#and zionists crying that palestinians want to kill them for being jewish as if them revolting sprang out of nowhere

[paris-geller-was-straightwashed]

I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind.

while the absolute horror continues to bombard palestine - the nonstop bombings, the dead bodies in the street and trapped under rubble those living can no longer get to, the restriction of health care, newborn babies left to die, starvation and thirst, literal sewage in the streets spreading disease, all of this in gaza and even in the west bank, the increased bombings there and raids - daily, meanwhile, here in canada, we apparently have nothing fucking better to do then arrest people for using pro-palestine chants under the guise of it being hate motivated.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

I wish this was a fucking joke, but no. a protestor in calgary was arrested for using 'from the river to the sea, palestine will be free.' apparently the cops stopped by to 'inform' the protestors what chants were allowed and what were ~no no's~ which included 'from the river to the sea', and when a protestor used it anyway (because it's NOT FUCKING HATE SPEECH) they arrested him. for calling for the freedom of people under an occupation.

this is canada, supposedly one of the most free places to be (built atop the blood of indigenous people but anyways). but with pro-israel propaganda and the weaponizing of anti-semitism being repeated by our media and leaders, shit like this happens.

someone tell me right now where in the phrase 'from the river to the sea, palestine will be free' there is a call for an extermination of jewish people. look me in the fucking eyes and try to find where in that call for freedom it shows hatred for jews. this is fucking pathetic. this is a call for freedom. this is a call for liberation of a people who've been oppressed and assaulted for years, since before both my 60+ parents were born. this is a call for them to be able to walk freely within their own homes, within their own land, to be able to control their own lives. liberation for their safety and for their children, from the constant risk of arrest, assault and raids by the israeli army.

this is about ending an occupation, not the jewish people & their way of life.

many new sites like cbc and global reported on this as well as others; the global article also interviewed a jewish man, who claimed the chant was anti-semitic. it mentioned that he was the president of an organization called 'Federation CJA' - one google search of their website, and wouldn't you fucking know it, they're in partnership with israel, from 'birthright' trips to allowing you to send goddamn postcards to their poor, sad soldiers who're exhausted from bombing innocent civilians all day.

so while we sit here in safety, humming over think-pieces about whether a demand from an exhausted people to finally let them be free secretly means slaughtering every person of another marginalized group in site, the death toll in gaza has gone above 11,000.

of all the fucking absurd things canadians could be talking about right now, this has to take the first-place blue ribbon.

frankly, what this does mean at least, is one thing - when the occupier starts crying because the people they've trampled on for years demanded they stop & it hurt their feelings, it means they're scared. it means that the marches and support are working. when the oppressors start weaponizing language used for liberation and claim it's a cry to hang them from the gallows, then they're getting desperate. it's a reminder to us all to keep pushing and fight for a liberated palestine.

from the river to the sea, palestine will be free

(I s2g if any zionists come in my notes trying to claim some bs that is just the regurgitated rhetoric of the propaganda you've swallowed it's on fucking site I will block you).

[matan4il]

Update post:

Yesterday, there were no less than two terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, one in the morning, and one in the evening.

The first one happened in Beersheba, where the terrorist stabbed and injured two people before being neutralized. The terrorist was an Israeli Bedouin, who had been convicted of drug-related criminal charges. The prosecution asked for his arrest, but the court decided to be lenient, to aid in his rehabilitation, and instead only sentenced him to community service. He was due to start in two weeks, but instead he chose yesterday to attack innocent civilians.

The second terrorist attack took place in Gan Yavne. A Palestinian man, who used to have a work permit in Israel, but lost it and remained here illegally, carried out the attack. The Palestinian terrorist started stabbing people at a gym and then at a nearby cafe, wounding 3 people, all of them originally determined to be in serious condition, one is a teenager, the other two are reported to have life threatening head injuries. The terrorist was 19 years old, and he was neutralized at the scene. In investigating how he managed to stay inside Israel illegally after his work permit had expired, the police has arrested two people so far.

Israel has wrapped up its second operation at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, with another soldier pronounced dead (20 years old Nada Cohen), bringing the IDF fatalities in the Gaza ground operation so far to 256, and the total number of killed Israeli soldiers in this war, including during the Hamas massacre (reminder that some of those soldiers were girls serving in non-combative posts, without combat training or even a weapon, and were slain while still in their pajamas) to 600.

The end of one operation in a Gaza hospital doesn't mean that's the end of Hamas abusing medical and humanitarian facilities, so there are and will be more such operations. That's why I'm also sharing this reminder that nothing is sacred or even just... off limits to Hamas, who moved kidnapped civilians in ambulances, as one of the released hostages testified.

I mentioned in a post expressing my frustration over foreigners' ignorance over the conflict, which doesn't stop them from acting like they know better than the people actually living it, the Hamas-Fatah "civil war," which erupted in 2007, when Hamas killed Fatah members in Gaza and took over the place. The two Palestinian factions have tried reconciliation several times over the years, but it never lasted long. Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas and its fellow terrorists organizations is not over yet, but already there's signs of that tension. This def bodes well for Palestinians if Hamas survives this war.

A city council meeting in California, which dealt with Holocaust remembrance, ended up being the scene of some despicable displays of antisemitism in its anti-Zionist form. IDK what was most distressing to hear about, the way they screamed "Lies! Lies!"' at a Holocaust survivor, or that they took and threw to the ground the phone of a Jewish man who came to speak about his grandma who had survived the Holocaust, or that they mocked a mother speaking of her child being harassed at school to the point he doesn't wanna be a Jew, because he doesn't want to be hated... Maybe that they made my friend, who attended the meeting, cry on what was supposed to be a very special day. I saw coverage on Israeli TV of the city council, which both told me how bad it was, if of all things, that's what they're talking about, and at the same time, it was nothing like hearing about it from her. So I'm glad that she shared some of her own impressions about this ugly demonstration of hatred (I'm also scheduling her post for a reblog). I just hope Jews all over the world know that we here in Israel care about you, we love you, we are standing by your side, and we wish we could do more for you. <3

Speaking of antisemitism, and an inability to recognize it as such, to call it out and condemn it, here's some recent examples from around the world. In Spain, the locals went out for an Easter drink, a tradition called, "to kill the Jews," but insisted it's not racist. Attacking and even killing Jews actually was customary in Europe on Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter. In fact, this specific nickname is derived from those old attacks.

In London, a policeman insisted that swastikas being displayed at an anti-Israel protest were not antisemitic, and should be taken "in context," despite admitting that a symbol that's abusive or would cause public distress would fall under his jurisdiction to act against.

In the Netherlands, a single mom of a Jewish girl was attacked for the daughter's choices (she decided to move to Israel and has served in the Israeli army) both at home and at her workplace, a hospital. The mother was so rattled after the attack at her home, that she wouldn't stay there. A Jewish hotel owner offered her a free stay at his hotel. In an interview with an Israeli reporter, the mom said she's considering moving to Israel, too (source in Hebrew).

This is 32 years old Celine ben David Nagar.

She worked as an office manager at a law firm, was married to Iddo, and they had a 6 months old baby together. On Oct 7, Celine was on her way with a friend to the Nova music festival, but they never made it there. The Hamas rocket attack started first. For 10 days, she was considered missing, and it took a while, but eventually they found her body. While her fate was still unknown, two days after the massacre, Iddo went on TV and talked about the fact that Celine was still breastfeeding. Following the interview, hundreds of Israel women volunteered to donate their mother's milk to the little baby girl. At Celine's funeral, Iddo asked said goodbye to his wife, and asked hr to watch over him and little Eli from above.

May her memory be a blessing.

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

[spot-the-antisemitism]

I don’t understand. The more I read on this blog and the posts you reblog the more confused I get about the double standards I see, so what the hell am I missing? Seeing lots of posts bordering on “Isreal/ zionists can do no wrong because they’re Jewish” makes very little sense to me.

“Publicizing that the Isreali government has killed thousands of Isreali children is a blood libel dog whistle”- The Isreali government has killed thousands of Palestinian children. That isn’t a lie. The idea of “Pallywood” is just as much a racist conspiracy theory as anything else with the same concept. This makes as much sense to me as a trans woman being caught red-handed murdering someone and then the people wanting her arrested being accused of dog whistling and just hating trans people because the “violent rapey ‘man in a dress’” stereotype exists.

“It’s antisemitic to not support anti-Palestinian jews/ only support pro-Palestinian jews”- Then why is it ok and encouraged to only support Palestinians that support a 2 state solution. Why are Isrealis correct or at least understandable when they want most of the land for fear of being victims of violence, but the Palestinians who want the same thing for the same reason are genocidal.

“Palestinian civilians are personally responsible for Hamas, a terrorist organization, because they came to power via election.”- Then why are Isrealis not personally responsible for the actions of their government via the same logic? Hamas is a terrorist organization for murdering/ kidnapping thousands of Isrealis as punishment for the actions of their government (which to be clear, this is true and they absolutely are terrorists). Then how is the IDF not also committing acts of terrorism by murdering thousands of Palestinian children for the actions of their government?

“It’s antisemitic to police people wearing the Star of David because of Israel”- True, it very much is, so then why am I also seeing the same circles call the Palestinian flag a “terrorist flag” because of Hamas? Why are they also insisting the assumption that Palestinians are gonna get violent, or calling them “intimidating”, is totally not subconsciously racist and completely understandable actually, even though said Palestines and their supporters are literally just calmly standing around and declining an invitation to talk? Talking about that tiktok with the girl who started crying to be clear.

