#but in this situation we ignore the fact that we're supporting palestinians by talking ABOUT them

[infiniteglitterfall]

pretty please, my fellow progressives

Could we please all keep in mind that the concept of "The Jews In General, or A Specific Type Of Jew, Controls Education, Government, Media, and/or Banking", is a longstanding antisemitic trope?

And most of all, that it is false??

No, a marginalized group does not also control education, the government, the media, and/or banking?

No, Jews do not secretly control these things and just pretend to be marginalized? No, Jews have not secretly been accumulating power since the Holocaust, granted by too-generous gentiles, out of pity?

No, it isn't better if you just mean a specific subgroup or kind of Jews. It's still specifically Jews.

It's like when people who hate trans/queer people are fine with rich white cis gay men. So they think it's not bigoted to blame "people with blue hair and pronouns" for the downfall of society.

We all know this means, "I only see some of you as human like me. You have to speak and act a certain way to count. Everyone in your group has to pass a test to get into the Good group."

Doesn't work.

Sure, it gives them plausible deniability to the people who matter to them. But everyone else can see exactly how they feel.

We've all known for years that it's bad to think of a marginalized group as having some "good ones." Rein it the heck in, please.

Because YES, all of those examples are ones I've seen implied, or stated outright, over and over, within the progressive community. This month alone.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello, I'm a second-year undergraduate student! My bachelor's is in International Studies, so I have various classes that span different disciplines but often touch on contemporary events. My first year was exciting, I was receiving a fairly nuanced array of perspectives and opinions on world conflicts, say, the war in Ukraine.

My university is generally understood to be a reputable and respected institution. Before last semester, I would have agreed.

However, their "nuanced approach" to teaching contemporary conflicts conveniently disappeared once Israel began its genocidal operations in Gaza. I've come to realise it has very close ties to Israel, and there is an obvious silencing of pro-Palestine voices. Faculty members feel surveilled (recorded lectures), and I've seen fellow students being harassed by others because they support a ceasefire.

I've talked to friends and acquaintances who support Palestine; we are all at a loss. We cannot voice our stance because of fear of being harassed, we are constantly fed Israeli propaganda, and our professors have begun to avoid touching on the topic. We learn international law, have a module on the Genocide Convention, yet we are told to ignore how Israel's actions are described in every article! Our degrees are supposed to be in International Relations! It's ridiculous.

We're trying to stay as informed as possible, doing what we can to subtly change other student's opinions by presenting them with information. But I've lost so much respect for the institution I pay to educate me and emit my degree, it's just enraging that they claim to form "critical thinkers" and "well-rounded" professionals when books written by pro-Palestinian authors aren't even available in our libraries.

I have no idea who else to ask for advice because professors have turned me down. Currently, my main concern is how to best stay immune to incessant propaganda in academic environments.

In advance, thank you for your time and response.

I'm sorry to hear it, that is a tough situation. You have a few choices as to how to respond. I can't tell you what to do because they will all require different actions, decisions, and consequences from you, and I can't predict or guess which course of action you will feel to be best. So yes, this is offered as advice only and you can choose what comes next.

First, if your university is in fact directly doing this, there is probably an element of fear. High-profile universities such as Harvard and UPenn have been attacked particularly by bad-faith right-wing actors due to alleged antisemitism, even though the Republicans don't care about antisemitism either and just want an excuse to bash left-wing liberal higher education. It's true that some universities have handled this incredibly complex issue very badly, have allowed fairly open antisemitic hate speech on their campuses, and aren't sure how to course correct back to "neutral," because "neutral" doesn't really exist here. Either side you take, you will piss someone off, and very few people have the tools or competencies to teach a well-rounded view, even if they should if they're literally in International Relations. So your university may have decided it's not worth being attacked by the bad-faith camps on either side, particularly the Republicans. There may be grubby internal politics at play (i.e. a major donor threatening to withhold funds or a high-ranking official threatening to cause problems if they allow open criticism of Israel on campus). This is not admirable, and it clashes with the idea of universities as blissfully nonpartisan idealistic environments of pure learning, but American universities are now very much beholden to the corporate shareholder model, and if the shareholders want to influence what is being taught or talked about, they can.

