#but why is it okay to kill israeli civilians?

[gayhenrycreel]

yet another day of blocking popular blogs for supporting an organisation that they would hate if they were killing their own people but nooooooooo its okay to kill random Jews apparently.

[haruchicken]

That @whenmagicfilledtheair blogs blatant antisemitism while simultaneously denying it scares the shit out of me.

Yeah, they are by far the worst I've seen.

The thing that I find the most frustrating about people like them, and why I even bothered to comment on their pinned post is that they demand answers to questions, but do so already knowing nothing anyone says will appease them. They are not looking for a debate or even open to changing their mind in anyway. You can see that if you look through their blog and see how they respond to anyone trying to provide them with evidence of their antisemitism.

That's why I didn't try to answer their pinned post, because I'm not going to spend hours going through their their blog taking screenshots and then compiling my own sources for why what they said is wrong or antisemitic when they will just deny anything they don't agree with as wrong or Israeli propaganda.

The thing is, it's easy to criticize Israel without being antisemitic--just look at how other Israelis have been doing it for years. But that's not what this person wants--they want to paint Israel as the most evil country on Earth, with the most evil people, who do uniquely evil things that no other country has ever done before.

I'm not Israeli, I'm not even Jewish, so for the most part I haven't said anything about this war. I come to Tumblr for memes, art and fandom shit. Yet, the rise of Antisemitism is really worrying me, especially when it's so easily brushed off with the excuse that it's just Israeli propaganda.

Like, I just don't understand why it's so hard to admit that, yeah, given how old antisemitism and how it's shaped a lot of cultures worldwide that it's possible some of it has slipped into the 'free Palestine' movement. This doesn't mean it's an inherently bad movement or that Palestinians deserve to die or lose their homes. It just means that maybe sometimes people should take a step back and see if some of their inherent biases have effected how they talk about this war as opposed to others that do not involve the Jewish State of Israel.

[apollos-olives]

"waaa waaa israelis are getting killed" okay??? and??? palestinians have been getting massacred for almost 80 years non stop. i was three years old when an israeli soldier held a gun to my face. i don't care that a few colonial settlers (that are ILLEGALLY settled there btw. according to international law) are dead.

hey answer this for me- why are the settlers and civilians the first people who get hurt? why? you wanna know why? because israel does it on purpose. it's all systematically set up. israel systematically puts settlements with israeli people who are not soldiers RIGHT next to the palestinians, so if anything happens, the settlers will be the first ones to die, and israel and america can immediately put the blame and demonize palestinians even more. israel is doing this ON PURPOSE. israel doesn't care for it's people. they kill them off whenever it's convenient. they will do everything in their power, including allowing their own people to be killed, in order to make palestinians look less than human.

stop falling for propaganda. stop listening to the western media. listen to the palestinian voices. listen to indiginous voices. listen to the opressed. we need help, and we need all of you to support us. from the river to the sea 🇵🇸

[gigislandofrandom]

Okay y’all, I don’t really get political on here as much as some other people—I have done political stuff in the past, but not a lot. But something needs to be said.

And yes, I will be the one to say it, because if a Jewish person says it, some people are just gonna say that they’re colonizers, this, that, and the other. But we need reason, and not just blindly accuse each other of deplorable acts.

There’s been a lot of heat on both sides of the Israel-Palestine issue, and for good reason. But I’m going to offer my own perspective. I know I’m going to get a lot of hate, but I’m not going to stand here and just blindly accept the marginalization of human lives.

I’m from the USA, as some of y’all know, and my country has sadly done a lot of hurt towards many different people of many different backgrounds, and we’re still dealing with the repercussions of that today. So keep this in mind, because I want to ask you all some questions.

Native Americans were subject to horrible treatment by white settlers, including being put on reservations, having their land taken, and having their culture erased. Would this give them the right to storm the US Capitol, rape women, take mothers and children as hostages, and kill civilians?

African-Americans, also, were subject to horrible treatment, including the slave trade, segregation, and outright murder based on nothing but the color of their skin. Would this give them the right to storm the US Capitol, rape women, take mothers and children as hostages, and kill civilians?

For a more recent example, Japanese people were put in internment camps during WWII. Many of these people had never set foot on Japanese soil, but had been born and raised as American citizens. Would this give them the right to storm the US Capitol, rape women, take mothers and children as hostages, and kill civilians?

If the answer to these three scenarios is no, why is it okay when Hamas does it to Israeli citizens?

I’m not going to address the issue of land ownership, since that isn’t getting anyone anywhere with this argument. But what I will say is this: the day that Hamas chose to start this whole thing shows you all you need to know about their true colors.

