#world and hamas like it's like you personally attacked them

[when-did-this-become-difficult]

the kneejerk defensiveness of the israeli government by american evangelicals EVEN PEOPLE OF COLOR is so batshit insane

[arabian-batboy]

The pager terrorist attack Israel did on Lebanon was so fucking disgusting. There's no line these Zionist animals will not cross, there's any crime they will not commit, no form of privacy they will not preach and no type of violence that is too dirty for them.

They're already making jokes about all the innocent people that are dead or injured and justifying it by saying they're just targeting Hezbollah's "terrorists," because apparently Hezbollah is just the Lebanese version of Hamas to them.

A boogeyman they will blame all their crimes on.

It doesn't matter that Hamas is literally just the name of the government or that Hezbollah is just the name of a political party, so their members includes normal civilians just like any other government in the world and their assassination is against international law (not that Zio dogs care about international law), but even if we assumed that every single member of Hamas and Hezbollah are weapon-wielding combatant, which is completely unrealistic, it still wouldn't justify this sleazy cyber attack that injured and killed innocent bystanders, including children (not that Zio dogs care about murdered children) who were simply standing next to those Hezbollah's members, which again, included civilian members who were off duty and doing normal daily tasks in public places such as shops, hospitals and schools.

But since The West has racialized the word "terrorist" so much to the point where fascists just use it as a synonym for Middle Eastern people, these actual Zionist terrorists can get away with killing, torturing and raping any innocent civilian they want from our region by turning around and calling them the terrorists.

They can kill any Palestinian person they want and excuse it by calling them Hamas terrorists or being used as a human shield by them, they can kill any Lebanese person they want and excuse it by calling them Hezbollah terrorists or being used as a human shield by them, they can kill any Yemeni person they want and excuse it by calling them Houthi terrorists or being used as a human shield by them.

They can use all the money, weapons and impunity that is unconditionally given to them by the US + The West to terrorize as many people as possible and in the end of the day, their victims are the ones that get demonized and have their death justified by being accused of being terrorists while their killers, the actual terrorists here, continue to victimize themselves and claim self-defense.

Find a protest near you here: X, X, X, X & X

Donate or join Palestine action here: PALESTINE ACTION

[queer-geordie-nerd]

I currently have a lot of Jewish mutuals/people I follow and over the course of the last few months, almost Every. Single. One has talked about their mental health declining, that they’re exhausted and terrified, that they’ve become more closed off and lost their trust in people from outside their communities, due to being gaslit and ignored constantly on a society wide scale. Almost all of them have experienced antisemitic abuse or violence personally or had bomb threats to their synagogues and community centres or had swastikas and slurs graffitied on their properties.

The worst thing about this outrage is that none of them are really surprised by it - frightened, sickened, yes - but not surprised. They and their ancestors have had to deal with this shit for thousands of years. And all of them expect - no they *know* - it’s going to get worse.

It’s beyond fucking shameful. We are failing these people on a massive, society wide scale. Again.

So, I NEVER want to see a single one of my fellow goyim say shit like “Jews are just playing the victim,” “the rise in antisemitism is overblown and not as bad as they say because I haven’t seen it,” “it’s just a few extremists,” because NO, IT ISN’T - it’s systemic. Those who aren’t directly perpetrating it are mostly ignoring it. If you won't believe or listen to Jewish voices (if not, why not?) then the cold statistics cannot be waved away.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-antisemitic-incidents-up-about-400-since-israel-hamas-war-began-report-says-2023-10-25/

https://news.sky.com/story/more-than-4-000-antisemitic-incidents-recorded-by-jewish-charity-in-uk-in-2023-with-explosion-in-hatred-blamed-on-hamas-attacks-13071580

https://www.reuters.com/world/how-surge-antisemitism-is-affecting-countries-around-world-2023-10-31/

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

People supposedly on our side regurgitated Republican propaganda about Hillary and Trump was elected. Many of those same people are now actively regurgitating Republican propaganda targeting Biden.

Some people are completely naive about how foreign policy and diplomacy work. Short of sending in troops Biden can’t force that little prick Netanyahu to stop this madness. At this point Netanyahu is actively trying to sway the election in Trump’s favor. Trump and the Republicans in power means the literal end of Palestine and its people.

Repeating Republican/Hamas/Iranian/ Russian propaganda will only make things worse for the Palestinians, Americans, and the whole world. Biden is a good man doing as much as he can while being hindered by a Republican House of Representatives and an illegitimate SCOTUS. Stop calling Biden the lesser of two evils, he is not. Trump is the only evil person (from an evil party) and he’s already proved it repeatedly.

Trump killed over a million Americans, killed more Middle Easterners than Netanyahu, and is responsible for the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Further it’s almost a certainty that Putin put his proxy Hamas launch the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel. Putin needed a distraction to take the world’s attention off his campaign in Ukraine and wanted to weaken Biden in the hopes of getting a more compliant Trump back. Putin funnels money and arms through his other proxy Iran to Hamas, which is also a proxy of Iran and has also attacked Israel.

Hamas are not champions of the Palestinians, they are an oppressive terrorist organization holding Palestinian as virtual hostages and using them as literal human shields. Palestinians want them gone as much as they want that little shit Netanyahu gone. Hamas leadership resides in luxury estates in Qatar that are paid for by Iran. Most Middle Eastern governments are oppressive autocracies and they only way they can keep their own people from rebelling is to provide them with a common enemy as a distraction and that scapegoat is Israel. Just as states like Iran need Israel as a foil, Netanyahu, and his conservative government, need the Hamas terrorists and hostile regimes like Iran to keep himself in power.

Protest Netanyahu and his supporters as much as you want as they deserve it and more. Donate to feeding and caring for the people of Gaza. I do both. But don’t repeatedly drag Biden through the mud and dissuade people from voting for him. Biden is trying to solve this nightmare while Republicans are giving speeches about how they are going to exterminate Palestinians and confiscate their land.

All these slogans you repeat came from a Republican think tank. Please consider doing something constructive for the Palestinians instead of working to get Trump back in the White House, because if he does we all lose.

[matan4il]

The other day, I went with my rl bff to the Jerusalem branch of the Museum of Tolerance for an exhibition on the Hamas massacre.

This is the sight that greeted us. "Esthers of the world, rise up!"

It's a poster celebrating two women whose families had lived in Iran, one is Jewish, the other is Muslim, and both women ended up being murdered due to the Islamic regime of that country, even though the Jewish woman's family had escaped Iran and fled to Israel after the Islamic revolution. The face of each girl is actually a composite, made from many smaller pictures of her people who have lost their lives because of the Islamist regime of Iran.

I knew this right away, because I have shared a piece that was done about the poster and how it came to be almost 2 months ago. 

"You don't understand!" my bff (who works as a teacher) said, all emotional, "She," my friend points to the Jewish girl on the left side of the poster, Shirel Haim Pour, "is the cousin of one of my students."

There is zero distance in Israel between us and the Oct 7 atrocities. 

We go in and join the tour of the exhibition. The guide tells us it was built jointly with Malki Shem Tov, who is a well known name in Israel, if you work at a museum. Malki founded a "creative visual solutions" company with his brother Assaf, through which among other things, they helped build many Israeli exhibitions over the years. "His son..." the tour guide starts to say and I don't need more than that for something to click in my head. I know so many of the names, faces and stories of the hostages, and so Omer Shem Tov pops right away into my mind. I didn't make the connection before, but now I can only imagine what it meant for this father to work on an exhibition that recounts, among other stories, how his son was victimized and robbed of his freedom during this massacre.

There is zero distance in Israel between us and the Oct 7 atrocities. 

The opening wall has a huge time stamp, 6:29 in the morning. 

The tour guide doesn't have to explain this number to Israelis, or why it's designed to look like an alarm clock display. We were all woken up on that fateful Saturday morning by the alarm clock of Hamas' rockets. And it doesn't matter what we thought or believed the day before, as the full scale and horror of the attack were starting to become known along Oct 7, we were all woken up.