Therefore: you can do one of a few things. One, you can just stick it out, finish your degree, get the diploma with the university's name on it, then go somewhere else for your career or grad study that will allow you to operate outside this restricted environment. Two, you can stay at the school and continue to address this conflict in a responsible and accurate way in your assignments, bearing in mind that it might lead you into conflict or lower your grades. (If you do this, it will help to have a group of people doing it with you, and keep track of paperwork, communications, and other materials in case you end up in academic or legal arbitration and need to argue that you have been unfairly penalized). This will obviously require a little more sacrifice on your part and it is difficult to say how it will play out. But if you feel strongly about standing up for yourself and arguing that this is integral to your degree and program of study, you can do it.

Last, as you're only a sophomore and thus still have time to transfer, you can think about doing that. It is difficult to uproot your life, plans, college setting, friends, etc, but it is still a choice. If you feel that it is not worth your time to continue to pursue an education in this environment, and/or that the effort it would take from you outweighs the benefit that it would confer, you can leave, and search for an international relations program that is more willing to take a nuanced perspective in this issue. As I said, only you can decide where the line is, and what qualifies as a total deal breaker. If you're still getting a good education in other classes/areas, and still feel like it's good value for your tuition money, then it might be worth it to just quietly disagree with what you're hearing in this realm and do your best to maintain perspective outside of class.

I know that many young people (and people overall, but especially those under 25) have strong opinions on Israel/Hamas, and I would lastly caution you to avoid getting swept too far in the other direction; i.e. ONLY surround yourself with people who call themselves pro-Palestine but are usually just only anti-Israel and more specifically, just antisemitic. It should also not be the case, or at least I hope it's not, that you are being peer pressured by your friends to leave your degree and university altogether just because their position on this one issue leaves a lot to be desired. As I have said before, life is complex. You will have to make choices about what you want out of a situation and weigh up what is best for you to do. You should certainly understand, as I noted above, that if this in fact an actual university policy and not just a few professors and classes who have decided to avoid it, it probably comes from fear of financial, political, or public consequences and is not because those involved are simply "bad people" and just love genocide. So yeah.

As I said, only you can decide what you want to do here. It may be that by this time next year, this issue (which has been dominating headlines/discussion since October) will have died down or at least moved into another phase, and the pressure for people to discuss and/or not discuss it in a certain way will have also died down. Be aware that you will always have to make choices about what you do and don't want to do, and there will never be a perfect environment that just supports everything with no complications. And be sure that whatever you do decide to do is what is best for you, and not pushed one way or the other by either professors or by peers. I know this can be difficult, but by asking for advice, I hope you're willing to put in the time to think and do what's right.

Good luck!

[wejustvibing]

thank you for the response. no hate or anything but i think talking about these things is what gets us somewhere! i defo do think think this is something that we will all never agree on and that’s fine but hope that we can continue to have conversations around it

just to pick up on the idea that - “celebs don't know half the shit going on in the world. they don't have the education, world view or the time for it and that's the sad reality. it's always a losing cause waiting for celebs to come through” - i think this is a very privileged and ignorant stance to have. there is no one stopping you from seeking out the knowledge, open a book, watch a video, do a google search. if we as people, in the context of palestine as this is what we are talking about, are having to wade through this biased media narrative and fight for what we believe to be right then celebs have the same access if not more, to educate themselves. that should not absolve them of responsibility.

@copsehamilton on twt/x said the following which i think best words what i believe a lot of people are trying to say about lewis’ stance - “I promise you guys, you can be a Lewis fan & have conversations as his fans about how he uses his platform. We all come from different backgrounds & our lived experiences are different. For those of us who have lived and breathed the Palestinian liberation, language matters”

this is especially what i was trying to say when talking about the stance that celebs are taking. wording matters because unfortunately celebs do have more reach than us and right now palestinians are fighting not just the settler colony but the rest of the western world - their appreciation when someone posts shadowing light on their situation means more than anything to them, they are begging for people to share their stories because that’s how social change happens. while i say this please do not think that this absolves western nations, humanitarian organisations from their responsibilities, but imagine if a celeb was to post that no humanitarian aid is getting in to gaza through the rafah crossing - it would reach a target audience that perhaps could not be reached by regular people who are sharing & posting, or by politicians etc.

i don’t know, i don’t want to clog your inbox so will just leave it there, but i am glad these conversations are being had

honestly i'm frustrated reading some bullshit takes these celebs have been sharing the past few days. outright support for the colonizer and their lies. onesided foul cries, i've seen them. it's disgusting and needs to be called out. they're loud and wrong out of whatever influence, ignorance or privilege they have.

