#Illegal colonisation

[claraameliapond]

The actual truth - please educate yourselves on all of this xxxx

The Vast Majority of Isralies are DUAL CITIZENSHIP HOLDERS

Illegal colonial occupation as a created nation state IS NOT THE SAME AS A COUNTRY WITH AN INDIGENOUS POPULATION

This is invasion

It always has been

The Nabka hasn't ended

[mostlykind]

the issue I have with the framing of Israeli “civilians” as these innocent bystanders is that it completely ignores their complicity in an illegal colonial settlement. they’re not innocent in the slightest. without them “Israel” itself would not exist and Palestinians would not be consistently, forcibly displaced from their homes. these supposed “innocent” civilians are literal illegal settlers who have stolen land and homes and claimed it as their own when it is not

[nanamins-overtime]

Settlements and annexation are illegal under international and human rights law.

Apartheid is illegal under international and human rights law.

Collective punishment is illegal under international and human rights law.

The use of excessive force is illegal under international and human rights law.

Ethnic cleansing is illegal under international and human rights law.

Genocide is illegal under international and human rights law.

Withholding food, water, electricity and essential medical aid is illegal under international and human rights law.

Palestinans have the right to armed struggle and self-determination. Resistance is not terrorism. Colonisation is.

[chaithetics]

It's not called New Caledonia

It's called Kanaky

(Kanaky is under the occupation of France)

It's called West Papua

Which is not a part of Indonesia

(West Papua is under the occupation of Indonesia)

It's not called Easter Island/ Isla de Pasqua

It's called Rapa Nui

(Rapa Nui is under the occupation of Chile)

It's not called New Zealand

It's called Aotearoa

(Aotearoa was colonized by Britain)

Hawai'i is not USA. It's Moana Nui

(Hawai'i is under the occupation of USA)

- Moana Love (@moanaloveniu instagram)

[nando161mando]

"Settler colonialism is killing us" (EN: English)

[rebellum]

Me trying to explain to white trans people from america/canada that even if they experience marginalization and oppression from a variety of sources that they still have some privilege because no one is The Most Oppressed Person Ever

Insert meme

[iamheretemporarly]

“The land belongs to Jews!”

Religion does not equal ethnicity

Do you know that?

It’s important to me that you know that

[scottishcommune]

Below the cut is a template email to send to Edinburgh Pride regarding sponsorship from Aegon, who have investments linked to the genocide in Palestine. Please feel free to use this text or edit it and make it your own and send it to contact@prideedinburgh.co.uk

Dear Edinburgh Pride,

As a queer person living in Edinburgh, I was deeply saddened to learn that the march partner for Edinburgh Pride 2024 is Aegon.

In December 2023 the ‘Don’t Buy Into Occupation Coalition’ published a report that showed Aegon have US$564million invested via shares and bonds in companies operating in illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories. Source: https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf

We are watching a live-streamed genocide every day - over 36,000 people in Palestine have been murdered by Israeli forces, including at least 15,000 children. The brutality of these atrocities are unthinkable, with evidence of torture and targeting of hospitals, ambulances and refugee camps.

We all have a responsibility to do what we can to end this genocide. As queer people, we are part of a rich history of resisting oppression and dehumanisation - of both ourselves and those we stand in solidarity with. Pride started as a protest against homophobia, transphobia and police violence. It is an important moment to come together as a community to celebrate queer joy and resilience.

But how can we celebrate using profits stained with the blood of our siblings in Palestine?

Aegon has $564million invested in companies that have been listed by the UN as “raising human rights concerns” for their operations in illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories, In 1948, 750,000 Palestinian people were displaced from their homes and lands and since then, Israeli settlements have been used to spread this process of colonisation.

In addition to this figure, Aegon also has major investments in Eaton Corp Plc., who supply parts for helicopters and fighter jets to the Israeli military and have recently been the target of major protests at their factory in Dorset. They also invest in Amazon, who support the Israeli military with surveillance technology used against Palestians.

Israel has long used ‘pinkwashing’ as a tactic to justify the brutal repression of Palestinians, using queer people to legitimise this horrific violence. We refuse to allow this to be done in our name.

