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kaccvcate · 3 months ago

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A great work of art should illicit an emotional response. Cannibal Holocaust (1980), one of the most infamous movies ever made, does exactly this, in spades. The creative leads were Italian, but the majority of the actors are Yanomami, the same ethnicity as most of the actors in Boorman's The Emerald Forest (1985.)

The beginning of the movie establishes that a group of young people researching cannibalism went missing after a expedition into the Amazon to contact previously isolated tribes. After a search, their bodies and footage are recovered, and this found footage makes up the majority of the film. It reveals that the young filmmakers were extremely prejudiced, and when they find the tribe they’re looking for, they terrify them with guns and violence, and burn their entire village. The jungle people rightfully murder the townies, and then just to be extra cool, they eat them, too.

Cannibalism is a controversial topic. In most human cultures, it’s extremely taboo; in some it’s abstracted and ritualized (such as in Catholicism); and to some chads still living out in the bush it’s highly sacred. I think European people are extremely oversensitive about culturally diverse funereal practices – for example, thanks to the colonial government occupying my country, I’ll be unable to keep my father’s bones after he dies, an ancient Choctaw tradition that we both would prefer to follow. To the Fore people of Papua New Guinea, the only respectful way of handling your loved one’s corpse is to eat their brains. Most cultures that practice cannibalism eat their enemies after defeating them in battle, which is similar to the culture of our cousins, the Chimpanzees. There’s also evidence of the practice by some early hominids in Europe. This leads me to think battlefield cannibalism was once universally practiced by our shared ancestors, and then dropped by certain cultures over time, so really you anti-cannibals are the freaks. Cannibalism is an especially controversial topic among some indigenous activists, because historically some North American tribes were accused of practicing it who never did, to justify European conquest (most of us always had a taboo similar to Europeans.) Personally, I think it would be better to rest in the warm belly of a friend, than to spend eternity in the cold, hard ground. Maybe if colonizers had to eat what they killed, they would kill less people. Human flesh makes good food for thought, at any rate.

Aside from the staged cannibalism, this movie contains footage of real war atrocities, and multiple real hunting scenes. They butcher and eat every animal killed on film. If the abstract thought of killing an animal to eat it is disgusting to you, I think you are probably extremely out of touch with reality. Colonial society separates people from food production so thoroughly that extremely normal things are frightening and strange to adults, as they ought only to be to young children. Even if you’re vegan, the fact of the matter is that without animal products our ancestors would not have survived, and animal products are indispensable to the future of sustainable living (if you think “vegan leather,” aka plastic, is better for the environment, you are a fucking moron, and don’t even get me started on the detrimental effects of synthetic fabrics, dyes, and scents, not to mention their byproducts.) “Wah wah, I don’t want want to look, dead animals are yucky.” Actually dead animals are beautiful and delicious, but have fun living in la-la fantasy land I guess. Non-human animals kill and eat each other all the time, even supposedly herbivorous deer and cows will eat meat when they have a chance. The idea that it's somehow immoral for humans to do so is anthropocentric elitism, which contributes to colonialism and environmental destruction. You will never survive the glorious people’s revolution.

Another reason this movie is so effective is the groundbreaking special effects, which are extremely convincing, especially given that they're placed alongside real animal violence. There's also several rape scenes - the one most commented on by mainstream reviewers is the one committed by a Yanomami man, but the European characters actually rape more women and break rules of consent in more varied contexts throughout the movie. During one of the only two times characters have sex and it isn't assault, it's filmed without the woman's consent, and the other time the Yanomami are forced to watch, so there's actually no consensual sex in the entire movie.

Most movies are about how the world is really a good place, and kindness wins out in the end. To me, the world has not always been so nice, and I’ve seen many real life examples where good people did not win, so horror movies are actually life-affirming in a very satisfying way. I’m not trying to say the tribe portrayed by the Yanomami are worse than the European characters (far from it) but what makes this a great horror movie is that there aren’t actually any “good” characters. We’re shown some pretty violent traditions the fictional tribe keeps, and I think some of the inhuman, barbaric practices of our “modern civilization” would be equally offensive to an isolated jungle nation, such as industrial pollution and prison slavery (not to mention the actions of the European characters in the movie.) Frankly, if you don’t like seeing racist white people get torn apart and eaten by some tribal-ass cannibal dudes, I think you probably just have bad taste.

#movie reviews #movies #cannibal holocaust #film criticism #red panther speaks

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acti-veg · 7 months ago

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Is it fair to compare what we do to animals to the holocaust? Or can we even call what we are doing to animals a holocaust to being with?

You could argue that it is fair to animals in some sort of abstract sense, but it is certainly not fair to the people who suffered in the holocaust or their families. The better question to ask is whether it is appropriate, and whether or not it even achieves anything. I think it is not a good idea to compare animal agriculture and the holocaust not because what animals experience is any less horrific but because animals are the victims of an entirely different system of oppression, with very different causes and consequences. The holocaust is unique in all of history. It is not comparable to the Rwandan genocide, it is not comparable to ethnic cleansing Darfur, it is not comparable to the mass slavery of black men and women in Europe and the Americas.