There is zero distance in Israel between us and those atrocities. I know this, and still it strikes me, again and again.

There's an area dedicated to the pictures of one photographer who went to the south soon after the massacre. I knew some of them already, like the pic showing the bodies of 13 elderly Israelis, who were on their way to a tour of the Israeli south on that Saturday.

Some are new, like the pic of the door handle in one bomb shelter. I stop for a second, because now that I've moved into my new place, it hits me that the bomb shelter door was made by the same company. Suddenly, I feel like I'm inside the picture in a reality where the terrorists took a slightly different route on Oct 7. The door was photographed from inside the bomb shelter, and the bullets that pierced it, they had to have hit the personal holding it shut. The handle has blood stains on it, and it's broken off. I can only imagine how many hours this person held, and how much force they had to use, for that to happen. I know one thing, even without knowing exactly who this bomb shelter belonged to... If this person was on their own, they would have probably ended up surrendering rather than keep fighting to hold on to the handle this desperately. This was likely someone trying to keep their family safe. 

One note retrieved from the body of a terrorist is on display. It says everything about the motivation of the monsters who committed these atrocities, and every word is purely motivated by antisemitism and religious zeal. The note is actually not in Arabic, as it may first appear, it's in Farsi, the language spoken in Iran, hinting at the source, the Islamist regime there, which doesn't care about the liberation of anyone, it aspires to create a global network of fanatic terrorism.

The translation: "You must sharpen the blades of your swords and be pure in your intentions before Allah. Know that the enemy is a disease that has no cure, except beheading and uprooting the hearts and livers. Attack them!"

There is a section dedicated to women's stories. The exhibition visitors spread out to watch the testimonies, each on a separate screen. It's a not like a forest, you can't really see it for the trees, and it's another moment of feeling overwhelmed because we can't truly get it. It's just not comprehensible, facing so many stories about intentional, face to face cruelty, brutality, sadism and joy in it. Mali Shoshana tells the story of how she tried to play dead while lying shot in a pool of her own blood, but her body wouldn't stop shaking, so she somehow turned on her side to the wall and knocked her injured knee against it, causing herself to pass out from the pain. It saved her life. Ricarda Louk tells the story of the last message they got from her daughter Shani, trusting she was right and there was nothing for them to worry about. Then Ricarda's son started screaming and crying, because he saw the same vid many of came across on that day, of his sister being dragged into Gaza stripped down, mutilated, abused, molested and humiliated, while Gazan civilians were celebrating the public degradation of her body. And there's more and more and more. "You can come back and continue to listen," the guide promises as he moves us to the next segment, but the truth is no matter how many stories I've listened to and absorbed, it still doesn't feel like enough.

There is a wall with the head shots of the victims in Israel who lost their lives due to this war, whether they were murdered on Oct 7 or since, but it's only been updated up until Mar 27 of this year. Even so, no matter what angle I tried, I couldn't fit in all of the pictures.

Interactive screens allow a geographic telling of the massacre's story. They show maps of Israel's south, with dots on them, red for the murdered, dark blue for hostages, bright blue for hostages who have been returned, grey for the injured. You can tap a dot and read a story. Or you can zoom out and try to comprehend how is it possible for there to be that many dots on the maps.

"From darkness to light," reads the exhibition title. That's the perception of time in Judaism. We always move from darkness to light. And there's a section for the light, for stories of resilience, of bravery, of rehabilitation, of mutual support and caring. Filmed interviews that do their best to summarize an incomprehensible amount of good we've seen in response to an incomprehensible amount of evil. It features people from every demographic in Israel, and in that way also serves as a reminder of just how diverse we are as a society.

This part, I think to myself, was included for visitors from abroad. We Israelis, we know.

There's one story I know already. Tomer Greenberg, an Israeli officer, rescued on Oct 7 baby twins from the carnage. He was later killed fighting in Gaza. Like a puzzle, I've heard this story from several angles, including from Tomer before he died. This movie features an interview I hadn't heard yet, with the volunteer paramedic that Tomer handed the twins to. Shalom, this medic, talks about how they clung to him desperately as they got to be fed and feel safe and cared for again for the first time in what's estimated to have been 14 hours. I'm sitting there, thinking of those babies crying, not understanding why their parents aren't coming to feed them, and I don't know how to deal with this.

Shalom shares that the experiences of Oct 7 have inspired him to try and become a combative soldier, something that wasn't on the cards for him before that. I wonder again at people who can act like subjecting an entire (already traumatized) society to a sadistic massacre can liberate anyone.

And I understand Shalom fully. When your family is in the pits of hell, there's nowhere you want to be other than there, with them, doing what you can, rather than sit and watch helpless from afar. Most people would say he did a lot on that day. Shalom must have felt like that still wasn't enough.

At the very end, visitors are invited to add their own little piece of light, through neon notes and pens on which they'd share their thoughts. Nothing feels like it can sum everything I'm thinking and feeling up, but not writing anything feels worse, so my bff and I add a few of our words to the notes.

I don't have any profound conclusions for this post anymore than I did for my note. I just know that this still hurts, that we're still losing people daily, that we can't begin to heal, because we're still in the middle of the wound being inflicted. But I also know that we WILL heal, that even if the wound can't be closed yet, our collective immune system kicked into action on Oct 7 already, that we will continue to share the pain and the comfort and the care, and this massacre and war will probably never stop hurting, that we'll never be the same, but eventually we will be alright. Where people choose to care, there's just no other option.

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

[im-not-your-nice-jewish-boy]

we've got long memories

I am not the least bit surprised by any of the tidal wave of antisemitism the left has spewed since October 7th. Every single post saying Hamas did nothing wrong; every single targeted attack on my fellow Jewish people on this site; the number of people who proudly paraded misinformation and disinformation to the extent of funding organizations actual Palestinians have said outright don't help them in any way just because it's against Israel which means that it must be good. None of this is surprising to me.

Now, maybe you could say that I'm a cynical bastard, and you'd be right. But you'd also completely be missing why I'm a cynical bastard. I learned this from my mother, who was beaten up just for being Jewish as a child. I learned this from family who disappeared between my ancestors fleeing the countries they came from and looking to see who made it with them. I learned this from the story of one of my grandfathers picking a new birthday because his birth certificate had been burned when the Shul was destroyed so he had no idea when it was. I learned this from people using "Jewish" as an insult in school and watching a girl I knew break down in tears because people were calling her a Jew when she wasn't. I learned this from holiday after holiday that repeated the same verse of people trying to destroy us and us celebrating our survival.

We remember these things because the rest of the world is very good at deliberately forgetting them.

"It's not that bad because it happened to the Jews. It's not an actual problem because Jews are white anyway. Was the Holocaust really even so terrible? Why do you want to be oppressed so badly if not to use it as a weapon against people who you're oppressing yourselves?"

Some variety of every single one of those is something I've seen in recent memory.

So, dear Passionate Goy Internet Leftists who have spent the last few months attacking and accosting every single Jewish person who dares to speak on the issue in any way that doesn't make them a Good Jew?

My dear friend, just know that we will remember you. You can try to go back to normal. You can try to just sweep it under the rug. You can try to act like it was all just business as usual and there was no harm done to any "Good Jews" and just to the "Evil Zionists" (both of which deserve their own rant post and have multiple of them from people a lot smarter than I am).

We will remember what you did

You will never be able to make us forget you calling for our deaths

And most of all, we will outlive you, just like everyone else who ever bayed for our blood

[fuck-hamas-go-israel]

Hamas is a heinous, murderous, vile terrorist group that’s intent on killing Jews.

But you can’t say they haven’t been honest about their intentions. Their manifesto, the interviews they’ve given, and the way they try to brainwash children through schools and media content have all been quite blatant in showing their modus operandi.