The tide is turning on companies like Aegon that profit from investments in the companies complicit in genocide. Recently, both Hay and Edinburgh Book Festival have dropped Baillie Gifford as a sponsor after over 800 authors called on them to divest from companies involved in Israel and the fossil fuel industry.

I ask that Edinburgh Pride:

Calls on Aegon to commit to divest from companies involved in supplying technology to Israel and operating in illegal settlements.

Drop Aegon as a sponsor until they are able to show evidence of divestment.

Publicly call for a ceasefire and a free Palestine.

There is no pride in genocide.

I look forward to hearing your response.

XX

Sources:

Investments in companies operating in illegal settlements https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf

Investments in Eaton https://extranet.secure.aegon.co.uk/static/sxhub/pdf/client-pen-distribution.pdf

Investments in Amazon https://www.aegon.co.uk/content/dam/auk/assets/publication/fund-factsheet/standard_bkj9zs0.pdf

Israel’s pinkwashing: https://bdsmovement.net/pinkwashing

War on Gaza statistics: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker

Edinburgh book festival ends Baillie Gifford sponsorship: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm553zrr3e4o

[starlightshadowsworld]

This video is from 2021 but still holds true to this day.

It's of a Palestinian child telling an Israeli soilder to get off her land.

And this, this is unironically the biggest threat to Israel.

That the people of the world are not with them.

That they are exposed as the illegal occupation colonising land that does not belong to them, while they try to wipe out the indigenous Palestinian population.

A six year old child telling them this land isn't there's, that's what they are most afraid of.

50% of Gaza is made up of children like this.

This is who Israel want to wipe out.

Hamas even used a recording of 2 children speaking in Arabic and the Israeli soilders came running.

Not because they knew Hamas was there, but because they heard the sound of children and came running with their guns.

They are the terrorists.

They are the ones carpet combing civilians, killing Palestinians and Israeli civilians.

They are the monsters.

But they aren't feared.

[akajustmerry]

As a second generation Lebanese Australian from a Lebanese family who's always been pro-Palestine, it's so important to view the occupation's drone bombing of Beirut in context. 1) Zionist forces have been bombing the south for over 70 days with missiles and illegal white phosphorus bombs. 2) The 100s of 1000s od Palestinians in Lebanon are heavily discriminated against by the Lebanese government. Palestinian refugees who have lived in Lebanon for generations are denied rights to own property, work, healthcare, and education. 3) This is a reality that co-exists with the Zionist occupation historically treating Lebanon as an "enemy state", with the occupation invading, occupying, and massacring people in Lebanese territories as early as 1949 and as recent as 2006. 4) There is an ultra-right Christian nationalist sect in Lebanon who have historically supported the Zionist occupation, going so far as to form a small militia to assist the occupation in the Shatila and Sabra refugee massacres in which over 3,000 Palestinian and Lebanese people were slaughtered. 5) The Zionist occupation has been leveraging Lebanon's dire economic crisis to take more control over Lebanon's oil and gas fields. There is a huge history behind the occupation's drone strike and assassinations in Beirut today. A history that shows how the Zionist entity's boot on the necks of the surrounding governments has only led to the perpetration of more violence against Palestinians in these nations, as well as citizens of those nations. This is what settler colonial entities do. It's all they can do: division and violence. And when the coloniser can't do the violence themselves, they engineer conditions for others to do it for them under threat of violence. A ceasefire is not enough. The Zionist occupation of Palestine and the Levant must end.

[claraameliapond]

Parent of photojournalist and activist killed by Israel while trying to protect children from sniper fire "I think one of the lessons we learnt from that was that you can't place any reliance on Israeli accounts of events. And I think that's why I feel it's particularly relevant today, when we're hearing Israelis explain their actions in Gaza, so I think that was our concern, that it was happening again. Because it does seem that that's the Idf's approach: to routinely misrepresent what are ordinary civilian targets as, in some way tainted with a military aspect and therefore justify their attacking them" ... "What you must remember is that that barbarity, was incited by the ongoing barbarity of the Israeli policies towards Palestine."

