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unsolicited-opinions · 3 months ago

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Read this again today for the first time in a year and it's still one of the best pieces I've read on this topic.

It is long, but I urge you to read it.

(Pasted here unedited so nobody needs to visit Musk's platform, formerly known as Twitter.)

Isaac Saul

11:26 AM · Oct 10, 2023

People ask me all the time if I am "pro-Israel" because I am a Jew who has lived in Israel, and my answer is that being "pro-Israel" or being "pro-Palestine" or being a "Zionist" does not properly capture the nuance of thought most people do or should have about this issue. It certainly doesn't capture mine.

I have a lot to say. I’ve spent the last 72 hours writing, texting, and talking to Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians. Much of my reaction is going to piss off people on "both sides," but I am exhausted and hurting and I do not think there is any way to discuss this situation without being radically honest about my views. So I'm going to try to say what I believe to be true the best I can.

Let me start with this: It could have been me.

That's a hard thought to shake when watching the videos out of Israel — the concert goers fleeing across an empty expanse, the hostages being paraded through the streets, the people shot in the head at bus stops or in their cars. I went to those parties in the desert, I rubbed shoulders with Israelis and Arabs and Jews and Muslims, I could have easily accepted an invitation to some concert near Sderot and gone without a care, only to be indiscriminately slaughtered. Or, perhaps worse, taken hostage and tortured.

I don’t believe Hamas is killing Israelis to liberate themselves, nor do I believe they are doing it to make peace. They're doing this because they represent the devil on the shoulder of every oppressed Palestinian who has lost someone in this conflict. They're doing it because they want vengeance. They are evening the score, and acting on the worst of our human impulses, to respond to blood with blood — an inclination that is easy to give in to after what their people have endured. It should not be hard to understand their logic — it is only hard to accept that humans are capable of being driven to this. Not defending Hamas is a very low bar to clear. Please clear it.

It’s not possible to recap the entire 5,000 year history of people fighting over this strip of land in one newsletter. There are plenty of easily accessible places you can learn about it if you want to (and, by the way, many of you should — far too many people speak on this issue with an obscene amount of ignorance, loads of arrogance, and a narrow historical lens focused on the last few decades). But I'll briefly highlight a few things that are important to me.

In my opinion, the Jewish people have a legitimate historical claim to the land of Israel. Jews had already been expelled and returned and expelled again a half dozen times before the rise of the Muslim and Arab rule of the Ottoman Empire. Of course it’s messy because we Jews and Arabs and Muslims are all cousins and descendents of the same Canaanites. But Arabs won the land centuries ago the same way Israel and Jews won it in the 20th century: Through conflict and war. The British defeated the Ottoman Empire and then came the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to the British granting the area to the Jewish people, a promise they’d later try to renege on — all before the wars that have defined the region since 1948.

That historical moment in the late 1940s was unique. After World War II, with many Arab and Muslim states already in existence, and after six million Jews were slaughtered, the global community felt it was important to grant the Jewish people a homeland. In a more logical or just world that homeland would have been in Europe as a kind of reparation for what the Nazis and others before them had done to the Jews, or perhaps in the Americas — like Alaska — or somewhere else. But the Jews wanted Israel, the British had taken to the Zionist movement, the British had conquered the Ottoman Empire which handed them control of the land, and America and Europe didn’t want the Jews. As a result, we got Israel.

The Arab states had already rejected a partitioned Israel repeatedly before World War II and rejected it again after the Holocaust and the end of the war. They did not want to give up even a little bit of their land to a bunch of Jewish interlopers who were granted it all of a sudden by British interlopers who had arrived a hundred years prior. Who could blame them? It had been centuries since Jews lived there in large numbers, and now they wanted to return in waves as secularized Europeans. Many of us would probably react the same way. So, just as humans have done forever, they fought. The many existing Arab states turned against the burgeoning new Jewish state. One side won and one side lost. This is the brutal and broken and violent world we live in, but it is what created the global world order we have now.

Are Israelis and British people "colonizers" because of this 20th century history? Sure. But that view flattens thousands of years of history and conflict, and the context of World War I and World War II. I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it.

