#fundamentalist islamists

[eaglesnick]

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”  Seneca the Younger

Nigel Farage is jetting off to the USA for a second time in a month. Pocketing  £12,000 for a speech at the “Keep Arizona Free Summit". it appears he is more interested in increasing his own personal wealth than serving the people of Clacton who elected him as their MP.

The “Keep Arizona Free” flier has this billing:

“Featuring Keynote Speaker Nigel Farage. Also known as “Mr Brexit", is a British politician, broadcaster and political analyst” (Keep Arizona Free Summit 2024)

Other speakers include the crusading Christian Brandon Tatum, a man who converted to Christianity in 2008 and now says he is working for the “Great Commission”. This means Tate is an evangelical Christian.

Unfortunately, Tate goes beyond simply preaching the word of God. Much like political Islam and Islamic extremists, Tate combines his faith with politics. He describes the Democratic Party in America as “the enemy".

“You cannot say that you are a Christian and you believe in Christian values and you turn around and vote for a party that believes in mutilating kids and gay marriage and all this other stuff,”  (Tate: 30/11/23)

I’m not sure how much child mutilation and “other stuff” happened under democrats Obama and Joe Biden but mixing politics and religion is a recipe for intolerance and dictatorship: just look to Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Yemen where Islamic theocratic governments rule with an iron fist. But don’t think a Christian theocratic dictatorship could not happen in the West.

“Jesus is their saviour, Trump is their candidate” was a recent headline in an apnews.com article.  And reiterating the hatred of liberal politicians, espoused by Nigel Farage’s fellow speaker Brandon Tate, Time Magazine said this:

“Trump has white evangelicals in his pocket. Whatever cognitive dissonance some devout Christians may feel for supporting a twice-impeached serial philandering liar who tried to stage a coup and threatens violence against political opponents is easily dismissed with the conviction that no Republican nominee, no matter how problematic, could be worse than losing to a Democrat.”

Another speaker sharing the Keep Arizona Free Summit platform with Nigel Farage is James T. Harris, another deeply religious man on the right of US politics, a man “committed to faith".

Farage will be in the company of like-minded people. Speaking of Britain, Farage said:

"We are a Christian country with a Christian constitution and a Christian monarch…I absolutely believe in Christian values that have made this country great." (Daily Mirror: 19/12/2015)

According to Evangelical Focus, only 6% of the UK population are practicing Christians, while 42% are non-practicing Christians. This presents Farage with a problem. Declaring his Christian believes will not bring him many votes, unlike in the USA where political evangelicalism thrives. But don’t believe for one minute right wing Christians don’t look to Farage as a UK saviour in the same way fundamentalist Christians in America look toward Trump.

This was a headline during the recent UK election campaigne:

“Reform UK: The Best Option for British Christians”. (Crisis Magazine: 01/07/24)

Fundamentalist Christians, like fundamentalist Islamist, are totally intolerant of people with values and believes that do not match their particulate brand of religious zealotry. 

Railing against the concept of social justice, Crisis said that Christians in the western world (do they mean white Christians?) were:

“..ignoring the voting recommendations of bishops wedded to a “social justice” ideology largely developed by the very same prelates, priests, thinkers, and activists who variously tolerate, implicitly accept, or actively favor sexual immorality, female ordination, liturgical abuses and numerous other evils—turning instead to such parties as the Brothers of Italy, Poland’s Law and Justice Party, and France’s National Rally.”

There you have it. GOOD Christians vote for the far-right. BAD Christians vote for liberal democracy, which brings us back to the “Keep Arizona Free Summit" and its guest speakers.

All three are regarded as “good Christians” hence their invitation to speak.

I am sure the people of Clacton, where over half of those over 16 are “economically inactive” will be cheering their support as Farage pockets his £12,000  fee as a “good Christian”. Maybe, he will ask his fellow speakers to pray for the one-in-three children in Clacton who are living in poverty? Maybe Farage, the highest paid MP in Parliament, will take heed of what Jesus said about riches.

 “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Matthew 19:12)

Maybe, but I sincerely doubt it.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Btw if you don't like how most anti-colonial resistance movements in SW Asia and North Africa are Islamist now maybe the US and co. shouldn't have worked so hard to destroy every trace of Arab communism by propping up Salafist and other fundamentalist anti-communist regimes and political parties during the first Cold War lol

[nietp]

Thinking about how the past year of intense sionist discourse has profoundly transformed/revealed the political landscape in France to the point where it is clearly one of the causes of the rise of the far right and fascistic party and one of the reasons we might have a fascistic gouvernement in only a couple of weeks.

Thanks to right-wing+liberal+centrist+centre left parties spending months attacking the pro-palestine leftist party, calling them terrorists, islamist fundamentalists, and antisemites, while congratulating+patting on the back the fascistic far right party funded by former Nazis for going to a pro-Israel march "against antisemitism", and presenting them as the reasonable option against the pro-palestine left, we are now looking at the possibility of said far right party winning the next election, having a majority of seats in the national assembly when they used to have literally ZERO seats only 2 years ago. Obviously sionism is not the only reason but it polarised the political space in a matter of days. Because islamophobia is so prevalent in this country and sionism propaganda is doing its job so very well, we're literally looking at Holocaust survivors asking people to vote for the far-right party. I know extremely sionist Jewish french people who are about to vote far right because they're convinced that if the pro-palestine left wins in 2 weeks, they will get bombed in their Parisian apartments on election night for being Jewish. Meanwhile the far right party has already announced it wants to ban kosher meat and wearing kippas in public spaces. Meanwhile Palestinians are actually getting massacred and bombed as we speak. This is all so insane. This year has taught this country more than ever before that sionism is an excellent introduction to fascism.