Even if this comparison were philosophically appropriate it still wouldn’t be appropriate for advocacy regardless; all it does is isolate and further distance people from the animal rights movement. Honestly, it makes us sound like extremists. We can advocate for our own movement and talk about animal suffering without being insensitive to the suffering of others, or hijacking someone else’s cause and using it for our own ends.

Most of the time when these comparisons are used they are used simply to make a point about animal rights, they aren’t exploring the interlinked nature of oppression, they aren’t empathising with the suffering of humans, they are essentially just using victims to further our own agenda, and that is wrong regardless of what our intentions are.

If a holocaust survivor or someone deeply involved in that event wants to compare animal suffering to what they or those they loved suffered through, like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Ellie Wiesel did, then that is their decision to make, but it is not ours as outsiders.

The mass slaughter of animals is uniquely and profoundly immoral in a way that has no comparison in all of human history. We don’t need to rely on comparisons which offend and isolate because what is happening to animals is horrific enough by itself. These comparisons may be understandable, and I’m sure they grab people’s attention, but it is exactly the wrong sort of attention for our movement.

These comparisons are offensive, they almost always lack any nuance and more fundamentally, they just don't work. Nobody ever went vegan because a vegan advocate who has no connection with the holocaust compared meat eaters or farmers to the nazis. If we want to be taken seriously as a movement then our advocacy has to be better than that.

#ask #holocaust comparisons #vegan

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walks-the-ages · 1 year ago

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ah, can't find the original post to respond to it, and tumblr was refusing to let me actually post with the usual bullshit of "sorry there was an error processing your post" . anyways.

If you see a post going around about Jewish restaurants being targeted for harassment by pro-palestine protestors "solely for being Jewish", stop what you are doing and actually look up the incident in question, because that is not what happened at Goldie's restaurant!

Full article below for accessiblity, and because we all know Tumblr only looks at headlines and doesn't click links to news articles.

Long post!

Bolding is my own for emphasis.

A protest against a top Israel-born chef was called antisemitic. Staff tell a different story

Wilfred ChanFri 8 Dec 2023 16.55 GMTFirst published on Fri 8 Dec 2023 12.00 GMT

The 21-second clip went viral almost as soon as it was posted early on Sunday evening. It showed hundreds of protesters, some with Palestinian flags, united in a rhyming chant: “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”

They were protesting outside Goldie, a vegan falafel restaurant owned by Michael Solomonov, the Israel-born celebrity chef best known for Zahav, an Israeli-themed restaurant widely considered one of the United States’ finest eateries. It was one brief stop along a march traversing Philadelphia that lasted about three hours.

Many of the protesters hadn’t even returned home from the march when the condemnations began to pour in. The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, posted on X: “Tonight in Philly, we saw a blatant act of antisemitism – not a peaceful protest. A restaurant was targeted and mobbed because its owner is Jewish and Israeli. This hate and bigotry is reminiscent of a dark time in history.”

Even the White House piled on: it was “antisemitic and completely unjustifiable to target restaurants that serve Israeli food over disagreements with Israeli policy”, said the deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates. Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice-President Kamala Harris, wrote on X that he had spoken with Solomonov and “told him @POTUS, @VP, and the entire Biden-Harris Administration will continue to have his back”.

It was the apex of a saga that has resulted in at least three workers fired from Solomonov’s restaurants over, as they see it, their pro-Palestine activism coming into conflict with their bosses’ views and policies, and at least one other worker who has resigned in protest – thrusting the renowned Israeli eateries into the thick of bitter US disagreements over the Israel-Hamas war.

The street protest against Goldie has sparked heated debate. As the war on Gaza rages on, with over 17,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October – 70% of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry – are Israel-linked businesses in the US implicated? Was Solomonov, a chef who has credited Palestinian influences in his cooking, an appropriate target?

Interviews with protesters and current and former employees at Solomonov’s restaurants paint a more complex version of events than what the video clip may have suggested. They reject the notion that Goldie was singled out because of the owners’ ethnicity, arguing that their objections stem from management using the restaurants to fundraise for Israel after 7 October in spite of worker concerns. Activists also say their protest shines a necessary spotlight on the political commitments of one of the highest-profile restaurateurs in the United States.

Tensions at work

There were political tensions simmering at Solomonov’s restaurants before Sunday’s march. The Guardian spoke to three Goldie workers who say they were fired due to their pro-Palestine advocacy: two who wore Palestinian flag pins in violation of a newly announced dress code that forbade non-Goldie branded adornments, and another who tweeted in support of Sunday’s street protest.

Their discomfort at work began following a fundraiser in October, during which Solomonov and his business partner Steve Cook announced they would donate all of the restaurant group’s profits from one day, over $100,000, to United Hatzalah, an Israeli medical non-profit that has supplied the Israel Defense Forces with protective and medical gear during the current war against Hamas.

