#french people consider jewish people as ''''their people'''' = their own

[la-pheacienne]

"jewish protagonists in world war 2 movies will likely be more relatable to an american viewer than roma people, straight up, because most mainstream holocaust films with jewish main characters are about middle class ashkenazi jews who lives are much like middle class americans. even though most of the jewish victims of nazism were poor religious eastern european jews. its the fear that it could happen to you, and thats less apparent if the story is about victims you cant relate to. also, theres a lot of jewish directors in america and not a lot of roma directors".

Hollywood has made a lot of movies about the Holocaust, but not a single one has shown a romani perspective, even though half of Europe's roma population was exterminated by the nazis. I can't really think of anything coherent to say about this, do you?

because it is not of interest to western audiences and doesnt fit the pre-established popular narrative structures of mass culture relating to ww2. whats going to be a popular movie has nothing to do with the real magnitude or importance of something. the big space that ww2 and nazi movies occupy in mass culture also has little to do with the real history of the holocaust for any of its victims. in fact the holocaust was pretty absent from american consciousness post war, it wasnt seen as part of why the us was fighting ww2, survivors didnt talk about it, and it first started to enter popular american consciousness in a big way because of a nbc tv series in 1978 called holocaust about a fictional jewish family. and although this series was the first time many americans had even seen or heard of many aspects of the holocaust, it was still criticized for sanitizing the true extent of nazi war crimes and how horrific conditions were. all this is to say that very few of these popular culture representations really have to do with showing the full reality of something, there are calculations in terms of everything relating to the mass market for film and tv. theres on one hand a western fascination with the third reich (just go to any book store and see how many books there are about hitler) that i think motivates a lot of these representations and on the other hand the transformation of memory of the shoah into a political tool for us interests and the rise of the israel lobby in the us, thus american films are more likely to feature jewish narratives. jewish protagonists in world war 2 movies will likely be more relatable to an american viewer than roma people, straight up, because most mainstream holocaust films with jewish main characters are about middle class ashkenazi jews who lives are much like middle class americans. even though most of the jewish victims of nazism were poor religious eastern european jews. its the fear that it could happen to you, and thats less apparent if the story is about victims you cant relate to. also, theres a lot of jewish directors in america and not a lot of roma directors 🤷🏻

further reading:

The Culture Industry

[fairuzfan]

For Liefer to pull up a Camus quote like this is quite laughable because of how the dynamics mirror each other. In the modern day, we have a status quo where Palestinians continue to be imprisoned and murdered and raped and segregated, denied basic medical care for years on end, all on their own land — while Jewish Israelis (to make distinction from Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, as many liberal zionists love to point out) suffer no consequences for anything, even if they play a direct role in the continued erasure and genocide of Palestinians. So if given a choice between suffering no consequences while benefiting from the status quo (that will not change unless the oppressed take it upon themselves to change their circumstance) and suffering consequences in the form of direct personal loss (with the strategy of forcing things to change by ennacting the same type of violence that the occupied experience on a daily basis onto the occupiers), of course someone who stands to lose nothing from the continuation of the status quo would rather the status quo continue if he has something to lose otherwise. Camus, when he said this quote, was not being righteous or overly sensitive. If anything, it shows how little he understood at the time of saying this quote. Because he didn't understand that an Algerian will suffer in both scenarios even if he (Camus) is safe, and for him to say something like this when people lived generations worth of violence for his and his family's (social) benefit is annoying and just plain offensive. Who is he, as a Frenchman born in occupied Algeria, to say what is worth justice when he only stands to lose anything in one scenario but not the other? He did not experience life as an Algerian native in French occupation. He might have observed it, growing up poor, yes, but he never LIVED it. Liefer might have observed the horror of settler colonialism, but that's nothing like experiencing it firsthand. To be the object of hatred to people who have higher status and more rights than you. It's just not his place as a person with nothing to lose if the status quo continues to comment on anything like this. What's the underlying meaning of this quote? "I'd rather others continue to suffer than myself experiencing suffering once."

I'm not saying Liefer doesn't have a right to mourn whoever. Im not even saying he has a duty to accept the consequences he experiences. But to say something so heartless as "I prefer the safety of my own rather than justice" within the larger, nearly century worth of context, is just insensitive and really belies his true opinions of the liberation of Palestine if he's so comfortable saying this outloud with moral authority in the middle of what is an outright bloodbath of Palestinians across Palestine. It's the timing of saying something like this because to say it now of all times when the entire world ignores or even encourages the violence in Gaza but mourns the death of Israelis? An Algerian born Frenchman and Israeli are going to be mourned on an international scale... but Palestinian and Algerian natives? Their deaths are regarded as facts of life by the rest of the world.

This makes it seem like I hate Camus, but I honestly don't, but I think the way Leifer is holding this quote up at face value and as the height of reason really is annoying. People like to mention Camus' "if" in this case as proof that he's actually saying "this is not real justice so therefore I do not have to accept it," but who is he to say what is or is not justice? The point I'm getting at is the people who benefit from occupation, in this case, Camus and Liefer have no right to determine what is or is not justice, despite their personal beliefs. The occupier has no right to tell the occupied what they should do to get freed. That alone is an arrogance in assertion that is so offending — the assertion that the occupier knows how to free the occupied in what *he* considers justice and the occupied just need to do whatever the occupier tells them to do. Because whether they both like it or not, they still benefit from and are part of the occupying force, and therefore have no real reason to fight the occupation at their own expense — the occupation is a violence that they are alright with inflicting if it means they cannot lose anything or anyone.

Also the idea that liefer indirectly compares himself to Camus is a little funny to me.

[vamptarot]

What Is Tarot?

— an educational post

— ⭑.ᐟ I am aware many people have made posts like this before, however I still felt like creating my own take on it. What inspired me was a post where someone stated that tarot is fictional. Which is incredibly incorrect. Being misinformed is of course, fine, but they said it with such utmost arrogance and confidence that it annoyed me a little. If you are misinformed, not even educated on tarot as a whole, what gives you the right to be a tarot reader? You cannot guide people if you, yourself are wrong and have incorrect information and assumptions. That is what I would have liked to tell them, but unfortunately due to my then circumstances I did not. I also would like to follow the word of God, and He says to act with love, not hatred. So, instead of calling them out and possibly causing an unnecessary argument, I have decided to educate those who might be curious or confused about what tarot actually is as a whole. It’s your choice if you read this or not. I also won’t go into themes of religion, this will strictly be focused on tarot. I just wanted to share what’s on my mind. not proof read.

what is tarot?

Actually, my dearest, tarot was created in the 1430s - 1450s and was first called tarocchi. It’s a game similar to bridge.

They were created in Northern Italy, Milan. Although at the time it was a game, it was still considered a luxury. The cards were hand painted for wealthy people, not necessarily due to them finding joy in it, but rather to reflect their status. It was a symbol of being wealthy.

Although nowadays the standard of a tarot deck is 78 cards it started off with 56 cards, from which the fool was the odd one out, a wild card. - If you have a hard time understanding, think of the joker card from solitaire. -

It was only used as a form of divination at the beginning of the 18th century, aka the 1700s.

Now, there are several reasons whys this has happened, but I will try my best to explain it to you in simple terms. - Although I won’t be able to go into every detail as these topics are very complex and have a rich history behind them, so please keep that in mind. -

In the early 1700s French occultists made claims about their meaning and history. They were confident in their skills, abilities and knowledge. Due to them grabbing people’s attention this led to people making custom cards for the usage of cartomancy.

At these times Romani and Sinti people were heavily discriminated against. They weren’t allowed to settle, work, buy a house and were banned from most public spaces including ones where one can buy food and such. All because they originated from India. So, as a means to keep alive they turned to earning money with divination, creating opportunities for themselves in order to live.

Another reason for tarot in a form of divination becoming popular is due to conservative Christian’s spreading the misinformation of it being related to Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. Of course, that is not true, never was and never will be. However, they are said to have some parallels. That is as far as it goes though.

Now, you could be thinking to yourself, ‘if it was a game, then it’s not a real divination.’ You are wrong! Let me explain to you why!

Remember how I mentioned that originally it had 56 cards and was named tarocchi? It also originated in the 15th century. The tarot you know of today began in the 18th century, got popular in the 19th century. There is roughly about 300 years between the two events and tarot has evolved for 100 years. So one can argue they are completely different things. Even if they are not, that’s alright.

Objects created for non divination usage can still be used for divination despite the creator’s intent. I will present you with a few examples of this fact.

Some people use their passed on pet’s bones as a form of osteomancy. You throw em, if they touch it’s a yes, if they don’t it’s a no. Sounds pretty messed up, right? For some people at least, can’t guarantee everyone thinks the same. Regardless, that was a living being, a beloved pet. Yet, you can use it’s bones in order to practice spirituality.