[jewelleria]

stop infantilizing palestinians.

it’s just fucking racist. it contributes to the (false) idea that palestine were so oppressed by their evil colonizers that they had “no choice” but to act like barbarians. it promotes the belief that senseless violence is the only way palestinians, a supposedly primitive and backwards people according to the uneducated westerners that defend them, know how to resist—and therefore excuses terrorism against jews in the name of “freedom fighting.” it paints jews as evil oppressors when in fact they are the oppressed, it shifts the focus away from hamas, the real oppressors of palestinians, and it places the blame entirely on israel.

you know what that is? it’s racist, it’s antisemitic, and it’s absolute bullshit.

hamas is not a group of unorganized and primitive barbarians who “just don't know any better,” or who were “forced” into making the genocidal choices that they did. they are adults who have the autonomy, free will, and political power to make their own choices. they have the power to end this conflict, and they choose instead to perpetuate it.

hamas been the governing and influential power in the gaza strip for almost twenty years. they are a sunni-islamist, fundamentalist, and genocidal terrorist organization hell-bent on burning israel to the ground and bringing the rest of the world's jews with it—and they know exactly what they are doing.

[tamamita]

What's the difference between a Shia & Sunni? And why do they hate each others? (I'm an atheist so I don't know shit about religions)

Keep in mind that this is no way trying to shame or denounce my Sunni siblings, but I do believe it's important to highlight a historical fact and how it's detrimental to the current geopolitical situation, since we're embittered by historical events, while at the face of imperalism and colonialism.

Shi'as are a political group of people who iunitially held that Ali (a), the cousin of Muhammed (pbuh&hf) was the successor of the Prophet. This is evident in numerous hadiths, such as Hadith Ghadeer Khumm, the Hadith of Mubahila and the Hadith at Thaqalayn. Nevertheless, the issue steems from the incident at Saqifa, which was a council met by some companions by the Prophet, who held an abrupt meeting, discussing who'd lead the Muslim nation following the Prophet's death. The meeting was held without consulting Ali (a) and they chose Abu Bakr to become the caliph. As a result, Ali (a) did nor approve of the selection and did not pledge his allegience to Abu Bakr. the incident at Saqifa serves as a catalyst to the incidents that would befall the Muslim community, such as Fatimah's (a) miscarriage and the subsequent wars against Ali (a) by some of the Prophet's companions, Ali (a) and his sons Hassan (a) and Hussain's (a) martyrdom.

This caused the rift in the nascent Islamic community, the Shi'as were any Muslim who held that Ali (a) was the successor by divine right, and swore their allegience to Ali (a), while the rest of the Muslims were nonpartisans. Sunni Islam is the standardization of Islamic scholastic and jurisdictional opinions which were formed in the Abbasid caliph. So it's errounous to assume that there was a split between Sunnis and Shi'as, when Sunni Islam was formed a few centuries later.

The reason for the hate is because of fundamentalist attitudes toward Shi'as. Some Sunnis and Salafis believe that Shi'a Muslims are heretics, because of their veneration of saints and the importance of Shrine visitations, the other reason is because Shi'a Muslims practice the doctrine of dissociation, which is the belief that any of the enemies of the Prophet's household should be cursed, thus some of the personalites of the Sunnis are cursed by Shi'as. Ancient scholars, suchs as Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Qayyim placed some fatwas declaring Shi'a Muslims to be heretics. These scholars' opinions are still popular today and used as pretext for prejudice against Shi'as.

In a geopolitical context, Iran is often considered to be rivaling power to Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism, and have often threatened the Saudi hegemony. Because of the Axis of resistance and their growing influence in the SWANA region, the Gulf States have attempted at all cost to undermine the growing sympathy for Shi'as. Bahrain is upholding an apartheid against it's Shi'i majority, The Saudi refuses to ackowledge the Shi'i Houthis in Yemen, but supported the Hadi government, thus imposing a devastating blockade. The Iraqi war saw the Shi'as gain power, while the Sunnis were often a disenfranchised group following the Blackwater massacre, which contributed the rise of various militias and terrorist groups, such as ISIS. While in the Syrian Civil War, Shi'as mostly made up the bulk of resistance fighters that sided with Assad against the Free Syrian army and Salafi Islamist groups, such as, Tahrir al-Sham, Jaysh al-Sunnah, Islamic front, Ahrar al-Sham and etc. These have contributed to the increase of tension between Sunnis and Shi'as. However, the fight against Israel have united Muslims, but the biggest obstacle the Muslim community must get through are the Salafist and Wahhabi clerics, espousing tayyafiyah (sectarianism)

[catarinastone]

So pride in my city ended up being in july (this past weekend) and there were a few interesting moments.

The first was when I was on the train next to two girls who also looked like they were going to pride. One of them had a "free palestine" sign.

Then a woman, probably in her fifties, with her hair covered (it was not a hijab, it was more like a cap) asked to see the sign. She then let them know that she was palestinian and talked a bit about whats been going on there. And then asked if there was going to be a protest.

The girls responded that they were going to pride and the woman bemoanes that she couldn't go because she had to work.