What day was that? October 7th, 2023. Right at the beginning of Simchat Torah, one of the holiest days in Judaism.

Hamas literally chose one of the holiest days in the Jewish faith to start the killing, torturing, and suffering of Jews that continues today, more than a year after it started. This is no arbitrary date, and many other terrorist groups have a similar modus operandi—take the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, for example.

Hamas aren’t freedom fighters, or a resistance movement. They are terrorists who will not stop killing until every Jew both in Israel and outside Israel is dead.

And they don’t just kill Jews. They’ve even killed other Palestinians—take the conflict in July and August of 2014 when 23 Palestinians were murdered by Hamas, many of whom were supporters of Rafah, Hamas’s political rivals.

When I say this, I am not trying to dunk on Palestinians. Many Palestinians have nothing to do with this, and just want the fighting to stop. But there are other Palestinians, and many Palestinian supporters, who have done absolutely reprehensible things—attacking Jews publicly, tearing missing posters of Jews down, and calling for the death of Jews, to name a few.

I fully understand that many Palestinians do have grievances against the Israeli state. That is perfectly valid, and I will always fight as an American for free speech everywhere, and for the right for the people to speak out against oppression. But these actions that are being taken are not the answer, and they’re only going to lead to more antisemitism and Islamophobia, both of which we have enough of in society without all this.

In summary, to the Jews: keep fighting. You matter, you are loved, and you are necessary in this world. All is not lost yet.

To the Palestinians: You have a right to your beliefs, and to your opinions, including about the Jewish state. I will always fight for your right to speak your minds, and to speak out against oppression and discrimination. But all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Speak out against oppression of your neighbors, and speak out against terrorism.

History has its eyes on both of you. For your sakes, and for the sakes of those after you, choose wisely.

[zorciarkrildrush]

I think the essence of what drives me crazy about current Enlightened Online Leftist Discourse Regarding My Life Personally And Whether This Time Killing Me Is Morally Correct (as in, commentary about the latest episode in i/p violence) is this:

I want a free Palestine.

I don't personally know a lot of people that don't! They might bristle at the tagline, because it's co-opted by people who do in fact want them dead, but as soon as I lay out why it's in literally everyone's best interest, how a non-free Palestine is horrific both to the people of Israel and to the people of Palestine, how pragmatically ridiculous the occupation of the west bank and the siege upon Gaza are (and I am a very pragmatic person), they get it. And I don't mean I debate people online about it - this, too, is a ridiculous concept - I mean having, time and time again, the deradicalization conversation with my friends, and colleagues, and my family. Obviously not only now - I've always been a very principled and argumentative Jew, ever since I became an adult - and I've been alive for, I don't know, a dozen flashpoints and operations and wars at this point, and I don't stop being argumentative and loud in peacetime either, but especially now.

But that's not what "from the river to the sea" means.

When you, gentle soul from across the sea, echo this slogan, you are either:

By apathy or will, ignoring that the sentiment cheers for the mass expulsion and killing of Jews. Indeed, any non-Muslim present from the river to the sea. This doesn't even begin to cover how even Muslim arabs still will not be safe under Hamas rule - and trust me, I don't care if a Hamas apologist told you different. A victory for Hamas (And we're ignoring the fact they do not have the military capacity for it - I hope you are aware of the privilege inherent to not understanding military conflicts) means exactly that. No "rule by the people". No socialistic, Palestinian utopia to be had, which is a fantasy I'm seeing alluded to a lot recently. Just an extension of the horrific power structure in Lebanon and Syria, where Hezbollah - friends and allies to Hamas - have been playing a tango for decades of both refusing to participate in actual government and betterment of civilian lives, while still draining their resources and controlling them with no real contest. "From the river to the sea" is not a sentiment for freedom fighting - it's a sentiment for a final solution to the people living here who are either Jewish, or for some Very Strange And Weird Reason would rather not submit to Hamas rule. You know - Israeli Arabs, secular and Muslim and Christian, Druze, Circassians, Bahai, take your pick. Their suffering, and my suffering - you know, a person who made the strategic error of being born in Israel while Jewish, which is inherently problematic and not okay of me - don't matter to you. Just the fantasy of an easy, morally correct cleanse of the land.