If you watch youtube pick a cards this will be easier to understand, regardless, charms can be used as a form of divination. You draw different categories on a paper, throw charms at them, whatever it falls on will have a meaning to your question. Money charms on ‘future spouse’? They might as well be wealthy, or at least good with their money.

Or, if that’s not good enough think about witchcraft. You think every single little thing used for spells, jars, hexes and so on was created for the sole purpose of witchcraft? It wasn’t. Yet it works because it’s intentional, because the person doing them has talent for it, because they were gifted.

how do readers read tarot cards?

I will be honest with you, not all readers are gifted with being able to do so, but they sure believe they do. - Am I saying this out of pettiness? Perhaps, let me be. -

So, if you feel like something is off such as beating around the bush, being too nice, being too mean and so on please trust your gut. Not telling you to be mean to people or accuse them unprovoked, that’s something an @sshole does, and I know you are not one. - Watch out for AI readings though, they suck. -

Moving on, I would like to say that every single tarot reader reads their cards differently. Some only do by visuals, some only does so by meaning, some do by both!

Alongside this, every reader shuffles differently. Some let the cards fall out, some take whatever is on top, some take whatever is standing out of the deck, some let them fall and then organise them neatly.

There is many ways to do this. I personally let them fall out and consider both visuals and meanings simply because I believe that is the right thing to do. - One time, during a love reading they fell out in a heart. I thought that’s cute. - At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter much. I have had several friends with different methods than me give me really good and accurate readings. - Just be catious of people who spread it out and then pick the cards out themselves. -

The most important part is being gifted with claircognizance, or in other words having hella good intuition. - or “6th sense”, whatever you wanna call it. - I believe every reliable and accurate reader is gifted with this, regardless of them being aware or not. You can’t read tarot if you don’t understand what spirit is trying to tell you, let that be your own guides or anyone else’s. Perhaps even your tarot deck.

Often times though, this is not the only thing readers rely on. For instance, I have clairaudience, clairvoyance and clairtypity. I can hear, see and feel what you would during whatever situation I read for you. This is not unique to me at all, every reader has at least one of these, and usually several. I even saw people with clairgustance and clairalience! They can taste and smell what you would! Isn’t that awesome?~ I personally think it’s fascinating, it’s not something that I have ever experienced. It’s cool that there are people out there who can do this.

So, tarot readers read your situation with the help of your spirit guides and their own spiritual gifts that they carry within themselves. As for habits and methods, it varies from person to person.

That is a reason why so many different tarot decks exist! Different people are called to different things. - Plus it’s cool -

how do tarot readings work?

This is the main reason why this post was made.. let’s get into it.

You already know how readers guide you, so I will tell you how do the readings themselves work. What else are they based on. Honestly, the best way I will be able to tell this to you is with examples, so that’s what I will do. Maybe someone else can tell you in a much more detailed and specific manner, but I am not them.

Tarot always reads your current energy. You can look into the past with it, but regardless it reads your current state of mind, thoughts, views, feelings and behaviours.

If you read a pick a card or personal reading that is based on the future - ex.; future spouse - then it will still read on your current energy.

For example let’s say you ask ‘when will I meet my future spouse?’ but you stay inside all day, then it will obviously be a few years or so. However, if the next day you decide to go out more or just put yourself out there in the world more and actually commit to it this can reduce to months.

If it’s a reading on your past then the cards will pick up on what still impacts you, whether you are aware of it or not. Let’s say you ask about your first kiss, how will it be like? Your cards could say that it won’t be as romantic as you think because this and that situation still impacts you.

I sincerely hope that you get the point, as I did my best to explain it.

Yet, there is still a question, ‘if someone is talented, why did that one reading turn out inaccurate?’ well because things change my dear.

If you were to ask me now about the appearance of your future spouse I could say they have brown hair and be correct, but they could go ahead and dye it red 15 minutes after I said that.

Things change constantly all the time and there is nothing we can do about it. That’s just life. It’s hard to hear, it’s hard to swallow, but it’s something we have to accept at some point in time. We can control some things, but not everything.

Change is inevitable.

There is good sides of it, and there is bad. You just gotta live and let others do the same.

Now, for pick a cards it’s slightly different. Maybe, genuinely, something is just not meant for you and you are just meant to ignore that. Maybe it’s for the blond teen in Canada who is asking about that one cute boy in her class. If you read a pick a card reading that is accurate but there is that one thing that doesn’t make sense, consider that means something to someone else. It’s not a personal reading.

That is why disclaimers like ‘take it with a grain of salt’ and ‘leave what doesn’t resonate’ exist. Yes, some people take advantage of it and that’s bad, but they were created with a good reason.

end note.

That is all I wanted to say, I believe. Although I made this post to get something bothersome off my mind I sincerely wish that someone out there has found it useful. My goal was truly to educate so if you know who the OP of the claim was just ignore them. Hating on people for enjoyment is not only immature but is going to have a negative effect on your body, mind and soul. Which I would not like. Please take care of yourselves! Thank you for reading.

[phoenixyfriend]

Can you explain the Iran-Israel situation please?

Alright, let's get to it. Please note that I'm writing this on mobile during my lunch break, so I can't include reference/source links as much as I'd like. Thankfully, most of what I'm going to be telling you should be easily located by searching for an article on one of the following: APNews, Reuters, BBC Global News Podcast, Democracy Now!, NPR, or The New York Times. Long-term background is probably best found in videos by the YouTube channels Real Life Lore or tldr global news, or on Wikipedia if you prefer text.

The short version: Israel attacked Iran's consulate in Syria to get at some of the military commanders that were there, which is legally equivalent to attacking Iran itself. Iran responded by sending about 300 bombs at Israel, most of which were shot down in transit. Given that they still called it a success, even though it seems only one person was even hurt, my understanding is that it's very likely that they only intended the rockets to be a show of force, rather than an actual escalation, because Iran can't afford a war right now.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post OR this post.

The long version:

Okay, let's start with some background on Israel, then Iran. This is... a lot, so if you already know the broad strokes skip down to 2023.

Israel was established following WWII by the English and French, following borders the two countries had secretly drawn up decades earlier in the Sykes-Picot agreement. The intent was to give the Jewish people a place to go... or, depending on who you ask, a place to send them. Their ancestral homeland was viewed as the best choice, sort of like a deportation millennia after a diaspora. Given that WWII had just ended by the time Sykes-Picot was actually put into effect, 'getting out of Europe' was something a lot of Jews were given to agree with.

The Arab world was not happy, as that land had belonged to the Ottomans for centuries, and had long since 'naturalized' to being Arab. I'm not going to pretend to know the nuances to when people do or do not consider Palestine to have been its own nation; it was an Ottoman state until WWI, at which point it came under British control for just under three decades, and that period is known as the British Mandate of Palestine; it ended after WWII, with the creation of Israel. Palestine's land and people have sort of just been punted around from one colonizer to another for centuries.

Iran is the current form of what was once Persia. They were an empire for a very long time, and were a unitary monarchy up until the early 20th century; in 1925, Iran elected a Prime Minister who was then declared the monarch. The following several decades had Iran's monarchy slowly weakened, and occasionally beset by foreign interventions, including a covert coup by the US and UK in 1953. The country also became more corrupt throughout the 1970s due to economic policy failing to control inflation in the face of rising oil prices.

In 1979, there was a revolution that overthrew the monarchy and the elected government, replacing the system with a theocracy and declaring Iran to be an Islamic Republic, with the head of state being a religious authority, rather than an elected one. This was not popular with... most countries. 1980 saw the closure of all universities (reopened in 1983 with government-approved curriculums), as well as the taking of over fifty American hostages from the US Embassy in Iran. You may have heard about that in the context of Ronald Reagan encouraging Iran to keep the hostages until the end of Carter's term in order to force the election.

So, the West didn't like having an Islamic state because it claims to like democracy, and also because the Islamic state was explicitly anti-American and this has some Bad Effects on oil prices. The Soviets didn't like having an Islamic State because a theocracy goes directly against a lot of communist values (or at least the values they claim to have), and weakened any influence their supposedly secular union could have on Iran and the wider middle east. The other countries in the Arab world, many of them still monarchies, didn't like the Islamic republic because if the revolution spread, then it was possible their monarchies would be overthrown as well.

(Except Oman, which is not worried, but that's the exception, not the rule.)

