audreyweasley

[audreyweasley]

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Source

[audreyweasley]

[audreyweasley]

well if bitches want to act cute this morning i'm gonna be fucking adorable. you want to talk about zionism? let's talk about what zionism is at its core bc i'm sick of people arguing there are versions of it that are justified and i'm fucking pissed off

zionism is a movement that advocates for the existence of a jewish state for the jewish people. currently the jewish state is in palestine, which was where we lived before our expulsion almost 2000 years ago, but other propositions for the location of a jewish state have included uganda, madagascar, and mussolini's "italian east africa" (esp. ethiopia.) there were biblical and historical reasons palestine was a candidate, of course, but the primary reason it "won" was it suited british colonial interests. it could, to quote the first british governor of jerusalem, "[form] for England 'a little loyal Jewish Ulster' in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism." as the british empire fell, what became the state of israel was picked up by the united states as a similarly loyal buffer against communism in the middle east

but those are ugly little ulterior motives, aren't they? and as loathsome as the zionist project is to me as a jew myself, i'm not going to pretend i don't understand that escape from antisemitism—particularly in the wake of the shoah—was a bigger motivation for a lot of zionist jews than furthering british and american imperialism. so, let's take jewish zionists at their word and go through why their most common arguments still fucking suck. i'm going to read the arguments in good faith, but that doesn't mean i'm going to mince words or coddle anyone's deeply-held beliefs in the face of an active, ongoing genocide. the only reason i'm even talking about the zionist perspective is y'all keep trying to pick fights and i want you to know how empty, callous, and self-absorbed your ideology is

i'm also not going to argue outside of what i've written below. if you comment i'll just block you, and if you make another post i'm not gonna read it. i don't care. you don't get the benefit of the doubt when your beliefs have led to a genocide

this post is excessively long because i'm angry as fuck and this is more of a vent than a persuasive essay. i'll be pleasantly surprised if it does any good, but i doubt it and i just need to scream so meh. now, click that read more and let's get this over with

the jewish people have a right to self-determination and a national homeland

oh my god woodrow wilson is that you?? shouldn't you be at the big birth of a nation screening in the sky?

i see a bizarre number of people citing this argument and it takes everything in me not to ask if i can see the cool steampunk time machine they must have just stepped out of. have 200 years of big world wars and small, horrible civil wars taught us nothing about nationalism? you can't build an ethnostate without kicking off a cycle of violence that ends in somebody's genocide. palestine wasn't a "land without a people" before the british colonized it, it was a colony of the ottoman empire that as a matter of fact had a delegation present at the treaty of versailles where wilson presented his famous fourteen points

see the thing about national self-determination is it sounds nice in theory, but human migration is a complicated thing and we tend to imagine borders being more solid than they actually are. you only have to look at violent processes like the partition of india or the places where america's southern border divided pre-existing mexican communities. prioritizing the sovereignty of people who belong to/are represented by nation states also inherently subjugates nomadic peoples and peoples whose self-government is more decentralized than the west is used to

if people are coming to israel to flee antisemitism, shouldn't we act in solidarity with people who don't have colonial interests propping up a state for them? do we not owe solidarity to our romani brethren who suffered nazi atrocities with us, or the first peoples of north america who were forced onto reservations that went on to inspire hitler's camps? does our suffering make it okay to do the same thing to palestinians now? or ugandans? ethiopians? malagasy? how would you have justified a jewish homeland if it hadn't ended up being palestine? borders and nations are concepts we made up that are maintained through violence. nobody has a right to one, especially at the expense of other people

jews need a homeland because we aren't safe anywhere else

how convenient for the antisemites! did you know that the government of arthur balfour of balfour declaration fame limited jewish immigration to great britain in the 1905 aliens act in response to us fleeing pogroms in the russian empire? it was the nazis who considered madagascar and they literally visited palestine to weigh whether expelling jews to the holy land was an adequate final solution to the jewish problem. hell, there were zionist fascists willing to work with the nazis and mussolini because they felt they had interests in common. (that link goes to a haaretz article, btw. i've even linked an unpaywalled version so you can all see a mainstream israeli source talk about this)

