#and even if hamas had beheaded babies so what?

[deep-sea-horror]

zionists are so fucking stupid its unbelievable.

[barblaz-arts]

I haven’t sent any of the other messages, and this is the first time I’m even seeing your opinions on this matter as I’ve followed you for your Wenclair art.

I’m an Israeli citizen. On October 7th thousands of Hamas terrorists went into Israeli villages (on Israel’s territory) and raped, shot, beheaded, burned alive and murdered 1400 CIVILIANS. They kidnapped 230 more citizens into the Gaza Strip, including babies and the elderly (no idea if they are alive, as Hamas didn’t let the Red Cross or anyone else see them and REFUSED any deal to release them, despite all the lies they are spreading). Hamas uploaded videos of them doing these deeds, they were proud of them. We are still not done counting our dead, 3 weeks later, because of the state they were left in. We identify people by DNA pulled from pieces of skull tissue, by CT scans of burned masses of flesh showing parents hugging their children as they were burned alive.

A little bit of history. In 2005 Israel completely pulled out of Gaza, and handed it over to the Palestinians. In 2007 Hamas was elected to lead the Gaza Strip. This is an organization that in its charter says loud and clear they want to murder Jews. It’s not hidden, there is no question about it. They are proud of it. And since 2007 they have not allowed for an election in Gaza, they have stolen international aid money to build terror infrastructure and embedded themselves deep within their civilian population (just a few days ago evidence was provided that Hamas built their HQ under a hospital, specifically because they knew Israel wouldn’t bomb it).

The truth is, the pictures from Gaza are heartbreaking. The civilians are suffering and it’s making me sick. But how is Israel supposed to respond to the massacre of October 7th? Just pretend it didn’t happen? No country would. Israel isn’t targeting the civilian population though, unlike Hamas. I’m not saying innocent civilians aren’t killed, they very sadly are because war is horrible. But it’s always an accident, they are never the targets. Hamas is the target.

Israel has its part in creating Hamas just like the USA had its part in creating ISIS and Taliban. Still doesn’t excuse terrorism. Israel didn’t deserve the October 7th massacre anymore than the USA deserved 9/11. I hope that you can appreciate that.

The truth is, there are innocent civilians on both sides here that are suffering. Things aren’t black and white, and they never were with this conflict. And if you want to have a discussion I’ll happily talk to you privately, answer questions as best as I can. But only if we come from a place of mutual respect. If you want to block me, that’s fine too.

I do want to let you know while I can that your art is beautiful and made me smile on multiple occasions. I hope you continue it. And I wish you luck with everything and hope that we all have peaceful days in the future.

First of all. Gaza was not given to Palestine. Israel put them there and had Gaza serve as an open air prison.

You can't go around saying "Israel has its part in creating Hamas but it still doesn't excuse terrorism" then go around saying that this genocide is justified because "What else are we supposed to do after what happened in Oct 7?" What a double standard. You do not get to say that what happened to them makes you feel bad but say that you were left with no other choice. You dont get to say that Hamas being born from 70+ of brutality is still not an excuse to kill but also say Israel doing the same thing is justified.

Now, of course this does not mean that I side with Hamas. Never have, never will. I side with Palestinians, something so many Zionists cannot seem to comprehend, because they see killing them as one and the same.

Listing off those atrocities, though heartbreaking, as I will always mourn the innocent, still does not change my stance or how I feel. I feel like a broken recorder, constantly having to repeat that the civilians in Gaza did not do those and in turn did not deserve any of this. The hostages don't either of course, and the families of the ones still held captive are furious with their government for choosing to bomb them along with Hamas like some sort of sacrifice, like what you are implying the civilian deaths to be. Just unfortunate casualties for the greater good.

You can go ahead and say that only Hamas were meant to be targeted all you want, but they did not need to cut off their water so they're not even able to clean and defecate. They did not need to cut off power and render hospitals useless. And NO they did not need to bomb those same hospitals, even IF it were true that it was a Hamas base. And they did not need to use phosphorus bombs to do it. This has, and always will be about Israel's hatred of arabs and Muslims, as it was 70 years ago before Hamas even existed, as it still is now.

Tell me, if the past two or so weeks was really about Hamas, then why are these people mocking the civilians that are mourning their families' death as they starve?

None of this should have happened. Hell, you shouldn't even be living where you are in the first place. No one has any right to colonize. Whatever white supremacists or religious reason anyone says.

Of course this does not mean that I believe all jews or Israeli are as evil as the pieces of shit in that tiktok compilation or the powerful pile of dung that rule your country. There are Isreali and Jews protesting for Palestine as well, and I deeply admire them for their bravery and to feel compassion for the other side and act on it.

It's baffling how you're aware that Israel is responsible for Hamas creation but still, maybe not want it, but think all you can do is reluctantly accept the unavoidable. Because this was definitely avoidable. But your government actively wants this, and frankly I dont think it cares about you. It does not care about the soldiers they send out and the people that died and the hostages that were taken. They are using you as an excuse for more death and money.

"Those thinking of revenge should be ashamed," said by one of the survivors of Oct 7. And she is right. You are demanding the wrong things of your government.

And no, I will not be talking to anyone about this in my direct messages. Talking about it privately makes it feel like some debate to be won, when this shouldn't be a debate at all. The reason why I answer these kinds of asks is to make people aware of what is happening. I'm just some girl, I cannot fight for Palestine in any way that can directly save a life and I dont have the financial capability to donate, but I can do this. We can make those sick excuses of humans on top know that we know of their stink and we will not give it any excuse.

[matan4il]

I've heard that the beheaded babies have not been confirmed, that it is just a claim being spread by the Israeli army and that they themselves have admitted that they do not have confirmation that this happened. (I hope it does turn out that this is not true and just misinformation being spread.)

Anti-Israeli lies.

Here is the CNN's Nic Robertson, one of many foreign journalists who yesterday were reporting from kibbutz Kfar Azza, confirming everything that Israeli soldiers, police people, paramedics and survivors of the slaughter had recounted. (no graphic images in the vid, he's just describing what he has seen)

If you want to see some of the more graphic horrific sights (still partly censored), you can, for example, check out this IG reel.

Let me also make something clear.

Israel is a democratic country, with free press, that can and does challenge the state's official institutes (including anti-Zionist Israeli journalists, who have every motivation to go against the government). Which means whatever information is released by official institutes will be subject to scrutiny. The government knows this. It is aware that it can't easily spread false info and propaganda even if it wanted to. Israel is not Gaza under Hamas, where that terrorist, antisemitic organization controls information, tortures Palestinian journalists, and threatens the lives of foreign reporters (something the foreign press association has spoken out against). What official information comes out of Israel is verifiable, because it has to be.

But more than that, I want to clarify why it wouldn't even want to. If you watch the news on Israeli TV, you won't see any horror images. As an Israeli, you can see those on social media, but not on the news. Because decades of suffering terrorism means there's a lot of sensitivity to preserving the dignity of the murdered and protecting the feelings of their families and the general population. That means, again, that the official institutes of the state will not make up horror stories that will emotionally abuse and scar the population. I did not vote for the current government, but I will also not de-humanize it by saying that it would knowingly and maliciously horrify its own people at a time when, as a society, we're all traumatized enough as is.

That's a part of why we're into the fifth day of this war and the government is still counting the dead from the massacre of the first day. Because the Israeli government is aware of how important the credibility and accuracy of its information is.

So just... shame on anyone spreading this lie that the State of Israel is spreading false propaganda about the horrors Hamas committed. I have no doubt that the source for this lie comes from those who want to discredit the accounts about these atrocities in general.