However, despite their very brutal honesty, why do Hamas-sympathisers try so hard to make Hamas look like good guys by defending literal crimes in the most insane ways?

It’s worrying and also shocking as these hypocrisies are such common sentiments coming from college campuses, which were once institutions that honed critical thinking.

Do they think that “kill all Jews” is a code phrase for “we want our territory back”? How do you possibly interpret open calls for the annihilation of Jews in any other way than what it is?

Do they not think that kidnapping women, raping and torturing them, and parading their naked, mutilated bodies around town to sexually humiliate them while men cheer is sexual violence against women? Isn’t this a feminist issue, part of the MeToo movement?

“Think about the children!” Yes, but when babies are beheaded and burned, when 4 year olds are kidnapped and orphaned, is claiming that these are AI-generated images and ripping down the posters of the hostages thinking of the children?

They cry out about war crimes but ignore that raping women and taking hostages are literally war crimes.

They scream to boycott companies for their ties to Israel using devices with technology designed in Israel. Will they give up their life’s pleasures because of their ties to Israel? My money is on no, because it’ll affect them personally and heaven forbid they take up activism that actually would inconvenience them in the slightest.

They claim to be experts in geopolitics after watching one TikTok video and claim that this is about territory and not antisemitism while also saying that Israelis can just “go back to whichever other country they also have citizenship in”. While turning a blind eye to the multiple antisemitic attacks around the world, and calling Israelis “white colonisers”.

They also claim to be champions of mental health awareness, experts in the psychological mechanisms of mental illnesses and take cautions to avoid triggers and micro-aggressions so as to not offend those who have psychological conditions. “We should let those who actually have these conditions speak up about their experiences!!”

But then when it comes to actual psychologically stressing situations like being kidnapped and taken hostage, they suddenly can speak for the hostages and know exactly what went on based on the most vacuous, flimsy evidence? “Oh she’s in love with her captor, she’s smiling at him! They’re smiling and waving, they must have been treated nicely by Hamas!”

How do they sleep at night with these competing ideologies in their heads? What do they achieve by making all these seem like the actions of good people?

They’re like Hamas’ PR team and defence attorneys rolled into one.

No matter what crime Hamas commits, they’ll come up with justifications and make it look like some kind of beneficent act of humanitarianism.

It’s so exhausting trying to reason with people who don’t see reason.

[luckybyler]

This was a reply to someone else, but I'm making this its own post because so many people are being so evil right now re: Noah Schnapp.

You can find other, longer explanations with history and all, but all the places I've seen more or less agree with this:

So you're all calling people to cancel Noah because he's in favor of a Jewish nation in what is today Israel. Which is a perfectly reasonable, decent and educated opinion to have, especially when you, to use a trendy term, "educate yourself" and find out why the state of Israel was created.

11000 dead Palestinians, half of them children

According to Hamas. Don't forget that, ever. They're the current, official government of Gaza, thus they're the ones who give numbers. This means that the real number could be 10, 1 million, anything in between. What I've read is that they probably give more of less accurate total numbers. What they fail to do, however, is distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians, and beteween civilians killed by IDF strikes, civilians killed by failed Hamas or Palestininan Islamic Jihad's rockets (which happens a lot), and Palestinians murdered by Hamas/PIJ (which also happens, a whole damn lot). They also don't specify how many civilians they have prevented or tried to prevent from evacuating or receiving aid.

11k dead people is a horrible number. Even 1 dead person is a horrible number. However, urban warfare in such a densely populated area is its own kind of hell, especially when the other side is fond of using civilians as human shields in every way possible. The fact that the number is 11k and not 50k, 100k, and so on, indicates that the IDF have indeed done a lot to minimize deaths. You don't genocide people by doing roof knocks, opening evacuation lines, dropping guided bombs, putting up an Iron Dome to deal with rockets while avoiding escalation, etc. simply because actual genocide, while a lot worse, is also cheaper, easier and faster than what they're doing. This is important because caling every act of war genocide dilutes the word, and there are actual genocides happening around the world. Also, there is a difference between striking military targets and causing civilian deaths as a side effect (what the IDF is doing) and planning and carrying out a massacre deliberately targeting civilians and inflicting as much pain and humilliation as possible on them. And there is a difference between doing so by breaking a ceasefire (which is what Hamas did), and defending your country because if you don't do that a terrorist group will anhilate you (which is what the IDF is doing).

Back to Noah. So far, these are the things that people have tried to cancel him for:

Traveling to Israel (a completely normal thing)

Having Israeli friends (another completely normal thing)

Condemning Hamas' horrible attack on October 7th (the decent thing to do)

Posting a statement saying he feels unsafe as a Jewish person in the US (which, given the rise of antisemitic acts in the world, including the US, including where he lives and where he studies, is a valid feeling to have)

Signing a letter, along with Shawn Levy, Brett Gelman, Ross Duffer and I think Cara Buono, asking Biden to press for the liberation of every hostage by Hamas. This especially shows the utter ignorance of the cancellers because, as it turns out, caring about every hostage implies a slowdown of IDF's actions (and, at the time, a delay of a ground invasion).

Supporting the existence and preservation of the state of Israel (once again, a completely normal thing). The fact that people are turning against him for these things says to me that the real reason you are all hating Noah is beacuse:

He's Jewish. Like, really really Jewish.

And the fact that this all comes from a place of antisemitism isn't hidden at all: I've seen y'all on here, on Twitter, Reddit, every other social media calling him slurs (such as "cunt"), censoring his name, pretending he's not part of the cast, asking the Duffers/Netflix to fire him, wishing him failure, doxxing him, calling on his classmates to physically assault him, etc. He doesn't need to educate himself: you guys are already teaching him a great lesson on why a Jewish state is necessary. If that's the treament he gets from his own "fans", what can he expect from the world at large?

[qqueenofhades]

What do you think of the movement to vote "uncommitted" in the primary? Personally I think it's a good idea as a protest vote, while not "allowing Trump to win" since it's, ya know, the primary. You're voting for "the Democrat you want to be the candidate for president" not who you actually want to be president. Most of the arguments I've seen against it seem to forget primaries exist...

Well, since you came to me and presumably do want my honest opinion on this topic, I'll share it with you. However, this will also be very blunt and candid, including some things which I haven't yet said in the 4+ months since the whole Israel/Hamas situation kicked off, and therefore also frustrated. This frustration should not be read as/taken as being directed at you personally, but since you're the conduit for this question, that's just something I want to highlight.

So. Why should you vote for Biden in the primary, and not "uncommitted" or whatever else?

First of all, what I desperately want to ask all these self-righteous VOTE UNCOMMITTED IN THE PRIMARY TO SEND BIDEN A MESSAGE types is: what exactly the fuck do you want this message to be, and what action do you expect Biden will take as a result? Is this actually based on an expectation of what he can/and or will actually do, or is it just a froth of misguided Online Leftist "rah rah this Bad Thing Happening Is All Biden's Fault," as we also notably went through when Roe was overturned by the Trump-stacked SCOTUS selected precisely for the purpose of overturning Roe? My god, the amount of bad "THIS IS BIDEN/THE DEMOCRATS' FAULT" posts that appeared, and are still circulating on the particularly idiotic corners of this site. Nothing could ever be Trump/the Republicans' fault in that case; it was the same old same old "DEMOCRATS DON'T CARE ENOUGH TO STOP THIS!!!" puerile fantasy. That's what we are getting now with Israel/Hamas. This isn't Hamas's fault for attacking Israel on October 7 (god forbid; the online left loves Hamas) and it isn't even the state of Israel and Netanyahu's fault for responding with full-scale genocide on Gaza. Or it is, somehow, but not so much that Biden personally couldn't magically reach in and stop it "if he really wanted to." I'm sick and fucking tired of this bullshit sixth-grade bad-faith disingenuous approach to playing Super Moral Social Justice Yahtzee and refusing to acknowledge the thousands of complex factors at play, especially when it involves blaming literally anyone other than Biden, personally (just like the Trump cultists, for whom "IT'S BIDEN'Z FAULT" is the beginning and end of their political theory, just like the Online Leftists). I'm sure this will get me called a genocide apologist by the Very Smart Moral Twitter Thinker types, but I don't think "Biden has failed to magically single-handedly solve this crisis, which stems from one of the most major and long-running issues in post-WWII and indeed pre-WWII world history, in four months" is actually a good reason to vote against him.