They then went on talking and I also heard that apparently one of the girls was studying at the same uni as the woman's son.

Anyways, not two days after that, on this hellsite, I came across this gem:

So obviously not someone to have an honest conversation with, but just for those people who think islam is an especially bad religion:

not every muslim is a fundamentalist. Even in places where fundamentalism has taken root, it's usually been the consequence of violent western interference. Not every majority muslim country is an islamist state, there are plenty of secular muslim majority countries. And finally, in case you haven't been paying attention to whats been happening in the US in particular, CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE NOT BETTER

[sethshead]

Another disconcerting element of “Queers for Palestine” is that it popped up in prominent left-wing anti-Israel/pro-Palestine rallies in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s terrorist attacks, before Israel had the chance to respond. As such, there is no way to interpret this slogan and the surrounding leftist fervor except as a signal of support not merely for Palestine, but specifically for Hamas, the jihadist movement with the explicit aim of eradicating the state of Israel. It's imperative to understand that Hamas, as detailed in its 1988 Covenant, is propelled by a fundamentalist Islamist ideology with the goal not only of eliminating all Jews but also conquering the world — just like ISIS. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar was recorded saying, “The entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.” Western support for Hamas, under the guise of Palestinian liberation, overlooks the deep-seated radical Islamist ethos driving the organization, which, if unbridled, would jeopardize the very freedoms cherished by LGBT people across the developed world. Anyone who doubts this should try being gay, bi, or trans in most of the Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA) Muslim-majority countries. Virtually all of these nations have laws that criminalize homosexuality and being trans, some of which carry the death penalty​​. Human Rights Watch’s "Everyone Wants Me Dead" report succinctly encapsulates in its title alone the perilous environment faced by LGBT individuals in these regions​. [...] The aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran is a harrowing tale of leftists being tortured and executed en masse by the very Islamic regime they supported for the sake of their anti-imperialist goals. Many Iranians who aligned with leftist organizations supported the revolution only to find themselves persecuted by Islamists they helped put in power. Immediately following the revolution, the new regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini began systematically oppressing LGBT people and publicly executing them by the thousands. These atrocities were justified as a means to "eliminate corruption" and prevent the "contamination" of society. Between 4,000 to 6,000 gay, lesbian, and bi people have been executed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution​​. Iran’s legal system, rooted in Islamic law, criminalizes consensual sexual relations between same-sex individuals, with penalties ranging from lashes to death. Iranian law does not distinguish between consensual and non-consensual same-sex intercourse, allowing authorities to prosecute both perpetrators and victims of sexual assault​.

But I've been told by queer activists that criminalized, illicit sex is hot, and that gay men in the Muslim world therefore have the best and most sex of anywhere. Given that frequent, anonymous, and risky sex is to those activists the high point of LGBTQ liberation, gay men in Gaza and Iran are thus freer than they are in the US. It is truly Michel Foucault's world, and we are all just living in it.

Back in reality, however, Navabi places his finger on a core part of the "Queers for Hamas" problem: the flattening of all conflicts into a single perceived intersectional struggle between power and the lack thereof. Motives, histories, local considerations, ideological incompatibility - all of these can be replaced by the imposition of provincial Western issues on very different peoples, ideas, needs, and lives. None of the individual conflicts and movements embraced by intersectionality discourse are allowed to breathe on their own, to have their own particulars respected. Instead it all becomes one vast, undifferentiated, vague liberation kitsch using the same prefabricated slogans and jargon. "How is that not its own form of small-minded, white-man's-burden, Western colonialism", you may ask. And you would be right.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Armin Navabi

To be sure, the Palestinian people have suffered more than their fair share, and it’s easy to see how the Palestinian resistance narrative can carry the allure of righteous rebellion, especially for factions of the hard left who have their own aspirations of a large-scale dismantling of our liberal society. The vicarious thrill of romanticized revolution that leads some to go far beyond simply advocating for the Palestinian people and expressing solidarity with Hamas, ignores the jihadist ideologies at the core of such organizations. These ideologies are oppressing LGBT Palestinians at this very moment, and given half a chance, they would oppress the very leftists now voicing support for the Palestinian cause. And, indeed, this has happened before.

The aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran is a harrowing tale of leftists being tortured and executed en masse by the very Islamic regime they supported for the sake of their anti-imperialist goals. Many Iranians who aligned with leftist organizations supported the revolution only to find themselves persecuted by Islamists they helped put in power.

Immediately following the revolution, the new regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini began systematically oppressing LGBT people and publicly executing them by the thousands. These atrocities were justified as a means to "eliminate corruption" and prevent the "contamination" of society. Between 4,000 to 6,000 gay, lesbian, and bi people have been executed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution​​. Iran’s legal system, rooted in Islamic law, criminalizes consensual sexual relations between same-sex individuals, with penalties ranging from lashes to death. Iranian law does not distinguish between consensual and non-consensual same-sex intercourse, allowing authorities to prosecute both perpetrators and victims of sexual assault​.

Source: The Algemeiner

Images of gay and bi men hanged from cranes so that they may slowly suffocate to death serve as grim reminders for anyone interested in human rights: align with Islamic fundamentalists at your peril.

"Queers for Palestine", and the nuanced realities it glosses over, underscores the need for a more informed and discerning discourse — a discourse that transcends catchy slogans and moral binaries and delves into the complex, often discordant ideologies at play in the Israel-Palestine conflict. That way, we can advocate for a better future without bolstering forces antithetical to liberal values, and without betraying LGBT people by undermining their very rights and freedoms. We can’t do that while overwriting the complicated dynamics of a 75-year foreign conflict with our own provincial identity politics.

