#Free gaza from hamas

[personalrprants]

[silly-little-zio]

hi! fun fact:

commenting “free palestine” on a post made by a jewish person simply living their life is actually not activism! it is antisemitism. hope this helps! :)

[infiniteglitterfall]

Someone on Reddit made the mistake of saying, "Teach me how this conflict came about" where I could see it.

Let me teach you too.

The common perception is that Jews came out of nowhere, stole Palestinian homes and kicked Palestinians out of them, and then bombed them for 75 years, until they finally rebelled in the form of Hamas invading Israel and massacring 22 towns in one day.

The historical reality is that Jews have lived there continuously for at least 3500 years.

There are areas, like Meggido iirc, with archeological evidence of continuous habitation for 7,000 years, but Jewish culture as we recognize it today didn't develop until probably halfway through that.

Ethnic Jews are the indigenous people of this area.

Indigeneity means a group was originally there, before any colonization happened, and that it has retained a cultural connection to the land. History plus culture.

That's what Jews have: even when the diaspora became larger than the number of Jews in Israel, the yearning to return to that homeland was a daily part of Jewish prayer and ritual.

The Jewish community in Israel was crushed pretty violently by the Roman Empire in 135 CE, but it was still substantial, sometimes even the majority population there, for almost a thousand years.

The 600s CE brought the advent of Islam and the Arab Empire, expanding out from Saudi Arabia into Israel and beyond. It was largely a region where Jews were second-class citizens. But it was still WAY better than the way Christian Europe treated Jews.

From the 700s-900s, the area saw repeated civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes.

Then the Crusades came, with waves of Christians making "pilgrimages to the Holy Land" and trying to conquer it from Muslims and Jews, who they slaughtered and enslaved.

Israel became pretty well depopulated after all that. It was a very rough time to live there. (And for the curious, I'm calling it Israel because that's what it had been for centuries, until the Romans erased the name and the country.)

By the 1800s, the TOTAL population of what's now Israel and Palestine had varied from 150,000 - 275,000 for centuries. It was very rural, very sparsely populated, on top of being mostly desert.

In the 1880s, Jews started buying land and moving back to their indigenous homeland. As tends to happen, immigration brought new projects and opportunities, which led to more immigration - not only from Jews, but from the Arab world as well.

Unfortunately, there was an antisemitic minority spearheaded by Amin al-Husseini. Who was very well-connected, rich, and from a politically powerful family.

Al-Husseini had enthusiastically participated in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Then the Empire fell in World War One, and the League of Nations had to figure out what to do with its land.

Mostly, if an area was essentially operating as a country (e.g. Turkey), the League of Nations let it be one. In areas that weren't ready for self-rule, it appointed France or Britain to help them get there.

In recognition of the increased Jewish population in their traditional, indigenous homeland, it declared that that homeland would again become Israel.

As in, the region was casually called Palestine because that was the lay term for "the Holy Land." It had not been a country since Israel was stamped out; only a region of a series of different empires. And the Mandate For Palestine said it was establishing "a national home of the Jewish people" there, in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

Britain was appointed to help the Arab and Jewish communities there develop systems of self-government, and then to work together to govern the region overall.

At least, that was the plan.

Al-Husseini, who was deeply antisemitic, did not like this plan.

And, extra-unfortunately, the British response to al-Husseini inciting violent anti-Jewish riots was to put him in a leadership role over Arab Palestine.

They thought it would calm him down and perhaps satisfy him.

They were very wrong.

He went on to become a huge Hitler fanboy, and then a Nazi war criminal. He co-created the Muslim Brotherhood - which Hamas is part of - with fellow fascist fanboy Hassan al-Banna.

He got Nazi Party funding for armed Muslim Brotherhood militias to attack Jews and the Brits in the late 30s, convincing Britain to agree to limit Jewish immigration at the time when it was most desperately needed.

He started using the militias again in 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the mandated land into a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian one.

Al-Husseini wouldn't stand for a two-state solution. He was determined to tolerate no more than the subdued, small Jewish minority of second-class citizens that he remembered from his childhood.