You can’t speak about this issue in a vacuum. You can't pretend that it wasn't just 60 years ago when Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab states who wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. Despite the balance of power shifting this century, that threat is still a reality. And you can't talk about that without remembering the only reason the Jews were in Israel in the first place was that they'd spent the previous centuries fleeing a bunch of Europeans who also wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. And then Hitler showed up.

American partisans have a narrow view of this history, and an Americentric lens that is infuriating to witness. As Lee Fang perfectly put it, "Hamas would absolutely execute the ACAB lefties cheering on horrific violence against Israelis if they lived in Gaza & U.S. right-wingers blindly cheering on Israeli subjugation of Palestinians would rebel twice as violently if Americans were subjected to similar occupation."

And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza.

Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this.

I'm sorry to say that while the blood on the ground is fresh. The Israelis who were killed in this attack largely have nothing to do with those conditions other than being born at a time when Israel and Jews have the upper hand in this conflict. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists. This is why we describe them as “innocent” and why Hamas has only reaffirmed that they are a brutal terror organization with this attack — an organization that I hope is quickly toppled, for the sake of both the Palestinian people and the Israelis. But as someone with a deep love for Israel, with friends in danger and people I know still missing, it breaks my heart to say it but I'm saying it again because it remains perhaps the most salient point of context in a tangled mess full of centuries of context:

You cannot keep two million people living in the conditions people in Gaza are living in and expect peace.

You can't. And you shouldn’t. Their environment is antithetical to the human condition. Violent rebellion is guaranteed. Guaranteed. As sure as the sun rising.

And the cycle of violence seems locked in to self-perpetuate, because both sides see a score to settle:

1) Israel has already responded with a vengeance, and they will continue to. Their desire for violence is not unlike Hamas’s — it’s just as much about blood for blood as any legitimate security measure. Israel will “have every right to respond with force." Toppling Hamas — a group, by the way, Israel erred in supporting — will now be the objective, and civilian death will be seen as necessary collateral damage. But Israel will also do a bunch of things they don't have a right to. They will flatten apartment buildings and kill civilians and children and many in the global community will probably cheer them on while they do it. They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings. We should never accept this, never lose sight that this horror is being inflicted on human beings. As the group B’Tselem said, “There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.” I mourn for the innocents of Palestine just as I do for the innocents in Israel. As of late, many, many more have died on their side than Israel's. And many more Palestinians are likely to die in this spate of violence, too.

Unfortunately, most people in the West only pay attention to this story when Hamas or a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank commits an act of violence. Palestinian citizens die regularly at the hands of the Israeli military and their plight goes largely unnoticed until they respond with violence of their own. Israel had already killed an estimated 250 Palestinians, including 47 children, this year alone. And that is just in the West Bank.

2) Every single time Israel kills someone in the name of self-defense they create a handful of new radicalized extremists who will feel justified in wanting to take an Israeli life in retribution sometime in the future. Half of Gaza’s two million people are under the age of 19 — they know little besides Hamas rule (since 2006), Israeli occupation, blockades, and rockets falling from the sky. The suffering of these innocent children born into this reality is incomprehensible to me. They will suffer more now because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response, all through no fault of their own.

There is no way out of this pattern until one side exercises restraint or leaders on both sides find a new solution. Israelis will tell you that if Palestinians put their guns down then the war would end, but if Israel put their guns down they'd be wiped off the planet. I don't have a crystal ball and can’t tell you what is true. But what I am certain of is that every time Israel kills more innocents they engender more rage and hatred and recruit more Palestinians and Arabs to the cause against them. There is no disputing this.

So, why did this happen now?

