending their support to israel and refusing to acknowledge the genocide that Israel is committing, has been committing for 70+ years to occupied palestine. the media that is operating on and fuelling the propaganda that palestinians deserve this form of carnage. all of these heads of states, these governmental bodies, institutions - all of these systems have blood on their hands. no amount of their backtracking now - especially now that they’ve realized that the people’s voices and support are not on their side and it will cost them future elections - can ever make us forget how quickly these racist, white supremacist systems, politicians, and figureheads jumped at the chance of contributing to genocide but a mere a week ago. let us never lose sight that their public words paint a very different picture from what is going on privately; they are still actively funding this genocide with no interest in cease fire.

the media continues to paint this as some type of war against terrorism, a conflict with geopolitics way too complicated to understand, in order to prevent you from doing your own research into it. this is not war. this is not conflict. this is genocide. this is apartheid.

outside of online efforts to raise awareness, i am also planning on joining in on pro-palestine protests that are occurring in my city. from the river to the sea, palestine will be free.

[sixtynineinchnails]

I've been wanting to make this post for months and in light of the recent ex-presidential ear piercing now seems as good a time as any.

As a non-usamerican, as someone who is pro Palestine, as an anarchist: I am begging you with every fibre of my being to go to the fucking polls this fall and

VOTE.

Disclaimer: I don't live in the united states and I never have and I probably never will. I can never truly understand what it's like to be a usamerican and I'm not going to pretend like i could. I fully expect to get called a fascist or some shit for saying your should exercise your right to vote but at this point I don't care. I'm scared, we're all scared, and news like we've just gotten tonight is only going to compound the fear and chaos and conspiracy thought and fearmongering and hopelesspilled doomerism we’re all dealing with rn. I don’t want to make anyone’s day worse. I'm not looking to debate you. I just want to say some things that i’ve been thinking about for a long time now while a couple people might actually stop to listen.

The united states of america is the most powerful country in the world.

What happens in the united states government this fall will affect every single person on the planet, in some way, for better or worse.

You aren't just voting blue to avoid trump turning the united states into an alt-right theocratic dictatorship (which on its own is bad enough). You're also voting to avoid the right from gaining power (where they haven't already) in of other powerful democratic countries. You're voting to stop Palestine (and let’s be real, probably a handful of other places) from being wiped off the face of the planet with nuclear bombs. You're potentially voting to avoid a third world war. I'm not saying this to spread fear of these things happening. I'm saying this because if you're not already aware of how huge the scope is here: you're not voting to save your country, you're very likely voting to save the entire world.

I can't speak to how people feel everywhere (if you’re also a non-usamerican please feel free to share how this is/has/will affect your country in the notes) but I want to speak to my own for a bit. I can confidently say that what happens in america heavily affects the political and social situation here in canada. We would not have had a convoy of thousands of people drive across the country (which takes days to do) to occupy our capital city for a month and halt almost $4 billion in trade to protest, i kid you not, wearing a mask during covid, if trump supporters hadn't paved the way (and directly influenced canadians to follow in their footsteps). We wouldn't have had "concerned parents" protesting against sex-ed and LGBTQ+ inclusivity in schools (protests full of armed+mounted police which they brought their young children to during school hours) if trump supporters hadn't paved the way. There are people waving flags and signs around on street corners along major roads every single week everywhere from the largest city in our country to small towns of under 5000 people. I’ve heard of people who’ve spiraled into such severe conspiracy rabbitholes that their entire lives and personalities have changed in just a few years. Despite being canadian nationalists, these people and their patterns of behaviour are all a direct result of donald j trump and his followers. And no matter your political leaning, pretty much everyone hates our current prime minister, our economy is bad, even people with decent incomes can’t afford to eat, and everyone is frothing at the mouth for something to happen. If america votes trump this fall, I see very little hope that our country won't vote conservative (our main right-wing party). They will backpedal decades of LGBTQ+ rights and Indigenous peoples' rights and climate action funding and children's education and a whole pile of other important stuff. They have made it very clear that they will follow the exact same path as right wing america and there are a scary amount of people here who want that. And even if canada remains centre/left while sharing the largest land border in the world with a trump dictatorship....well I for one can’t see that going over very well either.

And that's just my country. I know a lot of other countries have been battling a similar spike in alt-right groups and conservative ideologies following the last trump presidency. I don't think any of us are truly prepared for what will happen in the event of another one.

Look. I hate biden too. In general I disagree with the very concept of colonial government and money and the division of countries/states/etc and the legal/carceral system and a whole whack of other shit that we have to live with right now. Someone’s said this before but if any of us thought that telling you guys to blow up a walmart would save your country from a fascist dictatorship I for one would encourage it. But none of us are actually going to blow up a walmart, and it wouldn’t solve anything at this point anyways. We all have to take action in whatever ways we actually can and will. Voting is one of many small, simple steps you can take, should take, fucking better be taking. It’s easy, it’s legal, if you mail in you don’t even have to go to the polling station, and if you really can’t vote for whatever reason, encourage everyone you know who can to do so. Hell, if I could vote on november 5th I would crawl my ass over the border on my hands and knees to do it. I'm sorry that the two options are a fascist police state and an even worse fascist police state run by a man who thinks he's a god, but not voting won't fix that problem. You're not going to establish a revolution by purposefully not taking part in social change, and encouraging others not to either. Not voting against trump = voting for trump. If you don't vote and that orange nukefucker takes over your country it is your fault. And we’re all going to pay for your inaction, especially the people in places like Palestine who will be in significantly more danger than they already are if trump gets his fake tanned hands on the situation.

Anyways. Keep fighting. Stay safe. Do what you can. Don't give up. There is always hope for a better future. And for fucks sake go vote.

Oh and if we do end up in the worst timeline this november and I see you anti-voting fuckers making "lmao time to move to canada" jokes...count your fucking days.

-

TLDR: usamerica is not the only place in the world affected by the actions of usamerica. If you’re still railing against voting at this point you’re pro-trump lmao.

[wander-wren]

almost escaped the anti-ao3 posts this donation round but of course today i get smacked with a few, so i go hunting for this year’s arguments, which, as expected, touch a lot on palestine.

what i’m seeing here is a shitton of inflammatory language and very few sources, and even fewer sources that aren’t screenshots of That One Tweet. most of the arguments from both sides are made on things that aren’t entirely true. i dislike this. so let’s clear the air a bit, hm?