This is not a baseless worry, because Iran has stated that this is its goal for the Arab world. Overthrow the monarchies, overthrow the elected governments, Islamic Rule for everyone. That is the purpose of its proxies, like Hezbollah (Lebanon), the Houthis (Yemen), and Hamas (Palestine), along with less well-known groups like the Salafi Jihadists in Mali, who are formally under the umbrella of al-Quaeda, which Iran denies having any relation to but is suspected of funding. In areas where these proxy groups have gained power, they are liable to enact hard Shari'a law such as has happened in Northern Mali and other parts of the Sahel region.

While other conflicts have occurred in these countries, I think the above is most relevant.

Israel has repeatedly attacked, or been attacked by, other nations in the middle east, as they are viewed as having taken over land that is not theirs, and as being a puppet of the US government. The biggest conflicts have been 1947-1948, 1968/1973, and 2014.

And then, of course, 2023.

Now, Iran, more than any other nation in the Middle East, hates Israel. They have for a very long time, viewing them as an affront to the goal of spreading Islam across the whole of the middle east, and as being a front and a staging ground for the United States and other Western powers. Two common refrains in the slogans of Iran and its proxies are "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."

Due to Iran's military power and virulence towards Israel, the United States has been funneling money to Israel for decades. It has more generally been to defend itself against the Arab world at large, but it has narrowed over the decades to being about Iran and its proxies as relations have normalized with other nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Cue October 7th, 2023. Hamas invades Israeli towns, kills some people, and takes others as hostage. Israel retaliates, and the conflict ramps up into what is by now tens of thousands of dead, some half of which are children.

In this time, Hamas's allies are, by definition, Iran and the other proxy forces. Hezbollah, being in Lebanon, share a border with Israel's north. They have been trading rocket fire across the border in waves for most of the past six months. The Houthis, down in Yemen, claim to be attacking the passing cargo ships in order to support Palestine. Given that the attacks often seem indiscriminate, and that the Houthi's control over their portion of Yemen is waning in the face of their poor governance, this is... debatable. It's their official reason, but given that "let's attack passing ships, claiming that we only attack Israeli or American ships and that it is to support Palestine" is rallying support domestically for their regime, it does seem to be more of a political move to garner support at home than about supporting Palestine.

Iran, however, has not attacked Israel. They've spoken out about it, yes, but they haven't done anything because nobody wants a regional war. Nobody can afford it right now. Iran is dealing with a domestic crisis due to oil subsidies bleeding the states' coffers dry, and the aging Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of Iran, refusing to pick a successor. They are looking at both an economic crisis and succession crisis, and a regional war would fuck up both situations further. Iran funds most of its proxies, and they can't do that, and fight a war on top of it, while their economy is in its current state. Pure self preservation says they don't want a war, especially with the ongoing unrest that's been going on for... well, basically since the revolution, but especially since the death of Mahsa Amini.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Netanyahu has been looking at corruption charges and legal issues since before the Hamas attack. It's generally agreed that if Israel were to hold new elections right now, he would lose and be replaced, and also immediately taken to court. Netanyahu wants to stay in power, and as long as the war on Hamas lasts, he is unlikely to get voted out. A change in leadership in the middle of a war is rarely a good idea for any country, and he's banking on that.

However, the war on Hamas rests on the shoulders of American money and supplies. Without that military support, Israel cannot fight this war, and America... is losing patience.

Officially, America and most of the western world have been telling Israel to not fucking escalate for the majority of the war.

There have been implied threats, more or less since Schumer's big speech about how Israel needs a new election, of American legislators putting conditions on any future aid. There have even been rumblings of aid being retracted entirely if Israel follows through on invading Raffah.

So...

American aid to Israel has, for a very long time, been given in the name of defending Israel against Iran and its proxies.

Israel has been fighting this war against Hamas for six months, killing what is by now innumerable civilians, on the power of US military aid.

Netanyahu benefits from the continued war due to domestic troubles.

Iran does not want a regional war, or really any big war, due to its own domestic troubles.

The US is, in theory, losing patience with Israel and threatening to pull the plug on unconditional support. It's very "we gave you this to fight Iran. Stop attacking civilians. If you keep attacking civilians, then you're going to have to rely on what we already gave you to fight off Iran so that you won't keep wasting it on civilians."

Israel... attacks Iran, prompting a response, and is now talking about escalating with Iran.

I am not explicitly saying that it looks to me like Israel, which is already fighting a war on two physical fronts and even more political/economic ones, has picked a fight with Iran so that America feels less like it is able to withdraw support.

I just... am finding it hard to understand why Israel, which is in fact fighting both Hamas and Hezbollah, would attack the Iranian consulate in Syria otherwise. They can't actually afford to fight this war, escalating to a full regional conflict, on a third front.

Not without pressuring American into keeping the faucet of military funding open at full blast.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post OR this post.

[argyrocratie]

"In “Memory Voids and Role Reversals,” Palestinian political science professor Dana El Kurd writes of her jarring experience, hearing of the October 7th massacres by Hamas while visiting the Holocaust Tower at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. She notes the historic irony of Holocaust survivors seeking security from future oppression by expelling another people from their homeland by the hundreds of thousands, ghettoizing them in enclaves enforced by military checkpoints, and controlling them with collective punishment.

The irony of a state formed as the “antithesis” to the ghetto using ghettoization as a strategy of control is not lost on Palestinians. This infrastructure of coercion went hand in hand, of course, with ever-present physical violence — imprisonment, home demolitions, air strikes and more.

She quotes Aristide Zolberg’s observation that “formation of a new state can be a ‘refugee-generating process.’”

This is not only true of Palestinians. The Westphalian nation-state, which has been the normative component of the international system since the Treaty of Westphalia, necessarily entails (especially since the post-1789 identification of nationalism with the nation-state) the suppression of ethnic identity to a far greater extent than the expression of any such identity. Every constructed national identity associated with a “State of the X People” has necessarily involved the suppression and homogenization of countless ethnicities present in the territory claimed by that state. At the time of the French Revolution, barely half the “French” population spoke any of the many langue d’oil dialects of northern France, let alone the dialect of the Ile de France (the basis for the official “French” language). The rest spoke Occitan dialects like Provençal, or non-Romance languages like Breton (whose closest living relative is Welsh). The same is true of Catalan, Aragonese, Basque, and Galician in Spain, the low-German languages and now-extinct Wendish in Germany, the non-Javanese ethnicities of Indonesia, and so on. Heads of state issue sonorous pronouncements concerning the “Nigerian People” or “Zimbabwean People,” in reference to multi-ethnic populations whose entire “identity” centers on lines drawn on a map at the Berlin Conference.

When I say official national languages were established through the suppression of their rivals, I mean things like the residential schools of the United States and Canada punishing Native children for using their own languages. Or schools around the world shaming students with signs reading “I Spoke Welsh (or Breton, or Provencal, or Catalan, or Basque, or Ainu, or an African vernacular instead of the English, French, etc., lingua franca). And so on.

And when we consider the range of artificial national identities that were constructed by suppressing other real ethnicities, we can’t forget the “Jewish People” of Israel. Its construction occurred part and parcel with the suppression of diasporic Jewish ethnic identities all over Europe and the Middle East. The “New Jewish” identity constructed by modern Zionism was associated with the artificial revival of Hebrew, which had been almost entirely a liturgical language for 2300 years, as an official national language. And this, in turn, was associated with the suppression — both official and unofficial — of the actually existing Jewish ethnicities associated with the Yiddish, Ladino, and Arabic languages.

The centuries-old languages and cultures of actual Jewish ethnicities throughout Europe were treated as shameful relics of the past, to be submerged and amalgamated into a new artificially constructed Jewish identity centered on the Hebrew language. 

Yiddish, the language spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe — derived from an archaic German dialect and written in the Hebrew alphabet — was stigmatized by Zionist leaders in Palestine and by the early Israeli government. According to Max Weinreich’s History of the Yiddish Language, the “very making of Hebrew into a spoken language derives from the will to separate from the Diaspora.” Diasporic Jewish identities, as viewed by Zionist settlers, were “a cultural morass to be purged.” The “New Jew” was an idealized superhuman construct, almost completely divorced from centuries worth of culture and traditions of actual Jews: “Yiddish began to represent diaspora and feebleness, said linguist Ghil’ad Zuckermann. ‘And Zionists wanted to be Dionysian: wild, strong, muscular and independent.’” 

This “contempt for the Diaspora” was “manifested . . .  in the fierce campaign against Yiddish in Palestine, which led not only to the banning of Yiddish newspapers and theaters but even to physical attacks against Yiddish speakers.” From the 1920s on, anyone in Palestine with the temerity to publish in Yiddish risked having their printing press destroyed by organizations with names like the “Battalion of the Defenders of the Hebrew Language,” “Organization for the Enforcement of Hebrew,” and “Central Council for the Enforcement of Hebrew.” The showing of the Yiddish-language film Mayn Yidishe Mame (“My Yiddish Mama”), in Tel Aviv in 1930, provoked a riot led by the above-mentioned Battalion. After the foundation of Israel, “every immigrant was required to study Hebrew and often to adopt a Hebrew surname.” In its early days Israel legally prohibited plays and periodicals in the Yiddish language. A recent defender of the early suppression of Yiddish, in the Jerusalem Post, argued that Diasporic languages threatened to “undermine the Zionist project”; in other words, an admission that actually existing ethnic identities threatened an identity manufactured by a nationalist ideology.