Hi anon,

thank for essay of "gotcha" talking points that your cult sent you to send to me

"The idea of “Pallywood”" is inherently anti-palestinean and implies that palestinean culture and movies begin and end in hamas propaganda reels and is actually a thinly veiled "Palestinean culture revolves around terror and nothing else" all while dismissing all photos coming out of Gaza as propaganda .

DOGS CANNOT RAPE. It's blood libel. Next question

This makes as much sense to me as a trans woman being caught red-handed murdering someone and then the people wanting her arrested being accused of dog whistling and just hating trans people because the “violent rapey ‘man in a dress’” stereotype exists.

Hi yes what if the world was made of pudding? Well in Puddingverse a trans woman is guilty of murder, how quaint! Have you considered that maybe in your pudding hypothetical the trans woman would be treated differently than a cis woman who committed the same murder because of transmisogyny? Same applies antisemitic double standards

The palestinean flag is a form of pan-arab emperialism made by the PLO, it is associated with terror but it is NOT a terrorist flag. The Hamas flag is a terror flag. The Hezbollah flag is a terrorist flag.

"Then why is it ok and encouraged to only support Palestinians that support a 2 state solution." Because the rest want to genocide Israelis without exception. One state solutions are unviable at the moment. Next question

“Palestinian civilians are personally responsible for Hamas, a terrorist organization, because they came to power via election.” Never fucking said that. Gazans have been living under the tyrrany of Hamas for most of their lives and have to put up with their infrastructure used for terror, their food stolen and their children made into child soldiers. Free Gaza from Hamas!

Please send me more of your "questions" and I will happily debunk most of them. Please remind me of what I missed.

Cecil

[jedi-enthusiast]

Honestly I’m so confused why people are so upset that Israel was included in Eurovision, like…my dude it’s literally a music contest for a bunch of countries---that Israel has already been included in before---not an actual political statement.

It’s literally insane to me, especially with how people were treating the Israeli contestant---protesting her, forcing her to change her song, other contestants saying shit like “talking to her doesn’t mean I support Israel,” etc. etc.

And I feel like that’s a reoccurring thing with all this mainstream pro-Palestine bullshit: y’all don’t actually care about Palestine or want to help anyone, you just want “good person points” socially, but don’t actually care about your impact.

You'll post shit like "stan Hamas" and ignore the fact that they're literally a terrorist organization dedicated to killing Jews, and that they're literally hurting Palestinians too, as well as the fact that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is only ongoing because Hamas keeps breaking the ceasefire and won't give back hostages.

But you'll ignore all of the organizations that actually help Palestine because they're run by Jews/Israelis, or even just supported by Jews and Israelis.

(And how much do you want to bet that the same people who cry- "Hamas is only doing this because of Israel's actions regarding Palestine, so it's justified/reasonable/understandable, etc." -would never say that if it was a group like, say, ISIS that was kidnapping/killing/waging war on Americans because of the US's actions in the Middle East?)

You'll harass random people on college campuses just because they're Jewish, even though they clearly have no fucking say in what a country on the other side of the world does, and barricade yourselves inside a building and be shocked when you're suspended or expelled for property damage/harassment/etc.

But you won't volunteer at any organizations that are dedicated to helping Palestine, or donate money to those organizations, or donate food/clothes/etc., or actually do anything besides whine and cry because you helped destroy a campus building and your college doesn't want you there anymore.

(Hell, 99% of y'all don't even bother volunteering for your own communities, so I know you're sure as hell not volunteering to help anyone else's---again, you just want the "good person points")

Everyone that was so gung-ho about "oh yeah, let's punch Nazis!" a few years ago are now spouting Nazi rhetoric.

Everyone that preached that bigotry is never ok, even if someone from a minority does something bad, are now the same people chanting- "Jews are shit!" -and spreading blood libel.

Everyone that was calling for solidarity between minorities and oppressed groups are now the same people ostracizing Jews because they won't condemn the only country that will actually protect them- (or rather, they'll condemn the Israeli governments actions, but won't stand side-by-side with antisemites or say that Israel should be destroyed).

Everyone that said that it wasn't okay for people to be racist towards poc because some of the BLM protests were getting out of hand/violent are now the same ones going- "oh, it's fine to be antisemitic because these disgusting Jews Zionists aren't agreeing with me on everything."

Everyone that was posting shit about being aware of misinformation and doing your research before posting something are now the ones that have no idea what Zionism actually is, don't even know which river and sea their chant means, has no clue what Israel has actually done to Palestine and is just calling it a "genocide" as a buzzword despite all the evidence stating otherwise, etc.

Like...you guys are really just proving that you don't actually have morals beyond what's socially acceptable.

"Never harass random Muslim/gay/trans/black/etc. people just for a cause or because they did something you didn't like...unless they're Jewish, then you can stalk them on campus and be physically violent towards them."

"Bigotry is never okay, even if someone from a minority does something you don't agree with or something awful...unless they're Jewish, then spread blood libel and call for the "final solution" all you want."

"Not everyone from the US/Republican states/Christian churches/etc. agrees with what their government/state/religious leaders are doing, so it's not fair to blame and ostracize them for it...unless it's Jewish people or Israelis or, G-d forbid, Jewish Israelis, then you can hate them and blame them for everything!"

Like, genuinely, fuck off.

You aren't good people, you aren't "making a difference" or "on the right side of history," you don't give a shit about morality or justice or doing any good for anyone---all you care about is your fucking popularity and the social norm.

So keep your stupid, hateful, misinformed hands off of the I/P conflict---you've proven that y'all clearly can't handle having opinions on it.

[obislittleone]

It has been brought to my attention by a grand total of four people now that a certain shithead in the fandom is trying to dox me yet again. Though I don't care if someone disagrees with me and can move on with my day, someone posting misinformation about my blog and getting others to block me on the account that I am a 'genocide supporter' is not something I will stay silent about.

So, for the last time... here is my stance.

I do NOT support genocide, and will never support the mass killing of innocent people.

I have, and will continue to publicly condemn Bibi Netanyahu for his actions and use of the Israeli government.

I will keep working closely with the organizations I've volunteered for in collecting funds and aid for Palestinian refugees and families still caught in the crossfire.

I will always call out Islamophobia when I see it, as it’s very common in the far right communities on tumblr.

I am a proud zionist, and I want to reiterate yet again that TRADITIONAL JEWISH ZIONISIM DOES NOT EQUATE WITH FAR RIGHT 'ZIONIST' BELIEFS.

Once more, for those confused, here is the jewish meaning of the word zionsim: the belief that the jewish people have a right to self determinate in their homeland (in most charters stated 'to protect themselves from another holocaust') which as you'll notice, does not say anything about an ethnostate or the rights to wipe out innocent civilians in another territory. It quite literally just means that jews existing in Israel get to keep existing and shouldn’t be wiped out either. It's pretty reasonable of a belief if you're not mentally demented.

I have family and friends in Israel, who are not immigrants, and their lineage far surpasses even the concept of Roman mandated Palestine. They are also traditional Jewish zionists, and I completely stand with them. One of my friends was a survivor of the music festival slaughter by Hamas, and her mother was killed.

I will never stop bringing awareness to the hostages remaining in Gaza , and will always call anyone out who says the hostages are, and I quote 'being treated well' by Hamas. They are hostages. They can not leave, a lot of their family members have been killed, and they have to go through this time wondering if they will also die.

I will continue to block people who interact out of poor faith, or are of the mindest that 'these jews aren't on my side, so I'm going to harrass them.' That’s antisemitism, bub...

I can't believe I even have to say this but: newsflash! Israeli citizens are not evil, and are not responsible for their government, as you should be well aware of, at least if you live in america. Another newsflash! You can support the indigenousness of Jews while ALSO supporting the indigenousess of Palestinians!!!

I am so tired of asswipes virtuesignaling on this site, doxxing jews and crying their eyes out about a word they don't even understand, when I live literally done more for Palestinians than they ever have. It's antisemitism at its absolute worst, and it pisses me off to no end.

As I like to say:

Oh brave tumblr goy, what have you done for Palestine today? Because instead of harassing jews and harassing zionists, I sent actual aid to Palestinians.

For those who would like to actually contribute, here are some links to verified organizations (that ensure your donations will not be stolen by Hamas or their sympathizers):

Water For Gaza

World Central Kitchen (provides food directly to citizens without going through Hamas or UNRWA)

Shelter Boxes

And for those who would like to donate to an emergency fund for Israeli citizens being harmed by incoming rockets and attacks near the border, this org is partnering with a few medical associations in Israel to supply more ambulances to the hospitals:

Israeli Ambulances (Magen David Adom Fund)

And for those interested in donating to both Palestinian and Israeli children that have been caught in the crossfire, visit this link:

Save the Children

I may be keeping this as my pinned post for a while, just because my masterlist links haven't been fixed yet, and I need to keep this at the top of my blog for a while.

[the-rainbow-lesbian]

(I was starting to answer this and tried to put it in my drafts but I accidentally published it before I was done responding so I deleted and now I am reposting)

anon this shit never made sense to me even before when I was passively pro-palestine because I didn't understand or care to read but the way everyone hyperfocused on israel seemed like double standards because what country doesn't have issues? and no one cared when our governments in the middle east were oppressing us lol. I was like okay israelis are normal people and not responsible for their government, the same way I am not responsible for mine. I only got invested when people in my own fucking city started celebrating and cheering on terrorists and attacking random jewish people.

