#Israel are banking on people being quiet

[toshidou]

Just in case what I posted got cut off with a long note, I'm posting it separately too.

Please, please, please do not be silent about what is happening in Palestine. If you are in America, call your local councillors, spam call the white house, share posts of what's happening, speak on this, do not be silent. We cannot afford to be quiet when the governments of this world are allowing a mass ethnic cleaning to happen in broad fucking daylight.

Israel have just bombed Gaza's communication network. They can no longer reach anyone from inside or outside their prison. If Israel was so bold to openly carpet bomb them for all the world to see, what will they do when the world is blind to their actions?

Do not forget the Palestinian people, scream their name and their cause from the rooftops, demand your governments call a ceasefire, do not let them forget that every single life taken in Palestine is on their heads, that their hands are irrevocably stained with their blood, that they snuffed out over 8,000 peoples hopes, dreams, and lives.

This does not need to be stated, but if you support what Israel is doing, if you are "remaining neutral", if you are claiming that you can't look or deal with what is happening, I urge you to educate yourself using the master list link here. Nothing is more important than stopping Israel and holding them fully accountable for their mass and disgusting, putrid, vile war crimes.

If this is something you refuse to change your stance on, you are a reprehensible idiot and a supporter of genocide.

[secular-jew]

From a real Lebanese (Phoenician).

‎I realize that when I speak my mind as a free human being, there will be responses. I can handle that.

‎However, people who are of the opposite conviction (mostly from the medieval Middle East) always respond with the same modus operandi... Every single time someone disagrees with them, they answer by calling us names like Donkey, Pig, or Dog (حمار، خنزير، كلب hmar, khanzeer, or kaleb) which they intend as big insults. They also call us either 'Zionists' or 'traitors' or 'agents'.

‎They simply have no logical answer, and they are so pathetically childish.

‎My feelings are not hurt. Far from it. But seeing so many here in the US chanting "I am Hamas" causes me to see the need to enlighten those who don't know the detailed history of the past 50 years.

‎Why do we oppose terrorist and don’t agree with their terrorism and savagery?

‎Here is the long history recap, told from my personal perspective.

‎I grew up in Lebanon with friends from all faiths: Druze, Muslim, and various Christians. We laughed and played and got along. Lebanon was generally peaceful and safe.

‎We welcomed the Palestinians as refugees to Lebanon.

‎The border between Lebanon and Israel was generally quiet compared with other Arab nations. Many Lebanese did not want war. Instead, we desired to live in peace and tranquility. We wanted prosperity, trade, tourism, and banking. The Lebanese used to be known as having joie de vie and some of the most fun people to be around.

‎Lebanon was referred to as “the Switzerland of the Middle East” for its beauty and its desire to remain peaceful and neutral and a bridge between the east and west.

‎Lebanon was also called “the Riviera of the Middle East”, "California on the Eastern Mediterranean", and “Green Lebanon” because trees covered the hills and mountains and there was no desert.

‎Beirut was known as "the Paris of the Middle East". Lebanon's Golden Age was a period characterized by its natural beauty, including snow-capped mountains, warm beaches, and a pristine coastline. Beirut was a glamorous city with luxury hotels, nightclubs, and a vibrant cultural and intellectual life. It was a popular destination for movie stars.

‎Tourists flocked to Lebanon. They went snow skiing in the morning then drove 2 hours to Beirut to water ski in the Mediterranean the afternoon of the same day. It was on everyone’s bucket list.

‎Tourists were safe and they had so much fun that they did not want to leave. Many came back year after year.

‎Over time, the Palestinians created a state-within-a-state and there were areas where they prevented even the Lebanese army from entering. Which country would accept that? Knowing the trouble it will eventually cause, the Lebanese started to become bitter about the situation.

‎Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to make Lebanon part of the United Arab Republic, causing a civil war in 1958.

‎I was in Middle School when the six-day war erupted in June of 1967. School was nearing summer break. We went out for our lunch break and heard that war has started. I saw Israeli fighter jets dog fighting with Syrian jets overhead. the Syrian jets lost.

‎Because Lebanon is very small, we could catch AM radio stations from the surrounding countries. All the Arab stations repeated the same lie: "Our forces have destroyed the enemy's air force, and we have reached the outskirts of Jerusalem." All lies and propaganda from Radio Egypt, Radio Damascus, and Radio Amman. Same garbage from each station. Propaganda in the news continues to this day. If a radio station does not toe the line, the regime will shut it down.

‎To hear the truth, we turned to Radio Israel, Voice of America, and the BBC.

‎Three years later, the PLO started fighting against the King of Jordan. Their headquarters were in Amman, Jordan and even though they were refugees in Jordan, they tried to overthrow King Hussein. The king's forces surrounded them and almost killed every single fighter. The world called for a cease fire and forced King Hussein to relent. That was a major mistake. The same mistake is being repeated these days when the world asks Israel to stop firing. When the world does that, the problem never ends. It only becomes a bigger problem. The world had repeatedly made that mistake in the Middle East.

‎The PLO relocated to Beirut. They started firing at Israel from Lebanese territory, causing Israel to retaliate against Lebanese territory. Who would blame them for retaliating?

‎Again, we did not want war. We wanted peace.

‎Knowing that civil unrest was on the horizon, I went to America to study medicine hoping that by the time I completed my studies, the situation would have calmed down. Little did I know what the future held.

‎In 1975, the PLO caused the devastating civil war that engulfed Lebanon for 15 years. My parents were displaced and lost everything. So did many families. The toll was horrendous.

‎The town where I was born was located in the mountains outside Beirut, only about 30 minutes by car. My family could not go there because of the civil war and lost access to our house for over 10 years. Because it was a house owned by Christians, it was hit on more than one occasion while other homes nearby were OK. The roof had a hole in it from artillery shells. It was repaired, yet more shells hit it, sending the message not to return to town.

‎Our orchards used to have apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees, olive trees, sumac, artichoke, pine trees, mulberry trees, fig trees, and other trees. Not being tended to nor watered, they all died. Even the stones used for terracing our orchard were looted. Thus, our neatly terraced land became a worthless desolate wasteland.

‎My brother was kidnapped, other friends died. We had an apartment in Christian East Beirut. The area was besieged for a while and there were times when there was no bread. Artillery fired from Muslim west Beirut was so intense at times that even crossing the narrow street to the bomb shelter was incredibly dangerous. My mother developed heart disease and Parkinson's from the stress and fear.

‎My family were on the run from Beirut to the Metn district, then to the Bekaa, then to Cyprus, then back to various areas in Lebanon. The war had made them nomads.

‎There were so many other stories that my family endured, but I will omit them for brevity's sake.

‎The Syrian army entered Lebanon as ‘peacekeepers’ and destroyed Lebanon. For many years, the Syrian army occupied our house in the mountains and used it as their headquarters in the town. To remain warm and acting like uncivilized primitives, they lit fires inside the house on our ornate ceramic-tiled floor in the living room.

‎In the 1980's, Hezbollah came to existence and wanted Lebanon to be part of the Iranian Islamic caliphate.

‎Syria occupied Lebanon ruthlessly. Many Lebanese were taken to Syrian jails and tortured. Many never returned.

‎The war "ended", and all factions were disarmed except Hezbollah. Syria and the Shiites were in control and dictated that. Hezbollah kept getting stronger due to intense backing from Iran. For years, Lebanon remained an occupied country. Syria plundered Lebanon and became rich.

‎Syria and Iran, using Hezbollah and their own agents, began assassinating any leader who opposed them. They killed Christians and Sunnis alike. In 2005, Bashar Al Assad 'summoned' Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (a Sunni Muslim) to Damascus and 'ordered' him to do something, threatening that if he did not toe the line, Assad would 'break his head'. Hariri did not toe the line and was assassinated in February 2005. Hezbollah were the ones who committed the act.