I'm not sure how to answer that question except to say it was bound to happen eventually. It was a massive policy and intelligence failure and Netanyahu should pay the price politically — he is a failed leader. Iran probably helped organize the attack and the money freed up by the Biden administration's prisoner swap probably didn't help the situation, either. Israel's increasingly extremist government and settlers provoking Palestinians certainly didn't help. Nor has going to the Al-Aqsa mosque and desecrating it. Nor do blockades and bombings and indiscriminate subjugation of a whole people. Nor does refusing to talk to non-terrorist leaders in Palestine. Nor does illegally continuing to expand and steal what is left of Palestinian land, as many Jews and Israelis have been doing in the 21st century despite cries from the global community to stop. A violent response was predictable — in fact, plenty of people did predict it.

Israel is forever stuffing these people into tinier and tinier boxes with fewer and fewer resources. But if you want to blame Israeli leaders for continuing to expand and settle land that does not belong to them (as I do), then you should also spare some blame for Palestinian leaders for repeatedly not accepting a partitioned Israel during the 20th century that could have led to peace (as I do).

Please also remember this: Hamas is still an extremist group. The Palestinian people do not have a government or leaders who legitimately represent their interests, and it sure as hell isn't Hamas. Will some Palestinians cheer and clap at the dead, or spit on them as they are paraded through Gaza? Yes they will. And they have. Many will also mourn because they loathe Hamas and know this will only make things worse. This is no different than how some Americans cheer at the dead in every single war we've ever fought. It's no different than the Israelis who set up lawn chairs to watch their government bomb Palestine and cheer them on, too. This doesn't mean Palestinians or Israelis or Americans are evil — it means some of them are giving in to their violent impulses, and their zealous feelings of righteous vengeance.

Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence.

Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.

I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.

I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.

I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.

I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.

I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.

I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.

I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.

Whatever this is, I want none of it.

Oct 10, 2023

#jumblr #criticism of israel #Israel #Palestine #Gaza #Hamas #i/p #i/p conflict #oct 7 2023 #pro israel #pro palestine

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 months ago

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youtube

New Rule: Dear Chappell Roan... | Real Time with Bill Maher

And finally, New Rule: To mark the October 7th anniversary, we must launch a campaign to educate young Americans about the Middle East. And the way I'd like to begin that process is by addressing an open letter to Chappell Roan.

Now, to those viewers who aren't watching this while also looking at their phones, let me explain. Chappell Roan is not the name of one of Tru.mp's golf courses, she's actually a great new recording artist who, like a Hezbollah pager, is really blowing up. In just a few months, she went from a struggling artist to getting three billion plays on Spotify. Netting her almost 11 cents.

But here's what caught my eye. She seems like a Gen Zer who can be reached, because I saw her on TMZ say: "it's like, obviously, fuck the policies of the right. But also, fuck some of the policies on the left." That sounds like something I would say!

She also said, "I think it's important that people use critical thinking. I think it's important for me to… question myself… question my algorithm, question: is some person that tweeted something about someone else even true?" Preach, queer ally, preach.

But then we get to Israel, and Chappell, this is where we must put to the test your pledge to use critical thinking and to question whether what you're reading on social media is true. Because it isn't. There's a whole history of the Middle East that you and your fans aren't hearing about. So, why don't you let me be your spirit guide through this?

But before I do, let me tell you a little about myself, since you may have no idea who I am, considering that when this show went on the air you were barely old enough to be told you were in the wrong body. So, my name is Bill Maher, I'm 35. I've been to all of Diddy's freak-off parties, and I work at the same place as Euphoria. In fact, she's right down the hall. My TikTok handle is "B-Nasty" and I go live every Friday night with the anime filter on, and I once won a smoke-off against Willie Nelson, Woody Harelson and Snoop. Okay, that one's true.

But, no, look the truth be told, I'm a baby boomer, I remember phone-booths and cars with ashtrays and vaginal sex. And I didn't learn about the Middle East from TikTok, which is a Chinese company whose totalitarian government would just love to have America's youth hating America. That's some of that algorithm stuff you say you want to look into.

Now, first off, the fact that you don't know much history isn't your fault. You live in the United States where the schools stop doing that whole "teaching facts" thing a while ago. But getting all your history from TikTok is like getting all your calories from Hostess.