Are well aware of all of the above! You just don't care. You either smugly chuckle that I, and anybody else who will die, deserve it - or that it's an acceptable loss for the aforementioned fantasy. "Decolonization is an inherently violent process", you'll say to me, chillingly, before implying I have a summer home in Brooklyn I can just retreat to when things get tough. Israel is basically Rhodesia, a very popular blog here mentioned flippantly, so what's the issue with all of those lily-white Jews fucking off back home before the righteous freedom fighters strike them down? Well. This might be the part I urge you to open a book, or even Wikipedia or any god damn thing that will explain to you these upsetting, dense things you clearly struggle with.

It's easy for me to discount islamophobes. Like, very easy. It's very easy for me to discount insane evangelistics who "advocate for me" simply because I'm a pawn in their religious rapture. It's easy for me to fight against Israeli and Jewish fascists - I have been long before this news item came across your feed, as did the insinuations that some civilian deaths are okay, actually.

It's easy for me for me to see promotions for donations to non-political aid in Gaza. It's easy for me to see the sentiment that hey! Palestinians deserve safe, healthy lives. That they have deserved an independent state, and were unfairly denied one, for decades. It's easy for me to see people saying "You know, the Israeli government is shit, actually, and their actions endanger and promote to the misery of innocents". Because that's right! I wouldn't be voting and protesting and donating for all of these sentiments otherwise!

It's not easy for me to see people, who I honestly held in high regard and saw having well thought out opinions on important matters, inadvertently echo the sentiment that my death is acceptable. That a terrorist organization, who rule over their own territory with fear and violence, are righteous freedom fighters, vox populi, only out to establish a free state. Like hey, their manifesto said otherwise, so it must be all there is - right? That Jews are just hysterical, they can easily live elsewhere - ever since that nasty holocaust business everything's fine abroad. Besides, it was just so long ago who even cares stop talking about it. Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Ayatollahs in Iran, the fucking Islamic Jihad - are not interested in freedom. They aren't, and echoing their slogan tells me you are either ignoring that, or support them anyway. If antisemitic rhetoric, half truths and lies by omission work on you today, they would have in any period of time. I'm sorry this makes you uncomfortable. I'm not, not really.

So finally:

Know what your fucking words mean. Have a cursory glance at the history of the MENA and why it's so fucked, one that doesn't boil down to "The Jews, with American help, rolled into where they don't belong". This isn't even a joke. I've seen this braindead, history-revising sentiment repeated so many times, both online and in actual textbooks, that I feel I'm going insane. So many well-meaning people handwringing and assuring each other that repeating genocidal slogans is fine, that calling the i/p conflict "a simple problem" (which means it has a simple solution, right? Just kill the Jews.) is a well-adjusted and intellectual take. That "only the Zionists should die! The rest will be fine :)" I dare you to say that and also give me a correct definition of what Zionism is. Why I, a Jew that advocates for Palestinian statehood and rights and safety and always have, won't also face the wall in your little fantasy.

Freedom to Palestine. Peace in the middle east, fucking yesterday.

A curse and a plague on those who don't want either of those, and just want to cheer on the death of "the other side".

A curse and a plague upon you, when you tell me, smugly, from somewhere safe and far away, "from the river to the sea".

[xclowniex]

Okay talking about the pagers and walkie-talkies seriously now.

I have seen quite a lot of misinformation going about and I just wanted to correct a few things.

The devices were not given to civilians

We know this as whilst civilians have bought their own pagers of the same brand, they did not explode. Only hezbollah ones exploded. This was done by a shipment meant for hezbollah being targeted, not all pagers going to Lebanon.

Hezbollah isn't also going to just give their communication devices to random ass civilians unless they're no longer in use. The pagers were a somewhat recent investment, not something which is old and no longer of use. It's just military basics 101. Don't give civilians equipment you are still using and still need

Most of the casualties were children and innocent citizens

The casualties were mainly adults. Whilst some children were harmed, the majority affect were adults. We also do not know how many hezbollah vs non hezbollah were affected, but considering to be seriously injured or killed, a person would need to be holding one of the affected devices or be close to someone with one, it's safe to assume that the majority of people affected were hezbollah members. Hezbollah are trying to keep their communication away from Israel's prying eyes. This was literally the reason why they switched from cellphones to walkie-talkies and pagers. They are not going to hand their devices to random ass civilians as there is a non zero chance that an undercover Israeli agent is that civilian.

Israel knew that lots of civilians were going to be harmed

Israel did as targeted of an attack as they could. To have one joke in this, Israel casted "fire ball but only if you're a terrorist" it is impossible for Israel to know exactly where every hezbollah member is at any given second. They cannot make sure that there are no civilians near all hezbollah members. The only way an attack could have been more targeted is if Israeli agents confirmed that someone is 100% a hezbollah member and shot each confirmed person square in the head. That is literally impossible to do on a mass scale, especially since any Israeli agent who entered Lebanon would get killed by hezbollah if they are found out.

