#Israel-Hamas war

[wilwheaton]

Lies.

Lies from a liar.

This was deliberate.

This was premeditated.

This is EXACTLY what that murderous war criminal wanted to do.

[tributary]

magen david adom is the israeli emergency medical and blood bank service. years ago they saved my bubbe’s life after a bad fall in jerusalem. they are saving lives now, and they serve everyone that they can get to.

i am going to donate in her memory and i encourage you to do so as well if you’re able.

[girlactionfigure]

Sen. Fetterman: ‘I fully support’ Trump’s plan to send US troops to take over Gaza.

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman has backed President Trump’s idea to send US troops to Gaza to spearhead rebuilding efforts in the shattered Palestinian enclave.

“The Palestinians have refused, or they’ve been unwilling, to deliver a government that provided security and economic development for themselves,” Fetterman, one of the most pro-Israel voices in the Democratic Party, told Jewish Insider after Trump stunned the world with his proposal during a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu Tuesday night.

[charlesoberonn]

It's Memorial Day in Israel as of an hour ago.

This Memorial Day is particularly painful with so many people added to the list of the fallen on October 7 and in the subsequent war and unrest.

Many of them are from my hometown. I've been reading the messages people left on their memorial pages and it breaks my heart.

And of course for all the pain and loss on the Israeli side there's more than tenfold the loss in Gaza, in addition to a dire humanitarian crisis with millions more in danger.

I wish with all my heart for this war to end as soon as possible and for both Israelis and Palestinians to begin walking the path of peace, justice, and reconciliation, though I have very few hopes that it'll happen any time soon.

But very few isn't none.

Worse, bloodier, and longer conflicts and enmities have ended peacefully before. France and Germany, Japan and Korea, Israel and Egypt, are a few examples.

I believe this conflict is no different, and one day the list of the fallen will grow no longer.

[eretzyisrael]

This photo was taken in Israel on October 24. The bride and groom had certainly planned for a different wedding location and attire, but both got called up to serve their country in the wake of Hamas’ terror war against Israel...so, they married each other in uniform. There is so much life in this picture: The life that these two are building together, and the lives that they are saving and protecting through their service. Mazal Tov to this beautiful couple, and Am Yisrael Chai

StandWithUs

[thedreideldiaries]

Some People are Still Good

I recently caught up with a friend of mine and offhandedly, sort of casually mentioned that I’d been off instagram since October 7th. He didn’t know what I meant. He'd heard something about a terrorist attack and Israel's military retaliating, but nothing else.

In another universe without tiktok history lessons, I might have been upset. In this one, I was immensely relieved. I didn’t have to argue with him, or hear him rattling off whatever talking points are de rigueur for the Online Left, or get into a heated discussion about the meaning of the word “Zionist,” or get accused of being an apologist for crimes against humanity. I could just…tell him what happened, and how I felt about it.

I told him about the massacre and hostage-taking. I told him how many of the people murdered and kidnapped were peace activists - easier targets, he noted, than anyone in the actual government that Hamas is supposedly resisting. How this was, in proportion to Israel’s population, a bigger terrorist attack than 9/11. That it wasn’t just Israeli Jews who were killed or kidnapped, but Bedouins, laborers from abroad, Americans, and (this is something conveniently left out of a lot of the Discourse), Palestinians. 

I told him about the Israeli government doing exactly what Hamas had counted on them doing in Gaza. I said that people aren’t their governments. I tried to make it clear that I hope Netanyau, may his name be blotted out, lives out the rest of his days in shame and political obscurity (or, to save us all some time, quickly succumbs to some hideously painful disease). That I know there are miles of difference between going to war with Hamas and going to war with the Palestinian people. That if you express any hope that the rest of the hostages will be rescued, you run the risk of getting lumped in with people who think airstrikes on refugee camps are somehow justified, and that unfortunately those people do very much exist.

I told him how Jews are still reeling from what happened, and that it doesn’t help that so many on the left seem to think it’s irrelevant. I told him how my boyfriend (who I’ve seen cry maybe twice over the last decade), spent the entire afternoon of October 7th sobbing at his desk as he watched everything unfold in real time. I told him how that same boyfriend posted about how frustrating it is for Jews to have their suffering repeatedly dismissed, and how one of his leftist friends responded by accusing him of being a genocide apologist. You know, how you talk to a person in mourning. 