And in early November, Solomonov’s Zahav hosted a private fundraiser by a prominent political action committee dedicated to supporting political candidates “who reflect Jewish values”. Attendees at the event, which has not been previously reported, included the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer; and dozens of other pro-Israel officials and lobbyists, according to a current Zahav employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The employee said that in recent weeks, Solomonov had also booked and paid for multiple, lavish private dinners at Zahav for IDF members preparing to deploy to fight for Israel.

“The amount of material support that we’ve lended to pro-Israel causes and Israeli military personnel has been really discomforting,” the Zahav worker told the Guardian.

In an email to workers on Wednesday, Solomonov and Cook apologized for not communicating about their political stances with staff more directly. The pair had sought to “avoid discussing politics at work … to make everyone as comfortable as possible in the restaurant,” the owners wrote. “But perhaps we created a void that had the opposite effect. For that, we are sorry.”

The fraught politics of food

The protest and its fallout have produced the biggest controversy ever faced by Solomonov, one of America’s most prominent Israeli cultural figures and someone who for years has cast himself as a culinary bridge between Israel, Palestine, and the United States.

Solomonov’s brother, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, was killed in 2003 by Hezbollah snipers; Solomonov wrote in his first cookbook, Zahav, that the tragedy made him briefly consider joining Israel’s army. Instead, he decided to channel his emotion into food, something he found allowed him to “expose people to a side of Israel that had nothing to do with politics”. That led him and Cook, an investment banker-turned-restaurateur, to found Zahav in 2008, followed by other prominent Israeli-themed eateries: Dizengoff, Goldie, K’Far, and Laser Wolf, under a restaurant group called CookNSolo. In 2017, Israel’s ministry of tourism named him a culinary ambassador.

The restaurants have never been completely free from controversy. Debates over the origins and ownership of Middle Eastern food have raged for years; many culinary experts have argued that Palestinian contributions to Mediterranean cuisine have been used by Israeli chefs without sufficient respect or acknowledgement. Yet while Solomonov and Cook have always branded their food as Israeli, their menus and cookbooks cite Palestinian influences on many dishes. For years, Solomonov also spoke of his friendship with the Palestinian writer and cookbook author Reem Kassis – though the two are no longer speaking, according to the New York Times.

But the conflicts aren’t just over cultural appropriation. They’re about “the way Israel as a state has weaponized food against the Palestinian people”, says the Palestinian American chef Reem Assil, who owns Reem’s, a Arab street food joint in San Francisco. “Even before these last 60 days, Israel has restricted what Gazans can access in terms of food and water. They target bakeries, they target farms, they target markets. They uproot our olive trees, they make it illegal for us to forge our own ingredients, like za’atar.” The UN warned last month that Israel’s military operations in Gaza had put residents there at “immediate” risk of starvation.

A controversial fundraiser

Since the 7 October attacks, Solomonov has publicly sought to caveat his support for Israel. “I personally believe in the right of Palestinians to have their own state, and the right for self-determination, and I don’t deny those things,” he said at an event last month in New Jersey, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “And I believe the Israeli government oftentimes does things that I would not do at all … and it can be quite damaging.”

But internally, Solomonov and Cook were using their restaurants to steer resources toward Israel.

On 10 October, Solomonov and Cook announced a fundraiser that would donate all the profits across CookNSolo restaurants on 12 October to United Hatzalah. “It is not associated with any military,” the restaurant group assured staff in a Slack message – something that simply wasn’t true, workers soon realized with alarm.

Goldie staff were caught off guard because they considered the restaurant a politically progressive institution. The vegan falafel restaurant proudly displayed an LGBTQ flag and Black Lives Matter flag on its wall. Many of the workers were young and identified as queer. There was a casual dress code: Noah Wood, a 25-year-old who uses they/them pronouns, said they did shifts at Goldie while wearing hats with slogans supporting indigenous rights.

The night before CookNSolo’s fundraiser, Goldie’s store manager at the time, 24-year-old Sophie Hamilton, says she discovered public videos by United Hatzalah about how the non-profit supplied protective gear to IDF soldiers. She rushed off an email to Goldie’s general manager, Emma Richards, saying she felt “deeply betrayed and misled”. “I feel like I’ve been left with no choice but to refuse to come to work tomorrow unless [CookNSolo] commits to also raising donations for a Palestinian humanitarian organization, of course with no connection to any military.”

But Hamilton’s suggestion was ignored, and Richards simply told her someone would cover her shift the next day.

When Hamilton returned to work, she decided to keep working but while wearing a small Palestinian flag pin. “There’s just a point where you can’t leave your humanity at the door,” she said. No customers complained, but two weeks later, management announced a new rule: staff were not to wear stickers, pins, or patches that were not Goldie-branded.

Wood, the other server, started wearing a Palestinian flag pin in open defiance of the new rule. Another worker, June, 24, wore a green shirt, black pants, and a red bandana – a reference to the colors of Palestinian flag.

On 15 November, the restaurant asked Hamilton to send Wood home for violating the dress code. Hamilton refused, and the next day they were both fired, Hamilton for “poor performance for failing to enforce the uniform policy”. Wood was not given any official reason, they say.