‎The cowardly Iranian regime had established Hezbollah as a proxy to fight Israel. In essence, cowardly Iran used Lebanon to fight Israel, causing the destruction of Lebanon while Iranian territory remained safe.

‎So back to my first thought. The opposition cannot handle the truth. The only thing they can do is call us names.

‎I have thick skin. We have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations and adversity wreaked upon us by these savage terroristic animals.

‎Thank you, Israel, for Nasrallah's demise. It may create an opportunity for peace, but only if Lebanese leaders have the courage to seize the moment.

‎I will repeat what the terrorists and their supporters don’t want to hear: The Iranian Regime, The Syrian Regime, all proxies of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, ISIS, Al Qaeda, The PLO, Islamic Jihad, PJ, PFLP, Syrian Baathist Party, all the Communist parties, all of these and more have been CANCERS in the World. They oppress their own people and us alike. They are savage animals who are stuck in the seventh century with the mentality of brutal conquests and war.

‎Call me what you like. I was born a Phoenician, not an Arab. The terrorists took away my county, but God gave me America. I am grateful and I am blessed.

‎I'm going to have an awesome day, and the terrorists are going to get their rears kicked. Have a good night.

[vacuouslyfalse]

I was sent this by @metamatar on my thread about the material reasons why the US is not materially incentivized to back Israel. I'll be honest - I do not find it very convincing. Let's dive in.

The recent period has seen the bloom of two falsehoods, stemming from the same root of irrationality, glibly ahistorical narratives, and disinterest in understanding struggles for national liberation against imperialism. One: Benjamin Netanyahu more-or-less conspired with Hamas to maintain the Palestinian national division and empowered the movement in Gaza. Two: Israel and its parasitic lobby drive America into irrational warmongering.

The first is a slight overstatement of my position - there is no conspiracy, merely shared interests. The second is very far from my position - the US needs no external sources to drive it into irrational warmongering, but in this specific case, domestic support for Israel (both popular and elite) is what drives US support.

The ‘Netanyahu courted Hamas’ fairy-tale is newer, an odd chimera of the older truth that Israel and the US preferred Hamas – but, seldom mentioned, also Fatah – to Marxist-led Palestinian forces in the 1980s, and the newer truth that Netanyahu made deals that had allowed Hamas some financial manoeuvring space since 2014.

I think this basically concedes to my position on the first "falsehood," though it fails to mention Netanyahu's statements arguing that Hamas was a bulwark against Palestinian statehood.

From here on, the article spends several paragraphs summarizing the history of the Israeli-US relationship. While riveting, this does not directly relate to the question of US interests in this current war, so we'll skip ahead a bit.

The ‘Netanyahu enabled Hamas’ distortion rests on the correct statement that Netanyahu dealt indirectly with Hamas via Qatar and allowed the formation of a permit regime for Palestinian Gaza guest workers. This was meant to ensure relative quiet in the South. Far from Hamas collaborating with Netanyahu, or policing the ceasefire, this set-up was an achievement of the Palestinian resistance, allowing it the appearance of political stillness on its surface waters while underneath it moved fast and built up a deep defensive infrastructure. The lie is meant to suggest that Hamas’ strength is due to conspiracy with Israel, when Hamas simply expresses the nationalist aspirations of the Palestinian people. 

This is another, further distortion of the argument being made in "falsehood" one - that Israel's interests were served by Hamas. The idea that Hamas' strength emerges from conspiracy with Israel is absurd. It is, however, true that Israel has been willing to bolster Hamas and prefers it to a unified Palestine under the PA. Speaking of which:

This tall tale has also suggested that Netanyahu wished to avoid direct talks with the PA in Ramallah towards a peace agreement. The lie is the implication that the neo-colonial PA is a force for state building and Palestinian sovereignty. In fact, it is the velvet – more often these days, mailed – gauntlet of neo-colonial collaboration in the West Bank, amidst PA coordination with Israel and the murder of anti-collaborationist cadre like Nizar Banat in 2021.

This is, imo, completely correct - the PA is collaborationist. What this misses is that modern Israeli maximalists like Netanyahu reject the line pursued by the US, that of a collaborationist state governed by the PA. Even this shell of a state, along the lines of what was offered during the prior peace process, is now outside the bounds of what the ultranationalist Israeli far right is willing to accept.

Amidst closure and de-development, the popular resistance has been able to consolidate an arsenal and bring 1.5% of its population into a guerrilla force of 30,000-40,000 men that can – man for man – outmatch nearly any in the world.

This is where the article starts to go off the rails a bit. Can Hamas, man to man, outmatch nearly any army in the world? How would we know? Does this read like someone trying to do analysis or trying to write a PR piece?

The concrete is their mountains. From there they have imperiled an enemy with orders of magnitude higher GDP per capita – Israeli GDP is at $52,000 a year, with arsenals worth billions.

Fifth, through these achievements, the Palestinian resistance has been able to present an acute threat to the settler-capitalist property structures called Israel,

Here, we continue into mythmaking. How has Israel been imperiled? What acute threat has been presented? Certainly, over a thousand people were killed, but this does not constitute a threat to a nationstate. The article does not attempt to justify these statements further.

It is unimaginable that the neocolonial authoritarian states nor their US benefactor would remotely tolerate massive working-class militia which speak a language of justice and republicanism and raise arms against those states’ sponsors. In turn, it is as natural as the sun rising in the East that the US, the UK, Germany, France, and their Gulf and Arab satraps would converge on support for Israel as the spear’s tip of the assault on the surrounding Arab popular militia. 

Much of the "analysis" in this article takes this form - broad, sweeping statements with little attempt at justification.

Interestingly enough, this article actually links a far more lucid and well-reasoned analysis of the situation, with this funny aside:

(When did Marxists decide it is their job to whisper to the exterminationist class that their calculus is off?)

Good analysis is its own reward!

This article contains sentences like this one:

To contemplate any real reduction in its presence, though, it first needs a security settlement that would strengthen friendly regimes and constrain the influence of nonconforming ones. The 2020 Abraham Accords advanced this agenda, as Bahrain and the UAE, by agreeing to normalize relations with Israel, joined a wider ‘reactionary axis’ spanning the Saudi Kingdom and Egyptian autocracy. Trump expanded arms sales to these states and cultivated connections between them – military, commercial, diplomatic – with the aim of creating a reliable phalanx of allies who would tilt towards the US in the New Cold War while acting as a bulwark against Iran.

Which was really a breath of fresh air after the previous article. Directly citing US policy from the last ten years - incredible!

While it would be flattening a very nuanced article to claim that it takes my point of view, this is one of its core arguments:

Second, in pinning its imperial strategy on the Israeli normalization process, the US became especially reliant on this settler-colonial project just before it was captured by its most extreme and volatile elements: Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Galant. If American support for Israel has historically exceeded any reasonable political calculus, under Trump and Biden it acquired a coherent rationale: to place its ally at the centre of a stable Middle Eastern security framework. Yet the Israeli cabinet that came to power in 2022 – addled by eliminationist fantasies, and determined to draw the US into war with Iran – proved least able to play that role.

It makes the argument that recent US support for Israel was part of a larger strategy to disengage from the region, but one that made mistaken assumptions about the ability of Israel to maintain stability, and that the eliminationist actions of the Israeli state have undermined the realpolitik rationale for US support.

I am not going to go through the second article because it would mostly consist of me nodding along, but I think we see two distinct ways in which leftists write on display here.

The first article makes very broad assumptions about US goals and motivations and cites actual events only sparingly and selectively to support its thesis. The second puts the focus on the events themselves and draws out the motivations from them. The former is useful for writing fluff for people who are already convinced of your point of view, but it does not pass very convincingly for analysis. The latter reads like someone who is actually trying to understand the world.