1) ao3 is a racist/zionist organization

ao3 has had its scandals, including the 2023 management scandal in its full glory, which you can read about at the linked fanlore article. that covers several different areas where ao3 messed up. i will not defend these instances. i will, however, point out that very few of the current anti-ao3 posts mention them.

additionally, there is this fanlore article specifically about the issue wherein a volunteer was told to remove “from the river to the sea, palestine will be free” from their status, which is the singular piece of evidence referenced for ao3’s zionism. it has been spread that the otw banned or kicked out this volunteer, which is untrue; they left voluntarily. the otw also offered to allow the volunteer in question to change the status to “i stand with palestine,” communicating the same message in a less polarizing way.

you are allowed to dislike this decision. i do. but the otw slack is first and foremost a professional space, and they are within their rights to ask for political discussion to be kept out—or, in this case, to a politics channel so it can be opted out of. i am not currently aware of anyone having asked the otw board to ban or otherwise address pro-israel sentiments in the slack server, so i cannot actually make any statements about unequal decisions, because those decisions were not made.

ultimately i do not disagree that otw/ao3 have made poor choices rooted in racism in the past, but i also believe many of these posts discussing it now are performative, inflammatory, and misleading, which is not helpful

2) donating to ao3 during a genocide is bad/selfish/racist/etc

there are always problems in the world. this is literally the same argument as every previous year with new paint on it. people can care about more than one thing.

3) ao3 is a scam/mismanages money/gets more than they need/is horrible for not paying volunteers

here is a post i made last year breaking down ao3’s budget. what’s funny is, i saw a post going on for paragraphs about how they “calculated” that ao3 has 2.8 million in reserves (assuming their 2023 numbers shook out, it is like $1.5 million at best. these numbers are public and easy to find) and that they have “no idea” what to do with it and are deliberately not being transparent about it (they have publicly stated in news posts exactly what that money is for).

one very confusingly-worded post seemed to argue that it is morally wrong to have volunteer library workers, which is the same as ao3? something about master’s degrees? i just thought that was funny because. like. what. do you think the volunteers are the ones with a master’s in library science, friend?

also, people have said it’s a scam because they don’t update the site, and i’m like….what do you want them to update, exactly? i just want more tags wrangled. i suppose that translates to me wanting an update on the servers or whatever bit of hardware is limiting the tag system. otherwise i don’t see why you have to fix a good thing.

4) ao3 hosts evil bad fanfiction

ah, the age-old “child porn” argument. or racism is a big one this year. do i have to get into this one? it’s so goddamn annoying. just read the about page or a wiki article with your eyes. anti-censorship. yada yada yada. also, if you use the phrase “child porn” i do not respect you or take you seriously.

okay, first of all, fanfiction does not meet the definition of csam. it’s fanfiction. it’s fiction. there are tags for a reason. none of it is illegal. most of it has been published in real books for money before. you can hate it, but it deserves to exist, and with the way explicit material is getting deleted off the internet (see: wattpad’s new policies, google drive’s new policies), ao3 is a last bastion in the storm.

5) you should check out end-otw-racism for more helpful info

honestly i thought this movement was dead by now, but i’ve seen a lot of it mentioned today so i went to check. some things i found, scrolling alllll the way back to august:

a pinned post from SEVEN months ago that is several paragraphs of back-patting from the mods about how much “work” and “goals” have been accomplished and how grateful they are to the community. no mention whatsoever of what those goals were or what specifically was accomplished. also says the mods are going on break for a while, which presumably is still in effect

a few posts about the otw’s board meetings for various months, each rehashing how a board meeting runs and when the next one is being held. no information about what questions or comments the organization wants to focus on for each meeting or specific actions supporters should take

post about substack being a nazi site now (this is the only post i fully respect)

more board meeting reminders of no substance

a post reviewing the board elections, going over each candidate. the post acknowledges that no candidates mentioned the campaign or its specific goals, and instead grasps at vaguely related topics as if to show the volunteers are listening to them and they have done something

more board meeting reminders

a post about an update to the board’s strategic plan for 2023, which also acknowledges that the update does not really do anything end-otw-racism wanted it to do. many instances of “could have been a great opportunity to” do what they wanted. this one DOES finally state eotwr’s “recommendations” for the next strategic plan update, which literally all boil down to “more transparency,” which i suppose is fair enough

absolutely NO mention of palestine whatsoever

post on the weibo scandal, which is fine but generic, and again, not something brought up ever again despite being made in AUGUST

here i will give you a reminder that some of eotwr’s goals, particularly the ones around moderation and censorship, were unrealistic given the otw’s mission. while i believe eotwr started with good intentions, it seems to have rapidly dissolved into something performative and did not have solid enough organization to actually make any difference. their silence on palestine (and they are still posting despite the “break”) also makes bringing them up in convos about otw’s potential zionist leanings very weird.

at the end of the day, support ao3 or don’t. your morals and reasonings are your own. just don’t lie about them in ways that can be easily disproved, mkay?

this discourse also made me realize it’s been a minute since i reblogged a proper donations masterpost for palestine, so i am on the hunt for a good, up-to-date one now. feel free to link me any you know of.

[matan4il]

I spent some time with a friend yesterday. We briefly came on the topic of Palestine. Briefly because I knew we would have opposing views as she's Muslim. I have sympathy for Israeli and Palestinian civilians. She only has sympathy for Palestinian civilians. She wouldn't even refer to Hamas as a terrorist organisation. And it made me wonder how many Muslims have been told that Hamas is not evil? How many are taught that Israel is getting what it deserves? It makes me wonder why there are many many pro Palestine protests calling for a ceasefire but Jewish communities are getting no support whatsoever. Saying the word Israel feels like it is something dirty. And I am scared. I know Israel and Palestine have been in conflict for years and Israel has oppressed Palestine for a very long time. But how can people think that a terrorist organisation will bring them liberation?

Hi Nonnie, I'm sorry you had this experience. I'm sending you hugs!

I wanna introduce you to Mansour Abbas:

He's a devout Muslim Israeli Arab, and the chairman of an Arab Islamic party in Israel. He's not a part of the current governing coalition in Israel, but he was a part of the last one. He is still a member of the Knesset (MK, member of the Israeli parliament).

A few days ago, MKs were invited to see a 40+ minutes long film composed of footage from the Hamas terrorists, CCTV, victims cellphone recordings, etc. It's some of the horrors that most people haven't seen. No MK had to attend, and quite a few chose not to. I can understand, many of those who watched the footage fell apart, some couldn't stay to the end.

Mansour Abbas chose to come, and he brought with him two MKs from his party. One of the Jewish MKs said Abbas was crying during the screening. Abbas himself made it clear that what the Hamas terrorists did was sacrilege and goes against everything that Islam stands for. When one of the members of his party, an MK who didn't attend the screening, denied the horrors of the massacre, he demanded that she resign from the Knesset (heads of parties can't fire MKs, the latter have to resign). She's refusing to, and according to journalists, Abbas is looking for other ways in order to sanction her.

I'm saying all of this, because I want it to be clear that, much like every other human group, Muslims are not a monolith. Yes, there is a history of antisemitism in Muslim majority countries, that tends to be ignored (something that we have to address, if we want any hope of eradicating that antisemitism and make relations between Jews and Muslims better). Yes, there is a tendency to present the Palestinian issue to Muslims as if it's an Islamic issue, so they're all meant to take the same stand on it (and of course that can go hand in hand with a lot of misinformation. I have an online friend, who lives in a country, where I expect none of what she hears about Israel and Hamas is true). But Muslims are not a monolith, especially ones who live in the west, and have free and full access to information, to the real historical records, and not just to anti-Israeli propaganda.