In the Wednesday email to staff, the owners wrote: “We recognize that people have different views on the war between Israel and Hamas, and we respect your rights to your own views. Many of our guests have passionate feelings about the current conflict and, knowing that not all of you feel the same way, our approach is to simply avoid discussing politics at work.”

They did not provide details on the firings beyond writing: “It is also important for you to hear directly from us that we have never terminated employees based on their support for Palestine.”

The owners added: “We think it’s important to say that our support of Israel is not unqualified. We have plenty of criticisms, particularly in the way that the government has stymied the prospects for Palestinian statehood in recent years.”

In a statement shared with the Guardian, United Hatzalah’s senior vice-president for international operations, Michael Brown, said that the nonprofit and the IDF “often train together, especially when conducting mass casualty training drills, or search and rescue training drills in order to hone our skills and help the IDF sharpen theirs, as well as to allow for an easier flow of collaborative life saving efforts should the need ever arise in the field, similar to what happened during October 7th.”

The restaurant group declined to respond to a detailed list of questions by the Guardian about the fired workers, but a spokeswoman said in a statement: “CookNSolo exists to create community through food. We are committed to fostering an open, safe, and supportive workplace for all of our employees who have varying backgrounds and political views. Like many hospitality companies, we have standard policies for our employees, which we consistently enforce.” Solomonov declined, through a representative, a direct request for an interview.

Justin Sadowsky, an attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights non-profit, says the firings of Goldie workers are the first time he’s heard of restaurant workers allegedly fired for supporting Palestine since 7 October. “We’ve seen it in hospitals, we’ve seen it at large corporations, we’ve seen it in law firms, but it’s sort of spilling into everywhere,” he said. The organization says it’s received a “staggering” 2,171 requests for help and reports of bias in the 57 days since the Israel-Hamas war began, equalling nearly half of the total complaints it handled in all of 2022.

Call for a boycott

Meanwhile, CookNSolo’s fundraiser for United Hatzalah had caught the attention of local activists in a group called the Philadelphia Free Palestine Coalition. The activists weren’t in touch with the restaurant workers, but drew the same conclusion: by funneling restaurant proceeds toward a group associated with the IDF, CookNSolo was complicit in Israel’s war crimes.

In mid-October, the activists called for a boycott. Natalie Abulhawa, a Palestinian American organizer at the Free Palestine Coalition, helped write an Instagram post for the boycott that named three of Solomonov’s restaurants – Goldie, Zahav, and Laser Wolf – as well as a number of other Middle Eastern restaurants in the city. “Restaurants and businesses claiming to sell ‘Israeli’ food, fruits, vegetables, and products are part of an ongoing colonial campaign of stealing, appropriating, and profiting off of Palestinian food and culture as a means of erasing Palestinian existence,” the call read.

The boycott made waves in the food world, and Solomonov addressed it at a closed-door event in November at a New Jersey Jewish Community Center. Speaking to the crowd of several hundred, he called the boycott misguided, adding that it wasn’t affecting his sales, according to the Inquirer. While acknowledging that “part of Israeli food is Palestinian influenced”, he argued that any suggestion that Israeli food was stolen from Palestinians was akin to saying Israelis “don’t have a right to be there”. Solomonov added that his restaurants credited Palestinian influences on their menus and claimed Zahav imported more Palestinian wines than any other Philadelphia eatery.

But privately, Solomonov and Cook were using their restaurants to platform Israel’s war effort. On 1 November, Zahav hosted a fundraiser by a major political action committee called Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania, whose guests included Whitmer and as many as 80 other pro-Israel officials and lobbyists, according to the unnamed Zahav employee. “It was an explicitly pro-Israel reception and speeches made were about that support,” the employee said.

The employee said that Whitmer, who delivered a keynote, opened with the Jewish expression of solidarity “Am Yisrael Chai”, or “the people of Israel live”, and called for providing material support to Israel, and that Solomonov, who was in the audience, was afterward “emphatically talking and thanking all of the attendees”.

In the following weeks, the employee became even more disturbed as Solomonov hosted and paid for at least two private dinners at Zahav for small groups of Israelis, including soldiers who were preparing to fly home to fight the Gaza war. Solomonov explained with “a level of reverence” that the restaurant would cover the bill because of the diners’ roles in the Israeli military, the employee says.

These events, in addition to the firings of Goldie staff, have made many of Zahav’s staff deeply uncomfortable. “Most of the employees here are not particularly interested in the support of Israel,” the employee said, but the workers fear retaliation if they speak out. CookNSolo declined to comment on the events at Zahav.

A clip goes viral

Pennsylvania’s Jewish and Muslim communities have been on edge since the Israel-Hamas war began. On Monday, a Jewish daycare in Philadelphia reported that vandals had spray-painted “Free Palestine” and other graffiti on its windows. On Tuesday, a pair of students sued the University of Pennsylvania, claiming it had become an “incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred”. Last week, a South Philadelphia mosque reported that it had been vandalized by anti-Muslim graffiti. And last month, a man was arrested for pointing a gun and yelling racial slurs against a group of pro-Palestine demonstrators at the state’s capitol.