[girlactionfigure]

Human Rights and Human Wrongs

URI KURLIANCHIK

“It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means… Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.”

— Apocalypses Now

There has been a lot of talk about the "dehumanization of the Palestinians," so let's talk about this for a minute.

First of all, what does it mean? In plain English, it means Jews no longer have pity for Arabs who get hurt in the war they started to eradicate the Jewish people in the Middle East. This is mostly true. Even the eyes of the most gentle Israelis light up when they see a rocket hitting a Hezbollah launcher in South Lebanon or a building block used by the butchers of Hamas demolished in Beit Lahia.

It wasn't like that until recently. How did we come to this?

When I was a boy, Israel was a leftist country. We had huge peace rallies, the Oslo accords, all our war movies were of the insipid "shooting and crying" genre. We even had a subject called "peace" in school! People like me were viewed as crazy marginals (except back then, I also supported the two state solution, all civilized people did). To even suggest that not all societies wanted peace was seen as vulgar and uncouth. Nice people cried for the innocent dead on both sides. We could forgive the Arabs for killing our children but not for making us kill theirs. Etc… etc…

This euphoria of peace born out of the Oslo Accords was followed by decades of barbarism from the Arabs that eroded the pity reserves of the Jewish people. 

Yes, pity is a resource, and it's finite.

This wasn't the result of slanted reporting or anti-Arab propaganda. The media was firmly left-leaning and went out of its way to defend the Arabs after each new atrocity that was difficult to imagine was done by humans, and the widespread celebrations that followed. More and more, people asked themselves, “where is this peace partner? What kind of a society are we expected to live side by side with?”

Jews were torn to pieces with bare hands, baby skulls were smashed with rocks, little girls were butchered in their beds, children were massacred in schools, in discotheques, on buses. People were mutilated, castrated, crippled; not as collateral damage but meticulously, with sadistic precision, by an enemy that seemed to always prefer to go after defenseless civilians, that seemed to revel in atrocity.

And each time, the Jack the Rippers responsible for these horrors were celebrated as heroes by the Arab street and their progressive allies. No one stood up and said, "guys, there are laws even in war." No, when it came to hurting us, it was always, "by any means necessary." The laws were there to prevent us from protecting ourselves, never to protect us, and “resistance” often seemed like nothing more than an excuse to indulge in sadism.

Time after time, year after year, decade after decade; the Arabs produced images of horror that even the most progressive Israeli peacenik couldn't spin into anything other than what it was: the portrait of a savage society.

The change didn't occur at once. 

People first started voicing opinions that were outside the Overton window, only to be shut down in polite society. Then polite society started shrugging because it ran out of arguments.

Then October 7 came, the ultimate atrocity exhibition, the ultimate barbarity, recorded in vivid details and spread so ubiquitously there was no chance anyone missed it. Shocked and hurt, the Jews who still had pity learned that the Arabs and their progressive allies had no pity or even empathy for them.

"You made it up! You did it to yourself! It was only military targets!" and other forms of sadistic gaslighting were hurled smugly at a grieving nation. "Where are the 40 beheaded babies, haha? With or without baking powder, har har?"

The message was simple: "No matter what happens to you, you deserve no pity. Your very existence is a crime."

For many, this was the final straw. 

This was the moment their last shred of compassion for the enemy evaporated and their hearts became hard. Hearts of survival. Hearts of war. This is what the pseudointellectual farts mean when they talk about, “the dehumanization of the Palestinians.” The enemy finally managed to push Israeli society into not caring about the enemy. It took 40 years of hard word but we’re finally there.

Will this pity ever return, or have we finally transformed into a new kind of nation? I don't know.

What I do know is that when you treat someone without pity for decades, don't expect them to be compassionate towards you forever. 

Commit enough inhumanities and you'll be dehumanized.

[anamericangirl]

Israel just bombed a UN ran school and a Baptist Hospital in Palestine killing more than 500 Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are children.

We actually don't know who blew up the hospital. Palestinian authorities say it was Israel but Israel is saying they had nothing to do with it and it most likely a failed rocket launch from Hamas, which, you know is incredibly likely because Hamas is literally launching their missiles from schools and hospitals to try to get Israel to kill civilians.

If Israel hits a school or hospital you can bet your ass it's because Hamas fired a missile from that location, using children and other innocent civilians as human shields so stupid ass people like you will look at the situation and say "Israel is so evil! Look they are killing innocent people!" when those people are dead because of Hamas who put them in the way of Israel's missiles because they want Israel to kill their civilians and they are counting on fools like you to eat up their propaganda and just ignore the reality that they are using Palestinians as human shields, which they're not even trying to hide. And they know they don't need to because you're dumb enough to fall for whatever they say, regardless of what the obvious truth is. You got anything to say about that??? Do you have anything to say about Hamas using children as human shields? Or is it Israel's fault they are doing that?

Israel is doing everything in their power to avoid civilian deaths. They warn Palestinians every time they are about to fire. They send texts, phone calls, leaflets, order them to evacuate the area, tell them where to go, exactly where they will be bombing, even send dud bombs to the locations so people will hear them and get out before they do anything and then Hamas tells the people to stay where they are specifically so they get killed and idiots like you will say "look what evil Israel just did!!!!!"

Are you aware that a few days ago there was a brutal terrorist attack in Israel perpetrated by Hamas that killed 1400 people? Including children? Are you aware Hamas beheaded babies, brutally raped children, killed family pets, murdered innocent people and took several children and elderly people hostage? Did you know they went there specifically to kill and torture innocent people? You got anything to say about that?? Huh? Or is morality suddenly subjective again?

Or is Israel the bad guy for trying to protect their civilians because Hamas is hiding behind their own?

[fairuzfan]

The reason why I always say that Palestinians know the system better than anyone else is because we can see how it's weaponized to its fullest, yes, but we also see the multitude of ways they use the backing of the government system to blatantly lie about who we are and turn people against us. The government only ever benefits those in power and the people refusing to abandon the power of the government are the people with the most to lose in these situations. People who argue "Oh that's not how the government spending works" when we point out how money is used for war rather than spending for community projects don't understand, or maybe don't want to understand, that this in itself is the problem we are trying to draw attention to.

And even with things like... pointing out that the """"peace festival"""" was on the border of Gaza, which is said to be a "security threat" by the Israeli government, and was given permission to EXTEND its festival there — people still scoff that I would DARE say this when SO many people lost their lives but it still holds true in that these people conducting the festival really did not care they were across the street from a concentration camp as they celebrated whatever the fuck they were celebrating and that they lost their lives celebrating while they KNEW there people starving and locked up in a huge CAGE — what makes it worse is that the Israeli government gave it a stamp of approval. Like isn't that messed up? Isn't that absolutely batshit?? If you told ME you're holding a party a couple miles away from the concentration camps in America out of literally EVERYWHERE you could go, I'd be like "You're incredibly cruel" and I'd stop being your friend.

And when we come back to October 7th, like what's really ridiculous to me is that al-Qassam would go on a killing spree despite the fact that they had a time sensitive mission with a clear goal (that they already put into effect!) of getting hostages, hiding, and negotiating for the release of Palestinian prisoners. They don't have fucking time to go find and behead 40 babies, let alone need or WANT to, but somehow the state managed to twist this into a perverse act of vengeance that the unruly Brown Man has been itching to do to the poor and innocent White People (who also live across the street from the concentration camp) and people ate it up because of course those TERRORISTS want to kill people for no reason, of course. Nevermind that they stated their goal. Nevermind that they are trying to release political prisoners that the PA avoids helping at all costs. What they were doing in that kibbutz was only to kill and maim and torture because THATS what the state of Israel told me and Hamas is a bunch of antisemitic bloodthirsty men who only want to sew discord into your lives.