If this is true of Yiddish — the native language of the Ashkenazi Jews who dominated the Zionist settlement of Palestine — it’s even more so of the suppression of Jewish ethnic identities outside the dominant Sephardic minority. Golda Meir once dismissed Jews of non-Ashkenazi or non-Yiddish descent as “not Jews.” 

Consider the roughly half of the Israeli population comprised of Mizrahi Jews from Middle Eastern communities (including those living in Palestine itself before European settlement). Although the Mizrahim are trotted out as worthy victims when they are convenient for purposes of Israeli propaganda — the majority of them were expelled from Arab countries like Iraq after 1948, in what was an undeniable atrocity — they are treated the rest of the time as an embarrassment or a joke, and have been heavily discriminated against, by the descendants of Ashkenazi settlers. For example former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion described Mizrahim 

as lacking even “the most elementary knowledge” and “without a trace of Jewish or human education.” Ben Gurion repeatedly expressed contempt for the culture of the Oriental Jews: “We do not want Israelis to become Arabs. We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the Levant, which corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve the authentic Jewish values as they crystallized in the Diaspora.”

Current Prime Minister Netanyahu once joked about a “Mizrahi gene” as his excuse for tardiness. And an Israeli realtor ran a commercial appealing to “there goes the neighborhood” sentiments by depicting a light-skinned family having their Passover celebration disrupted by uncouth Mizrahi neighbors.

Nationalism and the nation-state are the enemies of true ethnicity and culture, and built on their graves. There’s no better illustration of this principle than the Zionist project itself."

-Kevin Carson, "Zionism and the Nation-State: Palestinians Are Not the Only Victims"

[spacelazarwolf]

lmao k we’re gonna talk abt ashkenormativity and the weird hostility some of y’all have toward non ashki jews.

so yesterday i was trying to have a discussion on this post, and the person responded with this:

and then promptly blocked me.

after which they posted a bunch of bullshit that i am now going to tear to shreds.

regarding the above screenshot:

- if you’re defining yiddish culture as “ashkenazi jews who speak yiddish” you are still erasing multiple communities of ashkenazi jews. italian ashkenazi jews migrated or fled to northern italy during the middle ages, long before the establishment of the pale of settlement, and have a culture that is distinctly influenced by italian culture, not eastern european culture.

- sounds like you’re outright excluding any group of ashkenazi jews who don’t speak yiddish or live in central or eastern europe. which is literally the reason i started the dialogue in the first place.

- talking down to me as if i don’t know what the difference between ashkenazi and sephardi is.

- immediately followed by incorrectly defining ashkenazi. ashkenazim are a group of diaspora jews who originally settled in the ashkenaz. there are many different diaspora languages that ashkenazi jews spoke, including judeo-french, judeo-provençal, judeo-czech, and different dialects of judeo-italian.

- kinda sounds like ur saying eastern european jews who speak yiddish are the only “true” ashkenazi jews????????

- yeah there’s lots of issues surrounding the way eastern european jews were viewed, but that’s not what the conversation was about?????

- it’s not really up to you to have or not have an issue with who identifies as ashkenazi.

- there are many ashkenazi groups that have ties in eastern europe. there are also plenty who don’t. there’s overarching similarities between a lot of different diaspora groups, but that doesn’t make them the same. and that’s ok.

- kinda weird how you say “this is a conversation for the jewish community, infuriating how people disagree with us about our own culture” as if i’m not also jewish?? do you not consider me jewish enough to talk about jewish culture or history?

- it’s clear you’ve researched a lot about eastern european jews. it’s also clear that’s the only group you know anything about.

- this conversation had nothing to do with zionism?????? very fucking weird for u to say this??????? especially when i was literally trying to express that ashkenazi jews are incredibly diverse and can’t just be boiled down to “basically eastern european”??????????

- also again homogenizing all ashkenazi jews under “yiddish culture” when you’ve defined yiddish culture as being distinctly eastern european. which. again. not all ashkenazi jews are.

- didn’t try to correct u on ur own culture bud! tried to get u to see that ur own culture is not actually The Only One.

- “because only a non ashkenazi jew can ever accurately represent ashkenazi culture right?” you’ve got some weird aggression toward non ashki jews you should prob unpack.

- again trying to make this abt zionism when i was literally arguing the opposite.

- also i don’t have a “giant blog” lmfao.

- this is funny to me bc u r literally the one who misdefined ashkenazi?????? and attempted to homogenize all ashkenazim under the label of eastern european????? hello?????????

- “irredeemable zionists” yikes bro.

- literally just me when i can’t read and have no critical thinking skills.

- this to me reads like someone who is trying to invert the concept of ashkenormativity and position themself as a victim of non ashki jews. which is absolutely fucking bizarre.

- you’re claiming i’m “denying yiddish culture” while many of your posts actively erase multiple ashkenazi groups from this culture while simultaneously lumping them all in underneath one umbrella eastern european label. like idk how you managed to be so ashkenormative that you managed to erase other ashkenazi jews but it’s almost impressive.

- gee i wonder what it’s like to have ur culture denied surely as a member of a tiny diaspora group that makes up 0.4% of the global jewish population i have no idea what that’s like!

- you are not advocating for diasporism. you are advocating for your culture and your culture only.

anyway, on to my other rant.

if i want to know how to recite a prayer in the ashkenazi rite, i google it. if i want to learn how to speak yiddish, i download duolingo. it’s easy to find these things because people have worked hard to preserve them. and also because ashkenazi jews make up over 60% of the global jewish population and over 70% of the us jewish population.

italian jews, however, including italian ashkenazim, make up 0.4% of the global jewish population. and i couldn’t even find a number for how many of us there are in the us bc there are that few. if i want to know how a certain prayer is chanted in the italian rite, i have to find 70 year old recordings of italian cantors and rabbis singing them for a musicologist who dedicated his life to keeping the italian rite and italki culture alive after it was devastated by the holocaust, bc the only synagogues that still follow the italian rite are in rome and israel. if i want to know how to speak the language my ancestors would have spoken, i have to take a zoom class at oxford at 6am where we study manuscripts from hundreds of years ago. in 1900, there were 20,000 native speakers of judeo-italian dialects. in 2023 there are almost none.

in order to participate in any sort of jewish life where i live, i have to know ashkenazi culture. i have to know the prayers and the songs and the customs. i have to know the food and the language and history.

but y’all don’t have to know mine.

and every time i try to infuse my own heritage into my practice i’m reminded of that. when i make italian jewish food, people don’t see it as “jewish food.” people hear my last name and assume i’m not jewish because it’s not a “jewish name.” when i use italki hebrew, people try to correct me. i frequently encounter other jews who don’t even know italkim exist. so yeah. it is infuriating when i experience constant pressure to assimilate into the dominant jewish culture of where i live only to be a excluded from discussions about that culture because i’m not part of it. i am part of it. i have to be.

ashkenazi culture is beautiful and diverse and i do genuinely enjoy taking part in it. but it is painful to get constant reminders that i don’t really have a choice. it is painful to have people in your own community see your knowledge of their culture as a given but their knowledge of your culture as optional or doing you a favor.

so basically,

you are not being erased by the reminder that jews who are not like you exist.

[bitterrobin]

I loooove expanding on the al Ghuls. IDK in both canon and fanon they're always exclusively villains with little nuance to them unless its the sole focus of a story arc. Even then, its pretty much only Ras and Talia that get their (deserved) due.