The Goldie protest also followed a growing number of incidents that have entangled Middle Eastern food businesses. Palestinian restaurants such as New York City’s Ayat have reported being flooded with negative reviews since the war began; last month, an ex-Obama aide was charged with a hate crime for harassing a halal food street vendor.

But Goldie’s attempts to head off pro-Palestinian activism were futile.

On 3 December, the Free Palestine Coalition led hundreds of protesters in an evening of marches around Philadelphia to renew calls for a ceasefire. Starting from Rittenhouse Square in Philly’s Center City neighborhood, the march took a wrong turn, which brought it past Goldie, says Abulhawa. The encounter with the falafel restaurant wasn’t planned, she says, “but we ran with it”.

June, who is Jewish, was one of the employees working inside Goldie that night, and said the protest – which lasted just a few minutes – was completely peaceful: “There was nothing violent, no hint of antisemitism.” The store was devoid of guests when the marchers arrived, though one customer came in partway through to pickup an online order and displayed no reaction. June even thought about going outside to join the protest, but thought better of it and instead quietly chanted along to the slogans from inside the store.

Someone placed two small stickers on Goldie’s door and window. One read, “Free Palestine,” and another contained a statistic about the number of children Israel had killed in Gaza (Abulhawa says that whoever placed the stickers were not asked to do so by protest organizers). One protester briefly posed in front of the door with a Palestine flag. Then the protest shuffled on.

A few minutes later, a user named Jordan Van Glish posted a 21-second clip of the protest to X, where it quickly went viral. Comments flooded in: “Once again proving that this is about hating Jews,” one user wrote. Stop Antisemitism, a prominent pro-Israel group, posted that it was a “failure” that no anti-riot police were dispatched and no protesters were arrested.

But Philadelphia’s police force told the Guardian that officers observing the march “did not see, hear, or record any threats to persons inside or outside Goldie”, and the department received “no 911 calls or complaints” during the event.

Some marchers have acknowledged how the clip, taken out of context, could have been misinterpreted. “I’d say in hindsight, maybe [the organizers] should have spent another minute explaining why we were stopping there,” says Joe Piette, a photographer who joined the protest. “It would have been better to explain some of the details of the owner of that restaurant. Our mistake was not explaining it on the spot.”

June felt that frustration when they got home that night and saw the clip gaining traction. “So I felt like I should give the context that was missing from that tweet,” they said. June published a post explaining that the restaurant group had raised money for Israel-linked causes and punished pro-Palestine employees. “If you don’t want to be directly funding genocide, you should probably stay away from Goldie” and other CookNSolo restaurants, they wrote.

On Monday, June got a phone call while on the bus to work: they were fired as well. The manager gave no explanation, but June didn’t need to ask why. “Honestly, I didn’t really feel that bad or surprised,” they said. “I had no pride in this job.”

High-profile officials have continued to argue that the protesters were motivated by antisemitism. Governor Shapiro doubled down on his tweet after visiting Goldie and meeting with Solomonov on Wednesday. “A mob protested a restaurant simply because it’s owned by a Jewish person,” the governor claimed. “That is the kind of antisemitic tropes that we saw in 1930s Germany, and it’s the kind of thing we should not tolerate.” In a statement to the Guardian, his office reiterated: “This was not a peaceful protest”.

Two days after the march, Tess Rauscher, a 25-year-old barista at the CookNSolo-owned Israeli cafe K’Far, resigned, citing the company’s fundraiser and firing of Goldie workers, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It was these actions, not the identity of the owner, that changed the nature of my job,” she said.

This article was amended on 8 December 2023 to delete an incorrect reference to a manager taking down an LGBTQ+ flag. Also references to Governor Josh Shapiro attending an event at Zahav on 1 November were deleted. Governor Shapiro’s office have said he was not at the event.

[end article]

TL;DR:

Goldie's restaurant and 2 other restaurants owned by the same famous Israeli chef were part of a general boycott starting in October.

The famous israeli chef, Michael Solomonov, has been directly funding the Israeli military with fundraisers at his various owned resteraunts (including donating over $100,000 in a single day)

Michael Solomonov has also hosted multiple, lavish "going away parties" free of charge for people deploying to go fight in Gaza (you know, just, going on over to help commit genocide!)

Multiple staff were fired for being pro-palestine, including for wearing pins with the Palestinian flag, or wearing the colors of the palestinian flag to work.

June, A jewish staff member who was working when the protestors arrived outside the restaurant, did not feel threatened in any way, affirmed it was a completely peaceful protest, and actually considered stopping their work to go out and join the march, but ultimately decided to stay for the rest of their shift and quietly chant along with the protestors. They were fired a few days later, and not given any explanation.

#long post #bold text #large text #free palestine #palestine #israel #free gaza #michael solomonov #zionism #anti-zionism #signal boost

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lemedstudent2021 · 7 months ago

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Where should Jews live? Where do they belong? Where do you consider their native land to be? Honest question.

an honest question deserves an honest answer so here ya go:

Anywhere and everywhere. Jews- the followers of the Abrahamic religion Judaism- along with Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Sikhs, Vegans, and literally any human being under the sun have the right to live wherever they please (given certain criteria are met like visas and that it isnt a military station/ off limits area etc).