i mean privilege is literally synonymous with most celebs isn't it? so that tracks. and that's what i'm saying. they're privileged as fuck. for someone so out of touch to start educating themselves they first need to even clock there's something wrong somewhere. that they're probably on the wrong side of history. you feel me? and we're expecting these people to pick up a book and influence others then it's over before it can even start.

lewis is privileged in many senses too but one thing he's not allowed is ever taking a step wrong. we see that every day. and i'm not victimizing him, it's just a fact. he's decided to champion social and political causes and he's actively trying to educate himself and do better in these spaces. and he does from time to time but it's always nitpicked to hell with always losing focus from the actual cause. same happened with this one. first it was his silence that was harmful and now it's his neutrality that is harmful. so like business as usual with the moving goalposts.

and let's not forget, if you're his follower you know where he stands. so what has changed?

yes, language matters. but it's also important to know where the discourse has gone. the nuance is lost. he simply said let's have peace and let's not kill children. what's wrong with that? what's wrong with being on the side of innocent lives? how did that turn into oh look he's promoting genocide? he shared links for funds of the orgs working in the region, he legit amplified them to his 35m followers like everyone wants him to, he's still getting hated on. how's he getting called worse person than that racist piket spawn?

imo at the end of the day this is misplaced anger. we're all feeling helpless for Palestine. we can see how the world's moving. we want more voices in their corner. which is valid and so is the disappointment. but there's global superpowers supporting is*ael and vetoing ceasefire so let's ask this one guy who mind you wants ceasefire, to change the world's direction? how is that even an option? seems to me he's just an easy target for frustrations and pain everyone is feeling atp (both are valid btw) but how's that fair to him?

and yeah, you're probably right. we might never agree on this. but same. no hate at all. these are terrible times and i do want to learn more too.

[embryhallowed]

I finally posted something on my main socials in vocal support of Palestine, outlining the history and violence of the Nakba, listing various sources including many anti-zionist Jewish voices.

I got one comment, from a woman I went to college with, who is Jewish, and who moved to Israel after Trump was elected.

Her response was pretty much what I expected. She said it seems like my only point is that the Israelis deserve the violence and had it coming, that I'm spewing revisionist history, asking where my essays about Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and so on are, and that I'm writing all of this from the safety of America, which is a country that is "worse than Israel by every metric" and she ends with telling me to fuck off.

So yeah, pretty much what I expected, if not a little weak sauce?

Like, it is not revisionist to tell the history of the Nakba. 750,000 people displaced, 15k killed, 500 villages destroyed. It's not revisionist to talk about the massacre of Kafr Qasim where Israeli police killed 48 unarmed civilians, 23 of which were children and the youngest was 8 years old, and then an officer responsible for the murders was put in charge of "Arab Affairs" in a nearby city. It's not revisionist to say Israel funded and supported Hamas to crush secular progressive movements in Gaza. Those things happened. It is well documented. They happened. They did. You can Google it and it will be the first result you see. And these things have continued to happen ever since.

I've been vocal for years about how it's fucked that America killed a quarter of a million Afghans, how Obama bombed the middle east so much that children in these countries grew to fear says with a clear sky, because the drones could fly on those days. I've talked about Yemen and Syria, I've talked about how AMERICAN influence made all of these situations worse. I've talked about Saudi Arabia and how they murdered an American journalist and nothing was done about it, but the reason THIS gets an essay right now is because it feels like we are witnessing genocide in real time, and most of the people in this country seem fine with it.

And like. "You're sitting there safely in a country worse than Israel."

Ma'am, idk what to tell you, you chose to move from America to Israel. Dunno what to tell you there. Otherwise, I HAVE BEEN VOCALLY CRITICAL OF THE USA FOR YEARS. I've openly said that the CIA, the industrial war complex, and American capitalism, has been the single greatest source of evil and suffering on the globe in the modern era. Like, I hate American government, politics, and the influence we have on the globe. We ARE the evil empire! WE'RE the baddies! I've been saying this for AGESSSSS.

IDK guys. I just gotta spew my feelings out here so I don't pop off to her. I have my sympathies for her, because she moved to flee from Trump and to ensure her mother had the healthcare she needs to live. She's married and now has a baby, she lives in Haifa. I understand why she's angry and defensive, I fully sympathize with how scary it must be for her.

But like. That doesn't change history. It doesn't change the fact that zionist military forces violently forced people out of the city of Haifa and cleared it for new Israelis. I've wondered, how old is the building she lives in? Did Palestinians live there once before her? I've never said the Israeli civilians "had this coming" but this situation IS a ticking time bomb, which is what leftist voices have been saying for ages.