You people who are still using Israeli talking points about hamas but still proclaim "support" for Palestine are just so transparent in how you want to dictate Palestinian liberation to suit your own needs before it helps Palestinians.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

What exactly is Hamas and why are they being used as a way to target Palestinians?

hamas is more or less a militia dedicated to defending Palestine from Israel at this point. It’s more complicated than that, but the overview is just that Israel sees hamas as a threat because members of Hamas fight back. On October 7th hamas made a retaliatory attack against Israel in a gamble to gain leverage that would force Israel to withdraw from Gaza and leave the Palestinians there to live in peace. As part of this leverage, several Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas, with the promise they would be freed unharmed if Israel agreed to a ceasefire. They underestimated how little Israel values human life, however, and the IDF used the attack to insist all Palestinians were members of Hamas, even the children, which for a lot of people legitimized the IDF becoming even more hostile than before. The IDF attacked Palestinians in a level of brutality not seen since the nakba in the 40s.

Which isn’t saying they were civil before mind you. They have been committing active genocide for over 75 years. They just picked up the pace using October 7th to justify their response, suddenly proclaiming hamas had bases hidden under every school and hospital in Gaza.

Hamas is at the end of the day a scapegoat. They’re someone Israel can point to whenever the IDF is called to question for their acts of genocide, and because hamas doesn’t exactly have a huge social media presence, especially since he IDF loves to cut electricity access to Gaza, the IDF is free to lie about hamas in any way they see fit. Best example being the falsified claim that hamas beheaded babies (which was largely spread by Biden) and massacred children. People believed these lies simply because westerners are scared of Arabs with weapons. You can thank bush for that one primarily, but a lot of western media in the past two decades or so have portrayed Arabs and Muslims as cartoonishly evil and bloodthirsty. Not unlike the way blood libel propaganda has been spread for centuries.

The key to effective genocide is to make the public no longer see the target demographic as human beings. Treat them like targets, threats, vermin, or whatever else and there is less public outcry when you start eliminating them.

[david-goldrock]

Hey, I'm sure you've been inundated with hateful messages since a fairly large blog pointed you out as a proud zionist. I don't think that's helpful for anyone and it speaks poorly of those who sent it. I'd like to ask you some questions though, and I won't call on you to answer them publicly but you may wish to reflect on them in private.

First, do you believe all the citizens of Palestine are guilty for what Hamas has done? If so, I might ask you why collective punishment was outlawed under the Geneva convention.

Second, why did the Israeli government need to make up a story about 40 beheaded babies, and why is that now debunked story worth so much more than the babies that have been killed by bombs or starved to death in Gaza now?

Third, why might the people of Gaza support Hamas? Even if you believe every single Palestinian does, why would such an awful terrorist group be so popular? Do you believe it is because they are just savages, frothing at the mouth to kill Jews and queers?

Fourth, what justifies the Nakba of the last century, the killing and displacement of 750,000 people?

Fifth, what of the documented cases going back decades of Israeli soldiers killing journalists, medics, and peaceful protesters, including non-Palestinians like Rachel Corrie? Why do you think she protested so vehemently?

Sixth, if you believe Israel has the right to reclaim the homeland of two thousand years ago, do you believe Native Americans have the right to violently take the land of the USA?

Finally, why do you think the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence exists, and what do their testimonies mean to you?

I see you enjoy Percy Jackson; those books were very dear to my heart when I was younger, specifically the messaging of compassion for others and standing up against unjust systems. There is no angry message that anyone could send that will make you change your mind, but I hope this, sent in good faith, might help you at least reflect.

Imma answer out of order, going from stuff that's related to the war, to stuff related to the conflict, to stuff pretty unrelated

Hey, I'm sure you've been inundated with hateful messages since a fairly large blog pointed you out as a proud zionist.

So that's what happened! that explains it, thanks

First, do you believe all the citizens of Palestine are guilty for what Hamas has done?

I guess you mean the civilian population as Hamas never declared independence. I do not consider them all guilty, but I consider many responsible, so let's break it down:

Guilty: any hamas memeber, any person who helps hamas (funds, weapon stashes, kindapee holding) and any person who volunteers or sends volunteers or incourage volunteers to serve as human sheidls. all of them are directly guilty

Responsable: reponsable is those who could have responded but don't. those who had information about the war and didn't share it with Israel, anybody who knows the location of kidnappees, terrorists or weapon stashes, etc.

The remaining, mostly children, are neither guilty nor responsible, and I am sorry they are in the crossfire. I wish hamas surrenders soon, but I am not very hopeful

why collective punishment was outlawed under the Geneva convention

collective punishment is outlawed because hurting those who aren't guilty is not okay, any child can tell you that. but this war isn't collective punishment. on the contrary: hamas members use the immence humanitarian support for the civilian population in gaza to remain afloat.

Second, why did the Israeli government need to make up a story about 40 beheaded babies

let's begin by saying that many babies were brutally murdered on Oct. 7, just so nobody gets any ideas

beheading specifically? well see, I was one of the people talking about the beheaded babies, so while I can't speak for my government, I can speak for myself

This was at a time things were pretty uncertain, and It wasn't clear what had and hadn't happened, and an esteemed journalist from abroad had made the claim, not the government, who only defended it. It felt like the horrors we saw were denied before we even got the moment to mourn for them. this is one of the few times in this war that Israel had shared false information, so I can see how one might get caught up on it, but this is 1 detail which was wrong, a few days after the horrific massecare.

babies that have been killed by bombs or starved to death in Gaza now?

I didn't see any proof for starvation, though I wouldn't be very surprised (even though gaza now gets almost twice as many humanitarian aid as it did on Oct. 6, much of the support goes to hamas, so maybe it did happen). About the bombs? I am not very glad about gazan babies and children dying by bomb strikes, but with all due respect, I prefer that the soliders we send into gaza stay alive than gazan children, so if a trapped house with a hamas base and a few children is standing, I prefer we bomb it than risk the lives of our soliders. you may disagree, that's an opinion, but I have friends in gaza at the moment, and I cannot go to another funeral, my heart has had enough

Third, why might the people of Gaza support Hamas? ... why would such an awful terrorist group be so popular?

For the same reason the rest of the arab world and some of the western world does: they kill jews. every time hamas does a terror attack, it's value in the polls skyrockets all over the middle east. they like to see dead jews. I genuinly wonder what other reason could it be in your mind? hamas and groups like it operated from before 1948, they are terrible for every infrastructure and chance for peace one might ever wish for, they call for the creation of a palestinian state on the entire land west of the jordan river, and for an Islamic caliphate, if you belive it's about land you understoon nothing

Even if you believe every single Palestinian does

Well, here is a poll from after Oct. 7

tell me yourself

Do you believe it is because they are just savages, frothing at the mouth to kill Jews and queers?

I do not think of them as savages, (hamas are worse than that, the rest are just misled by an awful culture that's filled to the brim with fundamental islamism), but yes, absolutly, they like hamas because they kill jews. they prefer them to fatah because fatah dares to talk with Israel. they support terrorist attacks, by the majority, they share candies when jews are slaughtered, yes, they like hamas because it is the main palestinian group killing jews.