[mariacallous]

In the context of a turbulent and unsatisfying three years in office, the incredibly awful September in progress might rank as the three-party German government’s grimmest month yet. After elections in the east that issued record results for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party—another vote, in Brandenburg, looms on Sept. 22—the government is also reeling from the fallout of two Islamist terrorist attacks that left three dead and eight wounded. One of those attacks involved a Syrian asylum-seeker whose petition for protection in Germany had been denied; he had links to the fundamentalist Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Now the government has announced its response: starting on Sept. 16, Germany will unilaterally impose border closures, for six months, on all nine of its borders with other European countries. Incoming foreign nationals will be screened according to arbitrary criteria, and rejected applicants will be forced onto Germany’s next-door neighbors.

Although some details remain unclear, Germany’s plan amounts to an unprecedented step. Eight of the neighboring countries are EU members, and all of them are part of the Schengen regime that guarantees freedom of movement across borders within the bloc and recognizes the right to political asylum. Meanwhile, Germany’s mainstream opposition party is demanding an even more severe policy—one that would essentially prevent the country from accepting any new asylum applicants onto its territory at all.

“Until we achieve strong protection of the EU’s external borders with the new common European asylum system, we must strengthen controls at our national borders,” said Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser. Her proposal involves expedited procedures at the German frontiers to determine whether each person who arrives may enter and apply for political asylum.

According to Faeser, the planned border screenings will limit illegal migration and “protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime.” There will be more deportations during this period, she said, but they will conform to EU law. But some experts disagree. European law expert Alberto Alemanno, a professor of European law at HEC Paris, told the Guardian that the German controls “represent a manifestly disproportionate breach of the principle of free movement within the Schengen area.”

And Sergio Carrera, a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), a Brussels-based think tank, told Foreign Policy that the border closures will most probably have a knock-on effect across the continent: “There’s the risk of these measures triggering a race to the bottom. Where’s the end point? We’re talking about rights that go to the very heart of what the EU is all about.”

The new measures at the German borders ratchet up pressure on European Union norms that are already strained. According to EU law, free movement within the bloc is guaranteed within the Schengen area, which encompasses most EU member countries (except Cyprus and Ireland) as well as Switzerland and Norway. Foreign nationals claiming political persecution have the right to apply for political protection in the country through which they enter the EU. But the bloc’s member countries may suspend Schengen’s guarantees in the case of “internal security concerns” as long as those concerns are proportional and legitimate and the suspensions temporary. Brussels must be briefed in advance.

Germany has had periodic border checks in place along the Austrian border since 2015—a response to the refugee crisis of 2015-16. Last year, in response to heightened migration flows, Germany established checks on its borders shared with Poland, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland. In fact, across the European Union, member states have temporarily restricted internal border crossings 404 times since 2015, according to German daily Die Tageszeitung.

Germany’s move would take another step toward turning the exception policy of internal EU border checks into the rule, argued Christian Jacob of Die Tageszeitung. A European Parliament study issued last year claimed that this was already happening and that a “systematic lack of compliance with EU law” could undermine rule of law guarantees.

One result would almost certainly be a chain reaction across the bloc. Walter Turnowsky, a migration expert at Denmark’s Der Nordschleswiger, a German-language newspaper, fears exactly this. “Officially, the announced German border controls are also temporary, but ultimately the announcement means the end of free travel across the EU,” he said. “From now on, governments will claim: ‘Well, Germany controls its borders too,’” so they will do the same.

The new German measures aim to stop non-EU citizens who have already applied for asylum elsewhere in the bloc from entering Germany by bus, train, or car from Schengen zone neighbors. (Currently, only third-country nationals who have invalid papers or don’t intend to file for political asylum are refused entry.) Under the new measures, the migrants would be returned to the country where they entered the Schengen area and originally applied for asylum, which are usually one of the EU’s southern external border countries, such as Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, or Spain.

German border guards would detain the foreign nationals at the border—perhaps even in a kind of jail, apparently for no longer than five weeks—until their status can be verified. Foreign nationals who had not previously applied for asylum but who claim political persecution could then enter Germany and apply for protection, which German courts would rule on at a later date.

One of the looming questions is what criteria German police would invoke to screen those parties interested in entering the country. Since not every person traveling into Germany can be stopped, “it will be people who look different, regardless of citizenship,” said Carrera, of CEPS. “A certain racial appearance will make some people suspect. This is racial profiling, and it is illegal.”

Against the background of its fierce battle in eastern Germany with the AfD, Germany’s conservative opposition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has opted to steal the other party’s thunder by endorsing measures very much like those of the far right—and until recently entirely taboo. Claiming that the government’s measures do not go nearly far enough, the CDU argues that no people—none at all—should be permitted to enter Germany in the absence of a visa or European passport.

This would de facto end the country’s commitment to offering asylum. In order to make this flagrant violation of international law at least appear to conform to EU regulations, under the CDU plan, Germany would declare a state of emergency as a result of internal security threats. This, the CDU believes, would legalize the across-the-board rejection of unwanted third-country nationals.

The proposal also goes a gigantic step beyond the limitation of movement in the EU, effectively eviscerating the right to political asylum.