[bfpnola]

We are Israel's largest human rights group [B’Tselem] – and we are calling this apartheid by Hagai El-Ad

One cannot live a single day in Israel-Palestine without the sense that this place is constantly being engineered to privilege one people, and one people only: the Jewish people. Yet half of those living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are Palestinian. The chasm between these lived realities fills the air, bleeds, is everywhere on this land.

I am not simply referring to official statements spelling this out – and there are plenty, such as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion in 2019 that “Israel is not a state of all its citizens”, or the “nation state” basic law enshrining “the development of Jewish settlement as a national value”. What I am trying to get at is a deeper sense of people as desirable or undesirable, and an understanding about my country that I have been gradually exposed to since the day I was born in Haifa. Now, it is a realisation that can no longer be avoided.

Although there is demographic parity between the two peoples living here, life is managed so that only one half enjoy the vast majority of political power, land resources, rights, freedoms and protections. It is quite a feat to maintain such disfranchisement. Even more so, to successfully market it as a democracy (inside the “green line” – the 1949 armistice line), one to which a temporary occupation is attached. In fact, one government rules everyone and everything between the river and the sea, following the same organising principle everywhere under its control, working to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group of people – Jews – over another – Palestinians. This is apartheid.

There is not a single square inch in the territory Israel controls where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal. The only first-class people here are Jewish citizens such as myself, and we enjoy this status both inside the 1967 lines and beyond them, in the West Bank. Separated by the different personal statuses allotted to them, and by the many variations of inferiority Israel subjects them to, Palestinians living under Israel’s rule are united by all being unequal.

Unlike South African apartheid, the application of our version of it – apartheid 2.0, if you will – avoids certain kinds of ugliness. You won’t find “whites only” signs on benches. Here, “protecting the Jewish character” of a community – or of the state itself – is one of the thinly veiled euphemisms deployed to try to obscure the truth. Yet the essence is the same. That Israel’s definitions do not depend on skin colour make no material difference: it is the supremacist reality which is the heart of the matter – and which must be defeated.

Until the passage of the nation state law, the key lesson Israel seemed to have learned from how South Africa’s apartheid ended was to avoid too-explicit statements and laws. These can risk bringing about moral judgments – and eventually, heaven forbid, real consequences. Instead, the patient, quiet, and gradual accumulation of discriminatory practices tends to prevent repercussions from the international community, especially if one is willing to provide lip service to its norms and expectations.

This is how Jewish supremacy on both sides of the green line is accomplished and applied.

We demographically engineer the composition of the population by working to increase the number of Jews and limit the number of Palestinians. We allow for Jewish migration – with automatic citizenship – to anywhere Israel controls. For Palestinians, the opposite is true: they cannot acquire personal status anywhere Israel controls – even if their family is from here.

We engineer power through the allocation – or denial – of political rights. All Jewish citizens get to vote (and all Jews can become citizens), but less than a quarter of the Palestinians under Israel’s rule have citizenship and can thus vote. On 23 March, when Israelis go and vote for the fourth time in two years, it will not be a “celebration of democracy” – as elections are often referred to. Rather, it will be yet another day in which disfranchised Palestinians watch as their future is determined by others.

We engineer land control by expropriating huge swaths of Palestinian land, keeping it off-limits for their development – or using it to build Jewish towns, neighbourhoods, and settlements. Inside the green line, we have been doing this since the state was established in 1948. In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, we have been doing this since the occupation began in 1967. The result is that Palestinian communities – anywhere between the river and the sea – face a reality of demolitions, displacement, impoverishment and overcrowding, while the same land resources are allocated for new Jewish development.

And we engineer – or rather, restrict – Palestinians’ movement. The majority, who are neither citizens nor residents, depend on Israeli permits and checkpoints to travel in and between one area and another, as well as to travel internationally. For the two million in the Gaza Strip travel restrictions are the most severe – this is not just a Bantustan, as Israel has made it one of the largest open-air prisons on Earth.

Haifa, my birth city, was a binational reality of demographic parity until 1948. Of some 70,000 Palestinians living in Haifa before the Nakba, less than a 10th were left afterwards. Almost 73 years have passed since then, and now Israel-Palestine is a binational reality of demographic parity. I was born here. I want – I intend – to stay. But I want – I demand – to live in a very different future.

The past is one of traumas and injustices. In the present, yet more injustices are constantly reproduced. The future must be radically different – a rejection of supremacy, built on a commitment to justice and our shared humanity. Calling things by their proper name – apartheid – is not a moment of despair: rather, it is a moment of moral clarity, a step on a long walk inspired by hope. See the reality for what it is, name it without flinching – and help bring about the realisation of a just future.

[pumpkinsy0]

"IM not speaking up about what's happening in Palestine rn bc minot very sure what's happening" well then sit down n buckle up cause ill tell u in the most summarized way possible

israel has been attacking and killing Palestinians for about 75 years. After world war 2, the US and the UK thought that jewish people should basically have their own place, and are using Palestine to achieve this. Since 1948, israel has been killing off Palestinians for land, and through this, basically an open aired concentration camp called Gaza was formed. If you look up the land Palestine has lost all throughout this genocide, you'd notice that there's israel in-between Gaza and the West Bank, and israel's defense forces called IDF has taken to, cutting off water, food, and electricity, even internet, from the Gaza strip, essentially making an open aired concentration camp. Because of this conflict, a resistance movement from Palestine, called Hamas was formed. The IDF has bombed, hospitals, homes, fucking bakeries, in Gaza pretty much everyday. The IDF is not attacking Hamas, theyre actively attacking innocent civilians, dehumanizing them, calling them things like "terrorist" and "human animals", using the Hamas attack on october 7th to justify literal war crimes. The IDF is backed up by the US military (which let me remind you is one of if not the most powerful military force out there). Over 8,306 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and a good chunk of the population in Gaza are CHILDREN. As far as I know, 45 families have been ABSOLUTELY WIPED. Their bloodline is gone, theyre never ever coming back. The media has been pushing support for israel and many israel acts are posting fake images and straight up lying for more support.

If you wanna support but dont know how, you can start by boycotting McDonalds, Disney, and Starbucks. They support the IDF in one way or another. The boycott has been pretty successful and if you wanna look for yourself, their market has been dropping significantly and they been trying to get ppl back with deals but it hasn't been working.

What's going on in Palestine its an active genocide being done by an apartheid state.

Also this isn't your question to be antisemitic, not every jewish person supports whats going on, its zionist

PS there's a website called the canary mission literally doxxes ppl for speaking up for Palestine, so dont be quiet, but be careful

free Palestine, fuck israel

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Keep the News Cycle Focused!

Resist, resist, resist - because, sometimes, it gets someone to report. And then more people see it and resist! And the cycle continues - but only if you keep pushing to make it go.

Don't pull back because Trump. They are not taking meaningful action on this because they expect you to pull back because Trump. We're playing election chicken right now and it is not to the benefit of the voters, or the non-voters being killed on our behalf. Oh, I don't doubt Trump would try to make it worse, and he'll flog it to his gullible base, but he's also an idiot who has a very hard time getting results and he is not the President. You say, "But he could...!" Ah-ah! But he isn't. Biden is succeeding at making it worse right now, and banking on your fear of Trump to insulate him from the consequences.

The only way to hold these people accountable is to threaten their power. If this continues and we all vote for it anyway, I don't wanna know what the political landscape is going to look like forever afterwards. Genocide is being included in the sensible, moderate solutions the sane party offers. Historically, it has been! We have a long and terrible association with genocides! But I don't want it to stay like that!

The best way to move the Overton Window back towards human decency is to stop the genocide NOW, before the damn election. But they're still trying to shut the objections down. They redefined this event twice, trying to make it look like NBD, and then they tried to keep the story as quiet as possible. It still is relatively quiet! But it's there. The people resisting got it covered.

