#I just want the Palestinians kids to grow

[thickania]

"oh my god, what about Hamas".....SHUT UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP. If Hamas it's so goddamn dangerous like Israel is fucking saying it, then Israel has the worse military in the whole goddamn world, their military is fucking useless. How can you bomb literally everywhere, and find at most 10 people that are part of Hamas? How?

And no, I'm not defending theorists, fuck Hamas, fuck their beliefs, I want Jewish people to be safe, I'm not saying that we should hunt Jewish people, again I want for Jewish people to be safe, I'm just saying that fucking tired of seeing kids caring bags with their families pieces, I'm tired of seeing and hearing mothers and fathers crying because their kid died of starvation, I'm tired of seeing people being dehumanized over and over again. I'm tired of seeing this word getting more and more polluted because of this genocide, I'm tired of hearing this same fucking argument over and over again.

"but what about Hamas"

"but the beheaded babies"

"so you want Jewish people to die?"

LIKE SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! AND FREE PALESTINE, FUCK ISRAEL!!!

[starlightshadowsworld]

Palestinians are not "animals."

They are not "children of darkness."

Little kids are rescuing cats and trying to comfort them when they themselves are terrified.

A doctor broke down when his father and brother came into the trauma unit.

And several of his colleagues hugged and gathered to comfort him.

Journalists are playing with babies.

Doctors are refusing to evacuate hospitals because their patients can't and refuse to leave them.

There's a little boy who gives tea to the journalists and thanks them for spreading their stories.

He's displaced at the hospital, his home is gone.

A kid was asked what he wants to be when he grows up and he said kids in Gaza don't grow up.

Kids are writing their names on their arms so they can be identified.

Momin Kireka is a Palestinian journalist who was disabled by an Israeli attack in 2008.

And despite the difficulty in moving around, he vows to continue to show the world the truth.

Awni, a young Palestinian boy has a gaming YouTube channel he loved so much.

He was killed in the bombing.

Mohammed Sami was an artist who's dream was to open an art gallery.

He was playing with the kids to raise their spirits. And the next day he was killed.

They are victims.

They are going through unimaginable horrors and still find it in their hearts to be kind.

They have hopes and dreams just like you and I.

They are people.

And they deserve to be recognised and known as such.

[odinsblog]

“I first started noticing the journalists dying on Instagram. I'm a journalist, I'm Arab, and I've reported on war. A big part of my community is other Arab journalists who do the same thing.

And when someone dies, news travels fast. Recently, I pulled up the list that the Committee to Protect Journalists has been keeping and looked at it for the first time. There are 95 journalists and media workers on it as of today.

Almost everyone on it is Palestinian. Scrolling through, I started to get angry. These were the people carrying the burden of documenting this whole war.

Israel is not allowing foreign journalists into Gaza, except on rare occasions with military escorts. These people's names are being buried in a giant list that keeps growing. What I want to do is lift some of them off the list for a moment and give you a glimpse of who they were and the work they made.

I'll start with Sadi Mansour. Sadi was the director of Al-Quds News Network, and he posted a 22-second video on November 18. That was a report from the war, but it also gave me a picture into his marriage.

Sadi's wearing his press vest and looks exhausted. He's explaining that cell service and the Internet keep getting cut off, and it's often impossible to text or call anyone, including his wife. So they've resorted to using handwritten letters to communicate while he's out reporting, sending them back and forth with neighbors or colleagues.

He ends the video with a picture of one of these letters from his wife. In it, she writes,

‘Me and the kids stayed up waiting for you until the morning, and you didn't come home. We were really sad.

I kept telling the kids, Look, he's coming. But you didn't show up. May God forgive you.

Come home tomorrow and eat with us. Do you want me to make you kebab or maybe kapse? Bring your friends with you, it's okay.

And give Azeez the battery to charge. What do you think about me sending you handwritten letters with messenger pigeons from now on? Ha ha ha.

I'm just kidding. I want to curse at you, but we're living in a war. Too bad.

Okay, I love you. Bye.’

A few hours after he shared that letter, Sadie and his co-worker Hassouna Saleem were at Sadie's home, when they were killed by an Israeli air strike that hit his house.

His wife and kids, who weren't there, survived.

Gaza is tiny, and the journalist community is really close. Reading the list, you can see all the connections between people. Like with Brahim Lafi.

Brahim was a photojournalist, one of the first journalists to die. He was killed while reporting on October 7. He was just 21, still new to journalism.

On his Instagram, you can see that in his posts just a few years ago, he was still practicing his photography, taking pictures of coffee cups and flowers. Then he started doing beautiful portraits and action shots. You can really feel him starting to become a journalist.

Clicking around on Instagram, I found a tribute post about Brahim from his co-worker Rushdie Sarraj. In this photo, Brahim staring intently at the back of a camera, his face lit up by the light from the viewfinder. He looks so young.

The caption reads, My assistant is gone. Brahim is gone. Rushdie himself was a beloved journalist and filmmaker.

And I know that because he's also on the list. He was killed just two weeks after Brahim. I read the tribute post to him too.

I saw this over and over again. Journalists posting tributes, who were then killed themselves soon after. And a tribute goes up for them.

And then the pattern continues.

Thank you.

Something else I saw over and over on the list, journalists later in the war who had become aware that they could be making their last reports. They'd say it at the beginning of their videos. And those were the hardest to watch, especially when it was true.

One video like that was posted by Ayat Hadduro. Ayat was a freelance journalist and video blogger. Her videos before the war covered a wide range from what I can tell, interviews about women in politics.

She even appeared in a commercial for ketchup-flavored chips. She clearly liked being in front of the camera. Once the war started, Ayat's pivoted to covering bombings and food shortages.