Finally, why do you think the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence exists, and what do their testimonies mean to you?

This is the easiest question you could have given me, thank you. BTS, the extreme-left organization that supposedly devotes themselves to testemonies about IDF misconduct, are cowards.

I have seen their testemonies, and I have reviewd their cases, and I have 2 problems with them:

they generalize specific cases. one of their favorite stories is the story of how once a few soliders (I think in Hebron) were on duty on the time of the world cup, so they evacuated a family from their house for that day, confiscated their TV, and watched the game, what they tell you is that it's a common occourance, what they don't tell you is that It happened once, and the soliders were heavily (though not heavily enough) punished

they prefer to act as social justice warriors than doing the hard work. BTS has dozens of cases of solider misconduct, but many of them has never seen a court, military court or general court. they gather a bunch of evidence, and instead of acting as an increadible organization that keeps the sanctity of the weapon and take misbehaving soliders to court, they exagurate and publish those stories abroad, to get a pat on the back, give bs for antisemites to spew, and leave the soliders out in public. Instead of making both palestinians and israelis secure (because I don't want the guy who thought he can take sombody's home to watch the world cup to walk with me on the street either), they prefer getting a bit of praise from the enemies of the country and leave things be

>Sixth, if you believe Israel has the right to reclaim the homeland of two thousand years ago, do you believe Native Americans have the right to violently take the land of the USA?

That is less like '48 and more like the bar-cokhva revolt... there is an empire there and not an ungoverened body, the violence comes from the people and not the colonising force etc. but let's answer this quesiton anyway because of all of your questions, this one made me think the most

Yes and no. If the first people of the american continent wanted to reastablish governence they never had over empty streaches of land to have it, this is insane. But if the first people organized in a movement to reclaim some of the USA and establish independent states where they once lived, and at first tried a peaceful solution for years, I think I'd support their struggle, yes. That said, it would be suicidal. the time we tried to do something simmilar (the bar cochva revolt) it ended in 2000 years of diasporah, so while I'd support the cause, I'd not support a war against nuclear america, and neither would I support giving back times square or D.C, a settlement would have to be reached. I think many americans would support it as well, particularly from the left

Fourth, what justifies the Nakba of the last century, the killing and displacement of 750,000 people?

I think you were lied to about the nakba... the "nakba" is the event in which right after the establishment of Israel (the day after) a war broke out with 7 arab armies attacked the newform state. in this war, the arab leaders of the time told many arabs in the area to evacuate and return after the war is done and there are no more jews in Israel. in the mixed cities fights broke out, and the army that got there first expelled the population they didn't support (Hadera went jewish, Hebron went arab). lastly, a few (though very few) operations under plan D got arab out of their homes. remember: the jews in the entire arab world, including judea and sameria, got the same treatment, often worse. now for those so called "refugees" (calling the decendent of a person fleeing from a war he started and getting a foriegn ID or returning to live in the same land under a different governance "refugee" is absurd. by that defenition I am a judean-polish-czechoslovakian refugee, even though I was born here) that UNRWA talks about now? they don't have "a right to return" any more than a roman or greek person does. the latest coloniser thinks they can get special treatment. for their property? they can get compensation once the entirety of europe and MENA gives Israel the tens of bilions of dollars worth of property that was stolen from them in '39 and '48.

Fifth, what of the documented cases going back decades of Israeli soldiers killing journalists, medics

I have seen none, I have seen, many, MANY, cases though, of "medics" and "journalists" with guns and suicide bombers.

and peaceful protestors

whats peaceful to you? throwing rocks at soliders? many die from these attacks each year. crossing the border? that would get you arrested or killed in any country except in europe

Rachel Corrie

Well, I am sorry that she died, there certainly was a better way to deal with the situation. The supreme court of israel (which is very left leaning) determined that her actions constituded an act of war and such the soliders are not guilty. I disagree, but you cannot pretend like this is either A. a common occourance or B. a clear case of non-violent proccess. her actions were, and I quote the surprmeme court:

I see you enjoy Percy Jackson; those books were very dear to my heart when I was younger, specifically the messaging of compassion for others and standing up against unjust systems.

Well, I see percy jackson as more about acceptance and breaking cycles of violence, but idk. I do think we should stand up against bad systems, and believe me, I could fill a book with the troubles that I have with the IDF. it often puts things under the rug, sacrafices Israeli lives to look better, and many other problems, but I don't think it is unjust. on the contrary, I think any army in the world, and epecially the US's one, would have flattned gaza on the 8th. the IDF is the most moral army in the world (it is the only one even trying)

Hope you agree with me, and even if you don't, how did you say? "I hope this, sent in good faith, might help you at least reflect"

This is the first civil ask I got since, I think, december. thank you for being civil

[mylight-png]

Sharing Mylight - Spread Joy

You know what? I'm tired. I just had a peaceful shabbat, my first time completely keeping shabbat and also seeing havdalah actually! It was the first time since this whole thing started that I felt like I could breathe and exist peacefully.

I was so tired. I was scared every day. Angry every day. Sad every day. And those negative emotions are so draining. It was amazing to just switch off my phone, and even though I had moments when I worried about what I would see when I turned my phone back on, it was generally a calm and restful day.

Immediately after havdalah, we were all hit in the face with reality. We were trying to figure out how to get back to campus and decided that driving was safer. Then we heard from someone who had come over from the chabad building (we were at the rabbi's house before) who said there was a massive pro-Hamas rally. It was so massive that it could be heard from the chabad, even though it was at least two miles away.

The rally was on the way back to campus, so we drove past it. It was awful. These people were chanting their genocidal slogans, carrying their hateful, antisemitic signs.

One sign stood out to me in particular. It was a poster comparing the Israeli flag to the Nazi flag.

I'll be honest, I had a panic attack in that car.

You know how if you bend a piece of metal a lot of times it breaks? This whole week was bending me back and forth, with me cycling through all of my negative emotions constantly. That sign is what broke me.

Those monsters are killing our children, beheading our babies, burning the babies alive, kidnapping our elderly, holding our people hostage, bombarding our families, and they compare us to the Nazis? This was the worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust and they are comparing us to the Nazis?

It's fucking disgusting.

Israel warns Gazan civilians to evacuate before they start trying to get rid of Hamas. Israel tries to open evacuation routes for them.

Israel didn't get any warning. Israel didn't get evacuation routes.

Israel fights to protect life, Hamas fights to end it.

So you know what? I'm tired. I'm tired of being bent back and forth until I break. I'm sure you are tired too. Let's find a way to bring light to Jumblr (I sure do mention light a lot, I didn't actually name myself mylight-png on purpose, I promise).

If you draw, draw something celebrating Jewish joy. If you bake, bake something Jewish that makes you happy. If you write, then write about some positive Jewish experiences. If you do pottery, make something Jewish. Whatever media you use in order to create, use it to create something Jewish and positive. Something celebrating our light in this time of darkness.

Post it here with the tag "sharing mylight" (yes space it like that to avoid overlapping other tags and also because haha pun)(obviously without the quotation marks).

In a world that wants us gone, share light!

I'll be trying to create something as well, and I'll post it here when I'm done.

[doberbutts]

hey can i ask you a question about this post of yours? (tumblr.com/doberbutts/731905953004437504)

in your response to the weird anon, you linked this al jazeera article/video (aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/19/what-hit-ahli-hospital-in-gaza) and said that it's "saying it probably wasn't intentional and it probably was a missile that originated in Gaza." however, i watched the video recently and it seems to me that what it says at the end was that the claim that it was a gazan misfire was false. am i just misinterpreting it?