I come from a food-centric culture too. This is an ice cold rejection and I hope like hell the folks on Team Biden who agreed to sit down and eat for the damage control told him that. This is almost as bad as throwing a shoe. This is trouble.

And I'm grateful. I want trouble like this now, because it's a lot better than what could happen later. Even a few weeks later. Gaza is STARVING, y'all, and we could stop it. Think long and hard about why we're not. I'm gonna tell you right now, it's not "because democracy!" (ie "but the guy who can circumvent congress and the law to sell more weapons and build more border walls isn't powerful enough to do this!") or "because antisemitism!" (ie "well, Israel and Judaism are the same thing and Jews have been through a lot, so Israel can have a little genocide") it's "because POWER!"

If politicians don't see a threat to their power, they don't listen. There is an entire crazed, fundamentalist religion DEMANDING that Israel exist so God can come back and destroy it, among many other awful things, it is damn near impossible to reason with them, and Democrats want their votes. Democrats want everyone's votes, but they've decided to move towards the fundies on the right and abandon the critical thinkers on the left. (If you think they haven't, PLEASE turn your brain back on and start looking and listening to them!) It's safe to ignore us because we have no other option. We have to get louder and scarier to see results. Hell, we have to get louder and scarier just to slow down the decay.

Keep it in mind when pushing back against all the awful shit that's going down right now.

And keep resisting!

[ultyso]

1. Classification – Dividing people into ‘them’ and ‘us’. (Palestinian civilians referred to as “terrorists”, look at any gov official, they say it themself)

2. Symbolisation – Forcing groups to wear or be associated with symbols which identify them as different. (Worker ID tags on ankles. Color of ID determines how much can even move, if can event get an id to begin with. Can purchase but not guaranteed.

3. Discrimination – Excluding groups from participating in civil society, such as by excluding them from voting or certain places. (East Jerusalemites were denied or delayed for citizenship. Restricting Water Access for Palestinians, but ensures plentiful access for Israel. Road Restrictions , American Road , More of road restrictions . Many Palestinians (not all) aren’t able to vote, Those coming to visit Palestine are faced with harsh restrictions by Israel. Color of ID determines how much can even move, if can event get an id to begin with. Can purchase but not guaranteed. Travel permits for aid struggles.

4. Dehumanisation – To deny the humanity of one group, and associate them with animals or diseases in order to belittle them.(Go on really any gov officials for Israel they call them animals all the time, remember the children of darkness and children of light comment? Shirts of pregnant Palestinians with a cross hair. Palestinians are tried to military court. Palestinians held without charge indefinitely. Children have most difficulty getting aid as they have hardest time traveling due to IDs needing to be for 16+, those under age have to travel with someone 55+. Facial Recognition of West Bank Civilians. Blockades and caloric counting

5. Organization – Training police or army units and providing them with weapons and knowledge in order to persecute a group in future. (IDF veterans talks of their violent treatment of Palestinians. , Facial Recognition of West Bank Civilians. )

6. Polarisation – Using propaganda to polarise society, create distance and exclude a group further. Some examples:

7. Preparation – Planning of mass murder and identifying specific victims. (Desiring Gaza to be flattened. ,The Gospel AI targets, if it truly was for Hamas, why are so many children being killed, Short Selling of Stock, Knew of the planned attack a year ago, Development of more settlements, Using unguided “dumb” bombs, Razing Cemeteries, False claims to Al-Shifa, “Voluntary” Emigration, Planned Settlements , Destroying more graves, Dug up graves to destroy them, Cutting of water, Unable to use rain water, Control of water, Israeli children singing to annihilate Gaza, Child being taken hostage in 2013, Desire to level Gaza

8. Persecution – Incarcerating groups in ghettos or concentration camps , forcibly displacing groups, expropriating  property, belongings or wealth. (Incarcerations 1 , 2 , Displacement, IDF ransacking homes, Burning food more ransacking, Stealing cigarettes, Stealing jewelry, Detaining at the border, Stealing pets, Kidnapping a baby, liquidate the ghetto, Taking and abusing UNRWA school civilians and stripping them

9. Extermination – Committing mass murder. (20K and counting), Killing doctors and nurses, vowing not to stop till complete quiet, Blockades where people are being killed and ambulances being restricted, Targeting PRCS , Residential buildings being bombed, UN schools bombed, Over 100 journalists killed, Journalists targeted , Use of White Phospherus, More PRCS Volunteers killed, Increased hospital shortages due to bombings, Decomposed Babies in hospital, due to lack of aid there is a rise in diseases, lack of aid now has COVID spreading,

10. Denial – Denial of any crimes. This does not necessarily mean denying that the acts of murder happened, but denying that these acts were a crime, and were in fact justified. (Look at any social media, it’s rampant everywhere, it’s all for “defense.”)

Stages of Holocaust Genocide

[tartlette1968]

My reality is this:

I simply want the "Good guys" to live up to that label, and they won't.

Israel is using American weapons to kill people.

Recently they used these same weapons to take down a single building in Syria, without flattening the surrounding area. And they knew who was in that building.

In retaliation for a border incursion that Israel was warned about, at least twice, they have flattened an entire country trying to kill a few hundred people. In doing so, they have killed thousands. This is looking more and more like a deliberate mass destruction and killing.

The groups who broke through the Israeli border, and took down the automated weapons, are intent on forcing the entire world to convert to their religion. They have a web presence that declares this. Their ideology is "Convert or die".

They are not our friends, they are not the "good guys" by any stretch of the imagination.

Iran has been supplying other groups weapons, understanding that these weapons will end up being fired at Israel, at homes, and businesses and city streets. They are not the "good guys", not by any measure. The Iranian Government has been imposing strict, oppressive restrictions on its own people for decades, and exacting brutal punishment--including death--for those that don't comply.

Iran has been, in recent days, on the receiving end of well aimed and well controlled missiles fired by Israel. Again, no cities have been flattened, and few people have been killed.

I don't need to ask, "What gives, here?" We know what gives. Netanyahu is trying to improve his popularity, and he is trying to do that by killing crowds of men, women, and children who are unarmed, and have nowhere to hide. He is maintaining that these people are expendable in the mission to destroy Hamas.

What a species we are.

The American Government has been whisper quiet in its criticism of Israel's mass destruction of Gaza, and mass invasion of the West Bank. Even so, Netanyahu has bristled and fumed at this criticism.

Iran has been supplying Russia with fleets of drones that end up killing Ukrainian men, women and children and destroying houses, schools, hospitals, and the power infrastructure.

Russia are not the "good guys" and as long as Putin is President, they will never be.

This is my reality.

Are there any "good guys" right now?

What a species we are.

[mariacallous]

The Blue Line that separates Israel and Lebanon is one of the most volatile borders in the world. Whenever the rhetoric between Israel and Iran escalates, or even when shepherds on either side cross over, anxieties of another conflict between Israel and Lebanon heighten. Conventional wisdom dictates that the mildest of confrontations on the border could provoke an all-out war.

But for the first time in a long while the fear of such a war is palpable. The Lebanese have started to stock up on basic necessities and are buying food, fuel, and diapers in bulk. Some Western countries have put their forces on alert to be ready to carry out evacuations, and more have called on citizens to leave the country while some commercial flights are still available.

There was chaos last week at Beirut-Rafic Hariri airport, the only international airport in the country, which was bombed in the last Israel-Hezbollah conflict in 2006. Israeli fighter jets have been flying low in Lebanese airspace, breaking the sound barrier and smashing windows, while an Israeli drone blares out an Arabic message calling on residents in Bint Jbeil, a town in southern Lebanon, to turn against Hezbollah.

Everyone in Lebanon agrees that the likelihood of a full-blown war with Israel is higher than any time since 2006. But if Israel’s goal is lasting deterrence of Hezbollah, a war may not be its best available strategy.