“This kind of measure, and those the government are taking, will be investigated and could come before the EU court of justice,” Carrera said. “The EU will determine whether the security concerns really justify such a breach of EU law.” Other experts have said that Germany will not be able to prove that the recent attacks or the numbers of asylum-seekers—which have fallen this year—actually threaten the state’s internal security and thus justify (or indeed, are really aided by) these measures.

One of the many problems with the new German modus operandi: Neighboring states will have to accept people refused by Germany back onto their territory—and Austria, for one, which has general elections on Sept. 29 (and where polls indicate the situation for migrants is getting even worse, with a very strong showing of the far-right Freedom Party likely) said forget it, it won’t take them.

Poland is also up arms at the prospect of traffic jams at the borders that would obstruct commercial and private transportation. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the German move a “de facto suspension of the Schengen Agreement on a large scale.”

The Belgian daily Le Soir seems to hit the nail on the head: “With governments like this, there’s no need for the far right to be in power. The pressure of elections and the fear of extremes are causing those in power to run around like headless chickens, with migrants as the only means for decompression.”

EU expert Thu Nguyen, the deputy director of the Berlin-based Jacques Delors Centre, told Foreign Policy that unilateral decisions taken by Germany—the EU’s most populous state—are entirely unproductive. She noted that the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, a set of new rules passed this year for managing migration and establishing a common asylum system at a bloc-wide level, addresses some of the concerns about immigration raised by Germany and other EU states, including by facilitating faster procedures for asylum applicants at the continent’s external borders.

After all, Germany—including the CDU’s parliamentary group in the EU, the European People’s Party (EPP)—was essential in drafting the pact, together with the 25 other EU member states. When the pact came in front of the European Parliament earlier this year, EPP parliamentarian Tomas Tobé said that “the absolute best way to help support a European migration policy is to be loyal to the whole migration pact.”

[argyrocratie]

(...)

"What is the Houthi movement?

The Houthi insurgency is a Zaydi Shiite Islamist political movement established in 1992 to challenge Yemen’s longtime, and increasingly corrupt, leader Ali Abdullah Saleh. Following massive street protests, Saleh resigned his post in 2011. After the resignation, a national unity dialogue was held in Yemen’s capital Sana’a to try to resolve a host of Yemeni political conflicts. However, those talks eventually broke down, prompting the Houthis to advance on Sana’a with the goal of taking power. This sparked Saudi Arabia’s deadly US-backed air, ground, and naval invasion of Yemen, which lasted for seven years and killed an estimated 9,000 civilians, as well as significant numbers of Houthi forces, in repeated airstrikes. Despite the overwhelming force used by Saudi Arabia, however, the Houthis gained control over roughly a third of Yemen’s land—and two-thirds of its population—over the course of the war.

In April 2022, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis negotiated a truce that has nearly eliminated the fighting in Yemen. The truce halted offensive military operations, allowed fuel ships to enter Yemeni ports, and restarted commercial flights from Sana’a airport. However, it did not offer a comprehensive political settlement, leaving open the threat of renewed hostilities.

How have the Houthis become involved in the war?

After Israel began bombing Gaza on October 7th, the Houthi movement—which has long held what Yemen expert Helen Lackner called a “fundamentalist foreign policy position against the US and Israel”—announced that it was ready to intervene in solidarity with Palestinians. “There are red lines in the situation related to Gaza, and we are coordinating with our brothers in the jihad axis and are ready to intervene with all we can,” the Houthis’ leader said. As part of this effort, the movement has carried out 27 attacks in the Red Sea between November 19th and January 11th, most of them on commercial ships linked to Israel (although some of the attacks have targeted ships without a clear connection to Israel). The movement has also tried to fire on American warships and on Israel itself.

In the attacks on commercial ships, the Houthis have mostly fired missiles at them, though on November 20th, the group’s fighters seized a cargo ship and detained the crew members onboard. These attacks have discouraged shipping companies from traversing the Red Sea, the fastest route from Asia to Europe; many are instead sailing around the Horn of Africa, which adds $1 million to the typical cost of a roundtrip. On January 11th, the White House cited this trade disruption as a key motivating factor for the US’s bombings in Yemen, noting that “more than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea—which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times.”

The Houthi movement’s attacks in the Red Sea, as well as the retaliation the attacks have generated, have revitalized the group’s power within Yemen. Prior to October 7th, the Houthis were facing discontent due to their authoritarian rule, their failure to pay salaries, and their control of aid in the face of spiraling poverty. Their confrontation with Israel, however, has seen “their popularity suddenly skyrocket, including in areas in Yemen where they don’t rule and in stark contrast to other Arab [states] who are at best being silent, or at worse, helping the enemy,” Yemen expert Helen Lackner told Jewish Currents. After incurring significant losses in their conflict with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the Houthis’ firm opposition to Israel has also helped them to recruit more young men to their military who believe they will have the opportunity to fight in Palestine, according to Lackner.

In this context, experts say it is unlikely the spate of Western bombings will end the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea—and such attacks could even contribute to the group’s bolstered popularity. “They’re willing to live with some level of retaliation because they can then position themselves as having been targeted by this Western alliance that is serving the interests of Israel,” said Mohamad Bazzi, director of New York University’s Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. Other experts have also warned that the US strikes risk provoking further escalations: For instance, the Houthis could decide to attack Saudi Arabia in a bid to up the pressure on American allies.

(...)

What is Iran’s role in the regional escalation?