I truly underestimated the level of fanatic jew-hatred people seem to have, it turns normal logical sounding people into insane nutjobs who are like um no actually rape is resistance, terrorists are cool, glory to our martyrs! lifehack you can hate jews with one simple trick if you call them zionists and israelis no I am not a nazi I have a good reason to hate the jews this time I swear! like anon everything you're saying makes sense, and they know it, they know that the shit coming out of their mouths is horrid but jews just have a different standard because they don't see them as human beings deserving of life. they cheer when jewish people are massacred and then cry when jewish people are rescued, but they perverted the social justice language so far that somehow it makes sense to them?? to me it feels like everyone collectively got infested with brain worms or something.

also everyone keeps using the passive voice for hamas, or act as if they had to kidnap israelis and there was no way to just return the hostages and not kill people sleeping in their homes and rape women who just wanted to dance at a festival..... these were all deliberate choices hamas made, and when are people going to understand that there are consequences? they expect israel to value palestinian lives over their own, and has there ever been other people who had that expectation placed on them?

I decided to not have anyone in my life who thinks like that and you know what? I am vibing, I hope karma comes for them hard when no one wants to employ their terrorist dick-riding selves.

[tieflingkisser]

Why American Jews Should Oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act

Hatred in the U.S. is real. The bill that passed the House will only make it worse.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act. But American Jews who care about fighting antisemitism should be against it. HR 6090, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, passed 320–91. Seventy Democrats and 21 Republicans voted against it (including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who noted that she was against antisemitism but wanted to protect her Christian right to say that Jews killed Jesus). The legislation would see the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. There are some who have long opposed codifying this particular definition because it comes with troublesome examples, most of which have to do with Israel. These include things like “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” Under this definition, then, Masha Gessen’s New Yorker essay on Holocaust memory and Israeli policy in Gaza would be considered antisemitic under the law. Gessen is a Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors and victims. There are many, including Zionist Jews, who have long warned that the IHRA standards could be used to chill pro-Palestinian speech. After the House passed the bill, Americans for Peace Now CEO Hadar Susskind warned in a statement:

Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, one doesn’t need to look far to find it these days. But the supporters of this bill are looking in the wrong places. They aren’t interested in protecting Jews. They are interested in supporting right-wing views and narratives on Israel and shutting down legitimate questions and criticisms by crying “antisemite” at everyone, including Jews, who oppose the Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich government.

Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York also opposed the bill:

I will take lectures from no one about the need for vigorous efforts to fight antisemitism on campus or anywhere else. I am also a deeply committed Zionist. … But while this definition and its examples may have useful applications in certain contexts, by effectively codifying them into Title VI, this bill threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech. Speech that is critical of Israel—alone—does not constitute unlawful discrimination. By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title VI’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.

I agree with all of this. I think a bill that effectively restricts speech on the country’s foreign policy has no business being passed in the United States. This bill would be a problem if it only restricted Palestinian Americans from describing their families’ histories or present realities. That codifying this definition in a bill fighting antisemitism would also deem many Jews antisemitic—including the quarter of American Jews who in 2021 said Israel is an apartheid state—undercuts its stated reason for being. But I also think you do not have to disagree with the IHRA—you can, in fact, feel that this definition is a sound one—to believe that this law is a mistake. All you have to do is remember that, as a minority in the United States, American Jews have been as safe and secure as we are because of liberalism, pluralism, and civil rights. American Jews take pride in American Jewish participation in the Civil Rights Movement, and for good reason. But it isn’t just that some American Jews have stood up for civil rights, though that is true. Protection of civil rights has also helped American Jews. When American Jews stood up for freedom of expression and the right to be full political participants, they were also standing up for their own rights. In 1963, speaking before the March on Washington, Rabbi Joachim Prinz said, “America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent. Not merely Black America, but all of America. It must speak up and act … not for the sake of the Black community but for the sake of the image, the idea, and the aspiration of America itself.” He might have added “for the sake of every minority community.” Freedom of religion and the right to express that religion in public by, say, freely speaking out against prayer in schools has long protected Jewish equality in American life. The same goes for the freedom to protest American domestic or foreign policy—against, for example, the Vietnam War (as many American Jews did). These fundamental rights are a large part of why American Jews are free to participate in public life as both Americans and Jews.

[keep reading]

[wittynameme]

how do I put this

I want to preface this with

NOt every Jewish person is a Zionist. You can be antizionist and hate antisemitism

A lot of horrible people have always used free Palestine as a dogwistle. They never liked either Jews or Palestinians

I do not like the violence, of course I don't

I dont know why I'm sitting here on my bed texting on Tumblr what MY opinion is on this war. Like I know anything or have any authority on the matter.

I am a 21 year old American. I live all the way across the sea on another continent where a country full of colonist war-profiteers pump out tons of pro-isreal propaganda.

Case in point the famous"we would need to make an Israel" speech.

I can only impart what I know from my experiences.

I've been in BLM protests and seen with my own eyes how horrible the police treat the protesters and how the news twists it in their favor, depicting them of being bloodthirsty violent rioters and when they can't in any way rationalize that they at least say there was "wrong on both sides".

I've researched propaganda, particularly blood lible in order to understand how people condemned Jewish people and perpetuated theofacist nationalism.

I've seen the ridiculous double standard we have for violence. Why do we only cry "violence isn't the answer" when someone who doesn't benefit the profit of the state does it but in any other case they were acting alone or defending themselves or "the cycle of violence is complicated and theirs nothing we can do about it"?

When Russia invaded Ukraine , claiming it was there territory actually and that they were freeing it from terrorism, we were record breaking levels of fast to call Putin out on his bullshit. In an unpresidented display of across the table unanimity we agreed to fight Russia. We also still viewed the Russians as victims and not as a monolith.

We associated it with the other times we've faught in Europe. WW1 and WW2 , times we have glorified to high hell and back as the war the USA taught valiantly in single handedly and definitely did nothing wrong. It was the last time we faught a unanimously "good" war. The Nazis were evil and we killed them...we definitely didn't join the war late. Inspire gas chambers and sell them tanks...and uh...what we did to Asia....well uh...we had too, war is messy and we picked the greater good. Now shut up before I send you to the principal and finish up that 5 page report on WHY we did the right thing when we dropped that bomb... And that other bomb.

When Israel invaded Palestine , claiming it was their territory actually and they were freeing it from terrorism ...we sided with them and stood by for 75 years as they became that theofacist ethnonation . They committed a genocide, they nearly erraticated the Palestinians. How many babies do you think died in their holy war?

Then word gets out that some of them killed babies in retaliation. I'm yet to see any evidence of this but it instantly got the whole UA up in arms . They viewed the entire rebellion as the same. All of our anti propaganda training just whent out the window in a second. Where's the "they were acting alone" or the "liberation is messy" or the "wrong on both sides "?

No. I don't condone war. There is no such thing as good war. It's always fucked.

But I find it insanely hypocritical, entitled and audacious to even use the word "condone".

This is an excellent example of people getting angry only when people fight back.

It would be remice of me to tell these people "yes I know they started it, but don't you dare try to end it, just sit there and take it because violence is wrong even when other people do it".

Who the hell am I to say anything?

At least I'm philosopically consistent. Are you? How do you neutralize the contradictions the government makes about violence?

[weemietime]

12 civilians died, at least 2 of whom were child soldiers placed in that position by Hezbollah. You know what else is equally disgusting? Hezbollah fired 200 missiles into Israel and killed 11 civilians.

Guess what, none of you terrorist simping fucks have said a single word about this. You don't give a fuck about civilians, lmao, you just love calling Zionists "dogs" because you think Jews (70% of whom are Zionists) are sub-human scum.

But of course never resist the opportunity to call out Israeli religious extremists for saying "Palestinian animals." Whoops! Turns out you actually do not care about this type of rhetoric, and that it doesn't bother you in the slightest! :-)

People like you and AOC are the ones sobbing openly that the USA opted to fund the Iron Dome, a purely defensive technology, when Iran launched literally a thousand missiles at Israeli residential zones.

Be so for fucking real, none of you expect that we have seen the footage of the pager attack, but actually we have and the explosions were so small that people standing right next to the targets were uninjured.

But it's OK, you can just say that you're mourning Islamic extremists who enjoy killing civilians.

they can kill any Yemeni person they want and excuse it by calling them Houthi terrorists or being used as a human shield by them.

And there it is, "I oppose genocide except when I can simp for the Houthis who actually perpetrated a genocide of 200,000 people and ethnically cleansed the entire Jewish population of Yemen, who have nowhere else to go but Israel, and then actively endorse the destruction of Israel, because I hope all Jews worldwide are killed [the actual, official position of Hamas]."

Yeah buddy tell us more about how opposed to genocide you are. You can just be honest and say you are fine with genocide as long as it happens to Jews. Cry and bitch and whine and scream about Israeli operations in Yemen when the Houthis have been attacking Israel for eleven months. Don't start wars you can't fucking finish, dipshit, then maybe the IDF won't target your precious genocidal terrorist Nazis.

I wish you and all Nazis a very fall down a well and break both your legs.