Likewise: withholding your vote might make more sense as a strategy if Biden was still only blindly supporting Israel and refusing to do anything to pressure them, which is demonstrably untrue. I know it's hard for some of these people to actually read the news and/or anything outside their ultra-curated Twitter feed, but it's been well-reported and well-documented that he is. If the US was directly involved in the bombing campaign on Gaza, sure, tell Biden that you will vote uncommitted to increase pressure on him to pull out. None of that is actually true, and the "information" about Biden's action in re: Gaza on both Twitter and Tumblr is basically just entirely malicious lies. So again: what message are you sending when you decide to be all precious and announce you're not voting for him? You don't want him to pressure Israel? You're willing to blow this up entirely and increase the media nonsense about BIDEN WEAK DEMOCRATS DIVIDED and give Trump an opening to exploit? You really want to announce to the Trump/Putin/Netanyahu axis of evil that their anti-Biden propaganda is working (since all three of them are working as hard as they fucking can to get Biden out of office, and as someone who opposes all three of them, I think this is a good idea to vote for Biden!) and they need to hammer harder on this wedge issue? Because that's all your oh-so-moral Uncommitted vote is doing. It's not a protest. It's not leverage. It is the withdrawing of leverage. If you want Biden in office so he can be pressured to listen to you and take action that you agree with, you will vote for him. Yes, in the primary. Yes, when it's not directly against Trump.

You want a ceasefire, you say? GREAT! WE ALL WANT A CEASEFIRE AND/OR ACTUAL PEACE AND RECOGNITION OF A PALESTINIAN STATE! That's in fact why you should be busting your fucking ass to make sure Biden gets re-elected, and to give him a strong show of support in the primary. Biden is the only candidate with a credible long-term (and like, baseline functional sane adult) plan for Gaza. Biden is the one who has been pressuring Netanyahu in every single contact to tone it down and stop acting like an insane murderous maniac and therefore torching any remains of sympathy for the attack Israel suffered in October. Biden is the one who has his entire diplomatic team working on high-level contacts with the Israeli government and the Hamas representatives via Qatar, while sufficiently threatening Iran to back down from frothing at the mouth to destroy Israel (once again, just like the rest of the antisemitic western left). Biden is the one who is pushing for this not to be World War III, and yet we get Baby's First Social Justice Activist screaming at him for being GENOCIDE JOE and blaming him personally for not, as I keep putting it, shapeshifting into Netanyahu's body and making this stop. "He should publicly call for a ceasefire!" Or, and this is just a suggestion, he should DO HIS FUCKING JOB and continue to work on serious problems that don't have instant socially media marketable catchphrases and won't come with instant gratification. Also, please tell me how you plan to get both Hamas and Israel to accept the same terms for a ceasefire, abide by it, and do exactly what Big Daddy Biden told them, because you, the dedicated anti-western anti-imperialist, think that's the best course of action?

Like. I mean. As vice president and now as president, Biden is actually one of the least foreign-intervention-happy leaders the US has ever had. He was originally against the Abbottabad raid to take out Osama bin Laden in 2011; he wound down the overseas drone assassination program (at which the Online Leftists screamed bloody murder at Obama, ignored in Trump, and then refused to give Biden any credit for ending) to almost nothing, he pulled the US out of Afghanistan, and even though he's been supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, he's also been extremely slow and cautious (in my opinion, too slow and cautious) at giving them all the military hardware they need, even before this latest blockade of aid in the House by Putin's favorite little bitch Mike Johnson. He has already presided over a historic shift in US policy toward Israel, in terms of conditioning the use of lethal aid, imposing reporting requirements, starting to criticize them publicly, and calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state and more humanitarian aid to get into Gaza. Yet in the Online Leftists' mind, because he is not personally out there Captain America-ing away the Israeli bombs and/or calling for Israel to be totally destroyed "from the river to the sea" as the Tumblr activists are fond of using no matter how often Jews ask them to stop, there is nothing he's actually doing! GENOCIDE JOE!!!!! Like, I thought the anti-western anti-American crowd thought all overseas American influence was evil (but all overseas Russian and/or Chinese influence is fine). When Biden actually doesn't recklessly intervene in foreign conflicts like Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon/Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2/pretty much every American president in the latter half of the twentieth century, you'd think that would get him plaudits? NAH.

"Biden should stop selling Israel weapons without Congressional approval!" Okay, sure, he should. Which he did one time, and he also repeatedly promised to veto and/or not pass any only-Israel aid package that didn't also help Ukraine and Taiwan. He's also not beholden to the frothing antisemitic Online Leftists position that Israel should just lie down and let all of its citizens be killed and its state wiped from existence. Like. We also remember that Jewish voters exist in America, right? And that Jewish lives are something which are repeatedly and demonstrably under threat in the rest of the world, including from Hamas and the Houthis (who are genuinely terrible people and the western left's warm embrace of them as principled anti-Israel actors is all we need to know about their inherent brainrot and moral vacancy). We know that maybe going full masks-off antisemite (which Biden isn't going to do anyway, for any number of reasons) isn't the greatest plan and nothing to which you should be conditioning your vote? Likewise, please tell me how you plan to make Congress (especially the GOP-led clown car House) "do what Biden wants," since you're still beholden to that being the be-all-and-end-all of moral action? Or how you account for Congress at all, and not just think The President is An Almighty King?

Aside from all this, I am sick to my fucking back teeth of the Precious Moral Princesses (gender neutral) who have spent four years lying about everything Biden has done. We had the personally blaming him for Roe ending (he could unilaterally overturn SCOTUS if he really wanted!) We had the endless bashing about student debt, only to ignore him actually making the most major effort to forgive student debt in all the post-Reagan years. We have had a complete ignoring and/or distortion of his domestic policy accomplishments, which are some of the most momentous since FDR and LBJ. We have had an utter ignoring, revision, and downplaying of the damage Trump did in one term and how very much worse his second would be. We have had to endure "WELL YOU CAN'T ASK ME TO VOTE FOR BIDEN" at every single second for every single thing, because this is such a terrible onerous thing to ask them to lift one single fucking finger to give us some more time to come up with a better solution. And yet, as astutely pointed out by one of my anons yesterday, they utterly don't care whether the obvious outcome of this action is to help Trump get back into power. Apparently that's not a moral reach too far, but straining their delicate tender moral sensibilities to fucking do the goddamn bare minimum to help us out -- both in America and around the world -- no, no. We can't have that.

Like. These people allegedly want a ceasefire, and they want it to come about by asking literally nothing more of them then posting snide anti-Biden diatribes on social media. That's the extent of the effort they're willing to put in. They can't even trouble themselves to take the first step of voting for people who want to address this crisis in a constructive way. So yeah, I have a hard time believing this is anything deeply felt in regard to opposing genocide, and just wants what makes them look morally superior. Also: I don't care if your feelings are genuinely pure and strong and you obviously oppose what's happening in Gaza (we all do!) and want it to end. In that case, why the fuck aren't you throwing your support (yes! Even in the primary!) behind the one guy who's actually working to fix it and not just posting empty platitudes on Twitter? It likewise does not excuse you from the harmful consequences of your rhetoric and actions, if you decide that the best way to act on your deep-seated and genuine desire to stop the genocide is just to blindly bash Biden all day every day. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not excuse the fact that this election is against Trump and everything horrible that he represents, and that we are in this situation largely because the online left has learned literally fucking nothing from 2016 and is eager to do it all over again. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not give you a special Gold Star Moral Activist sticker announcing that you were too virtuous to engage in the process now, but if you're sufficiently placated, you maybe will do it in November. Miss me with that bullshit. I've spent eight years pleading with people to help us fix this mess, by -- yes! engaging with the flawed process that makes partial changes!!! -- and all I hear is that same fucking nonsense. That is a large part of why this response is so steamed.