While the groups responding to Israel’s bombing of Gaza—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Iraqi and Syrian paramilitaries—are spread out across the region, they are all supported by Iran, which has armed and financed them as part of an overall strategy to contest US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. This Iran-supported network is often called the “axis of resistance,” and the alliance’s close collaboration reflects an approach developed by Qassem Soleimani, who was a key Iranian military leader until he was assassinated by the US in January 2020. “A big part of his strategy in the region was for the groups to get to know each other, and to share training and expertise—and that continued after the assassination in Baghdad,” said Bazzi.

Experts emphasize that Iran does not have full control over the groups it funds and arms, which often pursue their own agendas. For example, the relationship between the Houthis and Iran, according to Lackner, “is a bit like Netanyahu’s relationship to Biden. If they agree, and they want to do the same thing, then they do it. But they are not afraid to diverge either,” said Lackner. For instance, the Houthis ignored Iran’s orders to halt their advance on Sana’a in 2014, which sparked the years-long civil war and the conflict with Saudi Arabia. In the current conflagration, Bazzi said, Iran is unlikely to be directing the various forces to pursue “specific attacks,” but Iranian military leadership is “probably involved in larger-scale conversations about the division of responsibilities of different parts of the axis of resistance.”

According to Bazzi, at this moment Iran is carefully calculating how to maintain regional credibility by showing support for Hamas, while not going far enough to provoke a war with powerful foes like the US and Israel. “The primary Iranian calculation is about regime survival, and they don’t want to do anything that seriously jeopardizes their survival,” said Bazzi. Parsi said that so far, Iran has benefited from avoiding risky moves—in contrast to Israel, which has diminished its own “global standing” with its operations in Gaza. “Israel’s pariah status globally—at least outside of the West—is something that the Iranians are drawing benefits from. But that only works to the point that this doesn’t escalate into a larger conflict,” he said.

How is the US responding to the regional conflict?

Since October 7th, the US has repeatedly said that it wants to prevent more fighting in the region. Early on, the US dispatched warships and fighter jets to the Mediterranean to deter Hezbollah from entering the fray. Biden administration officials have also ramped up diplomatic efforts to halt a regional conflagration: The president sent envoy Amos Hochstein to Lebanon to try to negotiate a solution to the fighting around the blue line, and reportedly warned Israel against escalation with Hezbollah in private conversations. In October, when Israel had made plans to pre-emptively strike Lebanon, President Biden called Netanyahu to tell him to “stand down” on the attack plans, and ultimately, Israel did not launch a wide scale attack, according to a December Wall Street Journal report. “The priority for the Biden administration is to limit or prevent the broadening of the conflict,” said Schenker.

At the same time, the US has carried out repeated bombings in Iraq, Syria, and now Yemen, even as officials continue to talk about de-escalation. “We’re not looking for conflict with Iran. We’re not looking to escalate and there’s no reason for it to escalate beyond what happened over the last few days,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last Friday, after the first US bombings of Yemen. But yesterday, the US military again bombed Houthi targets for the third time in a week, and then designated the Houthis as a terror organization, blocking the group’s access to the global financial system. By targeting Yemen, experts say the US is significantly expanding the regional war—“escalating regional tensions and adding fuel to a conflict,” as Bazzi wrote in a recent column published in The Guardian. “The conflagration could spiral out of control, perhaps more by accident than design,” he noted.

Many Middle East analysts say the Biden administration’s attempt to avert regional war is failing for one main reason: its refusal to couple a plea for de-escalation with advocacy for a ceasefire in Gaza. “Seeing the wider regional conflict as something that can be managed separately from Gaza is the source of the dissonance [in the administration’s strategy],” Bazzi told Jewish Currents. “You can’t prevent the wider regional war effectively without addressing the core immediate issue, which is the Israeli assault on Gaza. It’s just wishful thinking in the Biden administration that somehow it can separate the two.”

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I've seen people call Hamas right-wing and maybe it's my American perspective but I don't consider Hamas right-wing or left-wing. It's an Islamic death cult, separate from the left vs. right political sphere.

While technically not inaccurate, it's an insanely America-centric view, specifically a left wing American view, because they see all politics as a straight line from left to right where the farthest left is perfect communism (or whatever their own personal utopia is) and the farthest right is a fundamentalist, fascist theocracy. But that's not even remotely an accurate way to describe politics.

The political compass grid, with authoritarian left, authoritarian right, libertarian right, and libertarian left, is much more accurate and allows for more nuance. And on that grid, Hamas would probably be near the top right corner, which is auth right. In reality though, most American right wing politics these days are a lot closer to the libertarian right than the authoritarian right. So while it's technically true that a fanatical theocracy is by definition "right wing", it's nothing like what the modern right advocates for. Broadly, the modern right wants freedom of speech, armed citizens, small government, less taxes, religious freedom, and to protect children. Hamas is a radical Islamist terror group who wants to kill every Jew in Israel and institute a global caliphate run under strict Islamist law. The American right and Hamas are natural enemies, since basically all their ideals and goals are diametrically opposed.

[humanerrers]

Israel and the world should strive to strengthen the very large community of Palestinians who accept Israel but who seek full political rights and equal standing as citizens. If the world values the ethos of human dignity regardless of race or religion, then at some point Palestinians, including Palestinian refugees, will need to have a nation-state of their own, whether in a unified polity consisting of the West Bank and Gaza, or in a single Israel/Palestine state, or in an agreed-upon regional federation where all residents are citizens with full equal rights. Israelis will need an iron-clad guarantee of their security and a comprehensive, binding cessation of all hostilities, as well as a normalization of relations with their Middle Eastern neighbors.