You can (and should) mourn innocent civilians who lost their lives or were injured due to the attack whilst also recognizing the attack was a targeted attack at hezbollah. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

[pettytiredandjewish]

I can’t believe that I have to say this but I guess I have to (since I keep seeing people say this kind of sick shit on different social media platforms)…

The I/P war is not a Palestine holocaust. Okay?! It’s not even close to a fucking holocaust. It’s a really horrible war in which innocent people from BOTH sides have sadly lost their lives. This WAR would not have happened if Hamas didn’t attack Israel and killed/kidnapped a whole bunch of innocent people (Israelis and non-Israelis)… did yall forget Hamas started this fucking war?? Not only that but other terrorist organizations also decided to jump in and join in on the war to wipe out all of Israel. These fuckers AKA Hamas doesn’t care about their civilians. It’s been proven multiple times that Hamas uses their civilians as human shields. Those who tried to fight back were killed by Hamas.

It’s not a Palestine holocaust. The holocaust AKA the Shoah happened during WW 2 when the nazies wanted to kill all of European Jews. (Because surprise- us Jews were blamed once again for every single problem that was happening around that time- kinda like how we are now being blamed for what’s currently happening… history does love to repeat itself- I wonder why). Jews were sent to ghettos and camps (work and death camps) all throughout Europe. A majority of them were brutally murdered by the nazies. Those who escaped and survived the shoah either went to Israel or fled to other countries like the USA or Canada. I was lucky that my great grandparents fled before WW2 (they left Germany due to anti Jewish hate crimes that was getting worse and worse…). But sadly my other family members did not leave Germany/Poland and were sent to the camps. Only a few survived.

So for the love of- just please stop comparing this war to the holocaust. Okay?! Because it’s not. Holy fucking shit some of yall need to know your history….

[troythecatfish]

Zionists are literally equating the IDF massacre of 250+ civilians to rescue 4 Israeli hostages to movies where the good guy kills multiple villains to get the kidnapped girl.... These people are so deranged. Holy shit. Imagine comparing human trafficking gang members to innocent civilians including children, toddlers, and infants... Absolutely insane thought process.

This is actually how Zionists think! These people are sick on the head! But at least they are openly showing their true colors now so the whole world can see how horrible these people are. So I'm kind of glad they're saying these kinds of things that dehumanize Palestinians out in the open. Zionists really do think all Palestinians are terrorists equivalent to human trafficking rings and gangs, including the children, toddlers, and infants apparently, which explains why they're okay with all the massacres.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

A terrorist in the PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) has admitted in his interrogation that they practiced for the Oct 7 massacre on Iranian soil. This is important to remember, that it wasn't just Hamas that committed the vicious attack on Israelis during that day, that the Islamist regime in Iran's involvement was crucial to what happened, and that Gaza was NEVER "an open air prison" as the anti-Israel crowd claimed. The above link has the vid quoted here.

Yesterday, Golani infantry's division 36 has left a section in northern Gaza, as a part of lowering the intensity of the fighting there. A short while later, no less than 50 rockets were fired from exactly that area into southern Israel. Yoram Bitan's shop in the southern town of Netivot took a direct hit from a rocket while he and his son were still inside (pic is from this vid, where the start also shows the barrages of rockets over Netivot). They're both thankfully okay, the building absorbed most of the impact.

Just this morning, at least 25 more rockets were fired from that area of Gaza into Israel, before IDF soldiers managed to find and destroy some of the rocket launchers that were used in these attacks (see pic with just one barrage of intercepted rockets over Israel on the horizon, Hebrew source). If Israel can't lower the intensity of the fighting, that's absolutely also because of Hamas' continued choices. Israeli civilians from the south are currently protesting against the possibility that Israel will stop the war before the complete removal of the threat of rockets being fired from Gaza.

The IDF has confirmed yesterday that it has eliminated more than 150 Hezbollah squads since the start of the war.

I got to watch an interview with Shirley (not necessarily her real name), who was a prison guard where Palestinian terrorists were held. She was sexually harassed by a terrorist called Muhammad Atallah for 2 years. Towards the end of her service at this prison, he told her that her life is being threatened by Amjad Awad, a Palestinian terrorist, who murdered the Fogel family when he was 18 years old, together with his relative, 17 years old Hakim Awad. These are 35 years old Ruti, 36 years old Udi, 11 years old Yoav, 4 years old Elad and 3 months (!) old Hadas in Mar 2011. Amjad and Hakim were actually on their way out of the house, when they heard baby Hadas crying in her crib, returned and murdered her (Hebrew source).