Yes my dear reader(s) you read that right; ones faith or lack thereof shouldnt be an obstacle in any aspect of ones life, be it medical services, education, job opportunities, so on and so forth. How novel.

That answers where they 'should' live (although I dont by any means impose anything on anyone; y'all do whatever as long as its legal and harms no one including yourself. God bless). Could is more accurate.

As for where they 'belong', this in my opinion is one of the beauties of religion: people from all walks of life can belong to a religion. Diversity lies at the heart of our existence as human beings and denying it is like denying the existence of the sun. Tolerance is a must if we are ever going to get along with each other. And this belonging isn't irrevocabley tied to geography. But I digress :)

Quick aside just so we're all on the same page: converting to a religion renders you just as valid and equal as someone born into a religion. Most if not all religions preach equality between their followers regardless of background, so i wont hear anything of 'oh theyre not real xyz' or 'they dont count' or any of that bs.

By this logic (religious demographics are, generally speaking, very diverse), there is no 'this set of people belong here, and those over there' ...and proof of that in a sense would be atheists/ agnostics; where would they 'belong'? Antarctica? Outer space? alright ill stop XD

If that were the case, most of the planet would be crammed in the Middle East lol [Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon alone are home to 34M (as of 2023), and the followers of the 3 main Abrahamic religions are an estimated 3.4B (as of 2020) globally. We wouldnt fit even if we used one of these]. Yeah nationality/ race/ ethnicity/ background influence and maybe even dictate one's religious identity, but it isn't the all or nothing we may think it to be.

Which brings us nicely to the next point, and here if you'll allow me i'd like to correct it to native land of Judaism (where it originated/ flourished/ spread whatever) as opposed to native land of Jews because as i mentioned above, a religion doesnt (or shouldnt) differentiate nor discriminate between its followers. By restricting them to one geographical location (and for some using it as an indicator of their authenticity) we do them great disservice as well as contradict the teachings themselves. A demonstration:

Im Jordanian right, (dad's maternal side are from bilad al sham; Syria) and im a born Muslim alhamdulillah. My dads Malaysian roommates from his uni days are also born Muslims (and have the best food lol, my all time favourite is lemak cili padi) and seperating us on the basis of them not being Arab or Middle Eastern is unislamic, intolerant, xenophobic, and wrong on every level. Alternatively, im just as Muslim as someone from Mecca or Medina. We're all Muslim. we are the world...

Circling back, Judaism the religion is native to the Holy land (I guess you can say it started in Egypt till it moved there but idk. Regardless), and Jews (adherants of the faith) can't in my humble opinion be fairly categorised as one monolithic unit... just like any and every other faith out there.

Another quick aside; this is merely a tumblr post that cant do the history and culture and intricacies and so much more of this matter a portion of the justice it deserves. I am but a tired medical student answering to the best of my abilities a question I was asked with my limited knowledge in theology and perspective in general, so do me a favour and keep that in mind. And to anyone reading this if you have questions or corrections or resources or anything you want to mention be my guest :)

If you're still here, I'm both grateful and amused. Here's what you probably came for, the piece de resistance if you will: 🍉israel🍉

Disclaimer: thanks for reading this far, but if you disagree in any way shape or form with any of the 30 human rights articles, you may as well stop reading and put your device through the shredder. Bigots, racists, fascists, anti vaxxers etc. dni

So far ive seen this idea, call it what you will, two times (which isnt a lot but its weird that it happened to me twice consecutively), that claims the freedom of Palestine equals a genocide of the Jews.

Er, no? No ma'am. One does not solve a genocide by comitting another genocide. What part of 'never again' are we missing here?

Before we get into politcal nominations and factions and other territories i dont plan on invading (pun intended) but might accidentally cross anyway (I forgot where i was going with this) i want to remind everyone that Judaism is not synonymous with Israel nor zionism (if u disagree with this go ahead and shred ur device too).

A refresher: Judaism is a religion, Israel is an illegal-occupying-apartheid-state, and Zionism is a movement/ ideology

So 'genocide of the Jews' is both wrong (diction) and more wrong (factually incorrect) in that the liberation of Palestine means freedom from oppression, discrimination, settler colonialism... the whole nine yards. Enough bloodshed already its been nearly 76 years.

When Netenyahu is eventually drop kicked out of office (and hopefully hung, drawn, and quartered for his plentiful warcrimes) what happens to the (illegal) citizens of Israel? Well first off, return the stolen homes and land to their rightful owners who have the keys (and documents if they werent tampered with or erased) to prove it.

As for the illegal-under-international-law settlements and new also illegal establishments; I have no idea what international laws will decree (not that I have that much faith in the judiciary system), but I assume they will be seized and evicted of the illegal tenants (how you like me now?) and given to those who have been displaced or homes ruined etc. because its theirs and theirs alone and it was unlawfully and cruelly taken away from them and not because the (remaining lol) former Israeli citizens can't or shouldn't live in palestine. they can go live somewhere where its legal. the priority is Palestinians tho.