As armed militias increasingly ran riot, the Arab middle and upper classes increasingly left. About 100,000 left the country before May 1948, when Britain was to pull out, leaving Israel and Palestine to declare their independence.

The surrounding nations didn't want war. They largely accepted the two-state solution.

But al-Husseini lobbied HARD. And by mobilizing the Muslim Brotherhood to provide "destabilizing mass demonstrations and a murderous campaign of intimidation," he got the Arab League nations to agree to invade, en masse, as soon as Britain left.

About 600,000 Arabs fled to those countries during the ensuing war.

Jews couldn't seek refuge there; in fact, most of those countries either exiled their Jews directly, confiscating their property first, or else made Jewish life unlivable and exploited them for underpaid or slave labor for years first.

By the time the smoke cleared and a peace treaty was signed, most of the Arab Palestinian community had fled; there was no Arab Palestinian leadership; many of the refugees' homes and businesses had left had been destroyed in the war; and Israel had been flooded with nearly a million refugees from the Arab League countries and the Holocaust - even more people than had fled the war.

That was the Nakba. The one that gets portrayed as "750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled!" in the hope that you'll assume they were expelled en masse, their beautiful intact homes all stolen.

Egypt had taken what's now the Gaza Strip in that war, and Jordan took what's now the West Bank - expelling or killing all the Jews in it first.

(Ironically, Jordan was originally supposed to be part of Israel. Britain, inexplicably, cut off what would have been 75% of its land to create Jordan.

Even more inexplicably, nobody ever talks about it. I've never seen anyone complain that Jordan was stolen from Palestinians. Possibly because Jordan is also the only country that gave Palestinian refugees full citizenship, and it's about half Palestinian now.

Israel is nearly 25% Arab Palestinians with full citizenship and equal rights, so it's not all that different -- but the fundamental difference of living in a country where the majority is Jewish, not Muslim, probably runs pretty deep.)

Anyway: that's why Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank, rather than being some contiguous chunk of land. Or being the land set aside by the U.N. in 1947.

Because Arab countries took that land in 1948, and treated them as essentially separate for 20 years.

Israel got them back, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in the next war: 1967, when Egypt committed an act of war by taking control of the waterways and barring Israel from them. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

Israel tried to give back the Gaza Strip at the same time. Egypt refused.

Palestine finally declared independence in 1988.

But Hamas formed at about the same time. Probably in response, in fact. Hamas is fundamentally opposed to peace negotiations with Israel.

Again: Hamas is part of a group founded by Nazis.

Hamas has its own charter. It explains that Jews are "the enemy," because they control the drug trade, have been behind every major war, control the media, control the United Nations, etc. Basic Nazi rhetoric.

It has gotten adept at masking that rhetoric for the West. But to friendlier audiences, its leaders have consistently said things like, "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels.  Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels."

(Palestinians were outraged by this speech. Palestinians, by and large, absolutely loathe Hamas.

It's just that it's not the same to say that to locals, as it is to say it where major global powers who oppose this crap can hear you.)

Hamas has stated from the beginning that its mission is to violently destroy Israel and take over the land.

It has received $100M in military funding annually, from Iran, for several years. Because Iran has been building a network of fascist, antisemitic groups across the Middle East, in a blatant attempt to control more and more of it: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen.

Iran has been run by a very far-right, deeply antisemitic dictatorship for decades now, which pretty openly wants to take down both Israel and the U.S.

Last year, Iran increased Hamas's funding to $350M.

The "proof of concept" invasion of Israel that Hamas pulled off on October 7th more than justifies a much bigger investment.

Hamas has publicly stated its intention to attack "again and again and again," until Israel has been violently destroyed.

That is how this conflict came about.

A Nazi group seized power in Gaza in 2007 by violently kicking the Palestinian government out, and began running it as a dictatorship, using it to build money and power in preparations for exactly this.

And people find it shockingly easy to believe its own hype about being "the Palestinian resistance."

As well as its propaganda that Israel is not actually targeting Hamas: it's just using a literal Nazi invasion and massacre as an excuse to randomly commit genocide of the fraction of Palestine it physically left 20 years ago.

Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have been protesting HAMAS throughout the war.

[lifeisnowx]

Zionism is not an insult, and anyone who uses the term in this way is antisemitic and part of the problem. Zionism means that Jews have a jewish state. This state exists and is called Israel.

If "liberating Palestine" to you means wiping out Israel, murdering all Israelis and turning it into an Islamic caliphate state, you are no better than the Nazis under National Socialism.

What was that again about "punching a Nazi"?

[wanderrnest]

This is 74 year old Canadian Israeli Peace activist Vivian Silver.

Silver dedicated her life to promoting peace. she co-founded Women Wage Peace, an interfaith grassroots organization, and was a board member of the human rights organization "Bzelem". she volunteered in "On the Way to Recovery," accompanying cancer patients from the Gaza Strip to hospitals in Israel. she was co-CEO at Ajik - an Arab-Jewish organization working since 2000 to support Bedouin society in the Negev and promote shared life for Arabs and Jews throughout the country.

When asked about her aspirations for the future of her grandchildren, she said, "May they have Arab friends, Palestinians. May they not be afraid."

On October 4th 2023, Silver helped to organize a peace rally in Jerusalem which attracted 1,500 Israeli and Palestinian women.

The last connection with her was on the morning of october 7th, when she hid in a closet and texted her son. she wrote "well, the terrorists are in my house". he wrote "i'm on your side". "i feel you" she answered.

She was believed to be kidnapped, but today, 38 days later, her body was identified.

May this kind soul rest in peace. The mind can't comprehend that this was her fate. Thank you for everything you did. May we will get to witness something of your aspirations come true in our lifetime.

[soxiyy]

Oppression is when you can’t hijack planes, set things on fire and commit suicide by setting yourself on fire

[anchorsnreignbows]

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

Once again, Hamas rejected a ceasefire. I guess it’s time to pressure Israel for a ceasefire even harder.

[ace-hell]

Israel: "WE WERE ATTACKED!! OUR PPL WERE BRUTALLY MURDERED!! RAPED!! KIDNAPPED!!! BURNED!! WTF"

the world: "where's the evidence? You have no proof. You are lying."

Israel: *provides proof*

The world: "fake" "haha deserved"

israel: *shows evidence of hamas tunnels and the massacre of 7.10*

The world: "zionist propaganda."

Israel: "its a footage of the CCTV of the al shifa hospital where hamas takes in hostages, photos of weapons hidden inside houses, schools, hospitals, churches and mosques. here's footage of hamas killing our and their own ppl and here is them admitting to have tunnels, that they'll do the 7.10 all over again and that they use palestinians as human shields"

The world: "israeli propaganda!"

Hamas, a literal billionaire terrorist group: "eh... Omg israel eats palestinian kids for breakfast and drink their blood on holidays!"

The world: "OMG!!! FREE PALESTINE!! ISRAEL ARE TERRORISTS!!! FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA!!! DECOLONIZATION BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY!!! GAS THE JEWS!!!"

I swear to god yall are the most hypocritical people in the world, having the smoothest brain out here with an IQ lower than my 5 yo house slipper

[mylight-png]

An interesting difference between the pro-Hamas vs pro-Israel movements is how people treat and discuss civilians on the other side.

I have been repeatedly told that, because I want Israel to keep existing and for Hamas (a genocidal terrorist organization) to not win, I must hate Gazan civilians.

In reality, I believe that any innocent civilian blood spilled is tragic. I do not argue that it is good that Gazan civilians are dying, only that the blood is on the hands of Hamas, who used them as human shields. That is why I want Hamas dismantled: they do not just pose a threat to Israel, but to their own civilians too. Additionally, other than a few very fringe groups and individuals, this has been a shared sentiment throughout most of the pro-Israel movement.

So many of the pro-Israel activists I follow publicly condemned the tragic murder of the Palestinian boy in the US. We do not want hate. We do not want death. We simply recognize that peace and Hamas are incompatible.