You can hopefully understand why Shirley was terrified when she heard Awad wanted to kill her, and Atallah claimed he could keep her safe, using this to try and rape her in a spot between two gates in the prison where there are no cameras. She fought back and saved herself. Atallah, who is imprisoned for attempted murder and murder as part of his terrorist activity, was put on trial back in 2022 for sexual harassment of Shirley and attempted rape, as well as for raping another female prison guard.

But in the interview I listened to yesterday, Shirley talked about how horrified she is over the possibility that Awad and Atallah might be freed in a hostage deal, where Hamas will demand terrorists with "blood on their hands" be released.

Last night, the IDF presented the findings of an investigation into the cause of death of 3 hostages, whose bodies were retrieved from Gaza. The autopsy determined that they were NOT killed by direct IDF or terrorists fire, but the bodies are in such a state, that it's impossible to determine what did kill them.

These are Michal and her husband Alex Lubnov.

Alex worked as a bartender at the Nova music festival on Oct 7. He was kidnapped to Gaza. Michal is seven months pregnant. This week, she visited the site from which Alex was kidnapped for the first time. She's waiting for her husband to be freed, and be with her at the delivery room.

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

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Israel has a right to defend itself.” This mindless cliché is the go-to posture for those who wish to wave away the mounting Palestinian body count and sirens going off about a potential genocide without the messiness of having to justify the specifics of what they’re defending. On its surface, it sounds both anodyne and sensible: Clearly a country has a “right to defend itself.” We are expected to accept this truism and move on. But wait a second. What is entailed by said country’s theory of “defense” and its political and legal relationship to the population with whom it is going to war? In the abstract, most people would agree that any county has “a right to defend itself.” But Israel is an occupying military power on land that, under international law, isn’t its land. What’s happening in Gaza right now is not a traditional war in any meaningful sense. Israel’s pummeling of a civilian population counts as “defending itself” only under the most Bronze Age moral logic of collective punishment. Even if one accepts this logic—which, to be clear, I obviously do not—or, if you believe some high but arbitrary number of Gazans must die as payback for the October 7 attack by Hamas, it would seem Israel has surpassed that number a long time ago. If one thinks killing civilians is okay as long as in doing so some Hamas fighters may be killed, then they should say what ratio of death is acceptable: 1-to-10? 1-to100? 1-to-1000? Even if a person thinks lobbing bombs into a caged population is justified because of the high Israeli body count—which to be clear, one should not think—surely 5,000 dead civilians and more than 2,000 dead children is recompense enough. No one realistically thinks Hamas—or violent resistance from Gaza—will be “wiped out” by this war. So what is the end game here? And those that do think this, what in Israel’s plan leads them to believe this is achievable without killing tens of thousands of civilians? This is a point Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) made to her pro-Israel congressional colleague Ritchie Torres (D-NY) last week, when she asked her critics, quite appropriately, how many dead Palestinian children will be sufficient. “How many more killings is enough for you? Is it a thousand more? Two thousand more? Three thousand more? How many more Palestinian [deaths] would make you happy?” It’s a genuine question: For liberals who say Israel has a “right” to kill as many civilians as it deems appropriate to “defeat Hamas,” clearly there has to be some upward limit, no? How many Palestinian children need to be snuffed out before the cure has become worse than the disease? Those defending the brutal bombing campaign should provide one, as this would reveal how fundamentally broken their moral logic is.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Palestinians in Gaza see UNRWA funding cuts as 'death sentence'

(via Reuters)

Okay so this might be an unpopular opinion, but as much as I think that UNRWA needs a complete overhaul and/or to be replaced with something and anyone collaborating on terror attacks to face consequences, I am extremely worried about the move to do it right now, in the middle of a humanitarian crisis.

I am pretty against dismantling or destroying vital infrastructure for anyone without a viable, realistic plan for who/what is taking its place. (To wit: this is why I have a problem with the people who want to dismantle Israel with no plan or regard for Israeli and/or Jewish safety.) Right now, it seems like no matter how poorly UNRWA is doing the job, they are currently the only ones doing it. If their funding is suspended, who steps in in a timely manner to feed, house, educate, and give medical care to internally displaced Gazans?