On November 20, she posted a video report from her home. You can hear the airstrikes hitting very close to where she is. It's scary.

‘This is likely my last video. Today, the occupation forces dropped phosphorus bombs on Beit Lahya area and frightening sound bombs. They dropped letters from the sky, ordering everyone to evacuate.

Everyone ran into the streets in the craziest way. No one knows where to go.

But everyone else has evacuated. They don't know where they're going. The situation is so scary.

What's happening is so tough, and may God have mercy on us.’

She was killed later that day.

Targeting journalists, in case you didn't know, is a war crime. So far, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found that three of the journalists on the list were explicitly targeted by the IDF, the Israeli military. Investigations by the Washington Post and Reuters, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have also raised serious questions in these three cases.

And the Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating 10 other killings. When we reached out to the IDF for comments, they said, quote, the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists. That's the answer they always give in these situations.

Meanwhile, dozens of seasoned reporters have fled Gaza. Journalists who worked for Al Jazeera, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. So many media offices were demolished in Israeli airstrikes that the Committee to Protect Journalists stopped counting.

It's not just individual lives that have been destroyed. It's an entire infrastructure.

Thank you.

The name on the list that was hardest for me to look at was Issam Abdullah, because I'd crossed paths with him once. Issam was a Lebanese journalist, a video journalist for Reuters for many, many years. He had just won an award for coverage of Ukraine.

I'm Lebanese and still report there sometimes, and I'd worked with Issam a couple of summers ago. He helped me film a sort of random story in Beirut. I was interviewing this entrepreneur who had started a sperm freezing company after an accident where he spilled a tray of hot coffee on his private area, burning himself.

I know, ridiculous. It was a really silly shoot. Right after we said cut and started to rap, Issam started this whole bit about being in his late 30s, reconsidering his own sperm quality and everything he now realized he was doing to hurt it, and no one could stop laughing.

It was a really good day that felt good to remember and to remember him that way. Issam was killed by the IDF on October 13. His death was one of the three that the Committee to Protect Journalists has identified as a targeted killing.

He was fired upon by an Israeli tank while standing in an empty field on the Lebanon-Israel border with a small group of other journalists. Everyone was wearing press vests with cameras out. They were covering the Hezbollah part of this war.

A few other journalists were injured in the attack, which was captured on video. The IDF says they were responding to firing from Hezbollah, not targeting the journalists. But multiple investigations, including by Reuters, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the AFP, found no evidence of any firing from the location of the journalists before the IDF shot at them.

The journalists in the group and video footage confirmed that there was no military activity near them. I had only met Issam once, barely knew him, but it affected me so much when he died. I know that he understood the risks of his job, but somehow it still felt so random and unfair that he would be struck down like that, following the rules, wearing his press vest and helmet, and a pack of reporters on a sunny day in an open field.

I find myself thinking about him all the time. His last Instagram post was commemorating another journalist, this iconic reporter Shereen Abou Aql who had been killed by the IDF. When I first saw that post in October, I thought how ironic because a week later, Isam also was killed by the IDF.

But then, after spending time reading the list, I realized how common this had become. I still haven't finished going through the list and looking up the people on it. I keep finding things that stick with me, like the funny way this one radio host would cut off a caller who was rambling on for too long.

A tweet from reporter Al-Abdallah that quoted Sylvia Plath. It read, What ceremony of wars can patch the havoc? I'm going to keep going down the list, even though this story is over now.

Just for myself. My own way of bearing witness. Which is, in the end, all that these journalists were trying to do.”

—DANA BALLOUT, The 95. Dana sifts through a very long list—the list of journalists killed in the Israel-Hamas war, and comes back with five small fragments of the lives of the people on it. Dana is a Lebanese-American, Emmy-nominated documentary producer.

[noble-kale]

My friend Sama and her kids have had a hellish past 422 days. Their house was bombed and is now rubble, so they have to live in a tent made of pieces of nylon. It's been so long that they've lived in a house that the nylon has gotten holes and offers even less protection from the elements now. Elements that are very cold and wet, since they live on a beach in the middle of winter.

Both of Sama's kids have to grow up without a father now, because a dying empire wanted to preserve its overseas warbase a little longer. Like US Secretary of State General Alexander Haig said it, Isreal is "the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk," but it's metaphorically sinking now and innocent people are paying the price.

So I just want to say support organizations like Palestine Action and the Palestinian Youth Movement. And donate what you can when you can to people in need, like to Sama and her young son and daughter, who should be safe and healthy and learning to read at school, not having to listen to drones and bombing in a thin dark tent.

flyers (eng + es) + vet

[fatsamsgrandslamspeakeasy]

Some warnings before you venture further  - - - 

1) This is your first, last, and only warning about content on my page.  If you do not like conservative views or are a liberal, you have been warned and I accept no responsibility for your interpretations, right or wrong, about items I post because frankly, IDGAF.  This includes my views on abortion, LGBTQ, Christianity, Donald Trump, Biden and his administration, gun control, or anything else you find that offends your senses.  Grow up buttercup, the world does not care about your feelings, and that goes double for MOI...!! 

2) If you are a minor, come back when your are over the age of majority in your locality.  If I catch you on here, I will block you for all eternity from access to my page!!

3) My views are somewhat controversial on some topics, so if you come across something that offends your fine sensibilities, just keep scrolling because I really do not care about liberal comments and you will not get a rise out of me because guess what – I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR PRECIOUS FEELINGS!! I would also respectfully remind you to simply ignore my offending posts the way you have ignored the obvious corruption in our government under Biden's watch.