So that brings me to two points that can and do coexist:

I do NOT want to treat all Muslims automatically as if they will for sure be against Israel to the point of having no empathy for Israelis and/or Jews...

If they are against Israel to that extreme degree, and if they are living in a western country, then it is, at least partly, on them.

And in this context, I'd like to share this vid that was sent to me.

So regarding this friend, I guess it's a question of how you feel about it. Do you think she has the conditions to look beyond this narrative, and see Israelis as people, who deserve empathy just like everyone else, and yet she doesn't?

(as a very small footnote, I wouldn't say that Israel oppresses Palestine, 'coz that makes this conflict far more one-sided than it actually has been...)

I'll say that for myself, that friend who lives in a country that is defined as an enemy of Israel? Where she will never get the truth (and that country doesn't exactly have free press in general)? I don't hold it against her. In her context, it's pretty amazing she's even talking to me when she knows I'm an Israeli. But other Muslim friends I have? Or even other non-Muslim friends from the west, who know Jews, who should know better than to uncritically accept a de-humanizing narrative? Yeah, I feel differently about them. IDK if this helps you in figuring out how you feel about this girl. I hope it does.

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

[luesmainblog]

for those wondering why i have been mostly quiet regarding israel and palestine: most of the pro-palestine stuff i come across is dismissive of hamas' horrors, blatantly antisemetic in parts, and generally conflates the israeli population with their government. or worse, treats them as a monolith; it is true that there are many israelis mocking the people their soldiers are destroying. it is NOT true that all of israel doesn't care and is just totally cool with what's going on. i will share what i find of israel's atrocities, but i will not make my jewish followers feel unsafe for shit they had nothing to do with. most of the stuff i've seen that *does* acknowledge the horror is jewish bloggers who have spent much of their life advocating for palestine, now having to struggle against antisemetics coming to them, furious that they DARE to be upset at the lost israeli lives. as though they are not allowed to mourn for both sides. as though they are not allowed to be horrified by what has happened; that they can ONLY be worried for palestine and how the attack was the perfect excuse for israel to double down. i refuse to send even more hatred their way by spreading their grief further into the void; you never know Exactly who's following your follower's followers. i am glad, at least, that nobody i follow was outright celebrating. but i know that people WERE, and now they're trying to act like that never happened. so incase this wasn't clear, cheering on the deaths of Israelis does not fucking help palestine.

I am truly disgusted with the blatant racism and colonialism that manifests israel's very core. it is an attempt at a violent ethnostate, intent to not only destroy the people it seeks to replace, but fully erase them from history. i am also disgusted with the way that the left is happy to celebrate genuine terrorism if it's committed "for the right side", as if parading dead bodies and raping people does fucking ANYTHING good. as if that doesn't fuel the israeli government's chances for propoganda. as if it hasn't traumatized your jewish neighbors. there are no fucking winners in war. free palestine and protect your muslim AND jewish friends in this time, they are BOTH getting their shit kicked in by ignorant people who want to take out their anger on some random kid in ohio. we are all posting in anger here. but let's check ourselves before we post; misinformation and antisemitism weakens our voices. Edit for clarity: this post is for my mutuals. I am specifically asking my mutuals to think carefully about what they post; i am aware that i've been too quiet, and i am trying to remedy that. i am also warning my jewish and muslim followers that if you've been using my blog as a safe spot to not think about it for a little bit, you're gonna wanna block the tags below. 'horrible things' will usually do it. i am also venting about how every jew i follow is getting hit with the "die you stupid zionist" shit from coward anons who can't tell the difference between supporting israel and just being fucking concerned for your family over there. it's fucked.

[breadcrimesprevention]

earlier this week someone I know got in serious trouble with our university for removing one of those shockingly vile "kidnapped from israel" signs/posters/fliers from a university bulletin board. some asshole student recorded him and reported him to campus police and now he has a hearing with the university's dei board. this could end his career.

there is a better and safer way to combat the recent surge in zionist propaganda on college campuses. most universities have what they call a "posting policy" or "signage policy" which dictates what is allowed to be displayed on campus. I've looked at five of these policies from different institutions. it is incredibly easy to find a common set of provisions that are sufficient to argue for removal of israeli/zionist propaganda.

this is particularly useful for removing those KFI signs. it is not a guarantee that your university has these provisions in their official signage policy, but odds are high that you'll be able to find something similar with a bit of digging. the common denominators of these provisions are:

signs must have clear authorship/sponsorship. (there is no such credit on the KFI fliers)

signs must promote an event or student organization on campus and usually list a date and time. (a picture of some settler's face with a "missing" label is not an invitation to an event)

there are always going to be exceptions in the language. the university of chicago has a clause stating that anonymous postings are permitted in one of their halls, but this is the only exception i could find in my limited sample size and it feels like an exception with an exception. like even fucking harvard has these two requirements in their student code: all posters must have clear authorship and a direct nexus to a real life event.

i'm happy to report that at my state university in a red state in the southern usa, university admin acted very quickly to remove the propaganda once i pushed for their involvement by emailing their pr department. do keep in mind that the person you're emailing may or may not agree with your cause on a fundamental level, but they will more than likely want to protect the university from violating their own policies. some tips on what to say:

do not talk about zionism. you want to make this person feel like they are protecting the university from stoking division/inciting violence/whatever you think your university's pr team cares about. refer to the zionist colonizers/settlers as "individuals," refer to operation al-aqsa flood as "the events of october 7," and refer to this genocide as a "sensitive geopolitical issue" if you must. neuter your language as much as possible to sound objective. i know that this can be very difficult to do.

appeal to the University, not the university. by this i mean to literally capitalize the word university in your email or otherwise appeal to some sense of authority beyond yourself. you kind of want the pr person reading this to feel that they must act as an agent for their employer (the University) to protect it. i said that i "trust that the University will act with integrity in addressing this matter, as it does for other violations of its signage policies."

kind of a weird one, but if you're jewish and feel safe mentioning that, do it. i am jewish. nowhere in my email did i represent myself as pro- or anti-zionist, but many goyim are casually antisemitic enough that they will assume every jewish person is an unwavering zionist and take their opinion on israel more seriously and sympathetically. there are too many bullshit nyt thinkpieces going around about how "jews are feeling unsafe on college campuses" and "jews are being vilified on campus" to not take advantage of these biases, especially in order to make muslim students feel safer here when they are in fact the ones receiving disproportionately more threats.

calling for a free palestine from the river to the sea is a mitzvah and is one of the most important parts of tikkun olam right now.

[volucerrubidus]

Updated my Rules recently; there are a few new additions, so I'm going to copy/paste them here for ease of reading! If you don't feel like going through every single line to see what's new, the main section that's new is the "Disclaimers" section at the bottom. Otherwise, I've just altered wording, sorted things into categories, and tried to make everything clearer and easier to understand. Thanks everybody!

--

I am not harsh about enforcing these rules, but I will ask politely that you abide by them! They are in place to ensure that we have a good time together!