It seems like the issues at bar are known issues and have been going on for some time. That absolutely, unquestionably, needs to be addressed. But I have thus far seen no real justification for 1) why now, during a large scale ongoing humanitarian crisis, nor 2) any concrete plan for how to meet these needs without a gap in coverage - something that will absolutely kill people. And of course this will primarily affect the civilians - the elderly, the disabled, and the children - the most. Doing a bad job is typically better than not doing an essential job at all, and I have yet to see a coherent argument for why it is, on balance, worse for them to continue than to limp along until there is a plan in place.

Does anyone have more [properly sourced] information on this and/or how to help?

[elliebelliegirl]

okay following up though... i understand that you are jewish and Israeli but (not trying to attack you, just trying to understand) how can you stand with the state of Israel after seeing the numbers of atrocities that the IDF has committed - of course the hostages should be released, but palestine will cease to exist if this continues and this is an active genocide. people are being displaced and thousands have died. how can you in good conscience stand with the actions of Israel ?

im still assuming this is in good faith! i do appreciate that you're asking and not attacking, it's really nice change of pace tbh. please understand that my ethnicity and my political opinions are not the same thing and how i feel about the state of israel is divorced from my religious beliefs. i just also believe that my people have a right to live in our indigenous land. i also believe palestinians should be able to live in israel (many already do.) anyway, here's the deal.

first, im not israeli, but my family is. i was born and raised in the u.s. while most of my family is israeli, i am not (yet.) im an american jew with strong roots in israel.

second! israelis have been displaced since october, since the attacks by hamas, the governing body of gaza. they've been attacked and killed for years (the whole reason the iron dome exists is because missiles are such an active threat.) getting displaced or killed has happened to israelis and gazans. its terrible for everyone. i am human, and therefore uncomfortable with war, but i don't think it's a genocide. i am horrified by the deaths in gaza. i hate that innocents are being harmed. i don't want to add a however, but there's a big one- it's that the ratio of killed militants v.s civilians is unfathomably low. if israel wanted to kill everyone in gaza (which is 100% not the goal) they would be dead already. the war is active now only to eradicate hamas, which would be beneficial to gazans and israelis, and to rescue the hostages. israel has offered to end the war multiple times and hamas has refused.. because they refuse to return the people they kidnapped. the war could've been over months ago!!! months ago. israel did not instigate this war, and has repeatedly offered ceasefire deals. hamas is the one shooting these offers down. also, palestine wont just cease to exist.. im not sure what that part means, can you explain it? i want to understand you, too.

also. i have cousins in the idf. one of them was supposed to come over before last days on sukkot and couldn't make it in the end. over the weekend, october seventh happened. the next time we spoke, it was a phone call right after simchat torah ended. he was on his way to the airport, having been called back to israel to meet his unit in one of the attacked kibbutzim and start collecting bodies. i only had a few minutes to tell him i love him and to stay alive on behalf of me and my siblings. the memory is so surreal. we turned on our phones for the first time in days to texts from our israeli family saying they were alive, not to watch the videos, not to look at the pictures. im still kind of stuck there on my couch, holding my siblings in a hug and wondering if someone who hadn't texted yet was dead. then we saw people celebrating the massacre. they haven't really stopped. so we knew we couldnt really count on anyone to protect us, and this was way before israel entered gaza. people were just happy jews were dead. don't know if this is a huge sidetrack, but. this is why i stand with israel. their goal is to keep my family alive. their goal is to keep as many gazans as possible alive. that is not the goal of iran and hamas. this goes further than zionism though, tbh. zionism is pretty simple as a principle 😅

[triviallytrue]

What do you think of Hamas or PIJ

I've saved this ask for like three months now because I think it's interesting, so here's an attempt at answering it.

I'm going to truncate this to being solely about Hamas - I don't have an independent opinion about the Palestinian Islamic Jihad that doesn't fall under their association with Hamas.

So to start with the obvious - Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist militant organization, which is not a tendency that I have a very high opinion of. At the same time, I believe in the right of Palestinians to live without Israel's boot on their neck, and they are more or less the only game in town for anyone who wants that - the PLO is horrifically corrupt and collaborationist, and no one else has stood up to become a leftist secular organization in favor of the Palestinians. I think a Palestinian state governed by Hamas would be preferable to the status quo, but that is less an endorsement of Hamas than an indictment of the status quo.

Beyond this background, it's worth taking a look at October 7th specifically, both as a world historic event and the most significant example of Hamas' strategy in its war against Israel.

I tend to evaluate this kind of action on two axes - the morality of the action and its effectiveness at accomplishing the overarching goal. Unsurprisingly, I think the decision by Hamas to target and kill Israeli civilians is wrong, and I find the justifications that have been put out about why this would ever be okay to be both unconvincing and disturbing.