furthermore, we've made the world just as unsafe for palestinians by taking land they occupied for thousands of years while we were gone. zionists can argue all they like that muslims have ~plenty of countries for palestinians to go to~ but muslims aren't a monolith anymore than jews are. although y'all desperately want every jew to fall in line with zionism so idk why i'm bothering to argue that

either way, that argument ignores that occupying palestinian land for jews to settle pushes palestinians by the millions into countries that aren't prepared to host a refugee population or who simply don't feel obligated to treat them with any respect or humanity. that includes neighboring countries like jordan, lebanon, and syria as well as the very european countries jews have fled in the first place. ESPECIALLY when you take the syrian refugee crisis into account. how many of those people were only in syria because their parents and grandparents were pushed there by the nakba?

but what happens to the jews of israel if we give palestinians autonomy?

look, i understand that a lot of us freeze up at the thought of jewish expulsion or a potential genocide of jews. antisemitism is real and dangerous, and like most jews i've seen plenty of it in leftist and anti-zionist spaces. while "what if the people we're oppressing retaliate" is a tired old white supremacist talking point, jews have historically gotten retaliation for shit we literally didn't even do. europe has exported its particular brand of antisemitism to the middle east, and while i don't believe the majority of palestinians would seek revenge against people just for being jewish, i also know that antisemites don't need majority support to pull off pogroms

but that doesn't justify israel staying its current course. zionist violence against palestinians is already fueling retaliation against jews in the diaspora whether we support what's happening or not. it's to the point now that every time israel starts bombing gaza again, i start to fear for my own safety here in the united states. furthermore, palestinians living in diaspora share the same fear and experience the same level of retaliatory violence because they've been forced to be strangers in strange lands too. what about them? what about us?

and most importantly, what about the people in palestine trying to cling to what's left of their homeland? why, because we've suffered at the hands of imperial powers, do we get to use today's empires to do the same thing to palestinians that the romans did to us? if israel stays on its current path, the only place this can end is in genocide. do we as a people really want that on our hands? do we want to see what happens when the west turns on us again and has our self-designated leaders' hypocrisy to wield against us?

i don't doubt that there are antisemites among the ranks of the palestinian people; just look how many racist islamophobes we jews have in our own communities. i've also seen plenty of palestinians and other anti-zionists acknowledge that jews had completely non-colonial reasons to flee to palestine, that mizrahi jews have existed in palestine forever, that we're being used by forces of white supremacy that don't actually give a shit about us as people

because that's the thing—they don't. we can't colonize our way into unconditional whiteness, and considering the dominance of white ashkenazim in israel i don't think it's a stretch to argue that that's what the zionist national project ultimately is. the west will abandon israel the second it's convenient, and all the jews living there will have left to rely on is the mercy of people who were forced out of their homes on their behalf. israel can bomb gaza until it's flattened like the warsaw ghetto before it, but we've seen what happens when you try to eradicate an entire people to create living space for a Folk who feel entitled to it. is that seriously the future you want for the jewish people? i leave the logistics of decolonization to the colonized, but as a jew i feel confident saying i don't want that done in my name

and it doesn't have to come to that. jews all over the world, both across the diaspora and within israel itself, are waking up to the hypocrisy and cruelty of the zionist project. jews are building community and solidarity with palestinian people, calling out our parents and grandparents who've looked the other way for too damn long, and reconnecting with the thousands of years of language and culture built in diaspora that the zionist movement saw fit to discard as a relic of jewish oppression in order to rebuild a rich, healthy, and just judaism that doesn't define itself by the conquest of others

solidarity with the palestinian people. from the river to the sea, if there's any justice in this world, one day soon you'll all be free

[audreyweasley]

[audreyweasley]