I usually hate DNIs, but I do want to make it clear: if I find out you are not pro-Palestine, I will hardblock you and move on. End of story. 

Basics:

Mun is 24. This is an 18+ blog.

Please note that if I can’t see what age bracket you’re in anywhere on your page, then I’m not taking a chance. You don’t have to disclose your age to me, but if I don’t see at least something that says you’re an adult, or over the age of 18 in some way, then I’m not going to follow back, and will softblock you. If you follow again, I will hard block you.  

RP etiquette applies. No godmodding, no metagaming, etc. Mun is not muse. Don’t assume your muse can automatically beat Tim in a fight. There’s more on combat below, but just be fair, and plot it with me beforehand.

Activity:

This blog is selective and mutuals-only. That said, I’m very likely to follow back/follow first. If you don’t follow me back in a week or two, I’ll unfollow again.

If I ever follow you a second time (or more times after that because I have memory issues and I’m not here often enough to remember urls well [I am so sorry]), I promise that I’m not trying to make you follow; it’s likely because I forgot about the first/previous time. Feel free to soft/hardblock me for your own comfort if it happens! I’ll do my best to avoid doing this. 

I am a low-activity blog; I work a full-time job, and struggle with energy and brain fog. Tim is also a finnicky muse.

Please do not pester me for replies. I will respond when I can.

Interactions:

Personals are free to follow, look, and like, but please do not reblog any of my posts.

Asks are a fantastic way to interact with me, and perhaps the best way. Often, I cannot access tumblr on the browser due to my work, so asks are something I can do on mobile at a higher frequency than threads.

If you want to continue from an ask answer, please make a separate post. If you don’t, then I will transfer to a new post on my turn.

I do not do M!A’s (magic!anons) unless I specifically reblog an M!A post– otherwise, I will not respond if you send one in.

Don’t forceship with me. Ships come from chemistry. That said, you are welcomed with open arms to tell me if you want to ship with Tim, and we can go from there! I do reserve the right to deny a ship, but if that’s the case, then I’ll work with you to plot a fun and interesting dynamic that makes us both happy!

I don’t do exclusives or mains; please don’t ask me to make you one or the other. If you do have exclusives or mains, then that’s awesome! No judgement either way; I just personally won’t have them on my blog.

Please reblog memes from the source. This is to keep my activity page easier for me to keep up with. 

Content:

I don’t rp smut.

I don’t use fancy text formatting for the sake of my own ability to proofread my writing. You are welcome to continue to use whatever text formatting you’d like, though!

I will make sure to tag any warnings that I find necessary (and upon request if I miss something!), and in turn, I ask that you please tag topics involving non-con situations. Thank you!

Communication:

If I do something you don’t like, PLEASE tell me! I want this to be fun for everyone involved, but if I don’t know that I did something you were uncomfortable with, then I can’t fix it, and thus, we are no longer mutually having fun. I know confrontation is daunting, and people have probably treated you very poorly when you tried to communicate a grievance in the past; it’s happened to me, and it’s happened to so many people I know. I will do my best to be kind, fair, open, and apologetic, and I will do what I can to help rectify the situation, no matter how big or small. Come open a dialogue; I’ll be happy to have one with you. 

I chat in the tags often.

If there’s something in a thread that you want to discuss, please come chat with me about it!

Please tell me if you want to ship! I want to know!

If you have a plot request, send it my way!

Combat between muses is going to come up often on this blog given the muse and source material. If a thread starts to go in that direction, I require that we plot out the fight before proceeding, so that we can work together to write a scene that both goes the way we need it to for plot reasons, AND goes the way we want it to for fun reasons. The only exception to this is people I’ve written with for long enough that I feel we will not accidentally step on each other’s toes during a fight.

Disclaimers:

I do not and will never ship Tim with Bruce, Dick, Jason, Cass, Duke, or Damian. If you write batcest, I don’t care, but I will not follow you. If you follow me, I’m likely to soft or hard block. The only exception to this is multimuse blogs who have muses I want Tim to interact with, or blogs that have a clear line of separation between batcest and batfamily interactions. I will be HIGHLY selective about this, though.

If you do not make it clear on your blog that you ship batcest, and then we become mutuals, and I see you suddenly start writing batcest, I will softblock you. It is not personal; I just don’t want to read that stuff on my own personal dash. I just ask for honesty. Please don’t trick me into following you; tumblr rp follower counts are not that important.

For full transparency: I do think the pro/anti debate is stupid. Those words are thrown around willy-nilly to vilify people or virtue signal, and I will not entertain that discourse on this blog. In my humble opinion, anyone can write whatever they want in fandom spaces, and I just would hope that tags are used appropriately, so that people can curate what they read or view. I personally could not care less what another writer ships; if there’s stuff I don’t wanna see, I’ll just not look for it, and I won’t follow people who write it. Simple as that.

You’ll see it in my bio too, but I want to address it here as well: I actively dislike fanon, and it will have no place in my writing of Tim. I don’t care if your muse draws from fanon—you do you—but don’t be shocked if my Tim acts surprised or confused by fanon assumptions of him (ex: if your muse brings Tim coffee to drink, he will be very confused as to why that was the choice. Tim Drake is not a coffee drinker). I am not going to gatekeep your experience with comics, and I am never going to send you anything that might make you feel bad for how you write your character. I love everyone’s interpretations, and I like seeing different takes on them! I just think it’s courteous to put this note here to be fully open and honest.

Thank you for taking the time to read through all of this; I know it’s long! I hope you have a fantastic day, and I look forward to writing with you! :D

[thegreatandpowerfulversy]

Hi! I just want to say I've found your blog a really valuable source of differing jewish opinions. I'm in sort of a pro-palestine echo chamber, which initially I thought was a good thing (and to be clear I still don't think palestinian people should be harmed, killed, deprived of human necessities or forcibly removed from their homes) - but I am also increasingly aware of the lack of critical thinking, casual antisemitism as well as full blown antisemitic conspiracy that happens in these discussions. I don't always recognise it immediately, but I understand it is there. And knowing many antizionist jewish people doesn't at all stop that from being true. I'm buddhist (culturally but also in practice) and it is important to me to consider the welfare of human beings and to not simply get trapped in dogma. I hope all of us can reflect on our views and be more mindful of the takes we uncritically share on social media - not simply whether or not they are 'true', but also if they are actively harmful to marginalised peoples. There's a real oppression olympics feeling to some of the discourse that I really dislike. People seem allergic to caring about multiple kinds of people at the same time. I've been able to better navigate the free palestine tag despite the claims of 'antisemites not welcome' as a result of your blog. I don't necessarily agree with every last thing everyone you've ever reblogged has said but I just wanted you to know you've helped me learn a lot. And I am still learning

Thank you for the message! I'm happy that you're taking steps to recognize the environment you've been in and get to a healthier place, and I'm very glad the posts I reblog and my occasional rambling in tags thereof is helping!