(to be clear, im only talking about the first paragraph of your answer to the anon in that one post, not about any of the posts or any of the people harassing you)

It's like. Right there in the article. Al Jazeera does not think it was a misfire and believes it did originate in Gaza but was shot down by Israel's Iron Dome, which I also fielded as a possibility. Israel says it was a misfire of a missle coming from Gaza. The CNN article I read that morning discussed both possibilities. In either case, yes, it was probably not an intentional hit and was probably a missle that originated in Gaza, because that is the commonality between both sides.

When you are dealing with a huge potential for propaganda, the best course of action is to find what remains consistant no matter who tells it. Those two things- that the hospital was simply guilty of being in the way and not an intentional target, and that the missle seems to have originated from somewhere in Gaza- remain consistant even in pro-Palestinian news. The other thing that remains consistant is that Israel told the hospital to evacuate- but the 'why' changes based on who says it and that is harder to prove.

This is like. How to Not Fall For Propaganda 101. You cannot take snippets and social media posts and headlines and just run with them. You have to actually investigate what is being said and who it benefits by saying it.

The other piece is- how to tell truth from blatant lies. In the example of the hospital, a lot of my weird anon pushback has been relying on the idea that the hospital was instantly levelled- in fact they said that more than once as proof that it had to be Israel. However... the structures received fairly minimal damage, as the bulk of the damage was to the parking lot and cars within, and there was no instant levelling of any building. We have photographic evidence produced from many sources that show exactly that. So... if that source is relying on a lie such as "the hospital was instantly levelled" when it is very proveable that the buildings are still standing, what other things are they lying about or exaggerating?

In another example, the claim that Hamas beheaded babies originated from a handful of specific Israeli soldiers, who are already known to be an untrustworthy source. When challenged to produce evidence of this claim, both Israel and the US walked back the claim. Always ask for evidence, and if the reaction is anything besides actually providing evidence... then the claim was probably bunk to begin with. In this case the reaction was initially "trust me bro" and then "how dare you ask me to do this because [excuse]" and then "okay yeah it's not true".

Lastly, use logic. Let's say Israel did bomb the hospital. Well they missed any actual buildings and we know they have good enough aim to hit whatever building they're aiming for because they *have* hit hospitals and other civilian buildings on purpose in the past. It left a 3ft crater in the parking lot and burned up a bunch of cars. Well either that one was a dud or it was their own misfire because we also know the concussive force of their munitions should produce more damage. Ironically, that's one of Israel's arguments that they didn't do it, that if it was one of theirs the death total would be higher and the hospital would have been obliterated. Again, based on what we know of civilian buildings they've hit on purpose, we know that's not an inaccurate statement.

At the same time, what good would it have done anyone in Palestine to deliberately hit their own hospital? And, again, if they were actually aiming for the hospital... they missed because they hit the parking lot. If anyone wanted to actually hit the hospital, one of the buildings would have been the better target. And yet, all of the buildings remain standing with relatively minor damage because the thing blew up well away from any standing structure. I do find it interesting that no matter what Israel's story is- which has changed multiple times because again, known untrustworthy source, none of them that I've heard have said that it was a deliberate attack on the hospital from Palestine either. Likely because they know that there is no logical reason for Palestine to attack a Palestinian hospital, and bullshit would be called immediately if they tried.

Lastly, the reason I'm looking for commonaiity and not just picking a single source to listen to is because journalists have reported getting shot at and blown up and their media signalling ignored, and if journalists are getting targetted and killed, that means less journalists are going to show up to try and figure it out because they also don't want to die, which means there is a significantly higher likelihood for propaganda and incredibly biased reporting to spread like wildfire.

Most of this type of thing relies on a grain of truth and then spins an almost plausible lie that finishes with an appeal to emotion. I think it would benefit everyone to research propaganda and how it works and how to identify it and how to combat it from taking root in your sourcing. I also think it would benefit everyone to learn how to research and challenge sources in the first place. I remember doing this in school where any strong opinion paper had to also have an accompanying paper arguing *against* it, written by the same person, so you could better learn how to identify where you may have fallen for propaganda that you happened to agree with and thus didn't research further.

Finally,

[eretzyisrael]

by Rabbi Michael Barclay

A mere month after the horrors of babies being beheaded, women being raped, and the slew of horrors from Hamas, Owens went on Tucker Carlson’s show to speak about how it really wasn’t that bad, and why should she even care. (After all, she seems to think that Hitler was “ok”, so what’s the problem?) She wanted to talk about the depravities of Hamas as an “academic discussion”, and refused to even condemn Hamas. She castigated Ben Shapiro for being passionately pro-Israel, and demonstrated a remarkable ignorance about everything Jewish, including: the Holocaust; the history of Israel; the history of the involvement of Jews in the early civil rights movement, and how Kanye West’s anti Semitic comments were clear expressions of Jew hatred.

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But her appearance a few months ago is not the exception; it is part of a pattern of repeated Jew hatred that seems to be an essential part of Owens’ psyche.

Most recently, she has tried to justify her repeating anti-Semitic trope by attacking a Rabbi and his family. She has called any Jew who points out her anti-Semitism a “thug” and “part of a gang” that she compares to Crips and Bloods.

I am always recalcitrant to  speak negatively about any conservative in the public arena, as we are all attacked too much by the left as it is. But it is worth taking an honest look at Ms. Owens to see if her previous words were just based on ignorance, or if in combination with her latest actions demonstrate a Jew hater and ignorant hypocrite.

While Owens showed ennui towards what happened on Oct 7 and defended Kanye West, in the last few days she has adopted some of the oldest Jew hating lies. There is a reality that in the early 20th century, many Jews got involved in the entertainment industry as it was just starting. Many of the original heads of studios were Jewish: the Warner brothers, Thalberg, Mayer, and others gravitated to the new industry of motion pictures as they were kept out of other businesses by institutionalized anti-Semitism. This led to the oft repeated anti-Semitic trope of “the Jews control Hollywood”. Although there was actually a level of truth to that in the early 20th century, it was simply a Jew hating slur by the 1950s. By the 1970s, the majority of executives, producers, and powerful agents were no longer Jewish. By the 1990s, the slur was no longer being used, and had actually been replaced by the anti-gay slurs of “Hollywood is controlled by the gay mafia”, and “you can’t get a job in this town if you’re not gay”; and the days of Jew haters accusing Jews of controlling Hollywood was a relic of the past.

But not so for Owens, who has brought back that Jew hating libelous trope in recent days. And she has additionally made personal attacks on a prominent Rabbi and his family for his exposing her Jew hatred.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

So stop your despicable whining. You are a disgrace and a shame to Jews like my friends and me who, for two thousand years, never had life as good and as privileged as you have it. They were getting butchered in Kiev and Odessa in their meager hamlets. They were burned at the stake during the Inquisition. The Crusaders broke into their homes and treated them as Hamas-ISIS does. And you are whining that 32 Muslim and Indonesian and Pakistani and Black Student groups sign a statement hating Israel and loving Hamas-ISIS? That is what they are. Grow up. They cheer the subhumans who cut off limbs, beheaded, and burned even children and babies. The Left distinguishes between bad rape and good rape. Hamas-ISIS is good Woke rape. Rape women who want peace. #MeToo. So, O Jews of campuses, stop whining. If they chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!” then gather a hundred of you and chant “From the River to the Sea, Yis-Ra-El Will Be Free!” If they chant for a “Palestine” that is a fraud because there are no “Palestinians.” But then you chant for Israel. Chant for Israel. And really get them angry by singing “G-d Bless America.” (READ MORE: Patiently Waiting for Israel’s Ground Invasion to Crush Hamas) As Woke leftists, you have been taught to whine, to seek safe spaces, to cringe at microaggressions. But whining will do no good. It never does. Get out there and affirm you are Jews. Affirm Israel’s right to live, even if it must kill 100,000 Gazans as collateral damage to exterminating Hamas-ISIS. Accept that the DEI Woke have no room for you. Stop waiting to be saved by off-campus organizations. You have to save yourselves, for G-d’s sakes! Christians will respect you for it. Many will join you. You don’t have to let a handful of foreign students — who do not even belong in America — along with a bunch of Jewish self-hating apostates, beat you down. There are more of you than them. Stop marching to the showers like lambs. This is not Auschwitz; it’s Harvard Yard. Stop whining. Fight back.