4) If you want to make a keen observation with a conservative viewpoint and/or would like to have an adult discussion about a post without resorting to name calling, please feel free to message me.  Otherwise, just shut your yap and keep scrolling.  I like to have discussions that are respectful and bring out points without being called names. However, if you insist on being an asshole, please know that I can be 100X the asshole you can be. You will find out very quickly that it's a hell of a lot easier to jump on, than it is to jump off!

5) If you try to hit me up for donations for the Palestinian cause, you are so wasting your time. These will be deleted post-haste! Why, you ask??? Simple: I remember only too clearly when the news came back on on September 12, 2001, the live footage of the Palestinians in Gaza, and muslims in Libya, Lebanon and other nations in the Mid-East proudly burning the American flag and openly celebrating the destruction of the WTC Twin Towers and the deaths of thousands of American citizens. YOU made the choice then to have me as your eternal enemy and so you and your cause can go take a flying fucking leap into the void......

6)  I am an older man (early 60’s) and happily married to my wife.  I’m not here for hookups.  I had to put this out there, believe it or not, because there is a whole brand of females out there that are attracted to older men. And if you are a scammer, using a pretty face to try to solicit $$$ from me, WOW!! did you choose the wrong blog. I ain't no love-starved kid looking to get laid. You won't get a red cent so move along....nothing to see here!

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8) I DO NOT FOLLOW EMPTY BLOGS.  If you like my stuff and want me to follow you, you need to have some content.

9) Have a nice day and stay cool out there!! 😎

[jewish-vents]

Cw for mentions of the current war, and general i/p stuff

There’s this growing narrative in Jewish spaces that we can’t be mad when Palestinians, especially Gazans, do or say something Jew hating because they’re traumatised, and I just… I can’t anymore. I just saw a Jew say it’s fine if a Gazan calls a Jew a kike because ‘do what you need to do’. NO. I am NOT going to tolerate the most blatant fucking Jew hatred just because it’s coming from traumatised people. Like, I get it, be lighter, make sure to critically evaluate the statement and see if it’s actually bigoted or if it’s just in an iffy tone. Trying to tone police very recently and deeply traumatised people IS bad, but saying that they’re allowed to be as bigoted as they want?? What the fuck???!!!

It’s like how there are a few big Palestinian bloggers here who are very Jew hating. People who literally spreading things like blood libel with ‘Israelis kidnap blonde kids from Gaza’, updated well poisoning, saying Zionists need to fucking die, and then on top of that refuse to talk to Jews who aren’t there to tolerate the rhetorics that are being spread by them. And these people are fucking Jew haters. And they’re harming Jews and radicalising a LOT of people into Jew hatred because their audience is so big.

Palestinians can be Jew haters. Bigotry is never acceptable, no matter the status of the perpetrator. Jewish safety is not less valuable than Palestinian safety, they’re fucking equal because everybody in danger deserves to be safe. Fuck all of you in Jewish spaces who try to spread this shit.

It's worth remembering that, while Jews currently have systemic privilege over Arabs in Israel, there is a history of over a thousand years of Jewish oppression in the Muslim world, and antisemitism is just as baked into Islam as Christianity.

Jews have been ethnically cleansed from the entire Arab and Muslim world, and Arab and Muslim governments frequently deflect attention form their own abuses of their citizens by blaming the Jews. This is as true in Palestine as it is in Egypt and Iran.

The situation is complicated, and grace does need to be extended to those currently suffering because of Israeli action, but blatant antisemitic lies cannot be tolerated.

-🐞

[i-cant-sing]

I'm surprised by how open you are about your views on 'controversial' topics. As someone who works in a hospital and a certain group of university in the US, I had to sign a contract that prevents me from speaking out on these matters. How do you manage discussing such topics in your role?

I mean where I'm from, we have much bigger issues than just someone's opinions. Idk what controversial topics youre talking about, but i dont be just going about and giving my opinions to everyone and anyone. No, not everyone gets it and my time is far much more valuable than to talk sense to an ignorant person who will just make it look like im banging my head against the wall. Also because opinions are constantly changing because Im also in a growing age and im still learning new things everyday. if you were to see my views from 10 years back, youd be surprised. but then again, i was still a teen back then and i was easily influenced so back then i used to think being a feminist is being "anti man" or that being "feminine" is wrong and weak, which is not true obviously.

again idk what controversial topics youre talking about, but im gonna take a guess its about the gaza genocide being comitted by israel and look, there is only one fact, not opinion but FACT! and thats that Israel is murdering Palestinians actively, torturing them, doing ethnic cleanising and still trynna defend themselves for murdering babies in the worst way possible, and then some. there is no other side to this- there is no excuse for israel to do this, not now, not then and not ever. they are comitting crimes WAY WORSE THAN THEIR OWN HOLOCAUST, and its so enraging to see how nonchalant they are about it, how they have ZERO humanity, how they are actually worse than the NAZIS- imagine being worse than Nazis.

now back to your question- how do i manage giving my two cents on this? I'm Muslim, and even if I wasnt i think its the pretty obvious and sane thing to do, but Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said: "Whoever sees something evil should change it with his hands. If he cannot, then with his tongue; and if he cannot do that, then in his heart- and that is the weakest of faith"

So if anyone of you can go volunteer in Gaza, or give humanatarian aid or donate, then he should do so. If you are not in a position to do that, then you should speak up, go to protests, post on your socials and raise awareness and keep up the boycott. If you are not even able to do that for whatever reason, then at least in your heart you should know that this is evil, go pray for palestinians, and keep on reminding yourself so that you dont get brainwashed into any western propaganda ever again about how Muslims are just deserving of this horrendous hate crime on such a level.

secondly, my reason for speaking up about this is because lets just forget for a moment that palestinians are majorly muslims and this is islamophobia. lets just consider them humans, okay? u could hate muslims adults all u want, but kids dont really have that much of a grasp on religion right? so, do you think that if Israel has and continues to comit a massacre on this level while the entire world watches, while everyone calls them out on their shit, while they have repeatedly documented their own disgusting tortures and crimes against these palestinians, have been called out by UN and the INTERNATIONA CRIMINAL COURT numerous times and they still continue on with this genocide, then what makes you think that you or i are safe?