I fully agree with you that everyone deserves human rights, that's what the "human" part of the phrase means, no exceptions. I find it incredibly tragic that so many people are dying in this war, and I wish none of them had to (even the Hamas fighters, in a perfect world they would be captured and given trials, because they're humans too). But one of my biggest issues with the online pro-pal movement is how they insist that this war is somehow exceptional -- that it must be genocide, that it must have the highest death toll ever, that it must be so much worse than any other conflict... and that's simply not the case on all counts. And the expectation that it would be, simply because Israel is one of the combatants, is due to ingrained antisemitism that, in most people anyway, probably isn't even at the level of conscious thought.

Also, even I don't 100% agree with everything on the blogs of all the people I follow. I'm aware that some of the Israeli news articles I see have a right-wing slant, but to me at least, going in with my eyes open is better than not hearing what's going on at all. I've definitely seen some Islamophobic posts going around and I don't endorse that any more than I do antisemitism.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your thoughts! I hope you continue to learn and grow and fight for human rights for all, Palestinian and Jewish both... and Israeli Arab, and Bedouin, and Druze, and Samaritan, and all the other groups in that area who always get forgotten by people in their black-and-white thinking. The only way we achieve peace is if we all stand together.

[thetiredstuff]

got a lot of new people following me so:

hi! Em, early 20s european girl (well technically i am a woman i guess cuz i'm not a minor but feels very weird to think i'm grown up enough to call myself a woman lol) who basically cries about school every week on here lol

loveeeee destiel (my beloveds) and cockles (whatever they are to you, i just see joy and cuteness so i have a lot of that on here as well)

pro lgbtq+ (to be clear: that includes all asexuality identities, demisexuality, pansexuality and all the others i am forgetting but yes pro all of it including the genders!!)

free palestine, don't like israel, to be clear i am not here for any anti-semitism or islamophobia (you can fuck right off if you are either of those things), blm, against bullying (like we all should), intersectional feminism (learning every day), am against monarchies (those people don't do shit and get paid way too much for it when it could be utilized for society to be improved upon)

voted for the most leftist political party during the last elections and the green party cuz climate change is real: unfortunately that letist party turned out to NOT want to lable the Uyghur genocide in China as a genocide when it is in fact abhorrent what is happening, so therefore no longer will vote for those fucking assholes, am against BREXIT (seriously fucking annoyed at the older generation who voted for it), find voting incredibly important!!!!! don't like the catholic church at all for the reasons for which they constantly appear in the newspaper

oh also mental health is incredibly fucking important and i believe in free healthcare because i'm fortunate enough to live in a country where a lot of it is free and accesible and it saved my family from ending up in poverty. mental health is health care and should be free and accessible for all. I'm also pro-choice.

i try tagging all potential trigger warnings with #tw (trigger) (example: #tw depression) but don't always know when to do it

now pretty important for spn people which all of you are cuz i don't do anything else on here:

i don't necessarily like j¨red (which is mildly said) i usually don't talk about him but every now and again when he pops off again i pop off as well and all of that i tag with the #jp tag. so blacklist or unfollow if that isn't what you wanna see from me also am starting to tag any unease between j.2 with #j/2 if it doesn't fit my #j2 fallout tag

also don't find the jensen is homophobic jokes funny. like at all.

okay that's all!! i think

EDIT: I love Misha (he's a straight dumbass but i mean that affectionately) and Jensen (he's a chaotic spn stan, same tbh) and Destiel (my beloved husbands)

[definitely-not-hosni-moubarak]

Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got myself in this situation. Well, it all started 38 years ago when I was still known as Hosni Mubarak, Vice President of Egypt. At age 53, I came into the presidency days after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, I myself was lucky to miss the bullets.. And the next 6 assassination attempts. I was all like:

Yeah, I used to hit the gym every morning, nbd.💪🏽😌 

During my entire presidency, I kept the country under strict emergency law, giving me, the state, full power of arrest and basic freedoms. Why? Well, I argued that such a law was necessary to combat Islamist terrorism, for which the threat came in waves during my presidency. This draconian law allowed me to enact heavy punishments for even small offenses, like gatherings bigger than five people. “How could it go wrong?” I thought. I had established myself as a long-trusted Western ally, you should have seen the handshakes Bill and I had. Just look:

I was telling him how ol’ boomer here (why yes I am very well acquainted with your young hip slang) was gonna turn off the internet for my people in a few years.. We don’t need to talk about how that ended up. 

My relationship with the west was cemented as I played a heavy role in the negotiating of the 1979 Camp David peace agreement signing with Israel. They needed me as a mediator in the Israeli-Palestine conflict. But that sent all the Islamist extremists my way, and thus, my people’s way, insert emergency law. I had to imprison many of the Muslim Brotherhood members and whether or not torture took place in the jails…

(It did)

But that’s not all I did, to stay in power; I was also fighting powerful opposition movements back home by using my security forces to fight dissidents. Genius right? But for some reason, my citizens didn’t really seem to like that and started protesting my presidency. 

Inspired by the Tunisian revolution, Egyptian activists started using social media like Facebook and Twitter to raise their voice and spread their word. What was I to do? Use social media to my advantage and spread my own propaganda? No don’t be silly, I don’t know how to work that. Instead, in January of 2011, I decided to sever internet access for them and forced companies to send out pro-regime propaganda to my citizens. If media was how they were gaining power, then all I had to do was take it away, and my loyal followers had a better and more effective way of spreading their love and allegiance to me, they put out posters and flyers, they’re so smart and innovative. But the internet blackout only lasted 5 days and only seemed to make matters worse. More activist started taking to the streets and protesting.

Protests erupted on January 25th, 2011 and Tahrir Square was being overtaken by protesters, claiming to be fighting “poverty, corruption, unemployment and autocratic rule.”  But did they have to be so mean about it? I mean just look at these signs:

.. 5’6” is a completely average height, that’s just rude and If they wanted me gone they could’ve just politely @ed me on twi- oh wait.

Furthermore, an activist group by the name of "We Rebuild" somehow connected to the Swedish internet, which was out of reach of Egyptian authorities and made an Egyptian Wiki that had step by step instructions on how Egyptian activists can get back online and stay connected. So my attempts were futile. 

Taking away the screen from their fingertips was truly the biggest mistake I made as president. On February 1st, 2011, after protests boomed through my lands, and military support was dissipating with my commander-in-chief leaving office, I very graciously, completely on my own accord, announced that I will not stand for re-election in September. But still, they were not happy, they demanded nothing less than my resignation. 9 days later I announce that I will give my presidency to my vice president, but still stay in power until the re-election. The next day Vice President Omar Suleiman announces that I’m giving the Military Supreme Council of Armed Forces full authority to run my country’s affairs and look how well that ended up for you.