On the one hand, Fischer is pretty harsh. On the other hand, as we've seen, nobody is going to stand up for Jewish students. They only have themselves. Even psychotic, Jew-hating bullies respect strength.

By they way, there is more to the article. And Fischer is just as harsh.

[the-rainbow-lesbian]

I'm not Jewish so I don't really have much of a personal stake in the situation but I must admit there is something about all this stuff that just feels...wrong...

I support Palestinian independence and I think what Israel is doing is objectively wrong. It does sorta seem they're trying to wipe the Palestinians out so they don't have to worry about them anymore, seeing as how they've been bombing places that were supposedly safe. Killing children will not bring the hostages back.

That being said, something about the way people are so quick to act as if Israel is the single most evil country in the world (as if others haven't also committed human rights violations) is so strange to me. And the way people are outright calling for the extermination of Israel, not even in a subtle way. Like it or not, there are people who live there and they won't have anywhere to go. Why is extermination of a group of people only okay if it happens to the right group of people? And all these things about how Israel is controlling the media, the claims that the 10/7 massacre was fake just because 40 babies weren't actually beheaded (and acting like it's sooooo out there and crazy to believe that that would actually happen), saying that Jewish people don't have a right to complain about feeling unsafe on campus because Palestinians have it worse... It's scary and the fact that NOBODY is being like "hey guys being pro-Palestine isn't an excuse to be antisemitic" when I'm sure they would have just 10 years ago is CRAZY. It's so easy to do and yet they don't do it. I don't think any criticism of Israel automatically equates to antisemitism, but it's clear to me that the situation is being leveraged to justify antisemitism and I just wish we could bring this up without people being like, "So you think murdering children is okay?" Like, no? You can't say a damn thing about it. Why did people get so extreme so quickly? What happened?

All this is to say I feel very conflicted about all this and although I'm sure you have people trying to paint you as a genocide enabler, I think your heart is in the right place. I appreciate that you're one of the few non-conservatives that look at things from a different angle. I feel like I'm going crazy.

exactly, you're not jewish, and many people don't have any stakes in this game either but they are suddenly very invested in this war when it's not even the most deadly conflict going on in the world, people only supposedly care about palestinians when israel is waging a war against hamas but don't really care about palestinians who live in syria and lebanon who live in actual refugee camps and have little to no rights, and generally, people don't care about arabs and middle eastern people, did anyone take to the streets and camp on their campuses to protest the syrian civil war? or to protest the horrendous atrocities the IRGC commits against the iranian people?

there is a difference between "children die in wars and that's very tragic" and "israel a jewish majority country is actively targeting children" and there are propaganda machines that are very much invested in having you believe that israel is some sort of genocidal evil state hellbent on killing children for fun, even though if genocide was israel's goal they would've already nuked gaza and not sent soldiers on the ground and risk their lives, and not continue to allow aid in and open one more entry point in shalom karem crossing that they had to close later because hamas shot rockets and killed two soldiers, hamas has been preventing civilians from accessing aid since this war started and now prevented more aid from entering to gaza through that crossing.

you might be getting there in noticing a pattern but it's all connected, you say israel is "objectively wrong" but if you were kidnapped by a terrorist organization would you want your government to do absolutely nothing to rescue you? unfortunately casualties are a reality of war and I think every decent person wishes that wars would all collectively stop but we live in reality and when a terrorist organization invades your border and massacres your civilians you have the right to defend yourself, and israel has warned civilians in advance to evacuate before they begin striking an area, this is the most recent example of them trying to urge a family to leave rafah asap and the response is both horrifying and eye opening x

people here in the west don't understand the middle east and your naivety is being taken advantage of, I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist but the terrorist organizations who want to eradicate israel know they can't defeat the idf so they are trying to win the information war by investing in this propaganda that israel is committing a genocide and targeting women and children and that israel is also the worst country in the world and they are using good old blood libels so that people turn against jews like they did when the nazis took over, do you think they started with rounding up jewish civilians to the gas chambers or with propaganda that dehumanized and demonized jewish people to allow this to happen? unfortunately stupidity is in abundance and people in the west are such useful idiots.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

An Israeli law draft that would prohobit UNRWA's activity in Israel passed a very primal stage of legislation. It still has a long way until it will become law (it would still have to pass 3 readings, as well as the Knesset committees), but if before Oct 7 it probably would not stand a chance, after the mounting evidence of the symbiotic nature between Hamas and UNRWA, it has a better chance than ever.

Speaking of the UN being despicable, and in cahoots with antisemitic, genocidal terrorists, we now have Martin Griffiths, the UN Relief Chief, saying that he does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Just wondering, if an organization targeting civilians, raping women, maiming children, beheading babies, burning entiree families together, shooting and kidnapping elderly Holocaust survivors, isn't a terrorist organization, what in the world does Hamas need to do to be recognized as such!?

You might have heard that Israel is operating in the Nasser hospital in Gaza. There's a reason for that, which was addressed by the IDF spokesperson: Israel has intel, including from released hostages, that Hamas kept kidnapped Israelis (and possibly kidnapped bodies) in that hospital. I've actually found one testimony from a released hostage, Sharon Cunyo, talking about this to CNN's Anderson Cooper. The vid is here (page in Spanish, but the vid is in English).

I cannot stress enough how much our hearts hurt for our Jewish brothers and sisters around the world, suffering from this current rise in antisemitism. We've now heard that in the UK, a doctor who has described Jewish colleagues as having a "big nose," and who said that a London borough would be better off "Jew free" was found to be not racist, and could continue to practice medicine. This ties in with a new report that shows the number of antisemitic incidents in the UK is the highest it's been in 40 years, with 67% of these taking place after Oct 7, and maybe most importantly, the initial peak in antisemitic acts was a celebration of Hamas' massacre, rather than any sort of reaction to the war in Gaza.

Meanwhile, in the US congress, a bipartisan resolution passed, condemning Hamas' use of rape and sexual violence on Oct 7 (and since, when it comes to the hostages). Which is incredible and needed, even if it only has a symbolic meaning. Still, guess who couldn't stomach defending the human rights of Israelis, even when it comes to rape, even when it had no practical meaning? Rashida Tlaib, once more doing the US proud.

These are (left to right) Yair Cohen, Ziv Chen, and Netanel Alkobi.

On Oct 7, they were among the soldiers who got to kibbutz Nir Yitzchak, and saved the majority of its people from being slaughtered. They stayed to guard the kibbutz since (as the border fence has not yet been completely fixed), and only recently entered Gaza. The other day, they were killed in a building booby trapped by Hamas in Khan Younis. As heartbreaking is it was to hear their families talk about them, it was also painful to hear interviews with kibbutz members, who had lost so much, who have had loved ones in captivity for over 4 months, and who were just as devastated as the families, when they recognized the three as their savior heroes.