Even supporters of Israel are aware and critical of its horrific apartheid and ethnic cleansing, genocidal approach to Palestine

[wszczebrzyszynie]

despite humanity spreading all over the universe in post-space colonisation era, the only other life form ever found was a fungi-like microorganism living in giant colonies, which by their appearance resemble earth minerals. it can be found deep below the surface of different, seemingly unrelated moons and planets, desperately hiding from all forms of light. commonly known as sculk, it is the newest and most important discovery in recent human history, although very little is actually known about it

Tango is a former hasa engineer, one of the people who completly revolutionized space mining, renowned for his work on the nature of sculk, and currently a wanted terrorist on the run, after he blew up a significant chunk of callisto, one of jupiters moons, durning an illegal sculk mining operation. Completly unfit for the criminal lifestyle, its a miracle he hasnt been caught yet, especially with many bounty hunters and criminals alike on his tail

(aka an old, gwitch/trigun/cowboy bebop inspired story idea revamped to fit minecraft themes, so i could draw some cool retrofuturistic designs. the price is in pln because me and aku thought it would be funny... poland can into space)

[opencommunion]

"On October 19, Sarah Mahamid watched helplessly from a window as Israeli security forces shot her younger brother. Taha, 15, had been playing with a friend outside their house in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem. The 19-year-old screamed as her brother fell to the ground. Their father, Ibrahim, ran out of the front door to get his son, but a sniper shot him too.

... Nearly 1,500 Palestinians have been unlawfully killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in the past 16 years – 98 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Each of them, like Taha and Ibrahim, has a story and loved ones who mourn them. The frequency of the killings have spiked in recent years with Israel killing 509 Palestinians in 2023. That is more than double the number recorded by OCHA in any previous year. ... Israeli officials have for years backed a shoot-to-kill policy regardless of whether the Palestinians being shot posed a threat. Israel has even authorised its army to shoot at stone throwers and has handed out assault rifles to Israeli Jews living in illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Settlers killed 17-year-old Omar Abdel Ghani Hamid when they attacked his village in the West Bank on April 13. Omar was one of several young men who had confronted the settlers to stop them from beating up Palestinians and attacking their homes. Omar’s father, Ahmed, said his son and his friends scared the settlers away even though they were not carrying weapons. However, one of the settlers returned with a pistol and shot Omar. ... Army raids and extrajudicial killings are part of a broader attempt to keep Palestinians in the West Bank 'afraid,' said Zaid Shuabi, analyst and activist with the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq. But it has ultimately led to the formation of a new generation of armed groups, often established by young people who are fed up with the occupation’s transgressions. Israel’s response to this new wave of resistance has been to target entire communities to crush the morale of Palestinians, Shuabi said.

'They want to reshape the Palestinian mind into thinking that we shouldn’t even dare to resist. And if we do, then we will pay a high price,' he told Al Jazeera. 'This is about intimidating us. They want to put us down … and to colonise our minds.'

Sarah believes that was the purpose behind the Israeli attack on her family. She said that while her father and brother bled to death on the street, Israeli soldiers entered her house. The Israeli army then cut off the water and electricity to their home. At one point, one of the Israeli soldiers began beating Sarah’s other brother with the butt of his rifle, telling him to keep silent.

Moments before the soldiers left, Sarah mustered up the courage to ask why they terrorised her family. 'He said, ‘To scare you,’' Sarah told Al Jazeera. 'I couldn’t believe it. I wondered what was wrong with them. They killed my brother and my father just to scare me.'"

[ef-1]

In light of Charles becoming the new brand ambassador for Puma, I want to remind everyone that Puma is one of THE main brands on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) targets list.

Do not fall for this shit, I don't care if you like anything they come out with. People are purposefully obtuse about why Puma is on the Boycott list and ITS NOT BECAUSE THEY DRESS THE ISRAELI NATIONAL TEAM! Puma is the title sponsor of the Israel Football Association which sponsors teams that operate on illegal settlements on Palestinian land, these settlements are regarded as war crimes under international law. From the official BDS list:

In December of 2023, Puma announced that they would not renew their sponsorship with the Israel Football Association (after the death of 30,000 Palestinians at the time). However they remain on the Boycott list until 2025, when they actually commit to divesting from Israel because they have engaged in misinformation in the past when coming under sustained pressure. In 2021, Puma claimed to stop supporting Israeli teams on illegal settlements but an investigation by BDS found that they had lied and it was simply PR crisis management: (1) they lied about not supporting teams on illegal settlements, (2) they lied about having Israeli distributors who have branches operated on stolen land and (3) they lied that one of their main licencees does not operate on stolen land.