No one, especially not now, can be deluded into thinking that any of this will be easy. I’ve spent much of my life pursuing the goal of Palestinian independence, to no avail. A reckoning and reconciliation of this magnitude will face implacable foes, including fundamentalist Islamists who reject Israel outright and traffic in the worst sort of anti-Semitism; militant secular Zionists who treat Arabs as strangers in their own land; right-wing religious Zionists who thirst for a “Greater Land of Israel” and eschew Palestinian rights altogether; and Christian evangelicals who view an expansionist Israel as crucial to their end-times theology. Belligerence is mutually reinforcing, and everyone involved must reject this cycle of hostility.

I would add only that, in parallel to our support of the large community of Palestinians who accept the existence of Israel and advocate for political rights, we in the West need to do our part to also support the MANY Jewish Israelis who accept the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause and the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people. We need to support the people on the ground, both Jewish and Palestinian, who are working under INCREDIBLY HOSTILE circumstances to create the conditions for peace. Because this is Tumblr, I will say explicitly that this cannot be done by reducing Israel’s existence to a European colonial project — which, whatever the intention, has the effect of legitimating violence against Israeli civilians. Violence begets violence, which fuels extremism on both sides. If you do not care about Israeli civilians, you do not care about Palestinian civilians. Full stop.

[the-rainbow-lesbian]

The trends, behaviors, and beliefs that led to the disastrous Iranian Revolution threaten to repeat themselves today in the West. We have already begun to see early glimpses. The most prominent example is the ongoing wave of mass anti-Israel and/or pro-Hamas protests following the Oct 7th attacks. Not only has Hamas been a disaster for women, LGBT people, and their own civilians, but the Palestinian “one state” solution would result in a country as unfree as Iran — and one equally antithetical to left-aligned values. Other warning signs include the case of Hamtramck, Michigan, where a progressive-backed Muslim-majority town council voted to ban Pride flags, or the spate of young TikTokers siding with Osama bin Laden’s 21-year-old “Letter to America.” This goes beyond Islamism. Segments of the far-left and Christian far-right are more than willing to team up, as we’ve seen in recent years with European populist movements, the opposition to defending Ukraine from Russian conquest, and radical lefties voting for Donald Trump to “let the empire burn.” The question is: why?

There is a particular strain within leftist thought that often exhibits a fascination with revolution and a drive to dismantle and disrupt, sometimes indiscriminately. Young (and some not-so-young) radicals see the problems that exist today, and with no appreciation for how far we’ve come, pronounce society to be irredeemably flawed. The only solution is to tear it all down. Whatever rises from the ashes, this dubious logic goes, cannot help but be better than the status quo. This perspective, while rooted in a desire for human betterment, usually leads to the precise opposite. Such revolutionary zeal is not just a desire for change, but an impulse to break the existing order, often “by any means necessary”, as so many recent anti-Israel protest signs can attest. This includes allying with any group or ideology that opposes the current power structures. This “enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach leads to alliances that are, at best, ideologically inconsistent, and at worst, counterproductive to the values that many leftists traditionally uphold.

In their pursuit of anti-establishment goals, many leftist factions find common ground with Islamist movements, not because of shared values, but because of a shared opposition to perceived imperialist or colonialist forces. The fact that Islamic fundamentalists oppose women’s rights, secular governance, and basic freedoms; the fact that they criminalize homosexuality and bisexuality in every society they control, is willfully overlooked by the far-left in the pursuit of a common adversary. But the blanket romanticizing of perceived underdogs, often without a critical assessment of their values or intentions, risks empowering forces that, given requisite power, could establish regimes far more oppressive than those they replace. In their quest for a radical overhaul, they’re willing to discard tangible progress in the pursuit of an idealized, hypothetical future. In Iran, decades of progress in economic development and women’s rights were thrown away in the revolution. The West today, which is so much further along, has even more to lose.

The Western world as we know it has been sculpted by liberal ideals such as democracy, individual freedom, LGBT rights, women’s rights, civil liberties, secularism, and the rule of law. Two hundred years ago, three-quarters of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today, this figure has decreased to less than 10%. Over this same span, life expectancy has soared in parallel with the expansion of liberal democracies.

There's a misconception that our current state of well-being is a permanent, fixed baseline that we can take for granted. Instead, progress can be fragile and temporary. The rights and freedoms we enjoy today are not guaranteed tomorrow. They are recent gifts of history, not immutable laws of nature. The potential to regress is real. While the champions of illiberal ideas fight tooth and nail for their beliefs, the guardians of liberal values seem to slumber. They need a wake-up call.