It has been hard for me to talk about how what is going on with Israel and Palestine is affecting me personally, but I grew up in Gaza and most of my family still lives there. My father did not survive the bombings last week and I have not been able to contact my younger sister in days. I am try to being understanding that most people do not have personal connections to what is happening and therefore are justifying their silence, but is heartbreaking to see this misinformation being spread. What’s happening there is a genocide, not a war. It is not antisemitic to support Palestine, it’s not even antiemetic to criticise Israel. There is no grey area or neutrality regarding this, and it is so easy to find resources that will educate you on the subject. It is my people and my home being destroyed so I will never be silent about this, but I please urge everyone to get informed and start speaking up and finding ways they can help.

decolonizepalestine has tons of information on Palestine’s history/propaganda that has been spread throughout the years

UK citizens can email their MP asking for a ceasefire

US citizens can call/email their local government officials asking for a ceasefire

Jewish Voice for Peace also has many resources for ways for US citizens to get involved, including protests

Donate to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

Donate to Medical Aid for Palestine

Donate to help get food and hygiene kits to Gaza

[audreyweasley]

[audreyweasley]

[audreyweasley]

what super expensive indulgence would u get for urself if u suddenly came into a bunch of money?? assume all bills/mortgages paid, all friends helped: what treat are u buying just for u?? for me it would be a quilted lambskin chanel bag in iridescent pink

[audreyweasley]

Sage Sohier chronicled the love of gay couples in the 1980s in her collection At Home With Themselves. Spurred by the AIDS crisis and the media representations of promiscuity and disease in the community, the project aimed to dispel stereotypes about gay love and showcase lesbian and gay couples of all ages, backgrounds and proclivities, capturing a visual that often went unseen.

“I was interested in how, as a culture, we weren’t used to looking at two men touching, and was struck by the visual novelty yet total ordinariness of these same-sex relationships. The visual ambiguity of same-sex relationships also intrigued me: were these sisters or friends or lovers or a mother and daughter?“

The photographic endeavor was also prompted by Sohier’s father. The book is dedicated to him and his partner Lee.

[audreyweasley]

[audreyweasley]

What is your Hogwarts house?

Actually I've already processed all five stages of grief in regards to a beloved author from my childhood very publicly making the jump from "milquetoast liberal with unexamined biases" to "actively dangerous bigot who will double down into perpetuity" and will no longer be basing any part of my identity on her intellectual property! Thanks for asking!

[audreyweasley]

get to know me meme >> Favorite TV Shows [20/?] The Good Place

Why choose to be good every day if there is no guaranteed reward we can count on, now or in the afterlife? I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.

[audreyweasley]

Every time I get groceries I’m always appalled at how little you can get for like, $20. I was making banana pudding so I needed vanilla wafers but the brand name nilla wafers cost $4 a box. The minimum wage in my state is $7.25/hr. My friend put it really well when he said “imagine you work for an hour and someone hands you two boxes of nilla wafers and said ‘actually this is a bit more than what I owe you’”

[audreyweasley]

As a fellow person in their twenties, you good?

i wish i could float in a river face down for seventy kilometers and not drown

[audreyweasley]

Sorry I didn’t get back to you it’s just that I’m completely unfit for human interaction.

[audreyweasley]

not caring if people think you're stupid is a life hack. recognising that you are kind of stupid is an even bigger life hack. we build entire societies to take care of each other bc we're all kind of stupid. it's fine.

[audreyweasley]

mmm that post that’s like ‘microplastics are the modern equivalent of everyone smoking all the time in the 70s because they didn’t realize it was dangerous’ isn’t actually a great analogy IMO. people do know that microplastics are dangerous, actually, there just isn’t much you can do as an individual to wholly avoid them. there isn’t really any individual action you can choose to take to avoid the health impacts of microplastics because they’re more or less omnipresent. not really a great metaphor for either an action that you can choose not to partake in as an individual or something people literally don’t recognize is dangerous