The pager terrorist attack Israel did on Lebanon was so fucking disgusting. There's no line these Zionist animals will not cross, there's any crime they will not commit, no form of privacy they will not preach and no type of violence that is too dirty for them.

They're already making jokes about all the innocent people that are dead or injured and justifying it by saying they're just targeting Hezbollah's "terrorists," because apparently Hezbollah is just the Lebanese version of Hamas to them.

A boogeyman they will blame all their crimes on.

It doesn't matter that Hamas is literally just the name of the government or that Hezbollah is just the name of a political party, so their members includes normal civilians just like any other government in the world and their assassination is against international law (not that Zio dogs care about international law), but even if we assumed that every single member of Hamas and Hezbollah are weapon-wielding combatant, which is completely unrealistic, it still wouldn't justify this sleazy cyber attack that injured and killed innocent bystanders, including children (not that Zio dogs care about murdered children) who were simply standing next to those Hezbollah's members, which again, included civilian members who were off duty and doing normal daily tasks in public places such as shops, hospitals and schools.

But since The West has racialized the word "terrorist" so much to the point where fascists just use it as a synonym for Middle Eastern people, these actual Zionist terrorists can get away with killing, torturing and raping any innocent civilian they want from our region by turning around and calling them the terrorists.

They can kill any Palestinian person they want and excuse it by calling them Hamas terrorists or being used as a human shield by them, they can kill any Lebanese person they want and excuse it by calling them Hezbollah terrorists or being used as a human shield by them, they can kill any Yemeni person they want and excuse it by calling them Houthi terrorists or being used as a human shield by them.

They can use all the money, weapons and impunity that is unconditionally given to them by the US + The West to terrorize as many people as possible and in the end of the day, their victims are the ones that get demonized and have their death justified by being accused of being terrorists while their killers, the actual terrorists here, continue to victimize themselves and claim self-defense.

Find a protest near you here: X, X, X, X & X

Donate or join Palestine action here: PALESTINE ACTION

[matan4il]

Seeing you posting what's happening here has given me a lot of courage. We have to make our voice heard, because what Hamas do... no human should ever have to live though what our people go through right now. It shouldn't matter what nationality you are - some things cannot be excused. Not intentional mass murder and kidnapping and so much MORE. I send prayers you and your family are alright.

Something you said and really amazed me at how simple it is and yet people here don't seem to understand: you CAN wish for Palestinians to have better, and can also support Israeli people when you clearly see WAR CRIMES happening in front of your eyes. If it were not Israelis, people would've been enraged instead of gleeful. The horrible things done to them just shows how those terrorist are not humans, but beasts. And those who smile at it are filled of hypocrisy and really have no humanity left in them. It's not that hard seeing a child crying for his mother after he was abducted and thinking that this shouldn't be something they do even for "freedom". What do they gain by this?

People say we kill children and rape women for fun for the last 70 years? They children die every week because of us? We're 20 years old. We want to get home, hug our dog and go see our partner. We, as we speak, give HAMAS TERRORISTS food while our people are there fighthing more terrorists in our cities. While the bodies pile. It's so difficult but we have to show what's happening. What's the true face of Hamas.

I hope someday people understand.

Lovely, I am so glad if I could give you anything during these days... Sending SO MANY hugs!

"We have to make our voice heard"

TBH, I have been so horrified in the past by the amounts of antisemitism and attacks on Jewish bloggers that I saw coming out when Israel had been under attack that it actually did paralyze and silence me. But not again. We're human beings and NO ONE should ever be de-humanized the way we are being (and have been), because it leads directly to the kind of inhumane violence we have been witnessing in the last 40 hours or so.

"no human should ever have to live though what our people go through right now"

This. I can't stop listening to the testimonies of survivors of the massacre and family members of those who have been killed or kidnapped, and the sheer horror of it all just keeps growing.

Thank you for the kind wishes, I hope you and your loved ones are and will remain safe, as well! I'm sending love and prayers!

you CAN wish for Palestinians to have better, and can also support Israeli people

This is exactly it. We're all human beings, we can and should care about the innocents on both sides. There's no contradiction. And yes, absolutely. The fact that a German friend tells me on WhatsApp that there are anti-Zionists in Germany handing out candies to celebrate the massacre is just incomprehensible. We wouldn't be hearing or seeing such justification of a cold-blooded mass murder if it weren't Israelis who were targeted, people would feel ashamed to post or re-blog posts that excuse the massacre, and the fact that they don't is a direct result of years of a de-humanizing narrative being pushed.

Regarding the terrorists, I'm going to say about them what I believe about the Nazis and every other group capable of massacring innocent people. They weren't animals, they chose their inhumanity.

It's not that hard seeing a child crying for his mother after he was abducted and thinking that this shouldn't be something they do even for "freedom". What do they gain by this?

That's exactly it. No one's life is made better by what Hamas did, not the Israelis' and not the Palestinians' either. We're all going to pay a horrible price for what Hamas chose to do.

We, as we speak, give HAMAS TERRORISTS food while our people are there fighting more terrorists in our cities

I will never forget how in 2014 we were under rocket and terror tunnel attacks from Gaza, so we were fighting the terrorists there. At the same time, we tried to help them still. A kid with a heart problem was allowed into Israel to have heart surgery here, paid for by Israeli tax payers, to save his life. His mom was allowed to enter with him, to be by his side in the hospital. When she was asked what she would like him to be when he grows up, she still said, "Shahid." A martyr. Which is what they call their terrorists. I remember the faces of the Israeli doctors hearing that, and still carrying on the life saving surgery. Someone told me - no one ever talks in the media about the positive parts of Israel. So we need to talk about them. WE have to keep making these moral choices, and we have to speak up because the world must never be allowed to de-humanize us again.

I hope that you're also feeling encouraged by all of the wonderful people who have stepped forward and expressed their caring for what we're going through. That matters! That's another ray of light that I want to amplify.

Take care and please do update me here and there on how you're doing! xoxox

[butch-bakugo]

I would have an ounce of sympathy for Zionists if they didnt:

make islamophobic circa 2013 jokes

repost racist propaganda about arabs to the point of charicatures

make a million claims about "innocent Israeli counter-protestors being attacked!" With no videos (beyond a lady who was going around randomly punching pro-palestine protesters then got mobbed LIKE SHE SHOULD to stop her from hurting others. But of course, no one can find out who she is to verify, they never say the location in question and they conveniently leave out the fact she was the instigator and agitator. Hell there's videos of a Zionist rabbi professor running into an encampment and trying to beat up the pro-palestine protesters. Litterally knocking over their food, kicking them and eventually just starts swinging. Edit: another rabbi professor got caught running around an encampment with an agitator student putting up mein kampf posters and tried to claim it was the protestors... While this man was actively Holding freshly printed ones.... With tape... Then when the protestors and cops found him, he tried to run in the encampment and throw the unhung posters and fight protestors until the members of the encampment blocked him. He then whines about how Jewish men can't even walk on campus anymore and left without comment.) proving the supposedly shouted anti-Semitic remarks (with videos of counter-protestors randomly trying to shout out "kill all Jews" and other remarks then claiming it was said by the pro-palestinian protesters then whining when they got arrested. Oh and there's two of three of those videos circulating)

make a million claims of seeing posts on here with "straight up nazi rhetoric" and other "examples of leftist antisemitism" to the point of claiming their saying nazi slogans but never with any screenshots or proof then call you antisemitic if you dont automatically believe them

a whole account by a token pro-zionist "2nd gen American from gaza" who essentially wore a "all lives matter shirt" about " just wanting peace" and walked through an encampment and, just like that video of that little white girl crying when protestors gave her a wall of silence, said he felt "threatened" because the protestors wore masks, side eyed him and ignored him. He even accounts how many people were nice to him, asked him if he wanted food or water and generally left him alone. He Litterally said he felt threatened because he went in to agitate and no body took his bait. I'm sorry but masks dont make people violent. He kept saying he felt like he couldn't talk about his views or felt like "they could do anything to me and I wouldn't see their face" like this is Karen level paranoia bro.

Spout pretty much every alt-right insult in the book to the point I have to wonder if they are trolls but have to toss out my suspicion cause their either too low key to be a troll or just remembering its a fachist movement. Calling people whores and sluts, saying they are giving Palestinians their "OF money", calling the Palestinians "immigrants who need to get out", calling people retards/n words/various other slurs, calling leftists litteral snowflakes and wokes. Like wtf

Snuggle up, reblog and like from alt right American blogs with bios like "pro life pro guns pro liberty", litteral pepe the frog icons, praise the fact Republicans like Matt gatez, tom cruz and other famously terrible and racist people support their movement.

Own up to the fact they want all of palestine and more and talk about Palestinians in a way that feels very familiar to me as a native American. Calling us backwards, primitive, dogs and other horribly racist shit.

Say they deserve an ethnostate because the Holocaust happened. No.

Like.... Wtf? Why are y'all cuddling up to diet Nazis right now? That's independent of any news source I saw, I saw that shit with my own eyes scrolling your blogs. I knew you liked fascism but like? Wow.