What about the indigenous everyone else? As long as their houses aren't stolen or illegal they can should stay because its legal and its theirs and thats that. you cannot kick someone out of their home to give it to another (which was the basis of the creation of Israel.) because its ✨i l l e g a l✨

And the people who dont belong so to speak? I think this one's case by case; like I said at the very, very beginning; people have the right to live wherever as long as its legal and ok to do so regardless of faith or background, and no one should be denied their right to live in Palestine as a country like any other, but they certainly must be denied living in homes stolen and given to them because thats, say it with me now, illegal <3

#pls excuse any grammatical/ spelling errors; i had a big exam yesterday and lectures resumed today and im still recovering lol #no joke this has taken me more than 5 hours to write #i have a raging headache and overdue lectures to study #and i dont regret it #if anyone reading this learnt anything or widened their perspective if only a bit it will have been more than worth it #im a sucker for any sort of knowledge and insight and i know my effort wont be lost :)#to anon thank you for the question. i hope i answered you well #if not #ah well #(if there is something specific tho id be interested to hear)#...unless this was satire or something and it flew right over my head. can you smell the overthinking?#i tried to keep this as real to life as possible because lots of things get lost over the internet communication-wise #hence the bad jokes and puns and references #not to make light of the situation on the ground #but to seem yk human and not robotic and unfeeling #idk i tried #do with that what you will #tag me tho #im so tired #but alhamdulillah #yall i reread everyhting to use capital letters and apostrophes wheres my nobel prize in literature? (mostly)#free palestine #free gaza #free rafah #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #fuck israel #its illegal xxx #ask #answered #anon ask

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arcane-abomination · 7 months ago

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Please do not interact with me if you fall into one of these categories. I’m not here for these and will block you without hesitation. I have included the definitions of each term so there is no confusion.

⚜️ Minor: someone under the age of consent

⚜️ Bigot: a person who is intolerant or hateful towards people whose race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc., is different from their own.

⚜️ TERF: Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist

⚜️ SWERF: Sex Work Exclusionary Radical Feminist

⚜️ Starseed: a new age otherkin group with bigoted practices that spread misinformation about history, medical disabilities, and people. Check out a more thorough breakdown HERE.

⚜️ Bullies & Trolls: people who take pleasure in causing pain in some way or another to others

⚜️ Gaslighter: A form of intimidation or psychological abuse, where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity.

⚜️ Gatekeeper: Someone that takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access or rights to a community or identity.

⚜️ Fascist: A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

⚜️ Proselytizer: a person who tries to persuade other people to accept a particular religious or political belief, idea, or way of life. (EXAMPLE: Christianity, Veganism, etc)

⚜️ Pro-Lifer: People who want abortion to be illegal and inaccessible. They ignore scientific facts and choose to believe life begins at conception.

⚜️ Anti-Vaxxer: someone who follows false and dangerous ideology that vaccinations are the cause of mental illness such as autism, and choose not to get themselves or children vaccinated as a result.

⚜️ Thinspo: an ideology that promotes unhealthy body image and thinness. It also subscribes to the dangerous notion that eating disorders are a viable lifestyle choice. Pro-Ana and pro-Mia terms fall under this label.

⚜️ Cyberchondriac: an individual who self-diagnoses their own mental health without a proper physician. This is incredibly dangerous. If you don’t have proper training you aren’t capable of diagnoses…PERIOD! No exceptions!

⚜️ Conservative: A type of political belief that puts emphasis on upholding and enforcing older close-minded traditions. Ideals such as the nuclear family, organized religion in our laws, and a strict bigoted worldview of races, genders, and sexual orientations are just a few examples.

⚜️ MAP: Minor Attracted Person

⚜️ Clovergender: a sick individual who believes they can identify as an age, typically the age of a minor, and then partake in adult situations with actual minors. Essentially a pedophile.

#paganism #witchcraft #pagans of tumblr #chaos magician #chaos magick #witches of tumblr #eldritch magic #chaos witchcraft #death witch #witch #dni list #dni

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argyrocratie · 1 year ago

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Solidarity among the Displaced

How Russian Anarchists in Exile Supported Armenian Refugee Squatters

(2023-09-19)

Throughout the world, mass displacement is accelerating as climate catastrophe, economic crisis, and war drive millions into exile, both within their own countries and across borders. These mass migrations are exacerbating gentrification, driving up housing costs just as real estate speculation is rendering more and more people homeless. How can displaced people continue to take political action in their new homes, establishing solidarity across ethnic lines in unfamiliar settings? In Armenia, Russian anarchists living in exile set one example, supporting Armenian refugees who had squatted the abandoned Ministry of Defense.

(...)

In the last decade, Yerevan saw several waves of protests. Do you see people building historical knowledge and experience from one struggle to the next?