Anyway. In short, I don't think voting "uncommitted" is a good idea, I think it only helps Trump in the short and long term, I think it protests nothing, I think it represents the same old tired anti-voting schlock that I have had more than fucking enough of, and I don't endorse it by any means. However, you will see that while I can strongly and unequivocally give you my opinion that it is a bad idea, I cannot actually reach through the screen, take control of your body, and force you to obey me one way or the other. So maybe, just maybe, Biden can't do the same with Netanyahu. Weird.

[girlactionfigure]

SEPTEMBER 4, 2024

Many anti-Israel protestors claim that the terrorist groups they support are merely anti-Zionist, not antisemitic.

The evidence shows otherwise.

Let’s take a look.

THIS IS A HAMAS FLAG...

…in the middle of New York City. Some Hamas apologists will tell you that Hamas no longer intends to exterminate all Jews, because in 2017, they “replaced their [openly genocidal] charter.” Well, lucky for you, Hamas is here to set the record straight. See, after releasing their “new” charter, Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar assured the media that the 2017 document did not replace their original 1988 charter. 

Since 2017, Hamas has made openly genocidal calls toward Jews. In 2018, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV media channel predicted “the cleansing of Palestine of the filth of the Jews.”

In 2019, Hamas Political Bureau member Fathi Hammad said, “You seven million Palestinians abroad, enough warming up! There are Jews everywhere! We must attack every Jew on planet Earth –- we must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help.” In 2021, Hammad called, via Al-Aqsa TV, for the Palestinians in Jerusalem to “cut off the heads of the Jews.”

BTW, THIS IS ONE OF THE MANY THINGS THAT THE ORIGINAL HAMAS CHARTER SAYS...

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)."

(Article 7)

Pretty explicitly antisemitic, wouldn’t you agree?

THIS IS A HEZBOLLAH FLAG (AND A HAMAS HEADBAND)..

…in the middle of New York City. Like Hamas, the entire purpose of Hezbollah’s existence is the destruction of the State of Israel. Unlike Hamas, however, Hezbollah, for decades, has carried out violent terrorist attacks against Jews not just in Israel, but also in the Diaspora.

Hezbollah’s most notorious attack was the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), the largest Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The attack took 85 innocent lives. Before October 7, the AMIA bombing was the single largest antisemitic massacre since the end of the Holocaust.

Given Hezbollah targets (non-Israeli) Jews worldwide, could it be that their problem is with Jews, not just with Zionism?

THIS, AGAIN, IS THE HEZBOLLAH FLAG...

...at the Princeton University encampment. If you’re still on the fence about Hezbollah’s true antisemitic intentions, fear not: Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah is here to clarify them for you.

“If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli,” Nasrallah stated. Just anti-Zionism, huh?

Then there’s his infamous threat: “If [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” 

We get the message loud and clear.

THIS IS "JEWISH" VOICE FOR PEACE, GLORIFYING THE HOUTHIS...

...using a photo that very clearly showcases the Houthi banner, which states, “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

“A Curse Upon the Jews” is pretty straightforward antisemitism, don’t you think? 

The Houthis are also personally responsible for ethnically cleansing the last Jews out of Yemen. Just anti-Zionism, eh?

THIS IS A PALESTINIAN FLAG WITH VARIOUS PORTRAITS, INCLUDING THAT OF YAHYA SINWAR...

…in the middle of New York City. If orchestrating the October 7 massacre, the biggest antisemitic massacre since the end of the Holocaust, is not evidence enough for you, there are other indications that Sinwar is not exactly a friend of the Jews.

In May of 2021, for example, Sinwar led a rally, in which the crowd was encouraged to chant, "We will trample on the heads of the Jews in front of everyone..."

There is also, of course, his infamous threat: “October 7 was just a rehearsal.”

Sinwar is the head of Hamas, which we’ve already established doesn’t really like Jews.

THIS IS A PFLP FLAG (AND A HEZBOLLAH FLAG AND A HAMAS HEADBAND)...

…in the middle of New York City. See that red flag? Yeah, that’s the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. PFLP flags are all the rage at pro-Palestine protests. Marxist Jihad. Super fun.

Yet, while the PFLP claims to advocate for a secular, democratic Palestine, the reality is much darker. When, for example, the PFLP, with the aid of West German terrorists, hijacked Air France Flight 139, en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, they infamously separated the Jewish from the non-Jewish passengers.Yes, you read that right: they separated the Jewish from the non-Jewish passengers. Not the Israeli passengers from the non-Israeli passengers. The Jewish from the non-Jewish passengers.

The non-Jewish passengers were let go. The Jews were kept hostage. That’s a pretty clear message.

THIS IS A PFLP FLAG...

…at the University of Pennsylvania encampment. If you’re still not convinced this is antisemitic, the founder of the PFLP, George Habash, quickly was there to set the record straight: “Killing one Jew far away from the field of battle is more effective than killing a hundred Jews on the field of battle,because it attracts more attention.”

You read that? He said “Jew.” Not Israeli. Not Zionist. “Jew.”

The PFLP live-streamed the October 7 massacre, and, as of several months ago, Israeli intelligence estimated that the PFLP was holding the youngest hostage, one-year-old Kfir Bibas, and his five-year-old brother, Ariel Bibas, hostage.

THIS IS A PALESTINIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD FLAG (AND A PFLP FLAG AND A HAMAS FLAG)...

…in the middle of New York City. Palestinian Islamic Jihad participated in the October 7 massacre. More than that, however, their entire ideology is antisemitic to the core.

See, Palestinian Islamic Jihad believes that a proper reading of the Quran indicates that Muslims are in an eternal struggle with their forever enemies, the Jews, and that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians exists because of this eternal struggle. 

To recap: Palestine or no Palestine, Islamic Jihad’s ideology dictates that Jews are the eternal enemies of the Muslims.

Sounds antisemitic to me, but what do I know?

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and  Patreon. 

somehow we’ve normalized weekly antisemitic hate marches in broad daylight

[erros429]

going to get a bit personal and a bit political here.

over a week ago, before hamas’s retaliation on israel, my jewish friend passed away. before their passing, they were always quite vocally pro-palestine and anti-apartheid.

before and after the attacks, i’ve mentioned my own pro-palestine stance on my personal social media accounts. but now ppl leverage my DEAD friend against me, saying nonsense like: “your friend just died and you’re defending the terrorists that would’ve wanted them dead???” and i just. the AUDACITY to fucking weaponize MY friend against me when they knew nothing about them.

it’s sickening. it’s outrageous. and my experience is TINY compared to the innocent lives that are trapped in a warzone. TINY compared to the family members of these victims who fear that they may never see their loved ones again. and yet?? people are using this tragedy as an excuse to spew antisemitism and islamophobia every which way, and it is repulsive to watch.

my point is, if you’re living in the western world and only watching this from the sidelines, through the lens of mainstream news sources, then i have a message for you: check your privilege, grow the fuck up, and educate yourselves before you open your damn mouths.

[stealth-liberal]

I have now seen the pictures of the children who've been kidnapped and brought into Gaza. These are CHILDREN, little kids. Apparently, videos are being released by Hamas.

So. I am going to be clear, if you support this... I hope you die in a fire. Hamas is a paramilitary terrorist organization, and it is listed as such by over 80 countries in the world. If you support this... you're a monster. This is child abduction and child murder.