If we let this continue on, if we dont speak up, then this is just giving a free pass to not only Israel but also anyone to go absolutely batshit crazy on any other country. The very fact that youre not in gaza and sitting in your home safe and cozy is by pure luck. But luck runs out eventually. And karma comes. What goes around, comes around. You stay quiet today over this matter, you dont try to help palestinians, then no one's gonna come for you too.

[ahaura]

Abby Martin tweeted (Nov. 7) a link to an interview she did with an former IOF soldier, Eran Efrati, posted in 2017. He describes the standard brutality of the IOF and how the soldiers enforce the apartheid state—protecting settlers; the standard practice of execution by both the IOF and police; the systematic dehumanization of Palestinians; the role and treatment of Arab Jews in the Israeli state; and Palestinian resistance.

Some excerpts:

"I didn't feel like I was protecting anyone, I didn't feel like I was keeping anyone safe. I feel like I'm terrorizing people. [...] I felt like I was the terrorist. And my job was literally to scare people so they cannot think about acting against the Israeli settlers or the Israeli military. That was actually our defined mission. [...] To instill fear in the hearts of Palestinians [...] and that's exactly what we did."

"At the age of 15-16, I began being almost obsessed with trying to understand the Nazi side in the Holocaust. Not only to hear the stories of the Jewish victims and any other victims of the Holocaust, but to try and understand how can a Nazi soldier get up in the morning, give his kids a kiss, a wife a hug and go out to the camps and do his job. I just couldn't understand it. And when I got into the occupied territories, for the first time I understood how there can be a contradiction inside yourself. As a human being you could do your job and be one person at home—be a loving, caring boyfriend or a son or a brother—and at the same time hold people under a regime so oppressive that people are dying not from only your bullets but the amount of calories being entered into their territory like in Gaza, from depression or sickness. [...]"

"Israel is selling the idea that the soldiers are more important than anything, the soldiers are more important than the lives of Palestinians—not just the life of soldiers, but identity, security, feelings—are more important than Palestinian life."

"Israelis are saying in a very clear voice [...] not only will we oppress Palestinians and do whatever we want, but in a very specific way of saying [...] whatever soldiers do in the occupied territories are right. Whatever we're doing is the correct thing."

AM: I want you to talk specifically about the culture within the Israeli military that fosters anti-Arab sentiment, and racism, essentially. EE: I think the system is not only inside the military, [...] that's actually what being an Israeli means. Growing up in the Israeli educational department, you understand that all the Arabs hate you, that they're actually in a way the continuation of the Biblical amalek, or Hitler, or that everybody there want to throw you into the sea. This is what you're growing up with and you really believe in that. [...] Going in the military, you're already so full of hate and fear at the same time that you don't need much to be very aggressive, violent, and racist toward Palestinians. They see the Palestinian women and the Palestinian men as subhuman. The occupied territories are like an ex-territory, when those human beings are not considered human beings."

(In response to attacks on Israeli soldiers) "[...] I learned [...] that if you will not respect existence, you can expect resistance. And this is how people resist. Israel as a state likes to use the idea that Palestinians only understand force, or power, but the truth of the matter is that Israelis only understand power and force. Every other attempt from Palestinians to try and negotiation this situation in a diplomatic way was countered by more attacks, more oppression, and more occupation, more stealing of the land, more destroying of homes, more settlements being built. We decided to call going into the U.N. 'diplomatic terrorism,' and to go into the ICC 'international terrorism.' We basically describe every form of resistance as terrorism because the sole idea of the occupation is not to be safe; the sole idea is to create an ethnically cleansed piece of land only for Jewish people—with Palestinian workers, of course some Palestinians can stay and do stuff for us—but this is our land. What people maybe don't understand is that Israel is creating the conditions in to the situation of constantly having to 'protect' yourself. We're creating this situation by oppressing millions of people [...] [until] they have no other choice but to resist."

"[...] the truth is that Israel do not hear the diplomacy, Israel do not hear the call of the Palestinians for equality. What we are seeing Palestine is what a lot of people like to describe as the most complicated political situation of our time [but] what is probably the most simple political situation of our time. It's a situation about equality."

AM: Would you say that you support the right of Palestinians to fight their occupiers? EE: Absolutely. I support the right of every human being under an oppressive military rule to resist this rule by any means possible. I do not believe Israel has a right to occupy millions of human beings without every decent human simple basic rights for their name. And I do not believe that Israel will change on its own. At no point in history there was a state or a power that had the power and control over other human beings and benefit from it and just decide to let go of this power on its own. It was always forced on them by the resistance of the people underneath them. All the intervention of other forces around the world. And unfortunately, as I do support the Palestinian right to resist, in any way, I do not believe that their resistance is enough. I do believe that the rest of the world has to interfere. And what's going on in Palestine—there's nothing else we can do except for giving all the Palestinians equal rights and starting a new state, a new equality system for all human beings on the ground."

[sepublic]

I’m concerned that a lot of people’s progressivism begins and ends at the production and/or consumption of progressive media. Because the message in a piece of media is only useful insofar as the effect it has on a person, if that person lets it motivate them to do actual, tangible good.