Some argue that the status quo with Hezbollah before Oct. 7, 2023, may have been the best-case scenario for Israel. The border had been mostly quiet since the 2006 war. Meanwhile, opposition to Hezbollah inside Lebanon was growing, as its alliance with Iran irked the influential Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman—Saudis are big investors in Lebanon—and the Beirut port blast angered the public.

One strategy the Israelis are now mulling is to keep any assaults limited to Hezbollah-dominated areas of southern Lebanon, a suburb of Beirut, and the Beqaa valley. This would further disrupt Lebanon’s already crumbling economy, but the main strategic goal would be to push the group’s Shia supporters into other areas of the sect-based country and thus increase social tensions. Israelis believe this could deter Hezbollah domestically. “I feel concerned about the Shias,” said Eran Lerman, former deputy national security adviser of Israel. “A lot of people have scores to settle with Hezbollah since the Beirut blast or since the killings of Sunnis in the Syrian war.”

He said that Israelis have nothing against the Lebanese people and even if a full-scale war unfolds, Israel will try “not to attack Lebanese infrastructure, and look for people we can work with on the ground,” he said in reference to anti-Hezbollah players in the country.

Over the last few years—as Lebanon’s currency plummeted, the country plunged into an economic crisis, and a port blast killed more than 200 people—opposition to Hezbollah has become more vocal, even among a section of the Shias. But there are no clear numbers, and some analysts believe that it is uncertain how the Lebanese will react when confronted with the Israeli enemy. Israel’s strategy to bank on domestic opposition and look for local allies may work, or it may not if Lebanese rally behind the group in national solidarity.

However, the biggest reason unaligned Lebanese can’t revolt against Hezbollah is the fact that the group is armed to the teeth and has a committed army of supporters.

During the Beirut protests, people found the courage to add Hezbollah’s name and the image of its leader Hassan Nasrallah on the same posters where they condemned other politicians for being ineffective and culpable. Hezbollah responded without hesitation. Hundreds of young Hezbollah supporters carried out bike rallies in downtown in a show of strength and conveying a message of what could erupt on streets if Hezbollah felt threatened.

The Lebanese Forces, a dominantly Christian political group that was once a militia and continues to be Hezbollah’s chief political adversary in Lebanon, is treading cautiously. Georges Okais, a Lebanese lawmaker with the group, ruled out a civil war. “Only Hezbollah is armed,” he said. “There’s no war between unequal sides.”

It’s not that all Lebanese back Hezbollah, but that they can’t yet afford to take the group on. If Israel wants to create suitable conditions for the group to be demolished by fellow Lebanese, it first needs to figure out what to do with Hezbollah’s weapons and followers and how not to go overboard in a way that has the opposite effect on its campaign. That’s a tall order. In times of war, it is unlikely that all pieces fall in place perfectly for Israel to achieve its goals.

Furthermore, Hezbollah isn’t just a group of a few thousand fighters. It is part of a community that sees the group as its defender and expresses faith in its chief, Hassan Nasrallah. The group enjoys the support of most people in Lebanon’s Shia Islam community (although not all) and others may side with it if Israel launches a full-scale invasion of Lebanon.

“The Sunnis opposed Hezbollah when the group fought on the side of [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad who was killing Sunni rebels; but now they back Hezbollah, which is helping Hamas, which is Sunni, and Gaza, which is Sunni,” Sami Nader, a Lebanese political analyst, added.

While Hezbollah may have anywhere between 20,000 fighters, as some analysts have argued, and 100,000, as Nasrallah has claimed, it has many more supporters spread all over Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s network of support and spies is extensive. Its functioning is highly secretive. Most Hezbollah fighters lead normal lives, have day jobs, are committed to offer their services when called upon, and are discreet enough to hide their identities. Since it is hard to identify Hezbollah fighters, Israel wouldn’t know how to distinguish them from civilians even if it invaded.

In 2020, when I received a tip-off about the location of Hezbollah’s weapons stockpiles, I found myself in a visibly Shia village on the Lebanon-Syria border. The walls were plastered with photos of Hezbollah fighters who had died in the Syrian conflict, posters of Iran’s ayatollahs, and of Qasem Soleimani—the leader of the Quds Force branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who was assassinated in Baghdad in a U.S. strike.

It was a simple village with concrete homes, shops selling flour, sugar and candy. As I stopped to take a break and engaged in what I thought to be a casual conversation with a local farmer, he seemed to quiz me.

After he let me go, a farm vehicle chased my car and blocked my path. The driver, dressed in a dirty yellow shirt and wearing a cap, gave me a good look, asked me who I was, interrogated me a little longer, and asked to see my passport before he gestured I could be on my way.

However, that’s not where the adventure ended.

Two days later I received a call from Lebanon’s general security department. I was called in for an interrogation, and after several hours of questioning, I was let go with a warning to not wander around too much. It was an indication of how deep Hezbollah’s support network runs in Lebanon, how its fighters are residing amid unarmed civilians, and how it operates under the cover of state agencies.

If Israel carpet bombs Hezbollah-dominated areas, there will be a massive loss of life; and yet it cannot control these areas unless it occupies Lebanon, which will almost certainly lead to an indeterminable long war and strikes deep within Israel.

Hezbollah is not a group of people wearing uniforms or wielding arms but a community inhabiting entire villages, neighborhoods, and cities. Will Israel eliminate entire populations to defeat its adversary? And will that bring it safety or an extended conflict?

Elias Farhat, a former general of the Lebanese Army, said that while there was no doubt that Israel is militarily stronger with a conventional army and weapons, “Hezbollah resorts to asymmetric warfare.”

“It deploys its units in hideouts, tunnels, and caves with no appearances,” he said, implying that Israel wouldn’t know who the enemy is. “A full-scale invasion allows Hezbollah to cause heavy damages in the heart of Israel between Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. … We don’t rule out an advance of Hezbollah in Galilee.”

Lerman said Israel was aware of the costs but if Hezbollah did not back off—which would mean stopping attacks on Israel and withdrawing to the Litani River as agreed upon in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701—Israel would be forced to carry out an assault.

Israelis are in a tight spot. They can perhaps weaken Hezbollah if they attack, but they cannot defeat it definitively. On the other hand, Hezbollah’s insistence to stay put on the Blue Line with missiles aimed at Israel is a constant source of tension and anxiety among the Israeli people.

But Hezbollah has also measured its response—partly because it understands that Israel has much more fire power, but mainly because the Lebanese people do not want a war. It has said that the group doesn’t want a “total war” and that it would only invade northern Israel “in the context of any war imposed on Lebanon,.” Even Hezbollah needs some legitimacy to operate in Lebanon, and staying in control of the country is the biggest prize for both Hezbollah and its patron Iran.

However, Hezbollah has continued its limited attacks against Israel and has vowed to keep going unless there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

There is one way out of the mess: politics. By starting peace talks with the Palestinians and resolving that dispute, Israel could deny its raison d’être, and two existential problems will be solved at once.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

post here

Ahmed Fouhad Alkhatib (@/afalkhatib)

What being pro-Palestine means to me / my platform: I'm passionately, unequivocally, and without hesitation, a proponent of the Palestinian people's just and urgent aspirations for self-determination, liberation, sovereignty, and safety. I grew up in Gaza, where I experienced Israeli violence and bombardment, including one incident that almost killed me and caused me permanent hearing impairment; my family is still in Gaza and has suffered dozens of deaths during this latest war; my grandparents were expelled from their ancestral homelands in 1948 and fled to the Gaza Strip; and my parents were raised in a refugee camp in Rafah during the 1950s. This background informs and influences me and speaks to why I care about the Palestinian issue and consider myself pro-Palestine. I am motivated by a sincere desire to see my people obtain their legitimate and undeniable rights, which they have not had for decades.