May their memories be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[azhdakha]

I think it's important for us to understand the opinion of an actual Palestinian and not those of radicalized sofa political experts from the other side of the globe. So I'm sharing the message of @wearenotjustnumbers.

"I know it's tricky to find the right answers from an unbiased perspective. First of all, let me tell you I am Palestinian, I am not from gaza but I am from Palestine. And I have witnessed everything that happened, as did my parents and their parents since 1948.

Killing innocent people is morally wrong on both sides, but here is where it gets complicated.

When you talk to a Palestinian, Muslim or Christian, they will most likely be demanding for their freedom, their land back. They won't demand to kill all the Israelis.

You have to keep in mind that Palestine has been occupied since 1948, Israel government has been stealing houses, kicking families out, binging in settlers to take their place and using them against each other.

Also, keep in mind that gaza has been surrounded and cut off from the world for over a decade, people literally grew up watching their families get killed, humiliated, stripped of basic human rights with nothing to do. So when a group like hamas targets Israel, people of gaza do not celebrate it, but it's more like they don't have a choice. They don't want "revenge" on anyone, every person from gaza I talked to just wants to live freely without fearing death of their loved one every waking moment. People of gaza do not control Hamas. What Hamas did is violent and wrong, and yes the Israeli settlers didn't have anything to do with it (this just shows you how brutal the Israeli government is). But it's a little hard for gaza people to condemn what Hamas is doing, while worse things have been happening to them for decades.

Hamas did kidnap Israeli settlers, but they treated them well (for whatever reason might be). They didn't "behead" babies which was proved after Biden had lied alongside people on social media. There is no proof of rape or mass shooting. What we have, is interviewed with Israeli who have been released, saying that they were treated with respect which took them by surprise.

Of course, the other civilians have not been released yet.

Which gets you thinking, if Israel does not know where the kidnapped civilians are, but it definitely knows they're in gaza. By bombing every place, flattening the city, won't that mean they'd kill their own people?

The answer is yes. Which indicates that Israel doesn't care about their people as long as they get to kill as many Palestinians as possible. Hamas already tried to use the kidnapped civilians as leverage, asking for a ceasefire in exchange of the civilians, but Israel refused.

So to answer your question, yes. You can grief for victims of both sides, while blaming Israel government for it.

The settlers who were brought by Israel, to fight a war that's not their own. The kids who were born in a country that's not theirs, and yet forced to fight for a land they don't have a right in, simply because they have no choice. Did you know that Israel has a law which says it's obligatory for EVERY citizen, female or male, to have martial training, as well as joining the army before they even reach their 20s.

These are victims of their greedy government, who uses religion as a political device. Who mixes zionism with Judaism.

And the ultimate victims here, are Palestinian. Hamas members are extreme, but they were once kids who watched their fathers get killed, their brothers wrongfully arrested, their mother humiliated. That isn't an excuse to their actions, that is a reason of why you might find it hard for gaza to curse hamas.

I would suggest reading about sole Palestinians who grew up in gaza.

For example, search Mohammed al durra. Ahmad manasra. And Ahid tamimi."

[dragoneyes618]

Charles Cooke made an important observation in National Review in the wake of the multitude of pro-Hamas demonstrations on university campuses, while the images of Hamas savagery were still fresh. To wit, the dividing line is not between left and right, Zionist and anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli, but between “normal human beings” and “unreconstructed crackpots who have lost their minds.”

“It is simply not within the normal bounds of human behavior to look at what has happened in Israel and to filter one’s instinctive moral reaction through whatever goofy, specious, ugly ideology one might have picked up in an overpriced seminar hall when aged 19,” Cooke wrote.

Happily, the numbers of normal people turned out to outnumber the crackpots, and to include in their ranks President Joe Biden (who both backed Israel’s right to rid itself of Hamas on its border and decried the “grotesque” anti-Semitism run rampant on university campuses), almost all members of Congress, and the leaders of most European countries.

Nevertheless, for many discovering how many crackpots there are whom one once considered comrades in creating a better world, all this has been profoundly disorienting. Few progressive Jews, I suspect, ever expected to see UCLA students rallying around the chant, “Israel, you can’t hide/We want Jewish genocide.” (I suppose we owe those students a debt of gratitude for making their goals so explicit, and not engaging in happy talk about a two-state solution. The Mufti of Jerusalem, who spent World War II in Berlin, would be so proud.)

The press last week was filled with the laments of many in the West whose worldview has been shattered (not to speak of the far-left members of the kibbutzim surrounding Gaza who were fortunate enough to survive.)

The Free Press led the way with an important column by Konstantin Kisin: “Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.”

Boaz Munro, in a Tablet piece, “Jews of the Left,” described the discovery that one is in a toxic relationship: “It’s terrifying to feel the coldness of one’s friends. You feel the walls closing in, the floor dropping from beneath you. Every psychological handhold you lean on (‘America is safe,’ ‘Israel is safe,’ ‘the Nazis are dead’) turns to sand, and you fall down.”

Unhappily, the division between normal people and the crazies does not favor the normal among one group: the 18-24 demographic and those who teach them. In a Harvard-Harris poll taken after October 7, a full third of 18- to 24-year-olds did not believe that Hamas had murdered whole families, beheaded babies and kids, or had murdered 1,200 people (actually 1,400). Only 53% in that age group thought that Hamas had indiscriminately targeted civilians, and only 54% in the 25-34 age group. Just over half of the younger cohort felt that Hamas’s actions could be justified by Palestinian grievances, and nearly one-half (48%) of the next youngest cohort. A full quarter of the youngest group thought Israel should be ended and given to the Palestinians and Hamas.

Of course, they were not operating from a large knowledge base. Over a third of the younger cohort did not know that Hamas has been listed by the US government as a terrorist organization for decades. And 46% of all Americans are unaware that the Palestinians, not Israel, have run the Gaza Strip since 2005.

How do these views and level of ignorance play out on campus? Just a few examples from last week.

At New York’s Cooper Union, Jewish students were forced to cower in the school library for hours, while those shouting pro-Hamas slogans banged on the doors to gain entry. Campus police made no arrests of the demonstrators baying for Jewish blood.

Students for Justice in Palestine projected pro-Hamas slogans, such as “Glory to Our Martyrs,” on the campus library building at George Washington University, which building was, incidentally, donated by Jewish benefactors.

The student senate at Brandeis University, an institution originally built by the American Jewish community, failed to pass a resolution condemning Hamas’s attacks.

And at Hillary Clinton’s alma mater, Wellesley, the student leader of one campus dorm wrote to all the students in that dorm, “We firmly believe that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.”

A graduate student in ethnic studies at UC Berkeley offered extra credit to undergraduates in her class who participated in the pro-Hamas “national walkout against genocide, settler colonization, and the siege of Gaza.” The Faculty Council of that same ethnic studies department sent a strongly worded letter to the chancellors of the various campuses of the University of California system complaining of distorted messages that termed the Hamas attacks “terrorism” or “unprovoked,” and endorsing the BDS movement. That same Faculty Council is pushing an ethnic studies requirement for all the tens of thousands of incoming students in the University of California system annually, with anti-Zionism as one of the animating principles of the proposed curriculum. 