So until Puma officially abides by that divestment, BDS have kept them on the Boycott list because they have a history of lying.

+ reminder Puma also sponsor Ferrari and Mercedes.

Unless their cheap, ugly shit is worth more to you than Palestinian lives, you can wait until they officially divest from paying for illegal settlements, so that colonisers can play on stolen land.

[tungledotedu]

prismatic bell is shamelessly doing genocide denial again (archive org version), with some points such as:

'the keffiyeh is a symbol of arab colonialism'

'Every civilian killed is a travesty to be laid on Sinwar’s bloody hands. But…it’s actually also REALLY GOOD for urban warfare'.

no amount of 'it's tragic, i know it sucks, it's heatbreaking' will make up for the fact that xe LITERALLY SAID THERE IS A 'GOOD' AND 'PROPORTIONATE' NUMBER OF DEAD CIVILIANS. including children and babies. and this is right after xe called them colonisers.

xe's still desperately trying to deny the death toll. 'the numbers as given have been proven false. Someone was literally able to show they’re generated with a math formula. (I have articles backing this up, but again, will have to add when I’m off mobile, sorry.)'

also known as 'i can't add more sources right now, but i DEFINITELY have them!' (uses memri tv as a source)

'actually it's completely legal for israel to target hospitals because they fabricate evidence of weapons in those hospitals.' who's going to tell xir about how the iof mistook an arabic calendar for a list of names. also, legality=/=morality.

'DELIBERATE TARGETING OF HOSPITALS: yes, Israel has bombed or raided several hospitals because they were being used as weapons depots or missile launch sites. This is completely legal—what would be illegal would be raids on hospitals not being used as military sites.'

'hamas is the one that's committing genocide! if israel was really trying to eradicate all of gaza it would be done already!'

62% of homes and 84% of healthcare facilities have been damaged or destroyed. as well as more than 80% of schools.

'what is happening in ukraine IS genocide! but not palestine!'

since this person seems so fixated on 'proportionate' death tolls...

ukraine has a population of 34 million, and the 2022 russian invasion has resulted in around 34,000 civilian casuallties as of june 2024. that's a lower ratio of civilian casualties to total population (1:1000). mariupol and the rest of donetsk oblast (population: 4 million) have sustained the highest number of casualties, with over 25,000 dead. this means the ratio is 1:160. according to this user, this is enough to warrant the label of genocide.

(edit: the number of dead ukrainian civilians may be higher at 100,000, making it 1:340).

but the gaza strip had a population of 2.4 million in 2022 (see the quote below), and the estimate of around 40,000 deaths has been outdated for some time now due to israel's destruction of gazan healthcare infrastructure and staff. even without a more accurate death toll, the ratio is higher (1:60). but for some reason (racism), it's not enough to be called a genocide.

the death toll in gaza is estimated to be much higher. according to the lancet,

Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.

and this is a conservative estimate.

also, according to this user's 'logic', with a lower ratio of casualties, russia is actually 'doing urban warfare' better than israel. so much for being pro-ukraine.

all of this disgusting vitriol is tacked on a post with artwork of jesus christ, because one of the sketches depicted him with a keffiyeh. i don't think prismatic bell has anything of worth to say about christianity.

(edIted on 20 july)

changed pronoun to xir. explanation here.

i've added a link to a source for 100,000 killed civilians in ukraine.

but still, given the choice between an academic article and an internet user, i'm going to trust the academic article to have actual research with sources and not 'fake numbers' for gaza.

i wrote a bit about how the alleged 1:1.5 civilian death ratio is incorrect under the read more, but then i realised, does it actually matter? should this be the metric by which we measure proportionality in the first place? should we forget how more palestinians have been killed by israel since its founding than the other way around?

if we only focus on this, we overlook the bigger picture, the alarming number of people who have been killed or left sickened and disabled. we have to keep the total population in mind, and the fact that israel also mass murders palestinians 'indirectly'. through starvation, cutting off electricity and water, blockading medical supplies as well as other resources, denying life-saving healthcare, and other means. what prismatic-bell said about russia targeting aid workers applies to israel too.