I know you're moved by what you see on there, we all are. The dead Palestinian bodies. But it's odd that your generation didn't seem nearly as moved by the Jewish bodies on October 7th. You killed at Coachella this year, but when Hamas kills at a music festival it's a whole other thing. Doesn't the sight of so many young women raped at a music festival make it a little personal? My guess is that Gen Z hearts are hardened by the propaganda you see on TikTok, which likes to call the Jews "colonizers." But colonizers are intruders who have no history in an area, like when Spain conquered the Mayans. Or when your mom took over Facebook.

When the Dutch took over South Africa, they had no history to the land, they just wanted it. But Israel is the Jews homeland. And Jews have always lived there, I cap you not. You can look it up. It's in this book called The Bible, which is horribly wrong about sex ed, slavery, science and cooking, but the archaeology checks out. It says the Jews built a temple with a really big wall seven centuries before Muhammad or Islam ever existed, and sure as shit, you can still go there and touch it. Calling Jews colonizers in Israel is like calling Native Americans colonizers here. It's ridiculous.

Chappell, did you know that for 2,000 years, Palestine was like an Uber driver with a three star rating? Nobody wanted it. And there was never any Arab country called "Palestine." It was an orphan province, and if you ask people what they thought about it back then, they'd say it gave them the ick.

But after World War II, and after the Jews were very nearly wiped out by an actual attempted genocide, they decided it was time for their historic homeland to be an actual country so that for once they could defend themselves.

And the UN - we like them, right? Yeah, they agreed, and voted a country for each of the indigenous peoples. One side agreed to that. But the Arabs had a slightly different proposal. They said, "how about we keep it all and wipe you out?"

Chappell, if you think it was repressive growing up queer in the midwest, try the Mid East. You're a female drag queen and you sing, "I fucked you in the bathroom when we went to dinner, your parents at the table." Yeah, that wouldn't fly in Gaza. Although you would, straight off a roof. The same goes for, "knee deep in the passenger seat and you're eating me out." Yeah, my guess is the morality police would figure out that one's not about the drive-thru and kill your featherboa wearing ass. You know when you sing that LA is where "boys and girls can all be queens every single day"? You're welcome, but offer not good in the West Bank.

Chappell, you're not wrong that oppression is bad or that Palestinian and many other Muslim populations are oppressed and deserve to be freed. You just have it completely ass-backwards as to who is doing the oppressing. Hamas is a terrorist mafia that took over Gaza. The Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist mafia that took over Iran. ISIS is a terrorist mafia that took over Iraq. The Taliban is a terrorist mafia that took over Afghanistan. These are the oppressors and when you make it all about Israel, you take the pressure off of them. You enable them.

The Iranian regime has killed 600 protesters after a 22-year-old woman died in police custody following her arrest for the crime of wearing her head covering incorrectly. Just to be clear, that's your team. Iran is who sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah. Are you sure this is who you want to throw down with?

Meryl Streep spoke at the UN recently and said this about the Taliban, who are only slightly more conservative than your heroes in Hamas. She said, "today in Kabul a female cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today… A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not." You're a singer and you're advocating for a place and a culture you would never want to live under.

Gender may not be binary, but right and wrong kind of is.

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/results/achievement/

Baseline: NAEP Proficient

And this is just US History. Now consider proficiency in World History.

Having watched the full video, I've come to the conclusion that Chappell Roan is a window-licking weapons-grade ignorant moron. What's more concerning is that her fans will uncritically parrot her ignorant, ahistorical politics just because they like her music.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/black-sheep-empire-actors-actresses-ancient-rome-0010292

The ancient Greeks loved the theater and ancient Greek actors enjoyed a position of eminence and respect. In contrast, although entertainment and drama were similarly adored in Ancient Rome, theater performers were often demeaned by the upper-class society and also perceived as morally unclean.

We need to go back to this.

#Bill Maher #Real Time with Bill Maher #New Rule #israel #October 7 #oct 7 2023 #october 7 anniversary #islam #islamic supremacy #palestine #pro palestine #hamas #pro hamas #hamas supporters #terrorism supporters #islamic terrorism #Chappell Roan #religion is a mental illness

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