She also said "we've offered peace and they never take it!" Iirc Israel hasn't actually met to negotiate with Palestinians for like a decade?? And like. WHAT HAVE YOU OFFERED?! "Hey guys, stop resisting us and we promise to stop taking your land and bulldozing your homes. I know we already did that like 70 years ago and completely ignored the borders we, Israel, agreed to, but believe us! We'll for sure hold up our end of the bargain this time! Also no we still want to have an ethnostate and we still want to treat you as second class citizens." WHAT PEACE OFFERINGS???

She said "you haven't offered any solutions!" I'm not here to offer the perfect solution for peace in the middle east, I'm here to say genocide is wrong, I'm here to elevate the voices of Palestinians and anti-zionist Jews. You already had the bones of a "two state solution" when the UN carved up the land, and Israel didn't respect that (not that it was great to begin with). And honestly, if you say "I kinda think a single secular state where everyone gets equal rights regardless of religion or ethnicity" you will get crucified??

Anyway. I'm just ranting at this point. I knew I'd get blow back for speaking out, but it honestly wasn't as bad as I expected.

I just hearted her comment and will reply later, though idk if she'll see it, since she promptly unfriended me. Also unsurprising.

Anyway, free Palestine

[smonk-wonk]

This seems to frame the existence of the KOSA bill as a nonissue (or lesser issue) and taking action against it as arbitrary. You can care about both things at once but more importantly- the KOSA bill will affect our ability to openly speak about Palestine the way we have been. It is a censorship bill, and will result in surveillance and be counterproductive in advocating for Palestine. Republicans definitely would not pass a censorship bill and allow the type of content we've been spreading over the last months under their watch. I personally do not think it was an afterthought to attempt to pass the bill now as we will of course prioritize Palestine which makes it very difficult to address something else.

If we ignore KOSA, the ability to access information like updates on Palestine, resources that provide aid to displaced Palestinians, and related matters will be compromised. Additional to that, resources for those in abusive situations, in need of (especially) LGBT resources and mental health resources, will be censored. Palestinians will die, as will children in abusive situations. They are taking advantage of the fact that we need to focus on Rafah, on Palestine, on the 2 million displaced Palestinians. Next thing we know information about it is being surveilled and hidden, information that saves lives and spreads awareness and has allowed the Free Palestine movement to gain the support and power that it has.

Do not stop talking about Palestine, but do not imply that KOSA is a nonissue. With KOSA, inevitably people will hear less about Palestine. People may stop talking about it or forget about it. Seeing less related content is no justification for forgetting about Palestine but like it or not that's just what's going to happen with more people than we can afford it to. I'd still continue to post every day in these tags but I'd be fucked up if my posts were censored or removed. I can't afford that and neither can anyone else. It's going to target and allow for the deaths of more Palestinians and many minority groups, many people in need of life saving resources, queer youth, so many people will be affected and people will wish they'd understood the full intentions of these politicians and done something.

Here senators are at a hearing admitting that they want to target "anti Israel" content, clearly expressing belief that pro Palestine content encourages terrorism and endangers children. I don't believe everyone would actually have to upload a government issued ID, but there would still likely be various forms of "identity verification" used widely, jeopardizing the safety of a lot of people. The bill will compromise much of the anonymity we are currently allowed that keeps us safe. We cannot focus on Palestine if we allow KOSA to pass because we're "too busy", because they are not separate issues. They are counting on our dedication to Palestine to overlook the fact that their bill will be used as a cover to censor a wide variety of important resources and Palestinian voices under the guise of protecting children.

Focus on Rafah BY not allowing KOSA to pass. Do not discourage action against KOSA, it's more dangerous than you think even if you mean well. They will have a full say in what information on various platforms would endanger children and must be suppressed or erased. And it's scarier knowing that they will have more access to the identities of those speaking against Israel or in support of Palestine. If you don't think republicans would allow unfiltered free speech for those talking about Palestine and anything that doesn't kiss Israel's soggy little pancake ass then you'd probably be wrong, given how they feel about pro Palestine content. Everything I just said would probably not make it very far if allowed to stay up at all

"but the kosa bill is going to be signed !!!"

FOCUS ON RAFAH

FOCUS ON RAFAH

FOCUS ON RAFAH

FOCUS ON RAFAH

FOCUS ON RAFAH

FOCUS ON RAFAH

FOCUS ON RAFAH

FOCUS ON RAFAH

FOCUS ON RAFAH