Yet I, and many others, especially those who are silent or are forced to be quiet, struggle with finding a political home in today's pro-Palestine movement. Increasingly, it feels as if pro-Palestine activism is dominated by maximalists (wanting all of historic Palestine and other zero-sum positions and approaches), slogan-driven voices, and narratives. There is a lack of pragmatic and humanistic ability to hold multiple truths at once and to advocate nuanced and color-rich positions and views that are not black-and-white depictions and understandings of the Israel and Palestine conflict.

Here's what, to me, an effective and meaningful pro-Palestine platform entails:

Supporting the right of Palestinians to a sovereign and independent state living in peace side by side with Israel.

Condemning Israeli government actions, policies, priorities, and decisions that kill, harm, undermine, or oppress the Palestinian people.

Criticizing and decrying the conduct of the war in Gaza, the military occupation in the West Bank, and the Israeli government's disregard for Palestinian civilian lives, and the destruction of property and cities.

Rejecting, denouncing, and exposing the theft of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and the sprawling settlement enterprise and settler violence.

Supporting highly targeted, specific, and effective sanctions against individuals, groups, and entities that are enabling the unjust and illegal occupation of the West Bank and harming Palestinian civilians.

Denouncing and combating the dehumanization of the Palestinian people or the denial of their existence as people with the right to live on the land they called home for generations.

Acknowledging the tragedy experienced by hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians from 1948 and giving them/their descendants the right to return to the lands of a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

Understanding past and contemporary mistakes that have set the Palestinian people back by decades and made them pawns in ideologies and geopolitical programs, agendas, and designs.

Developing a pragmatic and realistic framework for recognizing Israel's existence, right to exist, and the inevitability of its continued existence, all of which should inform how a solution is approached.

Dispensing with delusional and destructive elements of the Palestinian narrative and acknowledging that there will not be a full liberation of all of Palestine, there will not be a right of return to what is now mainland Israel, and that Israel cannot and should not be confronted militarily or through any form of violence.

Promoting a cultural shift away from revolutionary rhetoric, martyrdom, and armed resistance, and instead, rebranding coexistence and peace as a courageous and necessary evolution to preserve Palestinian lives, lands, and heritage and foster a new generation of nation-builders who are focused on doing the most with what the Palestinians currently have and can have in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Denouncing and rejecting antisemitism while also acknowledging that Zionists and Israelis are a diverse group/people and that the Palestinians have to work with all of these segments to have sustainable coexistence and peace.

Understanding how violent/hateful rhetoric, actions, and mistakes are detrimental because they empower right-wing and extremist forces in Israel who are opposed to Palestinian rights and that persistent mistakes and incendiary rhetoric and proclamations erode support for the Palestinian people and cause.

Recognizing Palestinian agency, responsibility, and accountability when taking actions that have negative consequences and outcomes and acknowledging that, while there's an asymmetry of power dynamics, Palestinian leaders, political groups, and prominent figures should make rational and responsible choices to optimize for better prospects.

Accepting that even with East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, access to holy sites must always be shared and open to all.

Realizing how nefarious regional players like the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies are not sincere or helpful allies to the Palestinian people and have done so much damage to the entire region and the Palestinian cause.

Developing the capacity to hear Jewish perspectives and grievances, historical and contemporary, to understand why pro-Israel supporters believe what they do and why Israel means so much to so many, even if one disagrees with those opinions and views.

Understanding that Hamas recklessly endangered Palestinian lives and placed the people of Gaza in significant harm and that the group relies on Palestinian suffering as part of its strategy to delegitimize Israel globally while perpetuating the conflict without any meaningful resolution.

Registering the dangers of Islamist rhetoric and ideology that seeks to Islamize Palestinian society and to turn the Palestinian national project into a religious one in pursuit of an Islamic state that, by default, will be exclusionary and incapable of accommodating diverse residents in a future Palestinian country.

I am compelled to share the aforementioned because, for far too many people, pro-Palestine activism has been reduced to incendiary language that fails to capture the multiple moving parts of what is needed to advance the just and urgent Palestinian aspirations for freedom and independence. While many students, activists, advocates, academics, and analysts have their hearts in the right place, many cannot present viable and pragmatic ideas that are not mere rhetorical statements and empty slogans.

I know that many strongly disagree with my views and opinions, and that's entirely fine. Still, many more are eager to see a recalibration of pro-Palestine activism to actually help the Palestinians achieve statehood instead of inflaming division and fostering hostility towards supporters of Israel and the Jewish community. Many in Palestine are aware of the need to be pragmatic and don't think that angry protests, BDS, antisemitism, endless academic lectures, social media activism, or "feel good" slogans will actually make a difference.

It's time for a rejuvenated pro-Palestine movement that serves as a big tent to encompass multiple views and opinions and to invite and promote broad alliances, especially with mainstream Jewish and Israeli communities, to work towards a just and sustainable resolution of the conflict once and for all. This is entirely attainable and achievable with humility, civility, patience, compassion and kindness, perseverance and determination, a willingness to accept reasonable compromises and accommodations, and, most importantly, the recognition of both sides' undeniable and mutual humanity.

[angrybell]

Hamas is engaging in the time honored “Palestinian” tradition of never missing a chance to miss a chance. I don’t know if they’re doing this internationally because they are banking on further casualties provoking international intervention to save them or if they are just blinded by their fanaticism.

I think it’s the latter. Why?

Because if they were rational, they would be looking at what a prolonged ceasefire would do to Israel. If the deal didn’t have the poison pills Hamas is insisting on (basically a permanent ceasefire but there have been others) then the professional heads of the Israeli military and security services have let it be known they would push the government to accept it.

Then, most likely, Netanyahu’s government would collapse. He’d lose a couple of the small parties that he relies on for his coalition. There would be a vote of no confidence and Netanyahu would be out. I don’t know what the Israelis will do at the polls. You could get someone who would find a way to make the ceasefire permanent.

Then you have the US. On a good, lucid day, Biden hates Israel. He’s hated Israel since Begin refused to bend the knee and kiss the ring of Senator Biden after the Osirak attack. His State Department and National Security team is infested with pro-Iranian and pro-“Palestinian” people who loathe Israel and would love to stick it to Israel. And Biden is facing an uncertain campaign to keep his job. He needs to hold Michigan, and during the primary, the Arab Americans in Michigan showed their displeasure with Biden. If they stay home on Election Day in November, his re-election becomes uncertain at best. So Biden, if he lucid, is going to pressure Israel to stay quiet, even if there are American hostages still being held (because The Bug Guy only gives a crap about you if you’re giving him the 10% cut) by Hamas. Then he can tell the Arab voters “I stopped a genocide” (even though there’s no genocide). There might be enough low information swing voters who will believe that he actually has brought peace in our time and vote him in for a second term.

If you think Biden won’t abandon Israel, ask the Republic of Vietnam and the Afghanis about how rock solidify American support was when he had the power to make sure our allies weren’t abandoned.

Hamas needs to be destroyed. Anyone who has ever been a part of them, or is part of them, needs to be hunted down and executed. That will only happen if Israel isn’t given a deal they can’t refused. Fortunately (in a perverse way because it means more Israelis will have to fight, kill, and possibly die), Hamas seems to not want to recognize the situation they’re being offered.

[rametarin]

Leftist Antisemitism.

The hilarious part of leftist antisemitism is the only thing that causes them to arrive there, is simply not making an exception to Judaism and Jewish people in their ideology anymore, when they consider all the things they hate about non-progressive groups. They just have to not consider Judaism or Israel exempt when they consider them either Oppressors or Oppressed. Simply not allowing criticism of Jews and Judaism to automatically be filed under antisemitic because it criticizes and analyzes Jewish behavior and Jewish beliefs, on the idea doing so is inherently anti-Jewish.