what about how israeli militants rape and sexually torture palestinian hostages? how they don't distinguish between combatants and civilians, and their 'definition' of terrorist includes elderly men and kids they've captured and stripped to their underwear? or how they've maimed people as part of rabin's 'break the bones' policy since the first intifada? or when the iof lied about letting an ambulance rescue hind rajab, only to kill the paramedics and shoot 335 bullets at the car where she was hiding? or how they haven't stopped bombing and sniping people despite orders from the icj and credible evidence of them committing genocide?

and 'fake numbers'? sounds like projection to me. here's what prismatic-bell said:

'And finally, let’s look at the civilian-to-combatant death toll. [...] With that said, the best data we have at this moment suggests one civilian killed for every 1.5 Hamas militants.'

no source given, but i'm guessing it came from wikipedia (where the sentence is unsourced as well).

here's an actual analysis by yagil levy on ha'aretz. it's outdated, but it argues that even early on in the genocide, the israeli army failed to show restraint in targeting civilians. none of that 'it's actually also REALLY GOOD for urban warfare' or 'entirely proportionate', or however you want to cruelly dismiss human life.

It follows that with a high proportion of noncombatants among the total number of those killed, we can conclude that the principle of discrimination was not adhered to, and an unusually high rate will reflect either a departure from the principle of proportionality or a highly flexible interpretation of it. [...] Thus, rather than this being a case of "collateral damage," it was the reverse: Because most of those harmed are civilians, what was produced is "collateral benefit," in the form of a low number of Gazan combatants killed.

This calculation shows that out of the total of 6,747, at least 4,594 individuals of both sexes who can be categorized as noncombatants were killed – 68 percent of the total. 

this is a different way of calculating the ratio. it takes civilian deaths and divides it by the total number of people killed, not by combatant deaths (as the 1:1.5 ratio does). with 2,153 combatants killed, the ratio is actually around 2:1, meaning it is biased towards civilians killed. this is an outdated estimate and is probably higher in reality.

or take the iof's more recent but probably inflated estimate of 16,000 dead hamas fighters, meaning 24,000 civilians out of the 40,000 killed. the ratio would be 1.5:1. or 170,000 civilians if we go by the lancet.. that's 10.5 civilians dead for 1 militant. (if anyone has better sources let me know.)

[tamamita]

Excuse me, sorry to bother you about this. I have a few people in my daily life who are severely misinformed about the Gaza genocide, how should I go about informing them of the facts before pulling a Frieren? They keep saying it's Hamas' fault if that puts anything into perspective. I feel there's no helping them and it's like talking to a wall but I'm kind of stuck dealing day to day with them.

Hamas was founded in the 80s as a resistance movement against Israel's oppressive rule and illegal occupation, even the Zionists claim that it was propped up by Israel as a response to the PLO, even if that wasnt true. If it was truly Hamas's fault, how do they account for every crime the settlers have committed before that. Do the Palestinians have no right to respond to the Nakba, which saw the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Are they just gonna sit back and see their native lands be stolen inch by inch? Furthermore, the founder of Israel, David Ben Gurion, specifically sought to expel the native Arabs from Palestine. (See: Plan Dalet), the Balfour declaration and the UN resolution did not even satisfy Ben Gurion's colonial ambitions because he wanted all of Palestine. All of this was premeditated and part of the current regime's policy. The Israelis are simply weaponizing antisemitism to perpetuate and justify its colonialism.

Why are the settlers occupying the West Bank, which is illegal under international law, ever since 1967? Hamas did not come into existence 20 years later. Why do you think Palestinians will grow frustrated and fight back when their lands are being stolen?

The matter of fact is that the founders of Political Zionism and Religious Zionism, Theodore Herlz and Je'ev Jabotinsky respectively, clearly desired to expel the Arabs, even admitting that they would put up a resistance in their attempt to colonize Palestine (read: Iron Wall and Herlz's letter to Cecil Rhodes). Their dehumanisation of Arabs and Arab Jews is a testament to European colonization under the pretence of religion and ethnicity, and this legacy prevails in the Israelis, all of whom are colonisers.

The Palestinians will forever have the right to defend themselves. I hope we all get to witness the fall of Tel Aviv in our lifetime, inshallah.