I also don't believe there is an argument that Palestine is better off than it was on October 6th. I want to be very clear about this - I do not hold Hamas morally responsible for the devastation that has been unleashed on Gaza. That responsibility rests entirely on Israel. There is no "justification" for doing what they're doing. But I do believe that when we evaluate an organization's effectiveness at achieving their goals, we need to take a blind eye toward moral culpability and examine cause and effect, and I don't think it's controversial to say that Gaza would not be in ruins right now if not for Hamas' actions on October 7th.

So when I examine Hamas, I see an organization that has done heinous things, not in service to a greater good, but rather to the ultimate detriment of the people they are fighting for.

And normally I would end the post here, and that would be that, but I think there's more to say here. When I critique an organization, I like to offer some sort of alternative path, a way that I believe they could be better or smarter. And the problem I have with "condemning" Hamas the same way I would another organization is that I just don't see a path forward for them.

I think Hamas could resist violently or peacefully or not at all and none of it would matter. If Palestine one day is free, it will be because of internal changes in Israel politics (vanishingly unlikely), internal changes in US politics (very unlikely), or collective pressure from the rest of the world against both (somewhat unlikely). The Palestinian people have been denied a say in their own future by Israel, the US, and the rest of the world (in that order).

Even if Hamas doesn't attack on October 7th, Gaza is still a very unpleasant place to live, and the noose just keeps tightening. The US is flipping the Arab countries one by one, relationships with Israel are normalizing, and no one seems to care. The fate of the Palestinian people is in the hands of politicians that would snap their fingers and kill them all, if they thought they could get away with it.

In this situation, then, it is not so surprising that Hamas does things that are violent, immoral, or counterproductive. When you are out of productive levers to pull, you start grabbing at the other ones, just in the hope that something will change. So, yes, I "condemn" Hamas, whatever that means - I mourn the Israeli civilians they killed just as I mourn the 30x (40x? 50x?) as many killed by the IDF. But I don't really think of Hamas or October 7th as surprising. I think it is an entirely predictable result of Israeli policy in Gaza.

[perrysoup]

Idk why Tumblr thinks I want to see posts from December by Zionists talking about how innocent Israel is and how it's all Hamas' fault

And I can't help but wonder, what the fuck have I posted or shared that makes it think I believe them? Edit:

Blocked someone on here who replied that Hamas kills its own citizens when:

1) Not a state, what citizens 2) Israel is bombing the areas they told civilians to go 3) Israel has killed it's own people who were fleeing civilians holding white flags because…they thought they were Palestinian citizens 4) Legit just say you don't keep up with anything other that Israeli claims

Listen, I get it, accepting you have been fed lies by your nation is hard. You think I was born disgusted with America? Fuck you think I made it to 10 grade not loving the shit out of my perfect country? You think I didn't get sick satisfaction from my government killing civilians because I was so deep in the "us v them" propaganda that I didn't care? I knew it was bad and treated it like I would a joke.

THAT'S WHERE I AM COMING FROM

You are not a bad person because your country is Your country doesn't have to be you As long as you act in defiance, even in the smallest way, they don't represent you. But if you are okay with what they are doing, or are horrified but won't speak up, it DOES represent you. You can see my blog, repeatedly I talk about how I could do nothing and be golden. White Male Southern Adult I won the genetic lottery. But it's not just about me. It's not just about you. It's about them. All of them. Helping all of them. Loving all of them. And that includes you.

But you can't put others pain to the side because the alternative makes you feel better. You help them when they hurt. You mend them and nurture them. What the US has done, and is doing, is awful. And I genuinely believe that the US should not exist as an entity. I say this, again, as someone who has the world as my oyster as far as current laws and actions go. It's time you recognize Israel did too.

Criticizing your country when it does bad things is not bad. Not criticizing them when they do bad things is.

We can all be free and happy, but not without admitting our failings and working to get better, together.

[scientia-rex]

My best friend from my early childhood’s mom, who was a hell of a lot nicer to me than my own mom, and who always encouraged me to write and read and develop critical thinking skills, is a Zionist. I didn’t really get what that meant for a long time. But a few weeks ago on Facebook I saw her flail for justification of what is very obviously a genocidal purge, an attempt by colonizers to totally remove the human impediments to their colonization, and then she quoted someone who had said that they could forgive the Palestinians for killing their children, but not forcing them to kill the Palestinian children.

No one made you.

You never have to kill. You have free will. You have a choice.