I live in a red area, right wing antisemitism is rampant. Both of my children have been bullied to insane degrees for being Jewish (more than for being lesbian in my daughter's case). When violence occurs in Israel, reprisals occur ALL OVER THE WORLD for diaspora Jews. I will be driving my kids to and from school as I don't trust these Qanon antisemites to not try something.

The sad part for me? The leftists will be silent. They don't care about the civilians and little kids abducted into Gaza, where they will most likely be executed. They also don't care that right-wing antisemites are a clear and present danger to my family, and we have quite literally been attacked by them before.

Hamas, other terrorists and right-wingers want all Jews dead. The left is HAPPY to sell them the rope and then turn around and whistle while they declare their innocence.

I support Israel's right to exist, and it's right to defend itself. That does not mean I support everything they do, I am not in a cult. Netanyahu is as evil as the head of Hamas. I stand by that statement. I am against the settlement policy. It is legalized cruelty. I stand by that statement.

But, I think y'all need to realize something about the Jews. We fight amongst each other A LOT. We will scream at each other till we lose our voices. We are not and never have been a monolith.... Until you start trying to kill us. The time from the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea at the hands of the Roman Empire through the Holocaust taught us well. The Haredi man I wouldn't have at my table yesterday to break bread with because I find nearly all of his stances repugnant is family today. Not family I like. Not family I want to spend time with. Not family I enjoy. But he is family today because y'all decided to cheer when people are killing and abducting us. We unite all the way up and down the line when people start killing us and put our other issues with each other on the shelf. Because when the killing starts, y'all tend to either cheer or ignore it, so we have only us to rely on.

If you want us gone, you'll have to kill each and every single last one of us. Every man, woman, child, and elderly person. And we won't go easy, and we'll take as many of you with us as we can before we die. We've learned our lessons well.

If y'all don't like that, then look in the mirror because y'all are the ones who taught us those lessons in one way or another.

[fairuzfan]

hello!! I don't know if this is appropriate (pls do not feel obligated to answer) but i was wondering what were ur thoughts on the israeli grass-roots movement Standing Together. I first found out abt them through a tumblr post that shared this substack article (https://theconnector.substack.com/p/if-its-not-helping-then-shut-the). the article immediately put an extremely bad taste in my mouth towards the movement and its founders, but i dont know if i'm being overly-critical of them.

Hey thanks for sending this in. No worries, it's totally ok. I was actually debating whether or not to publish this, mostly because I was afraid this would distract from Gaza, but I decided that it's imperative to stop normalizers from squeezing their way into the movement. Remember, the demands of the Palestinian people begin and end with liberation. Everything else is irrelevant and pointless to the cause.

So first off — I don't think you're being overly-critical of them at all. The first red flag of both this article and the group themselves is that they often exchange "Palestinian" with "Arab" and "Israeli" with "Jewish." That right off the bat shows me they have no respect for Palestinians and see Jewish people and Palestinians as mutually exclusive categories. I've spoken on this blog before about how racist it is to assume no Palestinian is Jewish and vice versa and this group really illustrates the forced division they imagine within their own goals and wording.

The article itself is quite anti-Palestinian in its erasure — it talks about avoiding words like "genocide," and "apartheid," and "ethnic cleansing" because "they are serious people trying to actually get something done." I really don't understand why not using those words makes you a serious person. If anything, it erases a description of how to define what it happening to Palestinians.

The whole redefinition of "peace" in this article and group is just calmness. These people are not advocating for peace in which families are reunited and land is given back — they are advocating for a muted version of the status quo of the current political system, just with less obviously fanatical governments. Peace cannot be attained when the people directly affected cannot have a say in defining it. They won't even say the word "apartheid." It's not some scholarly word with no meaning — it has actual consequences and effects on people (click). Palestinians are tried in military court. Their movement is monitored and restricted. It means that there are different legal systems for different people (click)! If you reject that this exists, then you're not interested in making the lives of Palestinians better — you're only interested in making your own life more comfortable.

As soon as you remove our ability to say words like "genocide" and "apartheid", you remove our ability to determine what happens specifically to Palestinians based on racism. By only saying "Palestinians are getting killed" an Israeli can come in and say "well so am I, by Hamas! Let's work together to end the killing" when it ignores that this is a systematic effort to completely wipe out all trace of Palestinians from the world.

It's like saying, "Don't say you have arthritis, say your joints hurt. And well, that happens to everyone, so let's just find a way to stop all our joints from hurting!" Then you work with people who fundamentally don't understand your pain and symptoms, oversimplifying your situation to the point of malicious universality. Sure, everyone's joints hurt, but my joints are hurting because my immune system is attacking them, not because of old age. You can't help my arthritis the same way you can wear a heat/cold patch to sooth your joints — there are other problems you're ignoring that all work together to cause me systematic pain and might cause bigger problems in the future if left untreated properly.

Similar symptoms don't mean similar causes and ignoring that is fundamentally ignoring the root issue and attempting to trivialize Palestinian's suffering. As soon as you take away the words to describe our situation, it doesn't sound so bad, does it?

Now, basically, the... weirdest part of the article is this excerpt:

People like him in Israel are very aware of how the left here is talking about them, and it’s not helping. “You can call me a colonizer or a settler,�� he declared, “but I’m not going anywhere. And neither are the Palestinians.” When people chant, “Palestine will be free,” he said, “we Israelis hear, ‘without you.’ In the same way that a lot of Palestinians hear the ministers in Bibi’s government speak and think they want to do the same thing to them.” The problem as they both see it is that we are caught between two polar opposites. “Hamas believes in Greater Palestine,” Green said. “And on the other side we have people who believe in the idea of Greater Israel.” Indeed, that concept is in the charter of Netanyahu’s Likud Party. “Both sides have very problematic governing bodies,” he added. And the status quo of maintaining the occupation and managing the conflict has been exploded now.

Well, first off, Hamas is not the only one who believes in "Greater Palestine." Palestinians around the globe have been fighting for that since 1948. Second off, it's quite odd that you would center yourself in the wake of the ongoing slaughter of 10,000 people, with no end in sight. Right now, I would assume you'd be advocating for an end to the mass killings first and foremost, but you seem to be more worried about your right to stolen land.

Third, this completely erases the violence done to Palestinians the past 75+ years in favor for a "peace" that will only allow citizens of Israel comfort in their lives. Sure Palestinian citizens of Israel might have more comfortable lives, maybe (although I doubt it). But what about Gaza, which has been ravaged by Israel? What about the people in the Occupied Territories, whose economy depends on Israel, which controls it? What about the millions of refugees around the world who can't so much as see the place where they grew up because they've been exiled? The colonization of Palestine by Israel is not so old — there are people STILL ALIVE who participated in the massacres of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967 and walk around without facing any real consequences for that. My great-grandmother had seen both and she only passed away a couple of years ago. Where is the "peace" for her? Where is the "peace" for millions like her who still dream of going back to their childhood home?

This group AND the article tries to cloud your view into illustrating two opposing groups with equal power. They aren't. Palestinians, unfortunately, endure systematic oppression both within Gaza and throughout Palestine. Each and every time they try to resist peacefully, they've been shot, abducted, or imprisoned. The Great March of Return is one such example. BDS is also an example, yet that has constantly been outlawed by American governments. There have been a plethora of Palestinian artists, writers, and filmmakers who have been silenced or killed for advocating for a Free Palestine. Most recently, this included Heba Abu-Nada who was an award winning poet and writer who was martyred on October 20th after getting shelled by an Israeli missile. Ghassan Kanafani also was assassinated last century. The list goes on. Palestinians have no hope of "changing the system from within" because that internal change will always depend on the mercy of the Israelis that pretend to ally themselves with the Palestinians. Someone in Gaza cannot leave their refugee camp and go back to their ancestral home because no one in this group is advocating for that — and remember, the right of return is an essential part of the demands of the Palestinian people and we cannot ignore that for a forced "peace" that favors calmness over actual justice.