I told him how when the first news of the massacre hit, there were leftists who praised it as the start of some glorious revolution. How I don't know how many of them were my acquaintances, because I got off social media before I could find out. How a lot of them were probably ill-informed about what was happening and how and why, but others just think killing Jews is good, actually, and I don't have the mental or emotional fortitude to find out which fall into which category.

I told him how frustrating it is to be a leftist of Jewish background, sickened by the right and heartbroken by the left. I told him how many petitions I’ve been asked to sign that didn’t so much as mention Hamas or the attack. I said I was worried to bring it up, because if you say “but what about the Jews (and, you know, others) who were tortured and murdered and kidnapped,” you get accused of all sorts of heinous, improbable crimes, and I simply do not have the kind of time or energy for that discussion. 

I told him how I still like my classmates, but I don’t trust most of them. I can’t let my guard down around them. I can’t talk about how I feel about the conflict except in vague terms, which is ironic, because the people who are brave enough to say “peace would be nice” are accused of not taking a stand. How terrified I am that I'll use the wrong word and out myself as whatever they think that makes me. How I’d hoped they’d be my friends, before all of this. How they’re all being really nice to me, and I can’t shake the thought that they’d hate me if they knew I thought the state of Israel should exist and that Israelis have the right to not be murdered. How I wish I felt like I could be in activist spaces without having to loudly and eagerly participate in my own dehumanization and that of so many people I love. 

And he listened. 

I don’t think anyone Jewish is wrong to be cautious. But for all the leftist goyim willing to argue that murdering babies is actually a good thing if the babies belong to colonizers, there are others - many others, I hope - who genuinely want to understand what’s actually going on. Who see a difference between resisting your oppressors and murdering them at a music festival or burning them alive in their homes. Who find “it’s wrong to kill civilians” to be an uncontroversial statement. I hate how many people I can no longer trust, but I’m so grateful to have at least some non-Jewish friends who actually understand nuance and care enough to try.

[bearfoottruck]

OK, so I've been seeing MULTIPLE posts on my dash about Palestine and I'm thinking, "Yeah, but what about Ukraine? Don't any of us still care about them?" Keep in mind that Russia and Iran are allies.

[rhpotter]

“I disagree with Kamala’s position on the war in Gaza. How can I vote fo...

[progressglobenews]

Al Jazeera English

[dirjoh-blog]

My Interview with Tal Hartuv—Survivor of the 2010 Hamas Attack

(Repost from October 18, 2023, reposting this because reportedly one of the terrorists is being released as part of the cease fire agreement)) This is my interview with Tal Hartuv, an artist who also serves as a guide and educator with Yad Vashem. In 2010, she endured a horrific attack by two Hamas terrorists disguised as Israeli police officers while hiking in the hills of Jerusalem with her…

[divinum-pacis]

Christian activists demonstrate for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war after an Ash Wednesday Mass near the White House in Washington, Feb. 14, 2024. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)

[eretzyisrael]

Senior IDF officials plan to rename Saturday's hostage rescue operation after commander Arnon Zamora, who was fatally wounded during the operation, Israel's Army Radio reported.

[thedreideldiaries]

It's been really disturbing seeing the usual leftist language around tone policing being applied to Hamas. Like when everyone was saying "don't judge the oppressed for expressing anger at their oppressor in whatever way makes sense to them" but "being expressing anger at" is now "literally murdering." And, more distressingly, "their oppressor" can be literally anyone arguably complicit in their oppression. Which, in a globally interconnected society, is...theoretically anyone?

I'm not sure what the answer is. We need to be able to talk about what it means to be complicit in oppression without actively participating in it. I do think there's such a thing as collective responsibility. Saying "silence is violence" feels trite and inaccurate, but I think people are basically using it to mean "don't remain neutral in situations of injustice," and I can definitely get behind that.

But then people start collapsing the definition of "violence" in both directions. When the people saying "silence is violence" are the same ones cheering on, excusing, or justifying deadly, physical violence against people whose crime amounted to "being in a place at a time," it gets really scary to be in leftist spaces. I want to be in leftist spaces! I have this whole code of ethics about it! But when there is no room for even the appearance of dissent - no way to say "we have different words for what's going on but we both agree the death and suffering need to stop; how can we do our part to help make that happen?" - I honestly don't know where we go from there.