They don't have to be wildly swallowed up in "far right" conspiracy theories about Jews and banks, or blood in the bread, or some religious belief in bringing on the apocalypse. They just have to not make an exception to Jewish culture when it considers ethnic identity important, Jewish religious beliefs and traditions as overriding modern secular sensibilities, and not make exception to Jewish traditional gender and sexual roles and practices. And apply them the same way they'd apply them to Christians and Europeans.

The quiet part out loud has always been Progressive Gentiles that observed privilege theory, critical lenses for sex theory and gender theory, would not make exception for Jews or Judaism when the time came- but, antisemitism was just that stuff ethnosupremacist whites, competing religions and competing nationalists did- not they, who constructed their policy on Jews based on the idea they could reform the "icky" out of Judaism or legally stamp out the undesirable elements with the state. And the quiet part out loud among Progressive Jews has always been, "These non-Jewish things are racist, sexist and religious demogaogery- but these criteria on bad things don't apply to me and mine religion or ethnic identitarianism, because Judaism is an exception to these characteristics just by being Jewish, and thus, valid. Simple as."

So now Progressive Gentiles and Progressive Jews are in an argument about whether this criteria to disqualify groups or instances from validity and declare them racist, sexist, homophobic and more, applies to Jews, or not. And if not, why doesn't this criteria that exempts them from the wrath of the state, also retroactively apply to all the other groups, behaviors and cultures and cultural beliefs that were previously declared to be racist, sexist and theofascist, and thus, intolerable, and safe to mock and deride as invalid?

It's going to be a hell of an argument, and may just come down to stamping feet repetitively until people have heart attacks at the podium.

[shdesofred]

Regarding Palestine

I just decided to make a Tumblr account to keep a bit of my anonymity to aid in support to the Palestinian cause.

I first heard about these attacks when a close friend of mine had friends and family impacted from the initial attack from Hamas, and after seeing countless graphic videos and doing a lot of research, I believe that the smartest thing we can do right now is try everything we can to give aid to those who need it most.

I think that there are quite a few children in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, seeing as they are roughly half of the population in Gaza. These children are being impacted daily, and the last truck that entered Gaza with "supplies" was filled to the brim with cloths to wrap the dead in. This is insanity, and it's no surprise that a majority of individuals are aware that at this point, they are doing everything they can to flatten the area of Gaza, bulldozing over human remains and historical housing.

During this time, the best thing we can do as humans would be to aid in those heavily impacted by these strikes. Gaza is still without electricity, water, food, and gas among so many other important resources needed for comfortable every day life. To my knowledge, parts of Israel as well as Palestine are being impacted by this conflict.

Do not get it twisted, saying "Free Palestine" is not a statement against Jewish people nor the state of Israel. This statement simply means to allow the Palestinian people to have the same rights to freedom as everyone in Israel, to be able to live comfortably amongst each other. Unfortunately, a lot of Zionists have impacted this movement negatively, and I have seen videos of Israeli soliders beating on quiet, reserved Orthodox Jews as well.

I wish there was more we could do as people to aid in favor of a humanitarian pause. The best I can do is continue to spread awareness, important information, and boycotting as much as possible. If you are also in favor of a humanitarian pause, let's become mutuals and boost each other's posts!

[jhmetal09-blog-blog]

(from Kim Dotcom)

This may be the most important post you’ll ever read because it provides a simple explanation about why our world is being destroyed, by design.

I’m not antisemitic or a Nazi. I’m simply a former hacker with great analytical skills who understands what’s happening in the world.

At the end of this post I will quote from a world domination plan. You will recognize the truth immediately because that’s what’s currently happening in the world. Today’s reality suggests that this plan is real.

When you do your own research you will learn that the origin of this plan was discredited and that the alleged creators have nothing to do with it. But who was the person providing the key evidence?

It was Allen Dulles. The man who raised money from US industrialists to fund Adolf Hitler, his Nazi party and his war. The man who later became the director of the CIA during Kennedy and the head of the Warren commission that investigated the Kennedy assassination. Why would anybody believe a man with such a questionable character?

The protocols of the Elders of Zion have unquestionably borrowed ideas from several authors but you can say that about most important writings throughout history. It was called a fabrication and is one of the first uses of the term ‘conspiracy theory’.

Why do Zionists have a massive over-representation in the media, politics, banking and world affairs? How did such a small community get to dominate all the centers of power and information?

Why can Israel ignore UN resolutions, international law and commit a genocide in Gaza to standing ovations in the US Congress? Why is Israel acting like it is above the law seemingly without any fear of consequences.

Read some of the alleged Zionist world domination plan below and compare it with reality. Is all of this just a coincidence?

“Our power will be more invincible than any other, because it will remain invisible until the moment when it has gained such strength that no cunning can any longer undermine it.”

“We shall absolutely control the media, so that not a single announcement will ever reach the public without our control. In this way we shall have a sure triumph over our opponents, for without the media, they are helpless.”

“We will distract the brainless heads with vain conceptions, fantastic theories, rotten amusement, games and filthy passions, so that they will be unable to use what intellect they have. They will never suspect that they have been stage managed by us.”

“We shall establish huge monopolies so that all will go to ruin when the political smash-up comes. We must at all cost, deprive them of their lands, we must lower wages and raise the price of all necessities of life.”

“We shall create an economic crisis, which will stop dealings in all exchanges and bring industry to a standstill. We shall throw onto the streets whole mobs of workers, simultaneously, all over the world, who will rush to loot property and delight to shed blood.”

“In our government, besides ourselves, there must only be the mass of enslaved people, a few billionaires devoted entirely to us, police and soldiers. To do this we must create chaos and hostilities and we must use all deceit, treachery and falseness possible. Our greatest weapon is the media.”

“We shall establish one king over all of earth who will annihilate all causes of discord, such as borders, nationalities, religion, state debts, etc. and get peace and quiet which cannot be secured in any other way. To attain our ends we must foment trouble in all countries, utterly exhaust all of humanity with hatred, struggle, envies, torture, starvation and diseases so that the people will be forced to take refuge in our complete sovereignty.”

“Our master card has been and is and shall be the destruction of all privileges, on the ruins of which we shall set up our absolute autocracy.”

Please be mindful that most pro-Israel comments on social media are generated by the largest bot network in the world, not by real people.

[sethshead]

"What being pro-Palestine means to me / my platform: I'm passionately, unequivocally, and without hesitation, a proponent of the Palestinian people’s just and urgent aspirations for self-determination, liberation, sovereignty, and safety. I grew up in Gaza, where I experienced Israeli violence and bombardment, including one incident that almost killed me and caused me permanent hearing impairment; my family is still in Gaza and has suffered dozens of deaths during this latest war; my grandparents were expelled from their ancestral homelands in 1948 and fled to the Gaza Strip; and my parents were raised in a refugee camp in Rafah during the 1950s. This background informs and influences me and speaks to why I care about the Palestinian issue and consider myself pro-Palestine. I am motivated by a sincere desire to see my people obtain their legitimate and undeniable rights, which they have not had for decades.

"Yet I, and many others, especially those who are silent or are forced to be quiet, struggle with finding a political home in today’s pro-Palestine movement. Increasingly, it feels as if pro-Palestine activism is dominated by maximalists (wanting all of historic Palestine and other zero-sum positions and approaches), slogan-driven voices, and narratives. There is a lack of pragmatic and humanistic ability to hold multiple truths at once and to advocate nuanced and color-rich positions and views that are not black-and-white depictions and understandings of the Israel and Palestine conflict.

"Here’s what, to me, an effective and meaningful pro-Palestine platform entails:

"1. Supporting the right of Palestinians to a sovereign and independent state living in peace side by side with Israel.

"2. Condemning Israeli government actions, policies, priorities, and decisions that kill, harm, undermine, or oppress the Palestinian people.

"3. Criticizing and decrying the conduct of the war in Gaza, the military occupation in the West Bank, and the Israeli government’s disregard for Palestinian civilian lives, and the destruction of property and cities.