Meanwhile, people who oppose Israel and support Hamas have repeatedly celebrated Israeli civilian deaths. I've seen people saying that they hoped Hamas would hit more Israeli residential buildings. They tear down posters of the hostages, including posters of Kfir, a baby who isn't even a year old. Regularly, I've seen violence incited at their rallies (by them) against us. I've seen it on my own campus, I've seen it on the news. An elderly Jewish man was killed at one of their rallies, and I have yet to see them say anything to condemn it.

None of them have condemned the broken windows and stolen books at a kosher restaurant. None of them have condemned the stabbing of a Jewish woman and a swastika being drawn on her door. None of them have condemned the Molotov cocktails being thrown at synagogues.

In regards to the actual war, all of them were so frantic to accuse Israel of the hospital hit (which was then proven to be a misfire) but said nothing when, earlier, Hamas had hit an Israeli hospital.

One side, the pro-Israel side, values life on both sides. We don't want civilian deaths. We only want the organization actively seeking our deaths to be dissolved.

The other side, however, makes no such distinction. To them, all Israeli and Jewish blood spilled is the same. To them, it is all cheap.

And I just think that's noteworthy and interesting.

(I recognize that some people are not like this, I am simply writing my observations about the majority of what I have witnessed.)

[miss-rum-hee]

Every time I see a pro-Israel post in the wild, I take somewhere between $200 - $1k out of my trust and donate it directly to a Palestinian family or place a large order to a pro-Palestine business. Just letting people who condone genocide know :)

"""Condone genocide""" and it's just me hoping for the hostages to be brought back home & bitching about how this site's """Activitism""" is LITERALLY just going after random Jews online & harassing them & doing borderline, oftentimes straight-up Nazi shit like cheering terrorist organizations who outright say that they want to kill all Jews in the world.

And the worst part is that this isn't the only example of antisemitism & general clown shit that I can find present in the movement, either. Cheering on a girl's sister being murdered at the Nova festival & hoping she suffered more as she died.

Saying that the only place Jews are indigenous to is Hell.

Holocaust inversion & denial.

Getting salty at a Jewish celebrity (PINK) for celebrating Hanukkah

Calling Tara Strong's cousins """settlers""" & calling her a colonial apologist while October 7th was STILL GOING?

Getting mad at Mike Pollock for making a tribute to the hostages

Just flat-out reinventing Nazi race theory

Going into a whole tirade about how anti-zionism isn't antisemitism & then at the end of it proceeding to call the Jewish person they're talking to a k*ke

Peddling conspiracy theories

Wearing the symbols of terrorists (Hezbollah, Hamas) & raising their flags

Doing the Nazi salute & praising the leader of Iran (who has oppressed the people of Iran for the last 4 decades)

Calling to "Globalize the Intifada" (which were bus bombings, stabbings & shootings that killed 1000s of Israelis)

Literal callbacks to Hitler's final solution + praising Al-Qassam (Hamas military wing which carried out the Oct 7 massacre at Nova)

Tearing out tributes to the hostages & calling it propaganda

I don't even know how to describe this last one

You got some nerve insinuating that I'm a genocide supporter when THAT'S the sort of bottom feeders you've got hanging out in your movement.

Anyways, grow the fuck up & stop harassing randos online because they said that hurting Jews is bad.

[silly-little-zio]

SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE GOYIM IN THE BACK

from rootsmetals on ig

[naipan]

[low-cole-timothy]

It's notable that while operating in a densely populated area with fighter jets, one-ton bombs, heavy artillery, and tanks, the IDF, never achieved a daily death toll even half of what Hamas did on October 7 with machine guns and RPG's in mostly rural communities in Israel.

https://x.com/shmmor/status/1757806496069374350?s=46&t=csiYrUnjPfo7fqZFTiXOwg

[historyistold]

In case you were wondering

[lazykurocat]

This is how Queers for Palestine seem to think Queer rights are in Palestine based on how much they support it...

No Courtney from Ohio they/them in Bio you can NOT get your fucking top surgery at Palestine Hamas would shoot you with the slightest hint that you're queer, get a grip and drink your damn pumpkin spice latte.