Despite facing myriad external adversaries, the greatest threat to liberal values comes from within. In their misguided quest to dismantle the liberal order, radical elements can act as a Trojan horse, surreptitiously opening the gates to any destructive force that aligns with their anti-liberal agenda. The unholy alliance between the Western left and the Islamist right has happened before. Let’s learn the lessons of history.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

since the end of world war two - which was a reset as the world was devastated by war and shocked about the holocaust and other atrocities committed by nazi germany and the axis powers - the usa (in no particular order):

had segregation until only around 50 years ago despite taking the moral high ground for beating the racist nazis

granted immunity to nazis and actively recruited nazi scientists

declared the war on communism costing hundreds of thousands of lives and ravaging vietnam as well as funding islamistic terrorism as a countermeasure

then declaring the war on terrorism after the war on communism backfired with 9/11 costing another thousands if not millions of lives with devastating consequences for countries like afghanistan

destabilised and hindered democracy in several countries and regions that still deal with the consequences today such as venezuela

declared the war on drugs but also had a cia funded crack epidemic

have built a wall on the mexican but not the canadian border

spent billions over billions for military and other operations to control other countries and have the most power on a global scale while many of the population cant even afford healthcare and live in very precarious situations or even without housing due to the unwillingness to regulate corporations and grant better workers and tenants rights

refuse to regulate big corporations and let technology companies grow unchecked which is kind of ruining the internet

claim to hate religious fundamentalism when its about islam while evangelicals are one of the most powerful political groups and fundamentalists are allowed to homeschool and isolate their kids

abused the jews wish for their own country to install the state of israel for control in the middle east, funding displacement and systematic cleansing of palestinians with the help of the british

still systematically discriminate against the native population and leave them in a vulnerable position leading to a huge issue with kidnapping, trafficking and unsolved murders of native girls and women

has almost 5 % of its population incarcerated who then are not allowed to vote with 30 % of the female prison population being prostitutes

have a sham democracy run by billionaires and reagan is mainly responsible for undoing social progress by enforcing neoliberalism and lying about trickle down effects

have no public broadcast and all news sources are privatised

still have the death penalty and abortion bans in some states

probably a shit ton more im forgetting now

yet usamericans have the gull to get on a high horse and point fingers at other countries because what? a european was mean online? lmao. and what gets me the most is that they often couldnt even name the president or point out said countries on a map.

people joke about the usa because they have made themselves out to be land of the free, the best country in the world, the worlds cop, the poster child democracy, while miserably failing their own people, immigrants following the promise set by the usa for a better life, and every country that was unlucky enough to be invaded and destabilised by the us military and the cia. on top the usa have a hegemonic grip on the majority of the globe and export culture wars and propaganda through hollywood movies and shows especially to other western countries. so give me a break

[sethshead]

The fact is, “Queers for Palestine” and their allies don’t give a damn about LGBTQ people under Palestinian rule.

The Palestinian lesbian advocacy group Aswat moved its headquarters from Ramallah to Haifa because the group could not operate safely in the Palestinian Authority. For the same reason, the Palestinian LGBTQ group Al-Qaws put its headquarters in West Jerusalem.

News organizations have reported countless cases where LGBTQ Palestinians have been beaten mercilessly by Palestinian authorities, sometimes with the approval of their families and sometimes not. In one case, a young gay Palestinian who had run away to Israel after his parents beat him decided to visit them in the West Bank. There he found Palestinian police giving him an ultimatum: Spy on other LGBTQ Palestinians or be tortured. And indeed he was.

In another case, Palestinian police dragged a young man from his home because he was gay. Then he was submerged in sewer water by a rope up to five hours at a time every day for three weeks. An investigation by a human rights think-tank at Tel Aviv University, which hardly takes a party line, revealed this the common pattern of torture for countless of other LGBTQ Palestinians.

[…]

Israel abolished its law against sodomy in 1988, 15 years before the US Supreme Court did. Israel banned employment discrimination against LGBTQ people in 1992, 28 years before the US Supreme Court did. In 1993, Israel formally allowed openly LGBTQ soldiers to serve, but the IDF had rarely enforced the ban before then. The United States didn’t allow openly LGBTQ people to serve until 2010.

Israel granted spousal benefits to same-sex partners in 1993 and recognized same-sex marriages performed abroad in 2006, years before US Supreme Court mandated marriage equality. And in 2022, Israel banned the devastating practice of so-called “conversion therapy” that seeks to change the sexual orientation of LGBTQ minors. Today only 22 of the 50 US states, plus the District of Columbia, have banned it.

Israel exists as a relative haven for LGBTQ people in the region not because of “pinkwashing”. That disreputable charge is based on ancient antisemitic prejudices about Jewish insincerity and manipulation. No, LGBTQ Israelis thrive because of Israel’s liberal values of tolerance, humanity, compassion, and individual rights. It is these very values that drive in no small part the hatred religious fundamentalists, from Islamists to leftists, harbor for Israel. Hamas itself believes a reason (((global Zionism))) must be annihilated is because it “promotes homosexuality and sexual immorality”.

There is good reason to criticize Israeli policy, and even call for more protections there against Jewish fundamentalist terrorists or for same-sex civil marriage. But for Western LGBTQ groups to outright side with Hamas for the elimination of Israel, and to dismiss all positive developments in Israel as “pinkwashing” is absolutely Chickens-for-KFC territory.

[enriquemzn262]

I might cheer if Hamas fucks up IDF but I won't support Islamist fundamentalists, same goes for Houthis, people forgot that they are... not the good guys either?

I can understand the IDF hate, those guys have been doing sketchy things ever since the Suez Crisis (dad personally saw some of THAT when he was there as part of the UN), if not earlier, BUT Hamas is still very much a fundamentalist, totalitarian and terrorist organization, and I can guarantee you that in the event that somehow they won and took full control of the current Israeli territory, their next move would be taking hold of southern Lebanon, the Sinai peninsula, maybe a chunk of Jordan, AND they would not give back the Golan Heights to Syria, instead choosing to go to war with them.

Those groups are just like that.