I think a lot of people are content with touting their media as ‘progressive’ but without being actionable about it. And so in practice, functionally, they are no different than an “apolitical” conservative who doesn’t care at all and so isn’t bothering to put good out into the world.

Part of it probably comes from certain schools of thought where morality is defined by being a “good” person with “good” thoughts instead of like, someone who does pragmatic good for other people. But also I think the other part of it is just complacency, and the prioritization of stroking one’s ego over how enlightened they are. You can’t just shift blame to the message for not making this very point, because it shouldn’t have needed to, a message can never force you to act. That’s on you to actualize it.

I suspect a lot of corporations such as Disney are fine with shows like Andor because in the end, they’re banking on this; Viewers flocking to the newest media to revel over how progressive it is, and then calling it a day. They know we’re content on paying performative lip service to the idea of rebellion, and so it’s easy for them to cater to the progressive market.

In general, this is my concern and self-reflection with media; You can appreciate whatever witty things it has to say and what meaningful lessons it offers, but are you actually applying them? If a character is mature in a situation, do you look at yourself for whether you’ve done the same? When the showrunners themselves encourage you to donate to a charity, do you? Have you helped a Palestinian fundraiser?

I think stuff like representation is important; I was affected negatively by the lack of it growing up. Stereotypes are still harmful. But people would rather half-ass their media rather than take it all the way through into reality or even just their engagement in fandom, and in the end you can appreciate how certain ideas are being made mainstream as a confirmation of changing values, and will educate other people like kids into legitimate action or maturity AND be one of those people yourself. You can easily do both yknow.

So yes you doing good work doesn’t make you beyond reproach in how you tackle things in writing or your internalized biases. We should still read feminist and race theory to be mindful and self-aware, to apply more lessons to ourselves. But also, having “good” thoughts alone doesn’t actually make you a good person, you still need to be kind. In the end you’re quite milquetoast and useless if you can’t put the message for action into action. Sometimes the message says don’t do X and you aren’t, at least you’re not adding to the harm in the world. But we could easily do a bit more by adding to the good. We all want to think of ourselves as Dumbo.

…Anyhow, it’s easy to write/reblog this to pat oneself on the back for being more woke than others and telling them off, only to not do anything with this either.

[merwgue]

Story time for the "💋" annon I'm going to smooch you back

So a little background info about me. My dad works in a job that needs him to travel every 5 minutes, back then when I was a kid, he didn't want me to grow up without an identity so he just left me with my mom in Egypt because he wanted me to grow up around arab culture. Fun fact about Egypt, there's actually alot of Palestinian immigrants there, for me I didn't need to immigrate, my family was very lucky to live in the area of Palestine where its very furnished and safe from bombing, some of my family even still lives there BUT THATS BESIDE THE POINT. My bf, I'm going to say his name is Sultan. He was also a Palestinian immigrant to Egypt. We were really close (platonically) and we really really liked each other. But then, stuff started happening in my family, and my dad started taking me with him to countries, we started going to country to country (18 to be exact) and by the time I was 14-15, we settled in England. I get into school, and I find the bitch in front of my face. To say I was flabbergasted, is actually an understatement.

We start being besties and he's also extremely popular so by extent I also became popular and everyone started shipping us, and they called us the doe and lion (my last name means doe in arabic and he plays rugby and they nickname him lion)

And I was down bad for him tbh, but he was worst because he always asked me out but my dad said he really likes sultan but he thinks until I'm a bit older I should focus on studying, and I trusted my dad's opinion because he RARELY ever says no

Sultan even wrote on the walls "I love *insert last name* and he ended up suspended for a day but that's another story

And last month during our head girl and head boy speech he wrote like a love confession AND READ IT INFRONT OF THE WHOLE COLLEGE YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP

And it was like 11pm and I was so conflicted I even texted @viktoriaashleyyx

I was like "is he hot?" And while I was on call with my bestie I was texted him like "Okay fine, I can bless you with my presence" and that's it😭💋

[nightcolorz]

hey bro love your posts never stop entertaining us pls

random ass question whats your favorite minor character from tvc?

Thank u ❤️❤️ 😁😁

this is a touch question lol bcus I have so many favorite minor characters, I’m a tvc minor character fanatic. I can’t choose one so I’m just gonna list of all my fav minor characters lmao.

I love Khayman hes so real. He reminds me of a socially anxious large dog who just really wants to make friends but he keeps scaring them off 😭. That part in queen of the damned where he reacts to the popularity of vampires in pop culture like a kid seeing themselves represented in tv for the first time was so funny omh i was living. Vampire from ancient Egypt buys Dracula cosplay bcus he wants ppl to like him was a genius idea thanks Anne rice. Khayman just, his whole personality reminds me of a character who’d be in what we do in the shadows he’s so inspired. Omg remember when he was so excited to go to lestats concert and meet other vampires and then he’s inside for two seconds, instantly gets overstimulated, and then sits outside for the rest of the time 😭 Khayman might be me guys.