*pushing up my nerd glasses* which is why I have fun writing GRAVEYARD because I can yap about my al Ghuls headcanons left and right. For example, Melisande is primarily a French name. But since Talia's mother is often described as mixed Arab/Chinese, I figured I would look for why she would have a French name (other than the writer's decision, maybe they thought it was just pretty). I came up with this: Algeria has history of French usage through its colonization, so Melisande has a French first name but an Arabic middle name (Fadhma). Since she met Ras in Woodstock, she'd have to have been a teenager/young adult by then, and thus been raised in the 1950s/60s. I figured the connotations of Woodstock, her mixed heritage, the then-current state of Algeria etc, the 1969 oil spill in the US, she would have visited America with curiosity about the counter-culture. (how? idk that's why this still in the works) In my au,

Melisande already held views on nature and environmental protection before meeting Ras. Her views were fierce, but probably a little naive compared to Ras' own views. Nonetheless, they clicked intellectually, with Melisande debating theories and politics, which eventually led to their marriage. I don't think Melisande would've liked America (and obviously neither did Ras) so they did not stay there. I considered writing Melisande having Kayble Amazigh heritage to further fuel her desire for change and revolution and because Ras is implied to have Bedouin/Berber origins, but since I don't know much about those cultures beyond some research - I figured I shouldn't include it. Also, because Melisande died when Talia was young, so I don't think she'd have the time to impart a lot of her specific culture onto her daughter, adding to Talia's isolation/loneliness. Melisande is a mother who's killed in both of her iterations, I just wanted to add more significance to her connection with Talia. Something about meeting an intellectual and then being doomed, one way or another, to be absorbed into his mythos. She's a blip in Ras's history, not even his first wife or his first lover - but she's important to Talia.

Same kinda applied to Dusan. He's only in several comics as the White Ghost because Ras needed a new body. He's albino. He's extremely devoted to his father despite not receiving the same attention, and he was born to connect Ras to some lost culture or people. Dusan, to my knowledge is not an Arab name. From research, in some areas, its a Czech/Slovak/Serbian name. This is interesting to me since, besides Nyssa, it implies he's the only other non-Arabic member of the family. Nyssa (depends on translation, is either Greek or Hebrew, which makes sense considering she is Jewish) is of Russian descent. So in my hc, Dusan is of Slovak descent, connected to some fictional peoples. Considering Ras' history, Dusan's mother was probably connected to some type of specific science or magic culture that Ras wanted his hands on. He seems detached to Talia, despite being her brother, so my hc is that he's much older than her and so they don't have a connection in the way that Nyssa created between them. Because Ras was successfully able to transfer his mind/soul to Dusan's body in Resurrection, we can glean that Dusan might've had this magical connection too. Bringing Mara into this, we don't get a lot of content surrounding what her relationship w her father was. Still, my hc is that her red hair streak is actually dyed, and she has inherited her father's albinism but has yet to show it outside of her hair. Mara is also not an Arabic name. In Hebrew it means bitter, but my hc is that she nicknamed herself Mara. Besides Nyssa, I don't think any other member of the al Ghuls are Jewish - so Mara just took the meaning as a way to symbolize her bitterness over her father. Her full name was Maram, which means "wish" or "desire" in Arabic. Whether it was Dusan or her mother that named her this, I'm not fully sure yet but I think it'd be more heartbreaking if it was Dusan. Despite spending so long attached to his father's crusade, I think it'd be sad if for a moment - he had independence and happiness w Mara. Maybe he wanted a son, just as Ras wanted a son, but he once loved her just as fiercely as Talia loves Damian. But again, the al Ghuls are Ouroboros. They cannot ever break the family curse, so in the end, Dusan was once again driven to his father's side w fervor, his lover or wife left him, and Mara was left (as many in the family) alone.

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Oh, there is some discourse about Oscar Isaac playing the mk system because he is not jewish. I have no say in the matter as I am not jewish, so I thought I'd ask

Oh! Okay! I'm willing to bed you are the same anon that sent this ask? Or maybe not and just someone with similar questions.

Well, Moon Knight came out over two years ago now. So most of the discourse over it is pretty old news at this point. If it is starting up again, it's just beating a dead horse. Or maybe there are new fans that are just blazing their own trail and not checking out that neat trail that's already been blazed.

Either way, I'm not upset about it. Learning is learning and I'm here for questions.

SO! Let's get into it!

Now, this may surprise a few of you… But I'm not Oscar Isaac. I know… I know… A real let down. This means that I can't speak on his behalf and everything I say is what I have picked up, and could be wrong.

As far as I am aware, he is not a practicing Jew. Meaning, he probably doesn't go to Shul or keep the Sabbath. He might! I don't know. I also don't know if he's Catholic or Christian or how he was raised or what his current belief system is… If it is on Wiki somewhere, I still can't say I know because how do you Wiki someone's personal religious beliefs?

What I DO know… He has Jewish Ancestry!

These quotes are taken from two interviews that are easily looked up on Google:

When asked how he felt about playing an Orthodox Jewish man for "Inside Llewyn Davis" (not his first or last Jewish role), here was his responce:

“We could play that game: How Jewish are you?” he said to interviewer Alexis Soloski, who is Jewish. “It is part of my family, part of my life. I feel the responsibility to not feel like a phony. That’s the responsibility, to feel like I can say these things, do these things and feel like I’m doing it honestly and truthfully."

Isaac referenced the fact that he has some Jewish heritage on his father’s side.

Of his roots, Oscar said, “My grandfather was French in Guatemala and my father is Cuban but he grew up in the States as well. I came to the States when I was five months old and I grew up my entire life mostly in Miami, between Miami and New York.” He is the third Oscar in the family. “My father and my grandfather were both named Oscar,” he revealed. “I am the third Oscar. It’s from the Academy Awards. Isaac is Jewish from my father side. I am definitely a big mix of many things.”

Now, I COULD get into semantics. His Jewish ancestry comes from his father's side and there is discourse in the Jewish system on Patrilineal vs. Matrilineal and what makes a Jew a Jew. I'm not going to get into that because it has WAY more involved than I'm willing to get into and that is probably why Oscar asked the "How Jewish are you?" question (He's known to be cheeky and that could be taken as a very cheeky question).

In MY books, If you have Jewish ancestry and you acknowledge it and consider it a part of you, then you are worthy of playing all the Jewish people you want in movies/shows/plays. ....As long as you are respectful and do your best to do it right.

And that is what I love about Oscar. He WANTS to get it right. He wants to honor the parts he plays and he understands when he has an important part that needs to be done right and with care.

Now, Oscar doesn't have DID (as far as I am aware), but he did the research and connected with people that Do have DID to make sure he offered a fare and honest and respectful tribute to it. Is it going to fit everyone with DID's shoes? No. But it is a very multi(LOL) colored disorder that presents in many different ways and because it is a Show meant to be visual to an audience that doesn't understand how it works, of course he's going to have to play it up a bit and the editors and directors are going to have to add flourishes that don't always agree with everyone so that we, a visual and auditory audience, can see a representation of this disorder that we can understand.

You know what's fun about being Jewish? You don't have to see it or hear it to demonstrate someone is Jewish. I can watch almost any movie or show and go "That guy's Jewish." How do I know? I don't. But in my head, he's now a Jewish character and I'm connecting to him that way.

You know what they DID do in Moon Knight? Oscar wore a Star of David necklace. There was a mezuzah on Steven's door. Steven had a Shabbat table set up. Steven is a Vegan to avoid having to risk not eating Kosher.

(I see Shabbat candle, decorative Menorah, and a Kiddish cup. I really hope he moves those (should be two but we only see one, Maybe it's behind the other) candles before he lights them. His fire hazard apartment gives me anxiety. Let's just hope his Havdalah candle doesn't set the place ablaze).

They could have done more to show his casual Jewish life, but you don't need to. This is Steven Grant pretty much living a Jewish life. I'm not sure what people were expecting him to do? Dance the Horah and have Peyot? This is more than what Comics Moon Knight has done to show his Jewish side for a LONG time (minus some good runs in the OG run and Recent MacKay run).

Anyways, I'm not sure who did decide to toss in those little details, but I deeply appreciate them and love them for it. And I love that Oscar is aware of and acknowledges his heritage. Not only that, but that he strives to represent it in a truthful and honest way.

Anyways, I hope that answers your question... There's a lot I could get into, but others have honestly done it better ages ago.

Is Oscar a Jewish man? I don't know. Probably not? BUT... If he suddenly said "I'm Jewish" I'd welcome him to the tribe with open arms. I think he's earned a little Challah. He's certainly a Mensch in my book.

[unnervinglyferal]

List of European countries and why I hate them, in alphabetical order:

Albania - I've never heard fucking anything about the people here, do you people even do anything save for having beef with everyone else in the Balkans. Fuck you.

Andorra - I don't think this place is even a real country. It's like the size of my dick. Fuck you.

Austria - You know what you did. Fuck you.

Belarus - Sucking Russia's dick just for the novelty of getting to be featured in their ongoing cringe compilation. An utter embarrassment. Fuck you.

Belgium - If there's two things I hate, it's colonialist brutality and the fucking smurfs. Fuck you.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Despite all the rest of their shitshow, at least the rest of the Balkans can at least agree whether they're one country or two countries. Make up your minds. Fuck you.

Bulgaria - The best thing you've got going on is the yoghurt and even that isn't as good as the greek ones. Fuck you.