The campus woke brigades, it has suddenly become clear, are not just engaging in some youthful hijinks, like goldfish swallowing, which they will presumably outgrow upon entering adulthood. No, the SDS radicals of the ’60s, who went into university teaching, have produced a generation and, in some cases, two generations of students and successors in academia. Entire university departments — Middle Eastern studies, black studies, decolonization studies, and gender studies — have become hotbeds of hostility not only to Israel but to Jews in general. Nellie Bowles offered in her most recent TGIF column at the Free Press a sampling of hundreds of academic job-opening announcements from normal-sounding departments for which applicants must express their commitment to pressing for “decolonization.” One guess who are the leading white, settler colonialists in the world today among the bien-pensants.

In many cases, oil-rich Arab states have simply purchased entire university departments to advance their cause. Qatar alone has contributed $8.5 billion to American universities since the early ’80s. And those donors have gotten what they paid for, as documented by Martin Kramer in Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America. Columbia professor Joseph Massad of the Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC), who vocally cheered Hamas’s October 7 massacre, described Israel as a racist state that has no right to exist in a 2002 speech at Oxford. Former department chair Professor Hamid Debashi wrote in an Egyptian daily, “Half a century of systematic maiming and murdering of another people has left... its deep marks on the faces of the Israeli Jews, the way they talk, walk, the way they greet each other.… There is a vulgarity of character that is bone-deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture.”

The leading scholars of Middle Eastern studies departments are not only filled with hatred of Israel but incompetent, in thrall as they are to the declaration of their guiding light Edward Said, that terms such as fundamentalism and terrorism are inherently racist and reactionary. Not one predicted the Islamic Revolution in Iran. And of the 144 planned sessions for the national conference of Middle East study departments at the time of 9/11, not one dealt with the threat of Osama bin Laden or terrorism. Even after 9/11, a hastily created session focused almost exclusively on how to prevent an American response to “so-called terrorism.”

But if Arab oil money has been well spent in creating departments at many of America’s most prestigious universities for highly ideological professors to indoctrinate captive students, Jewish donors have proven inept in their efforts to create Jewish studies departments as something of a ballast. Those departments are too frequently rife with Jewish professors who are also highly critical of Israel, and they do little to buttress Jewish identity.

Part of the great awakening among those who always considered themselves left politically has been the discovery of how lethal are many of the doctrines in which our young are being marinated on campus. Jonah Goldberg’s comment, “Scratch a progressive and you’ll find a totalitarian,” has been proven true.

Take, for instance, the panoply of doctrines that have been used to justify all sorts of infringements on free speech and to stifle diverse viewpoints: Bad ideas are harmful, and thus one is justified, even required, to shout down and prevent from speaking all those who espouse wrong thoughts; believe all women, especially when it comes to claims of assault; micro-aggressions, as defined by the victim, must be strictly policed.

Yet as the aforementioned Charles Cooke notes in another excellent piece, in the wake of October 7, those formerly justifying a wide variety of restrictions on “bad speech” suddenly became First Amendment absolutists, at least as far as the rights of those chanting their support of Hamas’s murderous rampage are concerned. Those chants for “Jewish genocide” are not exactly micro-aggressions, on the general scale of things.

Harvard University offers a prime example. Harvard is not exactly a bastion of free speech or viewpoint diversity. Indeed, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression rated it dead last among American colleges in that respect. But in response to the petition of 34 Harvard organizations placing exclusive responsibility “entirely on Israel” for Hamas’s murder of Israeli citizens, Harvard acted decisively. Dean of students Thomas Dunne created a special task force to deal with what he termed an attack on the Harvard community by those publicizing the names of the students involved.

That task force was charged, inter alia, with vouching for those students with potential employers. One wonders whether Harvard would also find it incomprehensible why potential employers might want to know that a job applicant was a Holocaust denier, if only because such beliefs raise questions about the basic sanity of their holders and create a hostile environment for Jewish employees. Why should promoters of a second Holocaust be any different?

The double standards about what speech deserves protection means that the left’s doctrines of free speech or the limitations thereof are ultimately about one thing — power, i.e., the ability to manipulate what ideas may be voiced to gain and maintain power. Control of the range of acceptable ideas is always the first step of totalitarians everywhere.

Second, the doctrine of intersectionality that all favored victim groups are linked in a common cause by virtue of their skin color or their victimhood ultimately justifies the elimination of all those on the other side — the oppressors and holders of privilege. In the Manichean universe of the proponents of intersectionality, there are only those fighting for a glorious utopian future and those opposing them. And like utopians from the French Revolution on, those standing in the way can be “offed” with a clear conscience.

Here is Hasan Piker, a popular commentator, with 2.5 million followers, who defended the killing of Jewish babies as not only legal, but moral. The Palestinians have a legal right to violently seize back their lands from these settlers, he argues, and “there are baby settlers as well.” The head of Students for Justice in Palestine at George Washington made the same argument: Any Hamas member, even an armed one, is a civilian; any Israeli, even one unarmed, is a soldier.

"We are finally discovering how deeply our leading institutions have been penetrated by the progressive mindset. What is clearer than ever is that the governing classes of far too many Western institutions want Israel to fail,” Times of London columnist Juliet Samuel writes. “They want it to fail physically, as they state with increasing brazenness. But just as importantly for their fragile worldview, they want it to fail morally. They need this failure because without it, all their nonsensical, convoluted political theories, all the ridiculous victim hierarchies and weird psychological complexes projected onto the world, make no sense and will be revealed as the worthless, nasty nest of guilt and prejudice they really are.”

A prior association with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) or other Muslim Brotherhood associated organizations — i.e., the ones proclaiming “from the river to the sea” — is no bar to employment at the US State Department or senior positions on the National Security Council. Middle-level staffers at the State Department recently staged an open protest over President Biden’s support for Israel after October 7. The Voice of America described the “angry and tearful reactions of State Department staff to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

The Times of London reports: “The BBC has been accused by its journalists of being too lenient on Israel and ‘dehumanising’ Palestinian civilians, allegedly leaving staff crying in lavatories and taking time off work.” In a widely circulated email to BBC director-general Tim Davie, the journalists accused their employer as “treating Israeli lives as more worthy than Palestinian lives,” and protested words such as “massacre,” “slaughter,” and “atrocities” being applied to Hamas’s actions.

The young BBC journalists call to mind their counterparts at the New York Times who forced the departure of the editorial page editor and his deputy over the publication of an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton arguing for the employment of National Guardsmen to stop the widespread arson and looting in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Not surprisingly did the NYT eagerly promulgate around the world the myth that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, solely on the say-so of Hamas, and without any independent fact-checking or consultation with Israel. That story was soon shown to be false in every particular: the responsible party (i.e., a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket); the area struck (the hospital parking lot); and the number of casualties (between ten and fifty, not 500).

The bombed hospital story was the 2023 reprise of the alleged 2000 shooting by Israeli forces of Mohammed al-Dura, a Palestinian boy shown cowering behind his father, later proven conclusively to have been a staged fraud. But now as then, the damage was already done in terms of inflaming public opinion against Israel. According to Honest Reporting, the NYT’s continues to employ as stringers in Gaza at least three Palestinians who have expressed support on social media for Palestinian terrorism and Adolf Hitler yemach shemo.

What do those State Department staffers and young BBC and New York Times journalists have in common? I’d take a large wager that the vast majority were educated at elite universities in their respective countries.

The time has come for Jewish parents, but not only, to ask themselves whether the possibility of landing a post-graduation job at Goldman Sachs is worth the risk of having their children’s minds twisted and subjecting them to possible physical threats on elite campuses.