I also love Fareed and Seth 😭😭. I love that Anne rice casually wrote an ancient Egyptian vampire and a modern day Anglo Indian vampire falling in gay love with each other and funding an unhinged vampire mad science hospital, and the Egyptian vampire is AKASHA’S SON 😭😭. the reveal that Akasha has a living vampire son who has been quietly living under the radar for the entire book series just practicing science and pursuing his passion for healthcare alongside his long term partner had me clapping and cheering I stg. They also have sm personality 😭 especially Fareed he’s so iconic. This bitch tricked lestat into giving him his sperm for cloning experiments and he served cunt while doing it. I love that they raised Lestat’s clone son as their gay dads, just so much there. Fareed and Seth u will always be famous

BENJI MAHMOUD!!! I love him sm. I’m also a big fan of sybelle but Benji occupies my mind a concerning amount. Like what kind of character?? There is sm going on with him. First of all he’s Bedouin and Palestinian and then he’s human trafficked to America by an insane man who wants him to be the house slave and take care of his disabled sister second of all he’s twelve and he’s a canon genius and he chain smokes to cope with his insane life third of all he is turned into a vampire by Marius and grows up into an immortal child who’s unfazed by being twelve for ever bcus hes such a chad it doesn’t affect him and he becomes a rich and famous business owner who wears fedoras and runs a vampire podcast and he single handedly kickstarts the plot of Prince lestat and causes the vampire government to happen bcus hes such a good activist he convinces all the characters to be better. Anyways wtf. Also I love sybelle she’s such a darling ❤️ Benji and sybelle and Armand’s little family is everything to me.

DENIS??? Wtf even was that. On a similar note Antoine. I love them both bcus they r incredibly interesting and rlly sad and they reveal so much evil about my fav characters anddd they both happened to be unforgivably butchered by the amc show ❤️

andddd last and also least haha kidding, Benedict ❤️. I feel so bad for him 😭but he’s also so real. Ben was the guy who Magnus manipulated and pretended to be friends with and then he chained him up and forced him to turn him into a vampire 😰. I love the concept where he was the first and only vampire to ever be “raped” by his fledgling, and I feel bad that all the other vampires treat him like shit for it 😭. He’s just a little guy. He’s such a pillow princess also. I can’t count all the times in Prince lestat where Bens described as lounging gracefully on the bed or whatever. Forever twink and hashtag loving it. What a dude

[fairuzfan]

Hey, I've been wondering why you like the Hunger Games. Is there anything that makes it special or appealing for you?

Oh boy, Hunger Games discussions! Here's an essay for you :)

When I was growing up, I read about the districts and the way the capitol profits off their labor — how they have every luxury in the Capitol with doing absolutely none of the work whereas the people doing all the work are the ones that are the most oppressed, facing restrictions in speech and movement to the point of being in literal cages — and I thought "Just like in Palestine!" And not just in Gaza either. The West Bank with their settlements are the same way in that their movement and speech are so vehemently restricted despite the fact that much of the labor (in farming, manufacturing, etc) is being taken to feed the imperial empire.

With the games themselves, I saw the way in which Palestinian children are expected to play in the world stage — pander to millions for the hopes that they would take pity as they walk into a death arena and perhaps donate to help them. It's dehumanization to an extreme scale, but it's what happens in real life. Some people decide to help certain Palestinians because of what Palestinians say or don't say — not because they're actual human beings who deserve life for no other reason than being born. People can coo and coddle the Palestinian children who articulate their struggles well, pretending to care about them, but they don't really. They're just there for entertainment. They're there for people to feel like they're helping some poor kid who they have no hand in their oppression at all. The fact that the children of the districts feel like they have to sell themselves is the same in real life. Just think about that conference where that kid in Gaza did a whole speech in English pleading for people to stop the bombing campaigns.

What I really liked about Katniss, narratively speaking, is her romances with Peeta and Gale not because I felt like she was especially interested in either one of them romantically (Katniss ace/aro rep to the max) but because of what the romance signified and how each one had a specific purpose. I remember reading analysis about how Peeta represented "peace" and Gale represented "revolution" and at the time I agreed, but now I feel a bit differently.

Peeta might represent "peace," true, but he was abandoned and abused his entire life. He was sent off to the games where even his parents had no hope for him. But even though he suffered physical and verbal abuse, he still gave Katniss that bread even if he personally suffered for it. I'm not sure if that represents "peace" so much as it represents "love." Even thinking about it now, how he risked his safety to give bread to the girl he loved... for some reason in these days, I cry whenever I think about it. The whole world had abandoned Katniss and her family, leaving her to starve. But that one little boy cared so much about her that he gave her bread despite what his mother told him to do. He risked everything — at the time, a little boy can only comprehend having his safety as a possession — for Katniss. For someone to love Katniss so much... in a weird way to me, that's heartbreaking. Even as I type this, I'm actually sobbing. My sincerest hope right now is that someone gives the people of Gaza and the West Bank that bit of bread, that bit of love, even if its at their own expense.

And this is not to say I think Gale wasn't necessary and important to the story too. I think Katniss needed both of them at different points. The fact that Gale had wanted to leave and live in the woods, and it being a serious consideration instead of it being ridiculed as "cowardly," was something I appreciated. I don't think its especially valid of us to tell people who are under the worst oppression imaginable how to live their lives and whether to put their lives on the line or not. That's not our choice to make. Katniss ultimately stays of course, but she constantly thinks about how the world would have been different if she did accept Gale's request to leave. I think a lot of people do think about that, honestly, when they're fighting oppression. What if they just left it all behind?

Katniss, herself, though, never really wanted to pick either boy. Throughout the story, she feels like she's forced to pick between them, being pulled in either direction, feeling pressured by each boy to choose. And I think that in itself is a perfect metaphor. She's being put in this situation — forced to participate in the games, forced to pretend to marry Peeta (which, false "peace" marriage orchestrated by Snow btw, great narrative choice there), forced to participate in the games AGAIN, and finally forced to lead an entire REBELLION... to me that's a pretty apt summation of what its like under oppression. The people who are the most oppressed don't WANT to fight — they just want their humanity to be recognized. They just want to live. They're not jumping through hoops because they want to, they're just doing it because they have no other choice.