With regards to the movement of the 2010s in Yerevan, there really was a street movement in which Armenian anarchists participated. There were protests against the increase in electricity prices, an anarchist bloc participated in a demonstration on human rights day, there was an action against the gentrification of Yerevan, and an action of anarcho-feminists. But unfortunately, all of the people from that generation have either left politics, joined political parties, or gone abroad to Russia or Europe.

Today, the anarchists in Armenia are mostly emigrants from the Russian Federation. In fact, I only know two Armenian anarchists: N—, a punk musician (who became an anarchist in the early 2020s), and S—, an anarcho-feminist who lectures in our space and occasionally publishes in left-wing and anarchist magazines (who also became anarchist around that time). Neither them, alas, was connected to the movements and affinity groups of the 2010s.

There is also an anarchist from Israel: Y—, a Jewish woman who gave birth in the Crimea, repatriated to Israel, lived there for 18 years in kibbutzim and participated in the anarchist movement there (including contact with “Anarchists Against the Wall”), married an Armenian and moved to Yerevan, and decided to establish a café here with anarchist and feminist themes. The café became a gathering place for the local Jewish community (for example, at Shabbat celebrations every Saturday), as well as for the creative intelligentsia, who held public readings there.

All this continued until Russia invaded Ukraine, after which the Russian authorities began to persecute their citizens even more, and hundreds of thousands of anti-war Russians (including anarchists) fled the country.

As a result, Armenia, which was mono-ethnic for almost all the years of its independence, is now more diverse.

The door of the Mama-jan café. The second sticker says “No war” in Russian.

That is how our small circle was formed, which now represents the entire anarchist movement in Armenia.

There are many different people among us. One is actively involved in veganism and even founded his own vegan cooperative (which I also joined). Others, like one friend who is a Christian anarchist, collect humanitarian aid for the victims of the war. There is a queer anarchist group that continues to engage in street activism.

How did you go about supporting the squatters?

As soon as we learned that they had been forcibly evicted, we decided to go and help them. We went to them several times and, despite some initial distrust, my friends managed to find a common language with them.

As a result, at the next weekly meeting, we discussed how to go about supporting them. One of the sympathizers of anarchist ideas, a visitor to our circle, arranged to supply firewood for using potbelly stoves to heat their tents. Also, as an anti-war activist with certain connections, I managed to invite a journalist friend there. During a subsequent visit, they met us very hospitably. We helped to unload the firewood and they fed us and taught us to play backgammon.

We made a report about the situation for emigrant Russian-language media, which later played a very important role. We also established contact with the charitable organization “Ethos,” which was founded by relocators in Yerevan and is engaged in helping both Ukrainian and Armenian refugees.

Thanks to the fact that news coverage appeared about the eviction and was reposted on our initiative via various publishing houses (for example, in “Doxa,” which actively covered the persecution of anarchists and anti-war protesters), we were able to initiate a collection for food, medicine, and fuel in Ethos. In the end, we collected 60,000 drams more than planned! [The equivalent of approximately $157, still a significant amount of money for some refugees in Armenia.]

Also, the squatters began to actively invite us to their protests: they held these every Thursday and every Monday near the government building and the State Expenditure Committee. My friends and I held a poster reading “State, why did you take away people’s housing” with anarchist symbols.

The squatters were very pleased with our support, and even invited us to barbecues—which was especially ironic in the case of our vegan friend.

What do anarchists have to offer to struggles for housing?

Anarchism, in principle, throughout its history, has been very interested in the housing issue. It is not for nothing that during the Paris Commune, one of the revolutionary decisions of the council was to settle homeless Parisians in the apartments of bourgeois emigrants who had fled to Versailles, and to establish a ban on evicting tenants for non-payment of rent. Housing insecurity is a significant aspect of modern society, a challenge to which anarchists must respond.

The example of this eviction is particularly striking. It shines a light on all the absurdity and immorality of a civilization based on private property.

The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers—in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage… Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage? On that point, as we have said, the workers are agreed. The idea of free dwellings showed its existence very plainly during the siege of Paris, when the cry was for an abatement pure and simple of the terms demanded by the landlords. It appeared again during the Commune of 1871, when the Paris workmen expected the Communal Council to decide boldly on the abolition of rent. And when the New Revolution comes, it will be the first question with which the poor will concern themselves. Whether in time of revolution or in time of peace, the worker must be housed somehow or other; he must have some sort of roof over his head. But, however tumble-down and squalid your dwelling may be, there is always a landlord who can evict you… Refusing uniforms and badges–those outward signs of authority and servitude–and remaining people among the people, the earnest revolutionists will work side by side with the masses, that the abolition of rent, the expropriation of houses, may become an accomplished fact. They will prepare the ground and encourage ideas to grow in this direction; and when the fruit of their labours is ripe, the people will proceed to expropriate the houses without giving heed to the theories which will certainly be thrust in their way–theories about paying compensation to landlords, and finding first the necessary funds. On the day that the expropriation of houses takes place, on that day, the exploited workers will have realized that the new times have come, that Labour will no longer have to bear the yoke of the rich and powerful, that Equality has been openly proclaimed, that this Revolution is a real fact, and not a theatrical make-believe, like so many others preceding it. -Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread

#anarchism #armenia

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