[smores100]

i don't believe anything hamas has to say. about anything. they're sadistic manipulative liars and have been proven to be ones again and again. they're the ones giving out numbers of casualties and injured people. they've already been caught including certain names more than once; they've also been caught including names of people who had died long before the attacks ever happened

it's amazing how 5 mins after an attack they know to announce 1000 people dead (they count so fast!), whereas 2 months later and israel is still making adjustments to the numbers and finding and identifying bodies from the october 7 massacre....(side note: by archaeologists. they use archaeologists. try and think why an archaeologist is needed to find proof of someone being dead rather than missing/kidnapped. let that sink in...)

interesting how when the idf was accused of bombing a hospital there were 500 dead, but when it was proven to be a failed rocket launch by islamic jihad there were only 20-50 people killed…math is fun!

and yet the world keeps hanging on to every word by 'the most credible not terrorist organization in the world'… (if you don't get the reference go watch eretz nehederet's parody of the bbc…they did a couple and it's so accurate it hurts)

also as mentioned here hamas doesn't differentiate between 'innocent civilians' and their own terrorists. they /are/ freedom fighters after all to them eeeeeveryone is innocent! but you can be sure at least half - if not more - of the real number of casualties are terrorists (there's a reason i used quotation marks but that's a whole other story...) and yes there IS a difference b/w collateral damage bc that's what happens in war specifically when the enemy hides like cowards amongst civilians, and PURPOSELY and DELIBERATELY invading cities and torturing and executing every civilian in sight if you can't see the difference then sorry i can't help you 🤷‍

also SECONDED on that whole genocide bs…sometimes people die at war??? it's not all genocide??? why aren't you crying about hamas' continued attempt at genocide? they literally have KILL ALL JEWS written in their charter! they massacred 1400 people (the majority being jews) on october 7! what do you think they're trying to do when they launch 10000 rockets at populated civilian areas??? the only reason there aren't thousands of dead israelis is bc israel gaf about their people and spent millions of dollars on shelters and the iron dome for protection. hamas could've done the same. instead they stole the people's money and used it to build underground tunnels to hide in and rockets. (in their defence they also used it for charity…how else would haniyeh have been able to survive in qatar w/o his 4 billion dollars???) your liberal misuse of the term dilutes its meaning and is an insult to real genocides happening across the world. ffs assad murdered more than half a million of his own people and the UN still sucks his dick and the world is silent....(i get it; actual war crimes and genocides and ethnic cleansings aren't interesting when the jews aren't involved…)

last but not least since this all started due to the cancellation of noah…FUCK YOU fuck you for trying to cancel a JEWISH boy for being PROUD of his IDENTITY and wanting HIS PEOPLE to be SAFE guess what? zionism IS sexy *le gasp* all of you using zionism as if it's a bad word a curse word using it to hide your antisemitism....zionism (nowadays) simply means you believe israel has a right to exist (as a safe haven for all jews) and the jewish people's right for self determination. it means NOTHING regarding the palestinians and any rights they should or shouldn't have. you can be a zionist and still support a two state solution! these things aren't mutually exclusive! the way certain people have twisted its meaning to make the world believe all jews and israelis are evil monsters who want all palestinians dead and the entire land to themselves is disgusting the backlash and sheer hate and the cancellation of a 19 year old jewish boy over it is no less disgusting but you know what? thanks for proving EXACTLY why zionism is still important and why israel MUST keep existing 👍

This was a reply to someone else, but I'm making this its own post because so many people are being so evil right now re: Noah Schnapp.

You can find other, longer explanations with history and all, but all the places I've seen more or less agree with this:

So you're all calling people to cancel Noah because he's in favor of a Jewish nation in what is today Israel. Which is a perfectly reasonable, decent and educated opinion to have, especially when you, to use a trendy term, "educate yourself" and find out why the state of Israel was created.

11000 dead Palestinians, half of them children

According to Hamas. Don't forget that, ever. They're the current, official government of Gaza, thus they're the ones who give numbers. This means that the real number could be 10, 1 million, anything in between. What I've read is that they probably give more of less accurate total numbers. What they fail to do, however, is distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians, and beteween civilians killed by IDF strikes, civilians killed by failed Hamas or Palestininan Islamic Jihad's rockets (which happens a lot), and Palestinians murdered by Hamas/PIJ (which also happens, a whole damn lot). They also don't specify how many civilians they have prevented or tried to prevent from evacuating or receiving aid.

11k dead people is a horrible number. Even 1 dead person is a horrible number. However, urban warfare in such a densely populated area is its own kind of hell, especially when the other side is fond of using civilians as human shields in every way possible. The fact that the number is 11k and not 50k, 100k, and so on, indicates that the IDF have indeed done a lot to minimize deaths. You don't genocide people by doing roof knocks, opening evacuation lines, dropping guided bombs, putting up an Iron Dome to deal with rockets while avoiding escalation, etc. simply because actual genocide, while a lot worse, is also cheaper, easier and faster than what they're doing. This is important because caling every act of war genocide dilutes the word, and there are actual genocides happening around the world. Also, there is a difference between striking military targets and causing civilian deaths as a side effect (what the IDF is doing) and planning and carrying out a massacre deliberately targeting civilians and inflicting as much pain and humilliation as possible on them. And there is a difference between doing so by breaking a ceasefire (which is what Hamas did), and defending your country because if you don't do that a terrorist group will anhilate you (which is what the IDF is doing).

Back to Noah. So far, these are the things that people have tried to cancel him for:

Traveling to Israel (a completely normal thing)

Having Israeli friends (another completely normal thing)

Condemning Hamas' horrible attack on October 7th (the decent thing to do)

Posting a statement saying he feels unsafe as a Jewish person in the US (which, given the rise of antisemitic acts in the world, including the US, including where he lives and where he studies, is a valid feeling to have)

Signing a letter, along with Shawn Levy, Brett Gelman, Ross Duffer and I think Cara Buono, asking Biden to press for the liberation of every hostage by Hamas. This especially shows the utter ignorance of the cancellers because, as it turns out, caring about every hostage implies a slowdown of IDF's actions (and, at the time, a delay of a ground invasion).

Supporting the existence and preservation of the state of Israel (once again, a completely normal thing). The fact that people are turning against him for these things says to me that the real reason you are all hating Noah is beacuse:

He's Jewish. Like, really really Jewish.

And the fact that this all comes from a place of antisemitism isn't hidden at all: I've seen y'all on here, on Twitter, Reddit, every other social media calling him slurs (such as "cunt"), censoring his name, pretending he's not part of the cast, asking the Duffers/Netflix to fire him, wishing him failure, doxxing him, calling on his classmates to physically assault him, etc. He doesn't need to educate himself: you guys are already teaching him a great lesson on why a Jewish state is necessary. If that's the treament he gets from his own "fans", what can he expect from the world at large?

[nightcoremoon]

weird opinion but christians aren't religious.

ok so like, jews generally follow god's rules, muslims follow allah's rules, hindus probably follow their gods rules, so on and so forth. and overall they do it out of faith; they do it because they want to honor the deity who loves them rather than because society forces them to.

granted the zionists and the radical extremists and the zealots do exist but as loud minorities and thus are statistical outliers & don't matter.

christians are... a different breed.

"if you aren't x branch and dont obey y rules you'll go to hell so we'll fucking murder you" is pretty much the main driving force behind a significant portion of christianity in history. the catholics, the protestants, the orthodoxy, all are built on a foundation of fear, anger, and hatred. it's shaped the way society developed; in the 4 nations that did the most genocidal imperialist colonialism- England, France, Spain, and Italy- a combination of convenient coastal locations, naval prowess, military tendency, christianity, and ultranationalism lead them down a path of missionaries, holding bibles in one hand and bloodstained knives in the other. the religion is inseparable from the culture and inseparable from the horrible things done in the name of their god, and the resulting cancers of society we feel today from the campaigns of slaughter. xenophobia. capitalism. savage barbarism via sensationalized capitol punishment. misogyny. queerphobia. gender fascism. classism. racism. all of these issues in the "civilized world" stem predominantly from those four nations and the disease ridden pestilent filth some call pilgrims.

here's something interesting:

there are less than 1 million rastafari in the world.

there are less than 5 million shinto in the world.

there are less than 25 million jews in the world.

there are less than 30 million sikhs in the world.

there are roughly 100 million african cultural religious adherents in the world.

there are less than 400 million chinese cultural religious adherents in the world.

there are about 500 million buddhists in the world.

there are about 1.1 billion hindus in the world.

there are about 1.2 billion nonreligious people in the world.

there are 1.6 billion muslims in the world.

and one final statistic

there are over 2.1 billion christians in the world.

the jewish count is a highball, rounded up, and includes several different definitions of jewish including people who are only one quarter. so for every single person who is even remotely jewish, there are more than 8 christians. for every hindu, there are 4 christians. for every atheist, agnostic, or "other", 2 christians. this frightening statistic should set off warning bells for everyone who is involved in a discussion about religion. and anyone who knows BASIC world history and can correlate data at all can probably piece together what I'm putting down.

now, I may be slightly biased here considering my eclectic religious beliefs. now, I personally believe that there is some primary force of energy that may or may not manifest itself as a humanoid being, that engineered the most basic laws of physics in the universe: atomic magnetism. as can be inferred by planck's constant and its implications, our universe is digital, written in binary. an electron either moves or doesn't move. there are no other options. so I genuinely believe in some form of intelligent design; whether it's a bearded guy on a cloud, some dude with six arms and an elephant for a face, just a big swirling pool of ectoplasm, or a big ol' plate of spaghetti and meatballs, something is out there that we are physically incapable of contacting from our plane of existence, just as a drawing on a piece of paper cannot reach out to interact with the world: a gif will move on its own but it will never acknowledge our existence, even if it could think by itself. and all the different mythologies of the world- egyptian, greek, norse, shinto, whatever- very well could be the agents of that unknown "god". perhaps anubis, ra, and bastet are just angels with animal heads that all of the peoples of ancient egypt saw and were like oh I guess this must be a god. maybe zeus and loki were the same person with a magic dick who fucked a bunch of animals in both greece and the scandinavian countries and spawned all of the horrible half-animal monstrosities that, idk, made vishnu think "well I have to kill that" and caused the biblical flood or something. maybe the jewish god gifted wisdom to siddhartha for sitting under a fig tree for 6 years through the angel pomona [roman goddess of fruit, had to google that one], so buddha gets his wisdom from demeter and is in nirvana right now right a step up from hades on yggdrasil the world tree keeping an eye on his charge persephone. any theory could theoretically be true but we ants of humans will never fucking know because we can't just point a telescope at the magellanic clouds and say "look, there's amaterasu with russell's teapot, and she's having tea with... *rubs eyes* lemmy kilmister??? wow I guess gods are real after all!" it's impossible to know the secrets of our universe because of the very restrictive nature of the universe itself. is it a circle? is it a donut? WE DONT FUCKIN KNOW.

we cannot know what religion is truthful.