But, I think my absolute favorite part of the Hunger Games Trilogy is probably the last part of Mockingjay, the third book. I find myself rereading the ending of the book quite often. The part where Plutarch says "Who knows, maybe it might stick this time" in reference to the newfound "peace" they have now. The part where the people of District 12, despite having their entire village bombed and destroyed, coming back to rebuild and bury their dead. The part where Katniss lives with this almost unbearable trauma for the rest of her life. And this one quote that she says, after she kills President Coin — who herself took this rebellion as an opportunity to profit and oppress:

"I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself. I think that Peeta was onto something about us destroying one another and letting some decent species take over. Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children's lives to settle its differences."

And honestly, that's what I kind of feel sometimes as I watch children get shot down and murdered on TV both in Gaza and the West Bank. I can't understand the... unadulterated cruelty that these people show to Palestinians. Today, I heard Lindsay Grahm (an USAmerican politician) talk about Palestinians as if they all deserve to die in some of the most horrendous ways possible. I look at zionists online deny the humanity of Palestinians and ruthlessly call for their slaughter. I just genuinely can't comprehend why people hate us so much, why I continue to watch the destruction of my people for months on end and how I'm expected to live my life as normal. What is the point of life if we do not value it? What's the point of living on like this, putting money over each of our lives? What's the point? Truly?

Why do we live in this life to watch skyscrapers be built on top of graveyards?

But then I think about how Katniss comes out of this again. She builds a family. The people that were around her from before, although a smaller group... they're still there and they're alive. They care about whether she lives or dies and force her to eat. To live. Greasy Sae made her food for months. Peeta came back to be with her. Gale's friend came back and buried the dead and rebuilt District 12. Buttercup, the cat that loved Prim more than anything, came back. Haymitch helped with the book of memories, raising geese for himself even if he was drunk. But they never forget. And they never forgave.

Katniss, she plays this game where she recounts all the good things she's ever seen anyone do, and I think "maybe that will happen to us. Maybe we will live our lives remembering the good to counter the bad."

So yeah, that's a big part of why I love the series so much. Throughout the entire three books, first and foremost we care about Katniss and we want what's best for her. That's something I think a lot of people forget. We say "Free Palestine" not for some abstract political concepts, but rather so that we can treasure the sanctity of life and live in a society that puts humanity over power.

I want the ending of Mockingjay to come true, for the Liberation of Palestine to be the peace that sticks.

[fromgoy2joy]

The anger is gone

I’ve felt so much anger recently. These past few months, that’s just how I’ve been living.

Not at Palestinians fleeing for their lives and who have suffered unimaginably. I want the war to end, desperately. But my fury lingered- at Hamas. At each person who celebrated, denied, and/or excused it October 7th and beyond. At the people who I loved who see my community as an acceptable target for righteousness. At the rampant rise of jew-hatred.

It only got worse when I played with the children in our community. Every Friday night, I’d be the one who would entertain them at our rabbi’s house, with makeshift puppets, drawing whatever prompt given, and making up stories for whatever they wanted. And every time they’d laugh, I’d feel a stab in my heart- 

How could anyone want to kill us? How could anyone want to hurt us? And the children? What have they done besides babble out hebrew words ? 

It worsened whenever I held a newborn in my arms and listened to the very Jewish name his parents gave him or her.

When I had to wonder about that same babies- "Will they be safe in the world we have now ? In the world they'll grow up in, that we have in part created? Will they get to be old men and women? When will they learn of evil- in their superhero cartoons or when their preschool gets a bomb threat?"

I grit my teeth when peers protested hostage shabbat tables, or talked loudly at coffee shops where they wished for the death of "Zionists", uncritically rehashing nazi talking points. It's a unique kind of hopelessness, to see fellow young and hopeful students- the world changers- lend themselves so easily to hate. I learned to contend with it, but I will never regain that hope I had before. Or rather, the one hope I had that the people of today are fundamentally different than the ones of the past. Where in fact, the same vile ugliness remains in the form of infographics on Instagram and in the hearts of English literature majors.

And now, I sit here in early January still in grieving of the world I thought I knew that had been ripped up to pieces. And the anger has puttered out into a sadness I think I'll always carry. I cannot trust the activist, the academic, or my generation. I can only speak out, but not too harshly and in acceptable terms. But most of all, I have started my Jewish journey with the knowledge that my destined to be adoptive family are incredibly in need of protection.

But most of all, what I know I can do, is keep showing up to shabbat dinners and speaking in high squeaky voices for the puppets. I can make the kids laugh. And for now, that'll be my superpower.

[helpfree-palestine]

bisan is live right now and i seriously don’t understand how people can’t see what is going on

as she is speaking, you can hear the incredibly loud buzzing of the israeli war drones

they’ve nicknamed the war-crafts zennane because of their loud buzzing

she’s talking about the kids who were kidnapped by israeli soldiers and the massacre that happened earlier that day

she’s talking about the desperate measures that palestinian people need to go to just to survive

she’s talking about her life before october 7 and how much she wanted to grow up and be an influencer

at one point, she starts crying because of how much she just wants to go back to living normally

she’s talking about how a hospital that helped service 10,000 people was targeted in october

someone asks her what she wants more than anything in the world, she answers that she wants to one day be able to forget the horrors of what is happening

she’s talking about what it feels like to lose EVERYTHING you’ve been planning for your entire life

these people have little to no food, no clean water, no hygiene products, nothing.

bisan was grateful to be able to eat a moldy orange for breakfast because even though it’s not good for her health, it’s her only option.

as the live is going on, two massive bombs strike right near her which shake the entire ground

they are being wiped off of the face of the earth and people are looking away

you read about this kind of stuff in history books and always think to yourself, “i would definitely help these people if this was happening now”.

but IT IS HAPPENING NOW

you may think that you can’t help but you CAN

boycott whatever you can that supports israel because that is funding the genocide of these people

it doesn’t matter what you think about boycotting, it absolutely works. support businesses that support palestine and boycott the ones that are against them

don’t turn your back to genocide.