Croatia - Out of all the countries in Europe whose existence I had literally forgot about, this is the oldest and the largest. How do you trace your history back to the fucking antiquity and only barely seem to exist at all? Fuck you.

Cyprus - I actually had to google to check that Cyprus isn't just a part of Greece, but apparently you gained independence from the UK in 1960? How the fuck are you in Europe and get colonized by Europe. Fuck you.

Czech Republic - Your main export is utterly unpronounceable last names. There's a reason why you can't shouldn't be allowed to put five consonants in a row. Fuck you.

Denmark - Annoyingly smug golden retriever-ass mushy-faced fucks. If I pressed my open palm into a dane's face, it would ooze through my fingers because these mushy fucks don't have bones.

Estonia - The bitter, prettier and smarter sister to Finland who is passive-aggressively better at everything but still doesn't get the same attention. Finns show up to your shores to raid the booze stores, vomit on everything, and leave, and you just let them. Fuck you.

Finland - An entire nation of spoiled ivory tower whiners who just will not understand how good they have it. The entire country would die out by mass suicide if things ever got half as bad as they are in the rest of the world. Fuck you.

France - The only reason why the french aren't known as an equal mass of colonialist brutes as the brits are is the language barrier. They're just as stupid but you'll never know what they're thinking because they consider learning another language to be beneath them. Fuck you.

Georgia - The americans stole your name and put it on a state and you just fucking let them. Now we have to hear about their utter lack of understanding of geography every single time some shit happens at your borders. Fuck you.

Germany - I'm jewish. And looking at your involvement in Israel, I'm starting to think you people don't really even care that much whose side you're on, if there's a genocide happening anywhere, you just like to be included. Fuck you.

Greece - You have like 4000 years of recorded history verifying that you've spent that entire time thinking you're smarter and prettier than anyone else in the whole world. You specifically invented the word hubris to describe yourselves. Fuck you.

Hungary - I'm pretty sure that you guys are the reason why people think all of Europe is a backwards shithole. Fuck you.

Iceland - The only reason you people can dedicate all of your time in inbreeding ponies and people is because your climate is so miserable that nobody wants to move there. Fuck you.

Ireland - Your climate is just as wet and miserable as Iceland, but you still got colonized by the english. Fuck you.

Italy - I've never met an italian who was capable of doing anything in a punctual and organized way. Imagining a whole country being run by italians seems impossible. Like having 15 cats successfully operating a tank. Fuck you.

Kosovo - What the fuck even is the Balkans. You guys don't even have your own language. Fuck you.

Latvia - Like Estonia without any of the good parts. Fuck you.

Liechtenstein - This isn't even a real country, this is just the quarantine containment where Switzerland ships the people who are too annoying for Switzerland. Fuck you.

Lithuania - The most boring of the Baltics. Fuck you.

Luxembourg - There is no way this place is fucking real. The fuck do you mean your citizens are called luxembourgers. The fuck do you mean your official language is luxembourgish. What the fuck is any of this. Fuck you.

Malta - Same thing as Liechtenstein, but for all surrounding countries around the Mediterranean sea. Fuck you.

Moldova - How and why is there a tiny-ass country the size of my dick on the border of the Balkans. How does this exist. Fuck you.

Monaco - This isn't a real country, it's a french ploy for tax evasion. Fuck you.

Montenegro - Oh won't you look at that, another teeny tiny Balkan country. Montenegrin is the stupidest name I've ever heard for a language, that sounds like a comedy bit. Fuck you.

Netherlands - Fuck your weed and fuck your bicycles. Fuck you.

North Macedonia - This also feels like a country they just made up just to make the list of European countries longer. Fuck you.

Norway - Fuck your oil and fuck you.

Poland - Your main export is far right politics and porn-addicted communist furry femboys. Fuck you.

Portugal - Spain but a little bit to the left. The only way to tell the spanish and the portugese apart is by whether they get mad when you call them spanish. Fuck you.

Romania - Get your fucking shit together. Fuck you.

Russia - Fuck you.

San Marino - Italy has two stupid little city-states as pets. This one is the one I hate less because it only contains tax evaders.

Serbia - The only thing I know about Serbia is A Serbian Film. Fuck that film and fuck you for making me remember it.

Slovakia - The wettest, saddest slavs of all the slavs of Europe. Fuck you.

Slovenia - Slovene is the second-stupidest name I've ever heard for a language. Fuck you.

Spain - I have no idea how the fuck a people who are as disorganized as italians managed to also be as competent as france and britain at colonialism. Fuck you.

Sweden - As smug and mushy as danes and as inbred as icelanders. Fuck you.

Switzerland - You know what you did. And continue doing. Fuck you.

Ukraine - You wouldn't be in this fucking situation if you hadn't trusted Soviet Union's pinky promise to never invade. A russian's promise is not worth the oxygen it wastes. You guys are cool but nonetheless, fuck you.

United Kingdom - Fuck you smug bastards for everything.

Vatican City - Italy has two stupid little city-states as pets. This one is the one I hate more because it contains the pope. Fuck you.

[eretzyisrael]

by Tal Fortgang

Francesca Albanese, the Italian lawyer who holds the United Nations position of “Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories,” is defensive when it comes to accusations of anti-Semitism. This is understandable, considering her own record of controversial statements. In 2014, she wrote that the United States tends to be pro-Israel because it is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby,” while Europe supports the Jewish state because of its “sense of guilt about the Holocaust.” In most places, revealing that you believe conspiracy theories about Jews controlling America would be disqualifying. At the United Nations, it earns you a promotion.

Albanese’s UN posting hasn’t made her any less sensitive to accusations of anti-Semitism. On social media, she responded to French President Emmanuel Macron’s denunciation of the October 7 pogrom as the “greatest antisemitic massacre of our century” by tut-tutting that “the victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.” She later added that “explaining these crimes as antisemitism obscures their true cause.” At a February 12 virtual event hosted by Harvard, she clarified: “Saying that the motivation was antisemitism is wrong and dangerous. I’m not saying that people in Hamas are absolutely not anti-Semitic. . . . the argument is that this attack was launched as a way to break the occupation, against the apartheid.”

Such casuistic reasoning about the blatant anti-Semitism of Hamas and other radical groups is increasingly common. Israel-haters who previously railed against Israel’s treatment of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza are coming clean about their real goals: eliminating the Jewish state “from the River to the Sea.” The UN itself, which treats Palestinian refugees with a different agency, different rules, and different goals than all other displaced groups, effectively maintains this position as well: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) confers intergenerational refugee status on Palestinians with the aim of ensuring their “right of return” rather than helping them settle and thrive where they have been for decades. This reinforces the view that Israel will eventually go the way of other occupying forces throughout history: out, or, as we Jews often hear, “back where you came from.”

Proponents of this view nonetheless wish to maintain that they do not hate Jews. They simply hate “the occupation,” an activity that would be meaningless if it didn’t also imply a subject—an “occupier.” Occupation of what? For years, we assumed the most defensible answer: the West Bank. But with the rise of maximalist rhetoric in anti-Israel demonstrations—“We don’t want two states! We want all of it!” they chanted at my alma mater, mixing in the Arabic version of “from the River to the Sea,” which translates to, “from water to water, Palestine is Arab”—maintaining that view is no longer possible. The occupation that Hamas is trying to undo is that of the territory on which Israel sits, which was called Palestine in between periods of Jewish sovereignty.

[queeranarchism]

"The quote is from Les Damnes de la terre (Wretched of the Earth), and can only be understood in the context of the fuller argument Fanon is making: “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” No one can deny Fanon’s brilliance or his pioneering and profound understanding of the psychological effects of colonial violence on the colonised and the coloniser (as a psychiatrist, he treated French colonial officers and Algerians alike and found them to suffer similar psychiatric ailments). But the second and more famously quoted part of Fanon’s argument is not comprehensible without the first part, and the first part – especially in the Israeli context – is in fact profoundly wrong. Colonialism, especially settler colonialism – and even more particularly Zionist settler colonialism – is very much a “thinking machine” with very powerful and longstanding logic and rationalities that are the key to its success. Because of this, considering what “a greater violence” would look like and how it can be measured, never mind achieved, is a crucial task for those analysing and fighting colonial violence alike. I have yet to see any plausible scenarios in which Palestinians acquire the means to deploy “far greater violence” vis-a-vis Israel/the Zionist entity for any length of time in any conceivable geostrategic balance of power. Even if Iran (the only major power that supports Palestine in any meaningful way), for example, wanted to deliver heavier weapons to Palestinians, Israel’s control over access points, as well as Egypt’s and Jordan’s, will prevent that from happening. Palestine is not Ukraine, supported by major powers and able to utilise land, water and air corridors to obtain an unending stream of weapons deliveries to fight a much larger and better-armed adversary. Quite the opposite, in fact. More broadly, Palestine today is not Algeria in 1956, which was Fanon’s most important reference point. Nor is Israel France, with a metropole to which settlers can return (unless we consider Tel Aviv the metropole). There will be no long-fought war of independence resulting in the vast majority of Jews leaving à la française a reconquered Palestine. But there are several scenarios that could lead to a redux of the Nakba, as many Israeli politicians are now screaming for. [...]