"4. Rejecting, denouncing, and exposing the theft of Palestinian lands in the West Bank and the sprawling settlement enterprise and settler violence.

"5. Supporting highly targeted, specific, and effective sanctions against individuals, groups, and entities that are enabling the unjust and illegal occupation of the West Bank and harming Palestinian civilians.

"6. Denouncing and combating the dehumanization of the Palestinian people or the denial of their existence as people with the right to live on the land they called home for generations.

"7. Acknowledging the tragedy experienced by hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians from 1948 and giving them/their descendants the right to return to the lands of a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

"8. Understanding past and contemporary mistakes that have set the Palestinian people back by decades and made them pawns in ideologies and geopolitical programs, agendas, and designs.

"9. Developing a pragmatic and realistic framework for recognizing Israel’s existence, right to exist, and the inevitability of its continued existence, all of which should inform how a solution is approached.

"10. Dispensing with delusional and destructive elements of the Palestinian narrative and acknowledging that there will not be a full liberation of all of Palestine, there will not be a right of return to what is now mainland Israel, and that Israel cannot and should not be confronted militarily or through any form of violence.

"11. Promoting a cultural shift away from revolutionary rhetoric, martyrdom, and armed resistance, and instead, rebranding coexistence and peace as a courageous and necessary evolution to preserve Palestinian lives, lands, and heritage and foster a new generation of nation-builders who are focused on doing the most with what the Palestinians currently have and can have in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

"12. Denouncing and rejecting antisemitism while also acknowledging that Zionists and Israelis are a diverse group/people and that the Palestinians have to work with all of these segments to have sustainable coexistence and peace.

"13. Understanding how violent/hateful rhetoric, actions, and mistakes are detrimental because they empower right-wing and extremist forces in Israel who are opposed to Palestinian rights and that persistent mistakes and incendiary rhetoric and proclamations erode support for the Palestinian people and cause.

"14. Recognizing Palestinian agency, responsibility, and accountability when taking actions that have negative consequences and outcomes and acknowledging that, while there’s an asymmetry of power dynamics, Palestinian leaders, political groups, and prominent figures should make rational and responsible choices to optimize for better prospects.

"15. Accepting that even with East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, access to holy sites must always be shared and open to all.

"16. Realizing how nefarious regional players like the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies are not sincere or helpful allies to the Palestinian people and have done so much damage to the entire region and the Palestinian cause.

"17. Developing the capacity to hear Jewish perspectives and grievances, historical and contemporary, to understand why pro-Israel supporters believe what they do and why Israel means so much to so many, even if one disagrees with those opinions and views.

"18. Understanding that Hamas recklessly endangered Palestinian lives and placed the people of Gaza in significant harm and that the group relies on Palestinian suffering as part of its strategy to delegitimize Israel globally while perpetuating the conflict without any meaningful resolution.

"19. Registering the dangers of Islamist rhetoric and ideology that seeks to Islamize Palestinian society and to turn the Palestinian national project into a religious one in pursuit of an Islamic state that, by default, will be exclusionary and incapable of accommodating diverse residents in a future Palestinian country.

"I am compelled to share the aforementioned because, for far too many people, pro-Palestine activism has been reduced to incendiary language that fails to capture the multiple moving parts of what is needed to advance the just and urgent Palestinian aspirations for freedom and independence. While many students, activists, advocates, academics, and analysts have their hearts in the right place, many cannot present viable and pragmatic ideas that are not mere rhetorical statements and empty slogans.

"I know that many strongly disagree with my views and opinions, and that’s entirely fine. Still, many more are eager to see a recalibration of pro-Palestine activism to actually help the Palestinians achieve statehood instead of inflaming division and fostering hostility towards supporters of Israel and the Jewish community. Many in Palestine are aware of the need to be pragmatic and don’t think that angry protests, BDS, antisemitism, endless academic lectures, social media activism, or 'feel good' slogans will actually make a difference.

"It’s time for a rejuvenated pro-Palestine movement that serves as a big tent to encompass multiple views and opinions and to invite and promote broad alliances, especially with mainstream Jewish and Israeli communities, to work towards a just and sustainable resolution of the conflict once and for all. This is entirely attainable and achievable with humility, civility, patience, compassion and kindness, perseverance and determination, a willingness to accept reasonable compromises and accommodations, and, most importantly, the recognition of both sides’ undeniable and mutual humanity."

h/t Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Mr. Allhatib’s pro-Palestinian activism is my Zionism. Jewish and Palestinian national aspirations are not mutually exclusive, but complementary. Neither people can be truly secure in their self determination until both are, until both recognize the fundamental legitimacy of the other and of their need for statehood.

From that mutual understanding can come peace, prosperity, and dignity to all. Is that not a better prospect than what we see at present?

[gamingavickreyauction]

@geekandmisandry I couldn't reblog your post so I'm replying to you here. Maybe OP blocked me, maybe you blocked me, maybe Tumblr's just being a buggy mess, I don't know.

Firstly, I am not saying that anyone I disagree with is in a bubble, but I think it is common for people, regardless of freedom of press, to be in political bubbles. Perhaps you are using the term more narrowly than I am.

Main point: This completely conflicts with my experience of how people think about politics. I live in the UK, where people don't like refugees much, to put it mildly (I am given to understand Australia is the same). For years, the right-wing press has been demonising people crossing the Mediterranean, and 'just let them die' was a mainstream opinion. People knew that thousands had died making the crossing, largely due to policies they supported, and that corpses were washing up on beaches in Greece. Then this picture was taken, of Alan Kurdi, dead, and was everywhere, and a lot of the same people were shocked and horrified.

There was, it seemed to me, a noticeable ramping down of anti-refugee rhetoric for months after, and politicians would be far more mild about refugees whenever that picture was put up next to them.

I think othered people - like refugees, like Palestinians, just don't get thought about as people very much - people of course know they are human, but don't bother to consider their interests. But when you look someone in the face you can't help but be confronted with that. Alan Kurdi looks just like your nephew. I think that confronting people, viscerally, with what they already intellectually know is going on can be a very powerful tool to change people's minds.

I don't want this to be about OP's proposal. I am talking about the general case, and am not advocating showing people gruesome images against their will.

And that example is the weakest possible case: pictures can do more than that by being undeniable evidence in the face of apologetic narratives. People who say the Oct 7 attack was justified tend to go quiet when shown pictures of the bodies in the streets in its wake. And people who say the IDF is the most moral army in the world will backtrack when shown the Flour Massacre. And I think this reflects a genuine shift in people's views.

I think that 'living in a bubble' is a spectrum, and most people are not completely unaware of opposing perspectives, but most people lack much understanding of opposing perspectives: leftists can't explain why perfect markets are efficient and rightists can't explain why intersectionality matters. People generally have enough awareness to think that they understand their opponents, but not enough awareness that any of their accepted narratives are challenged. And I think that's pretty bubbly.

And I don't think it's true that people are constantly exposed to media that disagrees with them, at least not on a lot of issues. The UK media is completely fucked (in large part by one of your citizens, you know) and the most left-wing the mainstream media gets is the Guardian. This means you have to go out of your way to even find voices in favour of publicly run banks. The range of perspectives on offer is pretty narrow, and worse, media have a tendency to fall behind the government line on military operations, like the invasion of Iraq, like the airstrikes in Yemen. This means people might know the basic facts, but not understand why people draw different conclusions from those facts than the official narrative, and are likely to be missing out on more obscure facts that are pivotal to those alternative narratives.

And I think this is similar in Australia, and in Israel. And just, as I said, I've spoken to Israelis who were pretty clueless. Not because they knew nothing, but because they knew little beyond the official narrative.

In conclusion, challenging OP on the grounds that showing people things they already know about/basic information is always an ineffective way of changing people's minds is mistaken.