And that’s how we get to me in this picture

As soon as I transfer my power, they’re trying to press all these charges against me like I ever did anything wrong in my presidency. They accuse me of horrendous acts (that I totally committed) such as conspiring with the police to kill 846 protesters during the revolution. “Negligence for failing to halt the killing of peaceful protesters”, they say. They sentenced me to life in prison, I mean if it was true (which it was) would they have later dropped the charges in January of 2013? And as if they haven’t put me through enough, in 2014 I get charged with

I mean they call it “embezzlement” and “corruption” for using public funds, I call it expanding my Cairo family estate cause I’m a good father and husband, you pick what you think sounds better. I was then later released on March 24th, 2017, and looking at the state all I can say is, some things never change. Citizens who fought for my overthrow, now numbed by the political turmoil, show little more than acquiesce. After all that, all those charges, still I stand here a free man, with my student now running the country, what more could the people really expect? Naive to think they’d make real change. 5 years after the uprising, the government had yet to fulfill the promises of the uprising. Egypt’s first democratic election, in 2012, which proceeded me, ended with a coup-d’état of the Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, who took part in the Muslim Brotherhood. General el-Sisi also suspended Morsi's 2012 Egyptian constitution, which attempted to further embed Islam into the constitustion, stating "The principles of Islamic law form the main source of legislation." Now, my former Director of Military Intelligence, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, stands as president. On the day of Morsi’s removal from office, el-Sisi cleared the Muslim Brotherhood protesters from central Cairo with his security forces. What would come to be known as the Rabaa massacre, lead to 817 documented death, with the estimated toll being over a thousand, signaling that no further uprisings will be tolerated. Unlike me, el-Sisi used social media to his advantage, he used it to crack down on journalists and dissidents. Oh, but he gets to stay in power. Anyways if you’re wondering where I am now, well, I'm in my upscale home in in Heliopolis, Cairo and I be chillin like a villain.

[schraubd]

I'm Very Tired and Cranky: S.1/BDS Edition

I didn't want to write this. I really really didn't. I've been swamped the past few days dealing with Rep. Rashida Tlaib telling people who backed an anti-BDS law that "they forgot which country they represent", then explaining why that's an antisemitic dual loyalty trope even when applied to non-Jews like Marco Rubio, then excoriating the AJC for literally making its own dual loyalty accusation against Tlaib as some sort of I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I racist retort to Tlaib's tweet, and finally just throwing up my hands and saying we should probably just avoid tropes of "loyalty" and whatnot in this entire discourse, because none of y'all can be trusted. And because this is the internet and this involves Jews and antisemitism and Israel and Palestine, I was doing all this while dodging a surrounding milieu of commentary that was as dumb as you could possibly imagine. In particular: Nobody involved in this controversy seems to have the foggiest understanding of what Senator Rubio's bill (designated "S.1") is even doing. When they're not engaged in outlandish hyperbole about it "banning criticism of Israel", they're outright mistaking it for completely different bills about BDS. And to the extent their arguments do touch on something that is within striking distance of an actual public controversy, they're almost universally awful. That's right: this is a rant post. Feel free to skip it. I'm venting. Longtime observers of "anti-BDS" laws may recognize that there are two very different "versions" of these laws which have been the subject of legal controversy recently. One is the federal "Israel Anti-Boycott Act", or IABA. This would (for the most part) update the Export Administration Act's preexisting ban on boycotting Israel as part of an effort to comply with a boycott demand by a foreign country to also include international governmental organizations (i.e., the EU and UN). I wrote critically about that proposed law here. Notably, neither the current law nor the IABA would prohibit, penalize, or restrict individuals or companies from boycotting Israel based on their own conscientious ideological choice -- it only covers boycotts which are done at the behest of a foreign power. The second are state-level laws which generally prohibit the state from investing in or contracting with entities which, themselves, boycott Israel. Such laws include the recently struck down Kansas and Arizona laws, as well as the Texas law that was recently challenged by a speech pathologist who could not (she maintains) renew her contract with a local school district because she boycotts Israel. These laws do target "conscientious" boycott decisions -- not by prohibiting the choice, but by declaring that the government won't contract with bodies that make that choice. I've written critically about these laws here and here. So which of these categories does Senator Rubio's S.1 fall into? Neither. His bill -- or rather, Title IV of his bill (the other three titles are defense authorizations for Israel and Jordan, and tightened sanctions on Syria) -- does one thin: it states that state anti-BDS laws (of the second-type, above) are not preempted by federal law. If that sounds technical, it is. Rubio's law doesn't itself impose any penalty or restriction on persons engaging in BDS. All it says is that if a state passes a law limiting its own investment or contracting to entities which disavow BDS, such a law wouldn't be deemed to conflict with any federal statute (preemption hasn't been a major feature of debates over BDS bills, but presumably Rubio is worried about Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council). If no states pass these laws, then Rubio's bill does nothing. If a state does pass a law, Rubio's bill still doesn't shield the state from having to defend its enactment against a First Amendment challenge. The state laws which Rubio's bill would declare non-preempted either are constitutional or they're not, but that question is utterly non-germane to Rubio's bill. And likewise, the validity of these state laws is entirely separate from the IABA and whether it is a wise or permissible alteration to the existing anti-boycott framework of the Export Administration Act -- Rubio's bill doesn't even touch on that subject. And even if we move to the subject of the state laws and their constitutionality -- boy, are we ever getting a blast of Twitter School of Law. On the anti-side: There's the basic version that says these laws "allow punishment for Americans who protest Israel", which, no they don't -- they just hold that the state won't invest or contract with you if you boycott Israel. Why is it the case that every single intervention in these debates that at all requires any adjustment in how one registers one's objections to Israeli policy is perceived as tantamount to banning discussion outright? Don't answer that -- I know exactly why. Then you get the more advanced play that the state can't claim its own ideological right to "boycott the boycotters" because "the Constitution is designed to protect American citizens from the government, and not the other way around", which sounds great until you think about it for a quarter-second and realize how strange it would be to apply to the government in its capacity as an employer and contractor, where it repeatedly and necessarily will be making non-viewpoint neutral choices on a daily basis. First Amendment law has recognized this since at least Pickering v. Board of Education:

[I]t cannot be gainsaid that the State has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general. The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.