[stress-test-interfaith-dialogue]

Meet Stress Test Editors John K. Roth and Carol Rittner!

John K. Roth

The Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College, where he taught for more than forty years and was the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights). He is a Protestant Christian with Presbyterian and Methodist ties. Long friendships with Elie Wiesel and Richard Rubenstein, Eva Fleischner, and Franklin Littell impressed on Roth how deeply the Christian tradition has been implicated in antisemitism and the Holocaust.

In books such as The Failures of Ethics (2015), Sources of Holocaust Insight (2020), and Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, and Endangered American Democracy (2023), Roth looks for ways in which Christians and Jews can work together to resist anti-democratic authoritarianism and to defend human rights. Against long odds, he remains hopeful that a two-state resolution, which he has long supported, can be found for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Hamas-Israel War

Carol Rittner R.S.M.

Dr. Rittner is the author, editor or co-editor of numerous essays and books about the Holocaust and Christian-Jewish relations, including Memory Offended: The Auschwitz Convent Controversy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1991); What’s the “Good News” After Auschwitz? (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001), Pius XII and the Holocaust (London and New York: University of Leicester Press/Continuum Publishers, 2002); No Going Back:Letters to Pope Benedict XVI on the Holocaust, Christian-Jewish Relations and the State of Israel (Laxton, UK: Quill Press, 2009); The Holocaust and Nostra Aetate: Toward A Greater Understanding (Greensburg, PA: Seton Hill University Press, 2017); and The Holocaust and the Christian World, 2nd ed. (Mahwah, NJ: A Stimulus Book, Paulist Press, 2019). She is the co-editor, with John K. Roth, of the forthcoming book Stress Test: The Hamas-Israel War and Christian-Jewish Relations (iPub Global, 2025).

Her international engagement further demonstrates Dr. Rittner’s commitment to fostering interfaith understanding and peace. Between 1985 and 2010, she led numerous groups of Christians to Israel, facilitating meetings with Israeli Jews, Muslims, Druse, and Christians. These visits also included interactions with Palestinians in Bethlehem, providing a platform for learning about and discussing the ongoing obstacles and possibilities for peace in the region.

She is the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates from Misericordia University, Dallas, PA (1990), King’s College, Wilkes Barre, PA (1999), Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ (2002), and The College of St. Mary, Omaha, NB (2011). In 2022, the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University, Greensburg, PA, honored Dr. Rittner with the Nostra Aetate Award, which “acknowledges distinguished work in the field of Jewish-Catholic relations and, in particular, recognizes scholarship that enhanced interfaith understanding.”

[kendrixtermina]

It's very easy to buy the US government.

Some have said that blaming the complicity of the US govern on the Israel lobby is an "antisemitic conspiracy" (even though the campaign donations are plain for everyone to see & no one said anything about equating them with all Jews - indeed many of the lobbyist are evangelical Christians... who seem to care precious little about the Christian Palestinian minority.)

So I want to stress the following:

This isn't unique to Israel AT ALL.

Money in politics, lobbying & corruption has been a mounting problem in the US (and to a lesser extent, but still very significant extent, other western countries)

US Politicians are, frankly, easily bought. Biden's bought by Israel, the previous guy was likely bought by Russia.

Fossil Fuel Companies buy them. Big Pharma buy them. Anti-Union ppl buy them. The Military Industrial Complex buy them (and are as guilty here as the Israel lobby) - and each of these had their propaganda campaigns to rile up people against unions for example, or spread climate denialism.

This was an ongoing, unfixed problem for ages, and now it has lead to catastrophe.

Since the "money is speech" decision under Reagan, nearly everything in the US has gone to shit. That's when poverty began increasing. That's when wages and life expectancy stopped going up.

This is why Americans are so poor. Why they have poor healthcare. Why the USA keeps poluting. And yes, why foreign governments can just buy whatever policy they want if they offer, say, oil in return.

This is a corruption problem. Some may term it a capitalism problem, too, but even if you don't want to go so far, it's just plain corruption. No conspiracy required.

It's just chaos. The throne is empty. There is no great mastermind behind anything. No one's in charge but market forces and inertia. Like many disastrous events in history, it's a clusterfuck.

Notice also how when I say, "Trump had financial ties to Russia", I'm not accused of wanting to kill all Slavs or anti-slavic prejudice? You immediately realize I mean the government, not Russians in general including average joe russians living in foreign countries?