The government of Israel is not about Judaism. They use it as a shelter for their actions, which are the actions of any colonial power: expand, conquer, kill. I am not going to ask the Jewish people in my life to justify the actions of a government. No one can, and it would be ridiculous to pretend that there could be a justification for genocide. They are not the Israeli government, despite the Israeli government’s decades-long campaign to cloud that issue. Many Israelis are not represented by their government.

It’s not “Israel,” a people, and particularly not the Jewish people; it’s Israel-the-state. Like a corporation will engage in evil in order to grow and profit, so will states. The people with the least empathy ascend to the most power and they use it to their own advantage. It’s why it is so critical that the populace always be prepared to fight back as a united front, en masse.

If you find yourself arguing that it’s okay to kill civilians, you would have committed war crimes for the Nazis and you need to stop pretending to yourself that you wouldn’t. At least know what you are.

[xclowniex]

How is people pointing out the atrocities committed by the IDF/IOF whatever the hell they are immediately labeled “allies of Hamas” when ya’ll constantly always use the whole “you can disagree with the actions of others” excuse to justify why Israel does whatever they do

Please point out where I have ever said that. It's honestly pretty tiring getting asks where people try to put words in my mouth that I have never said.

What you can find on many posts on my blog is me saying that I myself do not agree with the actions of the Israeli Government or the IDF and that you can criticize the Israeli government and IDF without being antisemitic which a lot of people fail at doing.

A lot of "criticisms" come from modern day blood libel where people will straight up say an antisemitic trope and swap out jew for zionists or Israel and that is not okay. Changing jew to zionists or Israel or anything similar does not remove the fact that it's still an antisemitic trope being used towards either half of the world's jews (as half live in Israel) or towards 80% of jews (as 80% of jews believe in some form of zionism, the most popular form amongst jews is a peaceful two state solution)

Another from of antisemitism which is masked as "criticism" is when people will only say something is bad if Israel does it yet is fine with any other country doing it. This is antisemitism as why is something only bad when the only jewish state in the world does it?

If a criticism does not fall into either group, then it's not antisemitism.

I also have not labeled everyone as "allies of hamas" what you are thinking about is when I have replied to anons and people saying they are riding hamas's dick or have drunk the hamas koolaid. This is simply me calling out people who are falling for hamas propaganda. Microsoft literally did a report earlier this year on Iran pushing pro hamas propaganda online and getting a lot of engagements. You can search the research findings yourself online as it's free to view.

Whilst I do understand that my replies can be harsh, from my perspective, I am getting a lot of asks, a lot of which I just delete and do not answer, of people who do not understand the basic concepts I have explained here and also like to do the whole "oh you only post about pancakes, you must hate waffles" thing. And it gets tiring and annoying. I do get fed up with people who do not understand nuance when it comes to things or that I might only focus on the Jewish and Israeli side of things because there are already so many great voices there speaking out for Palestine. Adding my voice won't do much more for palestine so instead I lend it back to my community, trying to fight antisemitism and xenophobia.

And the thing is, antisemitism deserve to be spoken about. It deserves blogs which only speak about it or is the main focus. I've experienced a lot of it in my life. I'm not gonna just trauma dump right now but I have been hate crimed before. It was not fun. And when I see levels of antisemitism which is worse than during the time I was hate crimed and a lot of the rhetoric being said that I was hate crimed for, I can't help but to not want to lend my voice to speak out about antisemitism.

Onto your last point, I have never justified any Palestinian civilians deaths. The closest I have ever gotten to it was on a post talking about the hostages where I say it is a difficult situation as Palestinian civilians have died during the hostages rescue and that Palestinian and Jewish and Israeli lives are all equal in value. And that its also hard because if the hostages were not rescued, they would likely have been killed at some point in the future and it's just a hard situation as my heart goes out to all the Palestinians who died that day as well as that I am happy that 4 hostages are home. In that post I also mentioned that my ideal scenario is no one dead, both in the operation and in the war in general and for everyone to be safe.

The other thing which I get a lot of anons about is whenever I bring up the war crimes done by hamas, such as in that same post about the hostages, I mentioned how it is a war crime for hamas to have the hostages in a civilian area and that in the eyes of international law, those Palestinian deaths are due to Hamas.

I honestly don't think that either of those things is justifying the IDFs actions. What I do think is that you, and so many others are afraid of nuance. As soon as someone like myself goes "these are all the factors at play and it sucks that things have turned out as they have" and not "idf bad no nuance ever" you get uncomfortable. And its fine to be uncomfortable. But what isn't okay is taking that feeling of uncomfortableness and directing it into misreading jews online to try and feel secure in your world view again.

I honestly hope that you have read all of this, as I know it's a long post, and you consider everything I have said.