""anyone who says that any one religion is more or less true than any other is a fucking moron, and if they're suggesting that White Western European Colonial Imperialist Protestantism is the one true faith, they're probably a fucking racist colonizer who beats his wife/sister and burns gays at the stake. and considering how that exact demographic is typically the one that murdered people for not converting to their religion, I don't think they have the intellectual non-deranged ability to make those logical connections.

again, I'm not saying that there AREN'T a lot of people of every religion who are evil assholes who contributed to mass genocide. israelites killed palestinians. shiites killed sunnis. hutus killed tutsis. danes killed geats. turks killed armenians. the ottoman empire has as much blood on its hands as the holy roman empire. germans who called themselves aryans but weren't actually aryan killed jews. but all of these tragedies were isolated incidents rather than repeated patterns over the course of two thousand years. not like christianity was and is.

just look at the United States, Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, & India's British Raj. Britain, France, Spain, and Italy, by extension Protestantism and Catholicism, are the shared factor between the long and bloody history fraught with massacring indigenous populations who wouldn't convert religions. native americans, indigenous canadians, latin americans but predominantly mexicans, the eastern chinese, coastal africans, aborigine aussies, indians- coastal coastal coastal. true the western chinese and the mongols/hunnu and xinjiang muslims haven't exactly been on civil terms and the silk road has always been a battleground and the middle east was already tenuous before murrica bombed them for oil but those happened in such a spread out area among asia which is FUCKING HUGE, MIND YOU! but also that's three high traffic places with massive diversity, it's human nature to have conflict, but not nearly to the same level as all of the shit christianity has done to the world. it's impossible to separate the religion from the cultures; victorian england without protestantism is just dirty people who die at 15 from having their 3rd child. italy without the catholicism is just grass and cheese. france and spain without religion are just kingdoms that fought wars with england for forever and now just make food that's one part delicious and three parts horrifying. religion is directly responsible for a significant portion of the evils those countries committed. one religion in particular.

they don't practice religion the same way as the rest do. they aren't faithful to their god. they don't follow his rules out of love but out of fear. they execute dissenters without a second thought, heresy they cry. they execute women and little girls for being free thinking or having sickness associated with mercury poisoning in the water, witch they cry. they slaughter men women and kids alike in the name of cramming their beliefs down the natives throats, we're chasing out the snakes they cry, we're bringing god to your godless people they cry, we're just civilizing you they cry. they shit in the streets and proudly display rotting corpses and leave the impoverished disabled and starving to die alone and whip their slaves and rape teenage girls and scrap in the streets while sopping wet with spilled ale over insignificant insults and stab people to death in the night and never even fucking BATHE, and they have the nerve to say the natives were uncivilized. the nerve. because hey. they read a magic book they stole from a culture who stole from another culture who stole from another culture, mistranslating each time from hebrew to greek to italian to english, and they think they're better because their skin is white.

christians never evolved. their mentalities have stayed the same. all thatms advanced has been technology. that's it. they're still the same evil disgusting degenerate bastards they always were. they just have the money they stole to buy stained glass windows, rosary beads, giant tacky metal statues, bigass robes, leather, and printing presses. and as time passed they used the money they continued to steal to buy cars and websites and radio stations and commit felony tax evasion and secretly molest children and line the pockets of the politicians.

all of their holidays are stolen from pagans anyway.

so fuck christmas. fuck easter. fuck lent. fuck the golden calf christian holidays that the tiny minded fragile snowflake conservatives lose their collective shit over because the pandemic response common sense stipulations won't let them buy the shit they can't afford with money they shouldn't have for people they don't even LIKE, all in the name of tradition, tradition! the rituals that worship something so much worse than satan or baphomet or pan or whatever: the dollar. they buy all the new shiny shit they can, at the expense of the chinese kids that the corporate pigs outsource to, buy the pine trees and the coca cola vunderbar and the fake mint corn syrup Js and watch the same shitty cookie cutter white supremacist hallmark fash movies and stuff their kids full of enough sugar to go into a goddamn coma when the african slaves who pick the cocoa beans will never get to know what actually being a kid will ever feel like because they're gonna die from falling into a combine harvester and be eternally forgotten to history and no christian will ever give a shit because they don't fucking care about what they don't see on their safe space news or hear on their safe space radio or read on their safe space social media. they think their worst sin is eating cheeseburgers so instead they'll go eat a mcchicken or chick fil a or an arby's chicken sandwich instead but not at popeyes because "that place is sketchy" and by that they mean they don't wanna eat where black people eat, that's why cracker barrel was so popular for so many white christians for so long because it had racially segregated seating until barely 20 years ago.

they don't love jesus. they love a paper doll they shove into their back pockets until every other sunday where they go to a fucking mall with a baptism waterslide and raise their hands like a bunch of dumbass weirdos and away to adult contemporary indie schlock with the word jesus pasted into a boring-ass hetero romance song, pat themselves on the back, then go to starbucks to scream slurs and misgenderings at 14 year old starbucks baristas who give them a cappamochalattechino instead of a fucking carmamochalattechino because you mumbled under the mask you didn't even fucking cover your nose with because you don't give a shit about the virus beyond how it inconveniences you.

they are horrible people who pretend to be good. until you suggest the slightest infinitely small inconvenience to them that would alter their holiday plans even the littlest smidge. then they would kill you if not for the police. don't get me started on them because you know by now what I'd say about those fuckers. but they'll gladly wear shirts about how they'll kill you. how they'll go back 200 years. how they'll murder you and watch you slowly suffer because their primate brains shoot a million endorphins when they watch things die by their hands because they never evolved a sense of empathy, compassion, or morality beyond how wearing a cross necklace will remove any of the consequences they will face in their afterlife.

they are horrible people who pretend to be good. unless you're gay or black or trans or Not Christian™ or mexican or disagree with them about politics economics sociology science technology music or movies. assimilate or die. assimilate or die. assimilate or die.

they don't deserve special treatment for their false idols.

they aren't better than jews or muslims.

they're worse.

so much worse.

and they should be stopped.""

-Nightingale Quietioca

save as draft arch draft bookmark draft where did I put my keys contra code kontra kode I need to remember this and copy it buzzwords keywords find it later please god tumblr don't bork on me this is good stream of consciousness repackage repackage change the words this is a great character study if I do say so myself thanks 3am me you're welcome 3am me

[eretzyisrael]

When Will a Stand Be Taken Against the Promotion of Murder? - by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

In civilized societies action should be taken against anyone who expresses the desire to commit murder. The Iranian government, Hamas, Hezbollah, various clerics, and other influential figures within the Muslim world, as well as neo-Nazis and other extreme rightists, openly proclaim their desire to commit murder or even genocide against Jews and Israel. Many in the Western world either refuse to heed these statements or actively support them. Many others relentlessly criticize Israel and remain completely silent about Palestinian promotion of the killing of Jews.