Indeed, for over 50 years of occupation, and 30 years of the post-Oslo Palestinian “self-rule” rather than “the native cur[ing] himself of colonial neurosis … through force of arms”, what has occurred (as I learned in interviews with therapists at the few mental health centres in Gaza as far back in the later 1990s through 2000s) is the passing on of trauma, with former Fatah prisoners tortured by Israel torturing Hamas members using the same techniques as the Israelis used on them – often screaming at their victims in Hebrew while torturing them in the very same rooms where they were tortured. Hamas has continued this cycle in the two decades of effective control over Gaza. And now we see this with crowds cheering kidnapped, beaten, and murdered Israelis. Whatever catharsis this constitutes, it is not one that will lead to victory over an Israeli society that has been using violence against Palestinians as its own traumatic catharsis for 75 years, in a world that has a very high tolerance for Palestinian civilian casualties, with most people in the West still supporting Israel whenever there is a high level of Israeli Jewish casualties. [...]

Tragically, Fanon died in 1961, a year before Algeria achieved independence. He did not live to see the realities of postcolonial politics in Algeria, or across Africa for that matter, where, as Kenyan novelist and decolonial thinker Ngugi wa Thiong’o has so powerfully showed, leaders of newly independent states almost immediately began treating their peoples in much the same manner as their former colonisers (a phenomenon also experienced with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas since Oslo). Forty years ago, when he was describing this dynamic of postcolonial governance in his groundbreaking prison memoir Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir, Thiong’o used the term “neocolonial” – not to indicate the continuation of European control by other means, but rather to describe how anticolonial leaders adopted (and adapted) the same brutal and authoritarian techniques of rule as their colonisers to cement and maintain their power; a critique of the “coloniality of power” that is today at the heart of the ever more popular decolonial thought. That coloniality of power fundamentally will never allow for anything approaching actual independence for Palestinians, neither via the neocolonial PA nor with Hamas at the helm. If Palestinians are to defeat Zionist colonialism, it will likely take a much different sort of analysis of its violence and power than Fanon offered three-quarters of a century ago, and it will probably require a paradigm shift in the core concepts of what a nation, freedom and independence are at a moment when the entire world, not just Palestine/Israel, is heading towards conflagration.

read the full article

I really like this column. When western media is mindlessly parroting Israeli propaganda and western far-leftists (myself included) are primarily listing all the evils of the Israeli state to make it clear who the real bad guy of the story is, there's very little practical discussion of what is actually happening and what could come next.

[determinate-negation]

and why are israelis talking about going to china like its a threat

“Rosenfeld arrived in China with one of his brothers, but did not integrate into the Jewish community in the city. His political leanings led him to seek out the local Communists, as did a small group of other Jews. The latter included the reporter, Hans Shippe, who greatly influenced Rosenfeld’s views, and the Jewish-Austrian physician, Richard Frey, who had experiences similar to those of Rosenfeld. The Chinese Foreign Ministry website, which provides added proof of the country’s great respect for Rosenfeld, posted an article that quotes him as saying that he did not come to China to lead a comfortable life, but that he came to join the revolution. And he did in fact do that.

[…] The Chinese Communists considered Rosenfeld one of their own. He was close to the highest-ranking officials in the party, including Liu Shaoqi, who would later become the President of the People’s Republic of China after Mao Zedong’s death, and to Mao himself. He also forged a deep friendship with the Communist commander, Chen Yi, who would later go on to become the Mayor of Shanghai and Foreign Minister of China. The two shared a love of literature and poetry, took hikes together, and had long conversations in French. Chen Yi also wrote poetry, and an anthology of his writings includes a “Letter to Comrade Rosenfeld,” in which Chen Yi supports the decision made by his friend, the European doctor, to join the struggle of the People’s Army of China.

Rosenfeld believed that the Communist Party would free the Chinese people from both the Japanese invaders and the Kuomintang. In 1942, he became a member of the Chinese Communist Party, and he is still considered a national hero in China.

At the end of 1949, after the People’s Republic of China was founded, Rosenfeld decided to return to Vienna. His Chinese friends advised him to remain in China, claiming that Europe no longer had a place for him. But Rosenfeld wanted look for relatives who had survived the Holocaust. At a farewell dinner held for him before going back to Austria, Chen Yi spoke about his friend’s huge contribution to the revolution and awarded him a badge of merit.

After a short time in Austria, Rosenfeld tried unsuccessfully to return to China. He also tried to emigrate to the United States, but was denied a visa due to his ties with Communist China. In 1951, he moved to Israel, settled in Tel Aviv, and worked at Assuta Hospital. It appears that he was actually waiting for a visa to return to China, but within less than a year he died of a heart attack at the age of only 49.”

and he didnt even want to move to israel. zionism and its alliance with antisemitic movements (like american anticommunism) is the negation of the diaspora. slightly tangential to this post but the red scare disproportionately targeted jewish americans. post war us jewish institutional leaders choose to move to the right in their dedication to israel and support for the us government, betraying socialist and anti zionist american jews

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

i just now learned about a recent case where a german man kidnapped and did unspeakable acts to two boys. one was german, one was a refugee. the first one was immediately treated as a missing case, but the second one was not because the cops were afraid the mother was hiding her son to avoid deportation. and the worst part is, that little boy was kidnapped in a government institution (lageso in berlin) where his mother went for help! its infuriating beyond belief.

racism is so deeply engrained in german institutions, its not funny. yet police refuses any reforms or real investigations and deny even the notion - despite mounting evidence - that there is an issue with systemic racism in german police. and we dont have an independent institution to control the cops, you know who investigates their failures and issues? other cops. and we all know how they stick together like literal shit.

but it also made me think about „missing white woman syndrome“. does anyone really care about an eastern european white woman who goes missing while being exploited in the west through prostitution, in the domestic field, nursing, or as a „mail bride“ dependent on her husband? does anyone care about a white woman in the usa going missing from a trailer park? does anyone care about a white woman who was homeless, mentally ill, drug addicted, disabled, impoverished, prostituted, or otherwise marginalised going missing? and do people not care about white men going missing?

and it also made me think about this current trend of oversimplifying and decontextualising racism. one thing i hope we all can agree on is that anti black racism is very persistent. i cant think of a single country where black people are treated preferably over other races, best case is to be treated equally as a black person, and even that is not the case in most countries. but this doesnt just apply to white majority countries. in japan or korea, or under the kafala system in the arabic gulf states, for example, black people are systematically discriminated against and exploited too. white people are also not the only ones guilty of colonialism and imperialism - albeit i dont want to minimise the scale of portugese, spanish, french, british/australin, german, dutch, belgian (neo)colonialism or the north american slave trade.

i dont know its just, everything always has to be put in context and looked at from an intersectional perspective but i feel a lot of people who fault white supremacy for everything dont do that. and dont get me wrong, white supremacy is the root of a lot of inequality and issues, but despite the name its not merely a black and white problem, its complex. for example, even if a roma or jewish person is white, neonazis dont consider them the same race as white people. or i remember my turkish professor once saying, „in turkey im considered white, but in germany im a person of colour“. because race is not just phenotype, it is also culture, nationality, location and ethnicity that matters for who is holding power and privilege.

meanwhile a lot of the same people will refuse to agree that sex matters. or claim that sex - which is a lot less ambiguous than race by the way and nobody argues that mixed race people prove that race is not real or doesnt matter the way they argue intersex people prove that sex is not real or doesnt matter - is a spectrum while chanting „black lives matter“. and i know that black communities do have that conversation about colourism and how whiteness is something even people of colour are supposed to „strive for“, which is why for example the harmful practice of bleaching your skin exists. so it is being acknowledged that race is a spectrum, but some of the same people who rightfully talk about black lives and how blackness is its own social category will call you a bigot for talking about female lives and how being female is a social category.

im not going anywhere with this, just some thoughts that came up regarding discussions on racism and sex and how they intersect too. feel very free to chime in especially as a person of colour obviously!

[wingsofhcpe]

anyway today in class we watched a documentary filmed halfway* by an Israeli man interviewing Israeli citizens and 3/5 of them called the Arabs animals who need to be purged, the 4th didn't agree but he was disappointed because he felt he couldn't fight against the overwhelming racism against Palestinians, and only an old Israeli Jewish granny stood up for them.