This doesn't mean that the state can impose any condition it wants on the speech of its employees -- if the phrase "arrive a balance" wasn't a dead giveaway, the sentence immediately prior to that passage in Pickering--"[T]he theory that public employment which may be denied altogether may be subjected to any conditions, regardless of how unreasonable, has been uniformly rejected"--is clear enough. But there is a balancing test, and it should be obvious that there are absolutely scenarios where the government can and should limit its contracting decisions (ex: the state can't ban racist speech, but it absolutely can fire a police officer who engages in racist speech, because the state has a strong interest as an employer to not let its employees talk that way). Moving to the "pro" side, first you have to hack through article after article talking about the IABA and how it is only a minor update to the EAA and har-de-har don't Sanders and Tlaib realize we've had a law like this for years -- you're talking about a different bill! Then you get the folks who say "well, these are just anti-discrimination laws" and ask what your position was on Masterpiece Cakeshop. The problem with that argument (other than the obvious "wait -- what was Rubio's position on Masterpiece Cakeshop?") is that these laws -- despite my advice -- are not being written as anti-discrimination laws. Indeed, Rubio's bill -- which only applies to boycotts which are taken "for purposes of coercing political action by, or imposing policy positions on, the Government of Israel" -- wouldn't even apply to a straightforward discrimination case where someone who refused to transact with an Israeli national simply because "I hate Israelis." If these are anti-discrimination provisions, then just write them that way: "we won't contract with any party which refuses to stipulate that they don't discriminate on basis of [inter alia] national origin." They're not written that way in part because these laws are, by design, meant to encompass activity that is not in of itself discriminatory (ex: the genuinely "nonpartisan" boycotter who refuses to do business with any party that she deems violates human rights -- Israel included as one of many). Those who cite Rumsfeld v. FAIR (upholding a federal law requiring universities which accept federal money to allow military recruiters equal access to campus facilities) are at least in the right ballpark -- it is an "unconstitutional conditions" case -- but it hardly disposes of the controversy here. FAIR relied heavily on the notion that the decision to exclude recruiters from campus is not itself inherently "expressive" (I'd also note that the government's interest in insuring its own agents have access to a facility they are, in part, funding seems especially strong and isn't present in the anti-BDS law cases). But a boycott is much more inherently expressive, and since -- unlike the law in FAIR (and again, against my recommendations) -- the state laws are explicit that they are quite purposefully targeting the expressive aspects of the boycott, not the conduct per se (again: Rubio's bill doesn't even cover a generic refusal to do business with Israelis) -- it sits on far less stable footing. All of which is to say: the law here is not fully settled and is complex, and we could stand for a much more careful conversation about how government speech versus individual liberty versus non-discrimination intersect in cases like these. But we're not having it, and nobody wants to have it. And I'm just really tired, all of the sudden. via The Debate Link http://bit.ly/2FnyoRA

[pocinperioddramas]

Some of the things you said in reference to Wonder Woman - Gal Godot specifically - really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not Jewish, but it's my understanding - re a post by a Jewish person on the way antisemitism crops up in discussions of Israel and how to avoid it - that 'Zionism' is just the belief that Israel should EXIST, not something that has any connection to support/lack thereof of Israeli politics/military action. (1/2)

Unless you really do think Israel shouldn’t exist - in which case, please be clear on that so I can unfollow. If it was a case of mistaken terminology (I’ve been there too!) please clarify or edit. I’d be happy to send you a link to the post in the messaging or something if you’re interested, or reblog it and tag you! (Also, it might be good to look into the Godot thing a little - she may be problematic, but a lot of the criticism I’ve seen of her is actually anti-Semetic dogwhistling.) (2/2)

Hello there! I am finally getting around to answering your question, after around 2 weeks of being absent from this blog. As you said that you don’t mind me posting my response publicly, I will do so in order for people to be clarified about my views regarding the issues on the table.

I understand your reservations. You linked me to the post you were referring to in your response to my own ask to you (the link did go through BTW). I actually saw that post a few years ago, I believe, and while the OP’s concerns about anti-Semitism cropping up in the process of defending Palestine are definitely valid (and they have every right to be concerned, as there have been some infamous figures who were pro-Palestine but also turned to be very anti-Semitic - there were at least 2 people I remember reading about, but I can’t remember their names at the moment), not every Jewish person shares their particular view about Israel/Zionism. There is, in fact, a website known as the New Jewish Resistance founded and run by anti-Zionist Jews (and they explicitly identify as such) through whom I learned a lot about anti-Semitism and Zionism and how to fight both forms of oppression (in this article, they discuss about what they stand for and in this other article, they tackle about how being anti-Zionist isn’t equivalent to being anti-Semitic). But understand that this definitely shouldn’t excuse from any possible anti-Semitism (as citing that could make me sound like one of those “I’m not racist, I have [insert race/ethnicity being discussed] friends” or in this case, “I’m not anti-Semitic, I have Jewish friends” and I definitely don’t want to be like that), so please do call me out if I have been anti-Semitic, whether subtle or explicit.

But you do bring up the issue of whether Zionism can be considered a legitimate ideology that started out with good intentions (a la how communism and socialism can be interpreted by many people too), which is the view held by the OP of the post you shared, or if it is an inherently flawed or oppressive ideology. To be honest, I’m still very conflicted about that. The important thing here has always been to center both Jewish and Palestinian voices speaking out on the issue, and while most Palestinians identify as anti-Zionist and anti-Israel, Jewish people are divided on it. Of course I definitely think that people who actively support the policies and actions of the Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces are reinforcing oppression, but Jewish people who bring up the point about Zionism being interpreted as an ideology with good intentions should be taken into account too, as people do think that Jewish people, despite centuries and even millennia of being in the diaspora, have an ancestral claim to their homeland in the Middle East.

But that also begs the question: if you support the ideology of Zionism while opposing the oppression of Palestine, do you think the two can be brought to life (i.e. Israel - or at least a Jewish state - and Palestine coexisting peacefully) in a way that do not contradict each other? Because as far as I know, Zionism is founded on the belief that the Jewish people have the right to a state of their own in the region of Palestine, where millions of Palestinians have lived for centuries too. Could a Jewish state exist where it does not have to oust these Palestinians from their own lands and it does not have to be a colonizer, and how can it be (realistically) put into practice? Or does Zionism and the right of Palestine to exist as a state directly contradict each other and thus you cannot actually support both? I would in fact hope for a two-state solution, but I do not know how it could be truly brought to life without involving any oppression or bloodshed. (Most of these questions are actually brought up too in the post you shared, but I am still curious about them and now that you asked me about it, it’s made me realize how sorely lacking my knowledge is on the issues and has made me want to learn more now actually. This is actually a good wake-up call for me, so I thank you for that, as your criticism has made me realize it’s important to evaluate my knowledge about issues in social justice - Zionism included - before speaking out.)

Now, with regards to Gal Gadot, most of the criticism I’ve read about her - from the people I follow on social media who have been vocal about being anti-Gal - with regards to her support of the IDF seems valid to me, but as it is said, anti-Semitism can still insidiously seep into conversations where people are defending Palestine, so maybe there truly was anti-Semitism there but I didn’t notice it. I did recently read an article from a Palestinian woman that discussed Gal’s Zionism/support of the IDF that might have had anti-Semitic undertones, though the author did make very good points about other aspects like the cruelties inflicted by the Israeli government and the IDF and the oppression that the Palestinians face from them, so maybe that’s an example of criticism that has anti-Semitic dog-whistling. What other examples have you seen of such criticism with anti-Semitic undertones?

But my point about Gal still stands: she may be a good actress and apparently progressive in other aspects, but her active support of the IDF and her praise of Shimon Peres alone are enough for me not to want to support her in any of her work, even “Wonder Woman”, despite my admiration of the character, her importance as a strong female superhero presence in pop culture and media, and the appeal of the movie due to the rave reviews it received, and I firmly believe that she wasn’t the one best suited to the role as there are plenty of other female actors who are even more progressive and whose personality, behavior, and views embody Wonder Woman and what she stands for more than someone who is an IDF supporter. I hope you understand.