[hindahoney]

Hey, so I just wanted to thank u for talking about all this. I'm a jew whose entire identity was rooted by fear, staying quiet, hiding every aspect of my self and on being jewish; to the point where I was pretty much taught by every jewish adult during my childhood that if anyone were to ask wether I was jewish, I was supposed to run and hide bc their intentions were most likely harmful (bc there had been an attempted kidnapping in my town BC the kid was jewish recently at the time). I had to leave my jewish school and dislocate myself from my culture bc my school received 2 bomb threats while I was in it in less than 2 years and the synagogue had also received a bunch of threats + had had general antisemitic crimes happening in it's surroundings.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling, but you talking alot about both Judaism and alot of the culture, along with you speaking out against antisemitism now with the anger and proof it deserves makes me a little less nervous. Alot of ppl use these genuinely awful things happening to Palestinian citizens to justify their hatred for us, to laugh at deaths of other citizens just bc they're at the other side of the border. I felt, and still feel a bit, like I was going crazy, especially with the ammount of hatred so many ppl on the west, and close to where I live, seemed to have towards jwish ppl. Not the current government of Israel, or it's genuinely shitty actions, but jewish ppl as a whole. Justifying the death of civilians with so much joy, differentiating between "good" and "bad" jews like we're little animals. Seeing someone speak out about it so openly made me a little less scared.

Maybe one day I'll be able to speak out against it with as much courage as you, but thanks to past experiences, I still have some growing to do before doing it as loudly and with as much pride. For now, I'll help where I can in the sidelines.

Again, sorry for the mopey rambling, just thanks for what you're doing in general.

A lot of Jews relate to how you're feeling right now. But if there were any time to show your pride and strength in being Jewish, it would be now.

[wadebae]

[copy pasta post because OP needed to turn off reblogs due to harassment. Another person asked them about doing this and they said it's fine, they just can't personally handle the harassment right now. These are not my words. Not giving credit solely to protect OP's inbox. Reblog or don't, but I wanted this on my blog.]

I have been noodling over posting this for several days but I think it's important for some people to hear.

At a March on Saturday, at a pro Palestine march, my group and I were targeted by by nazis. Not targeted for violence, but targeted for recruitment. They weren't wearing swastikas, they weren't spewing blatant antisemitic hate speech. They seemed like two normal dudes. They marched with us, talked about how awful everything in Palestine was, how we wished world leaders would grow a pair and hold Israel responsible for fucking war crimes, how existing in the world right now was hard. They were empathetic, they were kind, they seemed like genuine good dudes.

Until we passed a synagogue where people were handing our water to marchers. They had signs defending Palestine on their table. But the tone of the conversation changed. These two seemingly normal dudes started talking about how "performative" the gesture felt, that Jewish people should be doing more. That they needed to PROVE it. They started talking about "Zionist" propaganda in the US, about how it was deeply entrenched in capitalism. Things that, on the surface, seemed reasonable but it set off alarm bells in my head.

When I was a kid, I remember getting the speech of "don't repeat anything your uncle or cousin so and so says and don't argue with them. Try to avoid them but if you can't be polite." Because those uncles and cousins said a lot of hateful things about anyone who wasn't like them, but their favorite targets were black people and Jewish people. I would find out as an adult it was because many of those uncles and cousins were in the Klan. When I studied hate symbols for a class in college, I found my self looking at images I'd seen on arms and necks and hands my whole life, because I live in an area of the US where the KKK is still around. And standing in that crowd, listening to these guys talk, i had the most horrible realization I've had in a long time.

We were being fished by Nazis. We were a group of able body, white American leftists. At a march in support of stopping the murder and genocide of Palestinians, these motherfuckers were out here, trying to find people they could get to hate Jewish folks. I wasn't the only one in my group who clocked it, and when we called them on it, the masks came off. They called us a bunch of "Jew loving bitches" before they moved on.

But we're marched with these guys for a couple hours, talked with them, laughed with them, brought them into our circle. For a moment we forgot we also weren't immune to propaganda, we weren't immune to people who make hate sound reasonable and that people like that never start out saying the quiet part out loud, they lean on your anger and your sense of helplessness to move you where they want you. If the last eight years has taught us anything, it's that fascists know how to adjust to the times, to work with what they got, to recruit. They know how to radicalize people, how to weaponize anger and helplessness. And I'm sitting here, every day, seeing posts that sound exactly like these guys did and it worries me.

I know I'm talking to the No Reading Comprehension Website, but I'm begging you guys to develop some now.

You are not immune to propaganda. We are all angry, as we fucking should be. We are watching an entire culture, thousands of lives, whole bloodlines, being wiped out in real time, and for many of us our nations are at best, wringing their hands, and at worst, shipping them weapons, all to protect capitalist greed. It's monstrous, it's disgusting. But look, REALLY LOOK, at the things you are tweeting, sharing, look at the language and how it's used. Take the time to educate yourself about how hate groups use social justice causes and civil unrest to recruit, research the posts your spreading, check your sources. If you are out protesting, be situationally aware, and do not be afraid to clock and call out Nazis. Listen to Jewish people, listen to their concerns, educate yourself on what Zionism and antisemitism actually are and how they can be weaponized. It doesn't feel as good as rage, it doesn't feel as good as having a group you can functionally rail against in a way we can't against a nation a world away, but it's a skill that's going to help you and a lot of other people in the long run.