Civilized societies should not be silent when people state their intention to murder even a single person, let alone commit genocide. Many Western politicians and other prominent members of society do not seem to agree with this fundamental truth. In the non-Western world, many people have no inhibitions about saying, directly or indirectly, that they approve of murder in some cases and would personally commit it if the occasion arose. This is most easily seen when the potential victims are Jews. The leaders of Iran, for example, have spent four decades frequently and explicitly expressing their zeal to commit mass murder via the total destruction of the State of Israel. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has used familiar language to state this desire. Earlier this year he employed the phrase “final solution” on his website in yet another call for Israel’s destruction. Perhaps reminded of the phrase’s genocidal origin as the Nazi euphemism for the extermination of European Jewry, Khamenei later invoked a classic antisemitic trope by claiming that the extermination of the predominantly Jewish population of Israel would have nothing to do with Jews. “Eliminating the Zionist regime doesn’t mean eliminating Jews,” he said. “We aren’t against Jews. It means abolishing the imposed regime…Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Palestinians [would] choose their own government and expel thugs like [PM Benjamin] Netanyahu.” This Western-friendly waffling notwithstanding, Khamenei has made no attempt to conceal his true feelings. He has spoken of Israel as a cancer that must be forcibly cut out. In 2018 he tweeted: “Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.” Other leading Iranian figures have spoken out in favor of the destruction of Israel, some explicitly mentioning the leveling of Israeli cities. Yet Iran is allowed to remain an unhindered member of the United Nations. The Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas—elected as the majority party by the Palestinians in 2006—also openly and frequently discusses its desire to commit genocide against the Jews. This aspiration is clearly stated in its charter, which states: “Hamas looks forward to implementing Allah’s promise however long it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: ‘The [Day of Judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!’” Senior Hamas officials occasionally call publicly for the murder of Jews. In 2019, Fathi Hammad, a member of the Hamas Politburo, urged members of the Palestinian diaspora to kill Jews around the world. Hammad said: “You have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing if God permits.” The Palestinian Authority (PA) provides generous financial payments to terrorists and their families. It thus creates a huge incentive for Palestinians to murder Jews in Israel. Nor are these pensions limited to the murderers. If Palestinians are killed in an attempt to murder Jews, the financial benefits they would have received accrue to their families. This amounts to a “pay for slay” policy—in other words, the PA actively promotes and encourages the murder of Jews. In 2019, the PA spent 570 million shekels (about $160 million) on rewards to terrorist prisoners. By August 2019, the Palestinian terrorists who in 2001 killed 15 Israeli civilians—about half of them children—and wounded many more in the Jerusalem Sbarro restaurant bombing had received more than $900,000 from the PA. In May 2020, the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah terror organization, Hassan Nasrallah, referred to the creation of Israel as “the establishment of this virus of an entity, this cancerous tumor amidst our umma.” He added, “Israel has no legitimacy to exist at all and must be destroyed.” Clerics and other influential figures within the Muslim world also call for the extermination of Israel and Jews. Some of these figures have a very broad and influential platform. In 2012, the cleric Futuh Abdel Nabi Mansur officiated at a nationally televised service at the Cairo Tenaim Mosque. The service was attended by then Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi. The cleric said, “O Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters; O Allah, disperse them and rend them asunder; O Allah, demonstrate your might and greatness upon them.” Morsi could be seen saying “Amen.” There is also prominent support for murderers elsewhere in the Muslim world. On November 18, 2014, two Muslim terrorists from East Jerusalem murdered six people at a Jerusalem synagogue, including a heroic Israeli Druze policeman. The terrorists were killed. The next day, Jordanian parliamentarians held a moment of silence for the murderers. They read aloud verses of the Quran “to glorify [the terrorists’] pure souls and the souls of all the martyrs in the Arab and Muslim nations.” The Jordanian PM, Abdullah Ensour, sent a condolence letter to the families of the terrorists in which he ”[asked] God to envelop [the terrorists] with mercy.” Neo-Nazis and other extreme rightists also call publicly for “death to the Jews.” Some have carried this out, as was seen in massacres at two US synagogues. In a similar case in Germany in October 2019, only a strong door stood between Jews praying inside the Halle synagogue on Yom Kippur and a man who had come to slaughter them. These murderous individuals, while very dangerous, have only local capabilities as yet and are thus not in the same criminal league as Muslim countries and major terrorist organizations that promote murder and genocide. Beyond the would-be mass murderers themselves are those who finance and promote them. Iran and Qatar make money available to Hamas that enables the group to finance its anti-Israel operations—money that it withholds from its own population to further its own ends. Several Western and other countries give money to the PA, a body that openly promotes murder. They claim their money is not being used to pay pensions to terrorists and their families, but they have no way of ascertaining this. The PA can use whatever funds it has available, including donor funds, to pay Palestinians to kill Jews. In the Western world, a variety of senior figures and bodies exhibit the opinion that when Jews are the target, the promotion of murder or genocide ceases to be objectionable. Some of them go so far as to directly promote the interests of the murderers. A striking example is former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who welcomed representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah to the House of Commons and called them his “friends” and “brothers.” Others include former US President Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2014, they co-signed an op-ed in The Guardian suggesting that Europe and the US should recognize Hamas as a political movement. They failed to mention that Hamas is an organization with genocidal aspirations. This was a showcase of senior human rights advocates promoting the interests of would-be mass murderers. The Dutch government advisory body Adviesraad Internationale Vraagstukken (AIV, or Advisory Council of Foreign Affairs) is in the same category. It issued a report in 2013 recommending contacts between the EU, the Netherlands, and Hamas. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) wrote to Dutch PM Mark Rutte to disband the AIV for this recommendation, which would obviously come at Israel’s expense. The AIV’s recommendations were not accepted, but the organization was not disbanded. Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, does not bother to conceal his comfort with the extermination of the State of Israel. He said in an interview: “Iran wants to wipe out Israel. Nothing new about that; you have to live with it.” Another category—a major one—is those who freely criticize Israel but never mention the criminality of the major Palestinian bodies. They certainly never acknowledge those bodies’ open promotion of murder and genocide. If they criticize the Palestinians at all, they do so superficially and focus on other issues. One influential person who does this is US Senator Bernie Sanders, a Jewish politician who was a leading contender for the US Democratic presidential nomination. When he addressed the Israeli-Palestinian problem during his campaign, he spoke of the Palestinians’ dignity and called the Israeli government “racist.” European parliamentarians regularly criticize Israel while averting their eyes from Palestinian invocations of genocide and murder. In the Netherlands, at least one-third of the 150 parliamentarians have done this. In the Swedish and Norwegian governments the percentage is probably higher. Then there are those who unintentionally help would-be genocidal murderers. In 2015, then US President Barack Obama initiated the extremely flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran, which enabled the Iranians to sustain their quest for nuclear weapons with impunity and intensify their subversive and terrorist activities in the Middle East. In the context of this analysis one should also look at what is often called “Holocaust inversion.” This is exhibited by people who claim Israel intends to exterminate the Palestinians and/or that Israel is like the Nazis. In 2020, the Hungarian Action and Protection League commissioned a report by Hungary’s Inspira Ltd in which interviews were held with members of the adult population between the ages of 18-75 in 16 European countries. Twenty-four percent said they believe Israelis behave like Nazis toward the Palestinians. The main representative study before Inspira was published in 2011 by the University of Bielefeld on behalf of the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Their research was undertaken in seven European countries. The interviewers polled 1,000 people per country over the age of 16 in the fall of 2008. One question was whether they agreed with the assertion that Israel is carrying out a war of extermination against the Palestinians. The lowest percentages of those who agreed were in Italy and the Netherlands, with 38% and 39% respectively. Other figures were Hungary 41%, the UK 42%, Germany 48%, and Portugal 49%. In Poland, the figure was an astonishing 63%. It is not only Europe’s leaders who have lost their moral grounding. These results reflect the profound moral decay of major segments of the population of the European continent.

[brickdykehouse]

you see, its absolutely valid to say that those born in Israel aren't automatically zionist. its also completely true that zionism isn't Judaism. Buuut...

its been polled that only 2% of Israeli adults think that the IDF were using too much force against the palestinians. 2%. The IDF are taking selfies with palestinian people they've taken as hostages and using them as dating app profiles. There are israeli civilians *actively* blocking humanitarian aid to Palestine for religious reasons. IDF soldiers are receiving gifts and chocolates from civilians for slaughtering palestinians and destroying areas where said civilians want to settle.

Many of the organised protests for palestinian freedom are actively against antisemitism, and my heart goes out to any jewish person affected by antisemitism as a result of peoples misdirected rage, but I pose the question:

In the face of all the destruction, all the slaughter that Israel has posed on Gaza in recent months, as well as Palestine as a whole for over sixty years, as well as launching attacks on other neighbouring states for no concrete reason, as well as the revelations that the IDF sexually assaults women before they kill them in many places such as al-shifa hospitam, as well as the IDF using *recordings of children crying* to lure people out to shoot them, as well as using an AI that is supposedly for identifying hamas soldiers being used to target *families in their homes*, as well as murdering hamas diplomats families *during the peace talks*, as well as refusing a ceasefire when Hamas promised to release any hostages and become a political party instead of a military organisation if palestine was recognised as a state, as well as pressuring the families of the hostages hamas took to support their regime, as well as ignoring the thousands of palestinian hostages taken by themselves when using hostages taken by hamas to justify their genocide, as well as *israel never officially drawing their borders in their barely seventy-five years of existence, because they always intended to expand them as frequently as possible*, as well as MYRIADS of other stories of horrific actions sanctioned by not only the IDF and the Israeli public, but also the Israeli media, and general populus as well,

how, in the face of all that, can any Jewish person against Zionism justify not only their own presence in land stolen from palestinians with murder, cruelty and violence, their own citizenship to a nation that endorses the murder of TENS OF THOUSANDS of palestinians, including over two thousand children, but ALSO justify the existence of Israel itself.

To be Jewish and to refuse to denounce Israel as a state IS zionism.

Secular Jewish ranting post.

If the Talit in my pfp scares you - Out. Antisemites - Out.

If you see anything below this cut as a rejection of Palestinian safety, then you're reading words that aren't there, and sorry-not-sorry but: You're just straight up antisemetic. No excuses, no buts.

At this point, I think I can confirm that not a single tag on tumblr is clear of i/p posts.

and I'm not just talking about general i/p posts, not "death is bad" posts, not even pro-Palestine posts, but straight up "each and every Israeli person deserves to die" posts.

They say Zionism is a political movement, yet they say every person born in a specific place is automatically a part of that movement. That is a disguise of recism, and at this point I cannot be convinced otherwise.