Now as we examine the group themselves, here is their mission statement/goal:

Standing Together is a progressive grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality, and social justice. We know that the majority have far more in common than that which sets us apart and only a tiny minority benefits from the status quo. The future that we want-peace and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, full equality for everyone in this land, and true social, economic, and environmental justice — is possible. To achieve this future, we must stand together as a united front: Jewish and Palestinian, secular and religious, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, rural and urban, and people of all genders and sexual orientations. As the largest Jewish-Arab grassroots movement in Israel, we are committed to creating an alternative to our existing reality and building the political strength to make this transformation possible.

Yet again, they are separating "Palestinian" and "Jewish," reinforcing this dichotomy that's so harmful. AND they're interchanging "Palestinian" and "Arab," which erases the diversity within Palestinian society. A group that makes the distinction between "Palestinian" and "Jewish" shows that they are not interested in the restitution of Palestinians but rather solidifying their own position within society by emphasizing a false dichotomy between "Palestinians" and "Jews" with no potential for overlap.

They mention "true justice" but "true justice" doesn't exist if there are no reparations towards the people who have been exiled and displaced, murdered, and tortured the past 75+ years. Justice is not an abstract concept — it is adhering to the demands of the people most impacted by systematic oppression, which is the Palestinians.

Looking at their leadership, there are only a couple of Palestinians with the vast majority of them being non-Palestinian. Sorry, but I'm wholly uninterested in "peace" and "equality" movements that are not made up of majority Palestinians. It's only common sense that you would expect such a movement to be led by Palestinians themselves — but this group seems to use Sally Abed as a token Palestinian who furthers their narrative of wanting "peace" in Israeli society. And even looking at their action items, you can see they make a point about emphasizing safety for the *Israeli* citizens above all else, stating that their far right government does nothing to serve the citizens of Israel. They claim it will also bring safety for Gazans, but how? You can advocate for a change in the government, yes, but if the people in Gaza are subject to getting their rights taken away based on the whims of whoever happens to be in power then no amount of "internal" activism in Israeli society will help them. They will always be at the mercy of the people who have a vested interest in erasing the people of Gaza and the West Bank so that they may take over their land.

Please remember, the civil rights movement of the 60s and the BLM Movement of this century were led by and FOR Black people of the United States because they were the ones making the demands for a change in their circumstances. Because at the end of the day, the people who are the most oppressed deserve the right to decide how their future appears and should not be dictated by the oppressor in any way.

This group tries to make a separation between the "Israeli people" and the "Israeli government." Right away, I have to laugh. They act as if the colonization of Palestine is too old for anyone to remember its origins — no. I had family living in Palestine as recently as '67. Maybe *this* generation didn't choose to settle in Palestine, but the previous generation did. And the generations before that. Before 1948, Israel didn't even exist. Hell, before a couple hundred years ago, BORDERS didn't exist. Not to mention, mandatory conscription means that most civilians will have been directly part of the suppressing forces, making them liable for the material effects of colonization. Why are people so resistant to the idea of undoing colonialism and its effects? I cannot think of any other reason than because they have a vested interest in keeping those borders up, in emphasizing nationality because they're one of the groups of people that is benefited from the establishment of a "Jewish State."

So in that, unless you call for an end to the idea of the "Jewish State" in Palestine, then I cannot think of you as a sincere advocate for Palestinian rights — this group especially plays at normalization of a muted version of the status quo rather than actual justice and reparations. The "Israeli advocates" within this group will benefit first and foremost in their own activism — therefore it's hard for me to view them in a positive light.

All activism for Palestinians should center around giving Palestinians reparations, as well as giving reparations to all indigenous victims of colonization. I think this group only tries to muddy the waters to make people forget what they're fighting for. I honestly do not understand why liberation scares you, if it means that no nation-state will have complete and total power over you and your family.

"Free Palestine" is an anti-colonial movement. Such a thing is possible — but you have to try to make it possible. Those against the unending liberation of all people are one of those who have the most to benefit from the continuation of colonization.

Right now, your main concern should be the people of Gaza and the people of the West Bank, and ensuring their safety and longevity in the face on continued erasure. "Peace" is all well and good but who exactly gets to define that? Who gets to benefit most from it? Unless you can unequivocally answer "ALL Palestinians," then you're not an ally — you're only interested in helping yourselves.

Remember — the fact that we even had to fight for our rights is itself an injustice. At the very least, ask the people who are most affected what they want before you listen to Israelis who have a vested interest in keeping the state of Israel alive.

[eretzyisrael]

Every week we are reading about professions that are pushing out Zionist Jews from their fields.

In the field of international law:

...The professor saw a trend among the topics Israeli and Jewish colleagues were pushed to pursue. Those who continued their academic work in international law either wrote about Palestinians as victims or Israel’s violations of humanitarian international law. “Israelis would either write about IP law or business law, or about how Israel is being awful, violating human rights and all of that.”

This stood out because the professor noticed their colleagues from Latin America and China weren’t expected to work on topics that criticize their home countries as a condition for receiving faculty support. Yet when it came to Israelis, it was “clear to us this is what we need to deliver on.”

In the professor’s discussions with the senior faculty, especially the progressive liberal Jewish faculty, it came through clearly that support for Israeli students was conditioned on being the right type of Israeli, “and there were fellowships and scholarships and grants available to students who are willing to do that. In Hebrew we say that a person knows which side of the bread is buttered, right? So it’s pretty clear what pays off is to distance yourself from a mainstream Israeli kind of discourse.”

Understanding who holds the power and influences decisions is important in any profession, the law included. “You need to have the support and the mentors to advance in your career,” the professor explained, “and for that, you look for cues on what should I do, how do I make these people like me. Why would you bother, why would you take the risk of saying something that is controversial or put yourself in the position of protecting Israel or speaking on behalf of Israel when there is only a price to pay for that?”

“For example, there is an institute that gives out scholarships to doctoral students who are writing dissertations about Israel. I was advised not to take their money because then it’s going to be on my CV and people will interpret that as if I don’t have the right kind of politics. So even when there are economic incentives to write different kinds of scholarship,” under the current academic incentives, the professor concludes, scholarships and point-interventions will not work “because it’s more about selection and authority and networks and connections and less about economic incentives.”

Mental health professionals:

The anti-Zionist blacklist is the most extreme example of an anti-Israel wave that has swept the mental health field since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and the resulting war in Gaza, which has seen the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians. More than a dozen Jewish therapists from across the country who spoke to Jewish Insider described a profession ostensibly rooted in compassion, understanding and sensitivity that has too often dropped those values when it comes to Jewish and Israeli providers and clients.

At best, these therapists say their field has been willing to turn a blind eye to the antisemitism that they think is too rampant to avoid. At worst, they worry the mental health profession is becoming inhospitable to Jewish practitioners whose support for Israel puts them outside the prevailing progressive views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Authors:

Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing — where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression — is particularly alarming.

It feels like history is repeating itself.

Jews founded the Jews' Hospital in New York in 1855, now known as Mount Sinai Hospital, partially as a response to the need for a place that Jews could be treated without feeling like outsiders, as every other hospital at the time was aligned with various Christian groups. It followed the founding in 1850 of the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati. When Mount Moriah Hospital Mount Moriah Hospital opened in New York in 1908, the Forward reported that Jews "can open the door and enter as if to your own home without a racing heart and without fear."

Brandeis University was founded in 1948 "at a time when Jews and other ethnic and racial minorities, and women, faced discrimination in higher education."

Jews who were facing discrimination formed professional associations and schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for physicians, scientists, and trades, like the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York and the Kehillah which attempted to be an umbrella of professional and educational associations in New York (and that the antisemite Henry Ford railed against.)