Maybe you know more about these subjects, so if you have any more information, you can share with me so that I can learn too and if I am wrong in my views, I can rectify them and become more understanding and careful on these topics.

I am in no way an expert on Zionism, Israel’s oppression of Palestine, anti-Semitism, and Jewish and Palestinian experiences, as I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian. In fact, I only heard about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict relatively recently (I might have heard about it earlier had I been living in the West, but I don’t and I learned about it entirely through social media - that’s no excuse for me though, and I’m trying to catch up). I have conflicted feelings about Zionism and Israel in general, as I am not always certain about all the information I learn about these topics. But in recent years, I have tended to think along the lines of ‘Zionism is oppressive’ and ‘Israel (at least the way it was created and the state in its present form) is a colonizer/colonial state’, thanks to the articles I have been reading and whose views make sense to me. However I do get that I may have unconsciously appeared to be making assumptions with regards to the issues of Zionism and Israel, despite not being super knowledgeable about it as I’d want to be (although I definitely do think that what the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians is wrong). So I apologize for that, and please do not be afraid to criticize me for any faulty information or stances that I hold, when I air such information and stances. I actually encourage my followers and even non-followers to do so, so that I may continue to learn too (but that doesn’t mean I should rely entirely on other people to call me out - I am trying to educate myself as well by reading up on more articles, thinkpieces, and books discussing such issues as well as listening to the voices of the people at the center of such issues - I’m simply saying that it’s perfectly fine to call me out too in addition to me calling out myself while I am learning in my own way).

(Now, I will tread more carefully and be more specific when referring to Zionism and Israeli colonialism and make less assumptions as well.)

You are still free to unfollow me if you want, of course. I do hope we can reach an understanding, and thank you once again for your thoughtful ask. I really appreciate it.

-Admin Dawn

[babbushka]

hey!! i know that you’re jewish and i was wondering what your opinion on the israel-palestine conflict was? i’m sorry for bringing politics to this probable safe place for some, but i’m really passionate on hearing about jewish and muslim opinions on the conflict. a lot of my jewish mutuals tell me that opposing israel is anti-semetic, and that being pro palestine is wrong and that i should be ashamed of my beliefs (as a pro palestine muslim myself), but i just wanted to know your opinion since you are a jewish creator whose opinions i hold as valuable! is it really anti-semetic to be anti-israel, and is it bad that i am a pro palestinian woman?

hope this isnt too dark or deep! im just really passionate and would love to hear your opinion!

xoxo!!

Hello! I have a very long answer to this, which I'll put underneath the cut so that anyone who wants to read why your other Jewish mutuals might say that it's antisemitic to oppose Israel, and the long complicated history of it all, but if you don't want to read the super long version, here's my TLDR:

I personally am extremely against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I don't believe it is a "conflict," but rather an imperialist attack on Palestinian lives by the Israeli government. I believe we need to put political pressure on the Israeli government by means of putting political pressure on the United States' government, who supplies them with weapons and $$ to continue their occupation. And I wholly, completely, and proudly support my Muslim brothers and sisters, as well as the Arab-Jewish population living in Jerusalem.

(a much longer and deeper explanation under the cut for those who are interested)

One of the reasons why this is such a touchy topic for many Jewish people (whether they're pro-Israel or anti-Israel) is because the Jewish community across the globe has been raised to believe that Israel is our first, last, and sometimes only place of safety. The Jewish population of the world belongs to something called the Diaspora, which is the word used to describe a large population who have been forcibly removed en masse from their home country. Many African-Americans are also part of their own Diaspora, as a result from slavery.

But unlike the African-American Diaspora, Jewish people have throughout history been either forcibly removed from their homelands, enslaved, or executed en masse for being Jewish, for thousands of years. And for much of our history, it felt as though there was nowhere for us to belong, until Israel.

So there's a lot of national pride tied up with Israel for many people, and for good reason. Israel provided the Jewish Diaspora a place that they can finally call home without fear of expulsion, genocide, or discrimination -- and in the Holy Land no less. According to the Law of Return, if you can prove you are Jewish (usually by blood relatives) then you automatically qualify for citizenship, so Israel, for many many years, became a haven for Jewish people longing to put down roots that they never were able to before because, well, we just kept getting murdered.

HOWEVER, what is happening right now in Israel is not a Jewish-motivated problem. It is an imperialism-motivated problem. The actions of the Israeli government actually go directly against Jewish ethics, morals, and teachings. I want to make it very very clear that this is a Government using its power to forcibly remove a people from their homeland -- the very same thing that other countries have done to us. It's hypocritical, but it's also just plain wrong.

So for that reason, it is not antisemitic to criticize Israel. In fact, when governments commit heinous acts, we must call them out, regardless of who the country is. The problem is, many non-Jewish people see these acts and associate them with the Jewish Diaspora, and they take that as an excuse to commit hate crimes against Jewish people all around the globe (we're currently seeing a huge spike in antisemitic attacks in America, London, Paris, and Germany).

So it's understandable for Jewish people to say that criticism against Israel = criticism against Jewish people = antisemitism. You can criticize Israel without criticizing Jewish people, and you should. That is not antisemitic, that is just calling out a government for the crimes they are committing.

What is antisemitic (and I mean this in no way shape or form to be an attack on your question, I am merely trying to shed light on this issue!!) in addition to blaming Israel's problems or the occuption on Jewish people across the globe, is assuming that every Jewish person you know has an educated opinion on what's happening with Israel and Palestine.

For many Jewish people, especially American Jews, we have no connection to Israel at all (my family for example is entirely of Russian, Polish, and Czech descent, but we've been living in America for at least 100 years). Questions like these can also veer into the antisemitic belief of "dual citizenship", which is the false notion that American Jews have a secret loyalty to Israel and aren't True Americans. Jewish people have to work so hard to avoid getting hate crime-d in our own countries as it is, adding the extra pressure of responsibility for another country's acts really gets exhausting.

While I am more than happy to share my opinions because I know that I have a platform and I want to use my space for good, I am not a news correspondent, or a journalist, nor am I working in a political position. I am just a girl who lives in South Florida who happens to be Jewish, you know? I know a lot of Jewish people who don't know anything about what's going on in Israel or Palestine, because people can't be expected to have an encyclopedic understanding of all the problems of countries across the globe.

But what I do know, and what I hope that you take away from all this, is that the actions of the Israeli government need to be condemned, stopped, and that peace needs to exist.

It is not wrong to be Pro-Palestine, and it is not wrong to criticize a government. What is antisemitic is blame all Jewish people around the globe, attacking Jewish people, or using nazi rhetoric and propaganda to enact violence against Jewish people, in response to this government's actions.

I can't speak for other Jewish people, and their relationship to Israel is their own. But for me, personally, I stand by the Jewish mitzvah of Tikkun Olam in regards to the liberation of Palestine -- that is, I believe no one is free until we are all free.

I hope that this helped in some way, and I'm sending you all my love!