They say people who fled from their homes should be protected, yet somehow it's the Mizrahim's fault that they were slaughtered and pushed away into Israel.

I hate this. I want to browse the "trans rights" tag without seeing that my family deserves to die because my grandparents ran for their lives. I want to live in a world where people don't insist that my ethnicity isn't real, because somehow I'm white despite not being considered white in any actual physical fucking place.

I want to live in a world where my very existence isn't widely considered to be the cause for enormous death, and therefore invalid.

I used to ramble about how similar Antisemitism, Transphobia and Homophobia are. I'd say that all of those share the trait of trying to object to people who exist, as if objecting will make them disappear. I'd say that people who share those beliefs simply can't handle the existence of people who are proof against their theories.

As for antisemitism, I was both wrong and right. A simple glance at how those "antizionists" view the Mizrahim tells: Only considered existant when their existance can be used as a talking point, scoring "bonus points" against Israel, then thrown away not even a sentence later becomming "white" once more.

And don't even get me started on how those people view (or rather deny) Jewish ethnicity and history as a whole. Things that are a simple single google search away.

I always knew that it would come to this, but never have imagined the scale.

This isn't where I thought I'd turn out this year.

[aymanofhisword]

Why the Jerusalem declaration is Trump’s cruelest move yet

medium.com - Ben Wolford

A father and mother are in the middle of a difficult discussion over the custody of their child. They’ve both been crying. It’s the most critical moment of their lives. Suddenly, a preposterous man sits down at the dining room table, issues a legally binding order in favor of the father and then abruptly changes the subject: “Big crowd expected today in Pensacola, Florida, for a Make America Great Again speech!”

If you can imagine the way the mother feels, you can begin to imagine how Palestinians feel today.

The U.S. conversation has moved away from Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The story was way down on the home pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I couldn’t even find stories about it on the leftist front pages of Mother Jones and Jacobin. A Latterly contributing editor in Washington just told me that “it’s barely being discussed.”

The arrogant nonchalance is part of what’s so infuriating to Palestinians. Trump’s declaration was a gut punch to 12 million people that left them feeling sick, morose and angry in a way that’s difficult for non-Palestinians to understand. And we don’t even bother trying. Indifference is America’s ultimate act of cruelty.

But in fact, this is the worst thing the Trump administration has done. Worse than the Muslim ban, worse than repealing DACA and worse than walking away from the Paris Agreement.

Twenty thousand people assembled in downtown Amman today—and thousands more protested around the world—because one more piece of land has just been taken away from them. They did not elect the person who took it from them. The Israelis did not elect that person. And not even a majority of American voters elected that person. Fewer still among those who voted for Donald Trump know anything about the Israel-Palestine dispute or care.

Yet the images streaming out of today’s protests can give you an idea how much Trump’s 12-minute speech on Jerusalem matters.

If you think this demonstration has the look and feel of the protests that led to the Arab Spring, you’re not wrong. There’s a direct link between the way these protesters feel now and the way the protesters felt in 2011.

I’ll explain that, but first the requisite background. Jerusalem is a divided city. Both Israel and Palestine claim the whole municipality, but for now, after decades of gridlock, each side is mostly content to grasp a portion: the Israelis in West Jerusalem and the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Palestinians wanted East Jerusalem to be part of Palestine in any two-state agreement.

Trump, by himself, for no apparent reason, has imperiled that arrangement by declaring (or rather, slurring) “Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.” He didn’t say West Jerusalem. He said Jerusalem.

Journalists yesterday tried to make David M. Satterfield, the acting assistant U.S. secretary of state for the Middle East, clarify the president’s statement. It ended with Satterfield attempting to say grammatically acceptable sentences while at the same time saying nothing at all:

QUESTION: Could you explain the distinction between recognizing the capital and not deciding anything on borders as it refers to a deal? Because if you’re saying that this is a final status issue to be negotiated at the table, how does either (a), this not prejudice a deal when Jerusalem is a final status issue, or (b), how is it not a meaningless declaration that could be negotiated at the table? It has to be one or the other.

AMBASSADOR SATTERFIELD: Elise, final status negotiations are going to deal with those boundaries of sovereignty, border questions that the president spoke to as not addressed by his recognition. The president thought it was the right thing to do for the United States, after all these years, to acknowledge the fact, the reality, that Jerusalem is the seat of government of the state of Israel, the capital of the state of Israel. That’s it.

QUESTION: But it’s — respectfully, it’s inconsistent with the idea that you would also be negotiating at the table unless you can acknowledge what we’re all trying to get you to say, which you artfully are not —

AMBASSADOR SATTERFIELD: Thank you, Elise. You may well think that. Thank you.

QUESTION: Well — but the idea that it may — that is — that Jerusalem is the capital, but perhaps in final status negotiations that it might be not the united capital.

AMBASSADOR SATTERFIELD: Elise, I will only address one more point on this. What were the words the President used? It was a very simple statement: recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. There are words you might want to put in there; he didn’t. There are words you might want to take out; he didn’t. That statement was very carefully made, as was the comment we are not prejudicing addressing by this decision final status issue.

When asked in what way the statement was carefully made, he said “I’m not going to get into a tick-tock on this.” Asked if he personally agreed with the decision, Satterfield gritted his teeth: “Oh, now. I am an employee of the U.S. government. … This is a decision which we will work our best to execute and advance.”

In the absence of any clarification from the Trump administration, Palestinians have intuited what’s going on here: The United States, which was supposed to be mediating a deal, has suddenly awarded a city it doesn’t own to a people that doesn’t deserve it, as one Amman protester put it.

The chief Palestinian negotiator told The New York Times he’d given up on hope for a two-state solution and was shifting strategy toward simply making life better for Arabs stuck under Israeli occupation. “This is the reality,” he said. “We live here. Our struggle should focus on one thing: equal rights.”

The people he represents—those thousands marching in Palestine, Jordan and elsewhere today—aren’t ready to give up. But they, too, have undergone a shift. To speak with them, it feels like more than a mere shift in strategy, though that’s part of it: They’ve steeled their hearts and clenched their fists to a new reality in which no one—not the U.S., not Israel and not the Arab leaders who govern the Palestinian diaspora—is dealing with them honestly.

Remember, this is a people that understands all of Palestine to be its territory, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea. They understand Zionists and the West to have stolen this place where Jews, Muslims, Christians and others once lived together; imposed a religious state; and subjected the local inhabitants to second-class status or worse. They understand that they will one day reclaim this land, no matter how long it takes. The dream is to establish a democracy where Jews, Muslims, Christians and others can again live peacefully—a state where they can pay taxes and elect officials that work for everyone.

Today that dream seems further away. The Palestinian Authority, a governing body set up in 1994 to manage the transition to a Palestinian state, and its Fatah party leadership are seen as failing. The alternative, a Hamas-led vision of armed struggle, begins to appear as though it were necessary all along.

“They … have been told that their only hope is to create such pain for Israelis and unrest throughout the region that their needs will have to be addressed,” writes Mitchell Plitnick, former vice president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

This isn’t to say that Palestinians are the violent, extremist hotheads that Israeli and American propaganda would have you believe. (For instance, the U.S. embassy here in Amman ordered the children of government employees to stay home from school on Thursday. As far as I know, this wasn’t based on any intelligence that kids were in danger. Rather, it smells more like racist fear-mongering: “Those reactionary Arabs will kill your children.”)

On the contrary, Palestinians who aspire to nationhood view—with good reason—the Israeli occupation of Palestine as a violent, military project. Therefore, right or wrong, arguments for a violent, military response are at least understandable and should not be conflated with terrorism, as the editor of The Jerusalem Post does.

Such a conflict would be devastating. More than 1,500 civilians died in the 2014 Gaza War, almost all of them Palestinian, including some 500 children. But Palestinians are willing to die for statehood. Already, I’ve just seen a report of two killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during protests.

Such demonstrations could keep growing, especially as they relate to U.S.-allied Arab dictators in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are not only repressive (in a variety of ways) but are seen as increasingly cozy with Israel as a counterweight to Iran and Islamic extremist groups. It’s in this sense that many Palestinians are calling for a second Arab Spring, in the hopes that such an uprising would spawn a dozen Tunisias. But it could also spawn a dozen Syrias.

That predictions falls at the cataclysmic end of the spectrum of possibilities. So far, the “three days of rage” Palestinian leaders called for have been mostly peaceful. There’s still plenty of room for the parties to salvage the nonviolent resolution that Trump’s action threatens to destroy. But it would be a mistake to discount Palestinians’ feelings of powerlessness—and the power such a feeling creates.

Why would Trump even want to mess with that? “It is almost impossible to see the logic,” wrote Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution. Sixty-three percent of Americans opposed the move, according to a University of Maryland poll.

Trump’s motives for anything are a mystery, and he likes to keep it that way. He prefers chaos to continuity, and he likes to do things that make him the center of attention. He’s also been the target of an intense pressure campaign by right-wing American Jewish organizations, Evangelical Christians and wealthy donors like casino owner Sheldon Adelson, who made the Jerusalem embassy relocation a focus of their lobbying efforts. It worked.

The biggest reason this was such an irresponsible decision is simple: It didn’t have to be made.

It was a cruel decision because the majority of Americans aren’t effected and don’t care, while for so many people in the street today it felt like everything.