It appears that it is time for Jews in the professions where they are being blacklisted must start to form Jewish professional organizations, educational networks and institutions anew, where Jews can network and publish as they want without having to please the "progressive" crowds.

But the arc of history is going backwards, and this is only a Band-Aid. The problem is with America and the world itself, and Jews cannot solve this problem alone - the dangers of the progressive bigots are a threat to the free world and that needs to be addressed at the macro level.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Here's the thing that really broke me about the goyische left's response to the Hamas massacre: once again, the uncritical, antisemitic double standard for Israel and Jews versus literally anyone else has now expanded to assume that Jews do not deserve human rights or have lost them by virtue of being Israeli.

Let's say, for a moment, that you have been radicalized to really believe that the Hamas attack on civilians was a liberatory action, perhaps unfortunate that it targeted unarmed civilians, but what else were they supposed to do? Besides, Israel has visited similar and worse attacks on Palestine for years, so turnabout is fair play, especially in service of the struggle of liberation of a brutally oppressed group. [To be clear: I take issue with this and find it morally repugnant. But for the moment, let's accept arguendo this belief as a baseline.]

Do you really include rape, torture, killing children at all but especially in front of their parents, or killing parents in front of their children and taking hostages of the survivors, beheading infants, trapping and burning families hidden together alive, stripping and parading hostages naked through the street, mutilating and displaying the bodies of the dead proudly and celebrating their deaths, and doing all of this on a holy day where Jewish people the world over are supposed to be celebrating the end of the holiday season and the beginning of a new cycle of Torah learning. On a day that people will be resting, with their families, unarmed and in their holy spaces, and are explicitly commanded to be happy.

.......amongst the "unfortunate-but-necessary violent struggle?"

Like even if you believe in your heart of hearts that all Israelis should die or at least are acceptable casualties in the struggle, do you really believe that there is any excuse for the above atrocities? If you do, I need you to ask yourself some things:

Do you think there is any justification for the manner and cruelty of the deaths?

Do you really think that there is anything a person could do in order to deserve any of these actions as a sentence?

Was the cruel nature of this, designed to inflict the greatest amount of trauma on the survivors and the Jewish people at large, actually necessary to accomplishing the goal of liberation?

Would you accept any of these actions being done to any other group?

If you are a white American, do you think you personally deserve this yourself for everything the United States has done to the native population (never mind anyone else)?

Do you think that civilians can be held 100% accountable for their government's actions? Is that a standard you yourself would like to be judged by?

If context is important, how is the last 2000 years of brutal antisemitism from virtually every part of the world not also relevant context? How is the Holocaust not relevant? The Farhud?

Do you think refugees fleeing genocide should be able to live wherever they can and that other countries and peoples have a duty to step up and take them in? If so, would you call refugees of genocide colonists and settlers?

Do you think that children should have to answer for the crimes of adults? That it is ever okay to kill them in cold blood?

Do you think that non-combatant deaths should ever be celebrated?

Theoretically, if the only way Hamas could accomplish its goal (which we will assume arguendo is Palestinian liberation, despite the mounds of evidence against that) is to kill whatever Israelis they could get their hands on, don't you think that a valid liberation force would just kill people as efficiently as possible rather than take the time to brutalize and humiliate them first? Wouldn't that be the more morally understandable thing to do?

Do you think it's ever okay to mock or talk down to people grieving their dead, no matter who they were, especially if they were random citizens rather than, say, high-profile politicians?

These questions to me are unanswerable and the fact that they are even in question at all unjustifiable. The left has either actively participated in this or remained silent in the face of it. And too many friends who I thought were allies have failed to reach out to even ask if we're okay, let alone made even the weakest of condemnations of the brutality my people have experienced this week.

This tells me that you think my humanity, as a Jew, is conditional. That my right not to experience war crimes is up for debate.

How am I supposed to trust you ever again? Feel safe in your presence? Collaborate with you on other issues? Why should I?

For the people who are posting about the situation yet failed to condemn the torture and brutality against my people, please know that I will likely never fully believe you that you are for restorative justice, against the death penalty, against cruel and unusual punishment, against sexual violence, for children's rights and against the murder of children, against terrorism, against civilian casualties, for the rights and protection of refugees, for freedom of movement, support indigenous groups, and certainly certainly anyone claiming to be against antisemitism. There will forever and always be an asterisk next to your statements in favor of universal human rights which reads: *except Jews.

[germiyahu]

"If you describe a horrific and detailed act of racism committed by an IDF soldier or a Kahanist or other anti Arab extremist (say Baruch Goldstein's massacre), you'll find that a huge majority of Jews condemn him, his philosophy, his actions, denounce him and consider him a poor practitioner of Judaism"

No they don't, that's the whole fucking point.

Whenever IDF soldiers kill Palestinians the only reaction from Israelis you would get is them bringing up how military service is mandatory in Israel so you can't be mad at the soldier, how this is an extremely complex two-sided "conflict" where both sides are equally wrong and equally victims, how everything is the fault of the entire government of Hamas and Bibi (but just Bibi, they will never hold anyone else in the government accountable) and gaslighting people into believing that this is an isolated incident that doesn't normally happen and that the Israeli committing the crime will actually face any type of justice.

And this assuming that they would even acknowledge a crime has been committed instead of calling it "blood libel" and using what happens as a segue to talk about anti-semitism even more.

So you clearly don't know any Jews because Baruch Goldstein is one of the least controversial figures in Jewish history to condemn. Like, he probably has defenders in Israel but they're definitely a pretty small minority, and you'd be very hard pressed to find any diaspora Jews who approve of his crimes.

And aside from that, because yes people do defend the IDF when they are presented with similarly horrific sounding stories... but look what happens, most of these stories turn out to be exaggerated or completely false to begin with! This isn't about starry-eyed Jewish supremacy vs Muslims just doing an oopsie and they had good reasons for it, this is about truth. That's the key element. It's a little ridiculous to whine that Jews won't full throatedly condemn bombing a hospital and killing 500 people when that turned out to be a lie!

Baruch Goldstein was a terrorist, he factually provably committed horrific crimes. Osama Bin Laden was also a terrorist, he factually provably orchestrated horrific crimes. If you ask the average Jew to defend the former, they'd be equally as uncomfortable as if you asked the average Muslim to defend the latter. There are always going to be braindead terrorism fanboys in both groups, duh. I'm talking about the average person.

And here you are, deciding that no, the average Jew is a savage devotee to terrorism and genocide, just like every other Jew Hater online. It's becoming a bit stale. See that last part in particular, this is about a deep envious rage you feel that Jewish people "get away" with doing/thinking/saying "The Bad Thing" and you feel a need to bring them down a peg. You frame a very real thing (like blood libel is not trivial and Jewish people do not actually talk about it frivolously), as a privilege, a cheat code. You're jealous because you probably belong to a demographic that can't "milk" it's own historic oppression and tragedy, so you feel that Jews shouldn't "get" to.

But this is the real world, where exaggerating the alleged crimes of Jews is demonstrably linked with an increase in antisemitic rhetoric (check), harassment of Jews and Jewish institutions (check), and even violence (they just thwarted a planned terrorist attack in Brooklyn, very much the last roadblock to a liberated Palestine).

Anyway my point was that if you zoom out to more and more abstract concepts, a greater percentage of both Jewish and Muslim populations will probably support them. And I think it's telling that "a Jewish state founded on war and large violent population transfers" has a higher moral burden on it than "a Muslim state founded on war and large violent population transfers."

Ask a Muslim if they support "Pakistan exists" and how many would disagree? Realistically? But you dare act disgusted and shocked that a similar number and percentage of Jews support "Israel exists"? My entire question is why "This is a country that has done bad things and it exists amid ethnic conflict" is even on par with "this niche cult within a giant religion (literally they admitted to it) did a massacre on civilians."

If that's the moral equivalence then we're done here. I'm not playing games like that.