The man who filmed the Israeli chapter of the documentary* was exiled from Israel the MOMENT the documentary aired.

So tell me again how "it's all lies" and "it's just the anti-Israeli sentiment" when Israelis themselves are threatened with fucking exile, imprisonment and even death when they dare stand up against the apartheid and genocide imposed by their own government. Or how "it's all the Arabs' fault, the Israelis just want peace!" when the majority of the random citizens interviewed in that documentary didn't even consider the Arabs human beings.

The documentary is called Route 181 by Eyal Sivan on the Israeli chapter and Michel Khleifi on the Palestinian chapter. It was filmed and released on 2003, long before Hamas was even in power to begin with, so there's that myth over and done with too. And things have only gotten worse since then.

Educate yourselves. Don't get blinded by propaganda.

(*the Palestinian chapter was filmed by a French-Palestinian woman but we haven't watched it yet bc both parts together are more than 3 hours; will add on when we watch it).

(Also I would like to clarify that I do not believe the Israeli citizens are collectively evil. Not when propaganda by their own state runs so deep into every aspect of their life that it is extremely hard for them to even realise what's truly wrong- a viewpoint which has been confirmed with Israeli citizens who have managed to break out of it. No, I blame the West for propagating the lies of the Israeli ARMY AND GOVERNMENT when it is so blatantly false and easy to see when you live outside of its sphere of influence. And I blame those who can safely do better than this, but choose not to. That is the point of this post, along with obviously raising awareness. That is all. And remember: being against Zionism should not be an excuse to be an antisemite, when thousands of Jewish people around the world are fighting against Zionism also as we speak. Do not become a fascist as we try to fight back against fascism.)

[womenfrommars]

Hi I'm from France and I stumbled upon one of your posts about Islam. I'm genuinely sort of terrified of the future here. We finally achieved an atheist majority and fully separated religion from the state but Islam is quickly growing unquestioned. Somehow being antireligion in progressive circles has been fully turned into something bad.

And I don't think I can lie to myself anymore - muslim men are raised into an incredibly misogynistic environment and are strongly encouraged to never question it and benefit from it. I have had first hand interaction with those muslim men who sexually harassed me and pejoratively talked about my rights as a woman. On the French internet there is a massive mob of those same men being incredibly misogynistic everyday on how women dress and act.

And what is truly terrifying is that I'm told to endure it all. That it is just bad apples. Our leftists parties are in full support of it and gain voters from the muslim community, online and irl leftists constantly repeat "islamophobia" to every criticism brandished at Islam. Our discussions are getting americanized when their muslim minority is like 10 times smaller than ours and actually progressive over there. I'm so tired. There is no analysis of religion anymore. There is just choice feminism - choice to hide your body and be a property for men. And questioning the ever growing presence of men who desire to own us is somehow "white feminism". I'm lost and scared that eventually they'll become a big enough population that our laws will change to accommodate their regressive religion and take away my rights as a woman.

Somehow being antireligion in progressive circles has been fully turned into something bad.

Oh no you got that totally wrong. You can shit on Christianity all day long because it's seen as ''the white man's religion'', irrespective of all the non-white Christians who face persecution and subjugation in various parts of the world. And since October 7 it has become extremely normalised in progressive circles to demonise Zionism and by extension the Jewish religion, with false quotes from the Torah going around that all of us non-Jews are subhumans. It's only Islam that is being protected by the progressive left. They harp on about Islamophobia but Christophobia and anti-Semitism are not part of their vocabulary at all

On the French internet there is a massive mob of those same men being incredibly misogynistic everyday on how women dress and act.

Welcome in Europe in 2024! Muslims are not asking to be included, they are asking to be centered and catered to. They're not just asking for halal meat in supermarkets, they want to change European culture significantly. They want to get rid of secularism, sexual liberty, and the improved position of women in European societies. In the UK they're even handing out flyers asking people not to walk their dogs in muslim neighbourhoods because they consider dogs to be spiritually unclean animals. Muslim apologists are openly discussing child marriage online and the right for a muslim man to beat his wife. But leftists would rather talk about Christian misogyny (read: Christian women online sharing tips on how to dress modestly).

Our discussions are getting americanized when their muslim minority is like 10 times smaller than ours and actually progressive over there.

The USA has different immigration laws and mostly accept highly educated, liberalised muslims from Asia and the Middle-East. Almost all of their illegal migrants are from South America where Islam barely exists. The American muslim population is quite wealthy and highly educated as a result of the immigration laws whereas the European muslim population is lower educated and more dependent on social security, overrepresented in crime statistics, and not fully integrated into the culture as a result of the immigration policies from the 70s and the refugee crisis from 2015 and onwards. So to an American if you voice concerns about Islam specifically they see no reason to do so other than racism. I would like to see their reaction if their Christmas markets, concerts, and synagogues are blown up by Islamic terrorists. You'd think 9/11 would have been a wake-up call

And questioning the ever growing presence of men who desire to own us is somehow "white feminism".

Even when ex-muslims come out in favour of Western culture and against Islamic culture the left sees them as puppets because they think minorities cannot think for themselves. Unironically racist. Not to mention ex-muslims face extremely violent threats and social rejection from the Islamic community

I'm lost and scared that eventually they'll become a big enough population that our laws will change to accommodate their regressive religion and take away my rights as a woman.

Honestly I have had such thoughts myself, especially with mass migration coupled with the extremely high birth rate of muslim women. I think the best course of action is restricted immigration combined with intense integration efforts. And we must be willing to defend our Western values publicly even if it means we will be accused of right-wing nationalism or racism. Islam is fundamentally incompatible with secularism and equality between men and women

[sissa-arrows]

People who think the West’s support for Israel has anything to do with regretting the holocaust and wanting to support Jewish people are pathetic.

In France Eric Zemmour was in the protest and he was celebrated and people were chanting “Zemmour President” You know what Eric Zemmour said? That “Bugeaud who killed Arabs and even some Jews in Algeria should be celebrated and real French people should be proud of him”. For the record Bugeaud invented what could be called the very first Gas chambers. Women, children, elderly Algerians and livestocks were put in caves. The cave was then closed and they would start a fire at the entrance of the cave and feed it all night so the gas in the smoke would kill the people inside the cave. Zemmour is also a guy who has been condemned multiple times by justice for inciting hatred toward people based on their race or religion. He believes in the “Great replacement” you know the thing that was used as a justification in the West every single time mosques have been attacked. That same Zemmour considers that France was totally flawless in terms of protecting Jews during WW2. He said that Petain was a hero who protected Jews. When faced with someone who said that no Petain sold out Jews actually Zemmour said “No but Petain protected French Jews”. Petain removed the citizenship of thousands of Jews WITHOUT ANY DIRECT ORDER FROM NAZIS GERMANY to make them easier to deport and kill. That’s who Petain is I would never call him a hero he was a Nazis collaborator and a piece of shit but pro Israel protesters do think he is a hero.

Before the protest you know what people who support Israel in France were saying. “That’s what the Arabs want to do to us here they dream of it and if we don’t stop them and defend ourselves now we are next” but suuuuuuure this is all about the holocaust. Because you know nothing says “We regret the holocaust” like supporting a white supremacist colonial project against indigenous Palestinians and wanting to deport/kill all people you label as Arabs in your own country. All of that while supporting and celebrating a man who denied the role played by France during the holocaust and said we should celebrate the death of Jews at the hand of France in Algeria.

This has nothing to do with the holocaust and everything to do with colonialism. When the people at the protest in France chant “France, Israel we have a common enemy” and call for the death of that enemy they are not talking about Hamas cause Hamas was never a direct threat for France. They are talking about people like me. North Africans and Black people.

And this is not just France. I saw many videos of Pro Israel protests all over the world chanting “Death to Arabs” waving flags from Jewish supremacist organizations that call for the death of all Palestinians and Arabs.

But sure lie to yourself so you can sleep well and pretend this is all about supporting the poor innocent Israeli victims. After all they didn’t do anything wrong they just killed, tortured Palestinians. They just stole land from indigenous Palestinians. Put Palestinian children in cages. Used them as shield. Used phosphorus on civilians. Bombed schools and hospitals… Israeli are all soooo innocent they are just active participant to a settler colonial project that wants the end of the indigenous people of Palestine.

Last thing: If this was about trauma caused by the holocaust and about regretting what happened the one being forced to pay for it would be Europeans. Europe would be the one being forced to give up a part of its land not Palestinians who are in no way responsible for the holocaust. So cut the crap. This is all about white supremacy. Western imperialism and settler colonialism. This is colonization. Any support of colonization is a support for white supremacy nothing else.