#hating israel

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

There is an excellent paper at JCPA showing how the EU spent over 1.8 billion euros to promote gender equality among women in the West Bank and Gaza - when the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are explicitly against women's rights.

As I looked a little deeper, I saw that Spain spent €300,000 on "Building a life free of violence against women in Area C of the Governorates of Bethlehem" in 2022. I wondered exactly what the problem is in Area C specifically, which is under Israeli security control.

According to UN documents and others, there is a real problem Since the Palestinian Authority police cannot operate in Area C, some abusive men flee to Area C to avoid being arrested. Also, Arabs who live in those areas do not have to worry about being prosecuted for abusing their wives because of the security vacuum.

So what can be done? 

One NGO report summarized recommendations, mostly to add a Palestinian police presence in Area C - which would erode Israel's security control over the area and endanger Israeli citizens. 

If Israel occupies those areas under international law, then Israel should be responsible for enforcing all laws including domestic violence among Arabs. Why do no NGOs demand Israeli police arrest Arab wife beaters? If the Israeli police aren't doing their legal obligations, shouldn't there be demands for them to step up? When I was reading about this problem, that was my first thought - this is under Israel's jurisdiction and therefore Israel's responsibility.

So why don't any NGOs or the UN demand Israel adhere to international law?

Because they hate Israel and would prefer Palestinian women be beaten and abused rather than support more Israeli security control over areas it already has control over. 

To be sure, Palestinian women are reluctant to go to Israeli police, even in Arab areas of Jerusalem. A Palestinian NGO explains: "If a woman tries to go to the [Israeli] police, the family and community stigmatize her for going to the occupation and harming her family."

But that does not absolve Israel of doing everything it can to prosecute crimes in areas it controls. That is international law. Israeli police have problems in Arab communities in Israel as well, but they have to solve the problem nevertheless - and they also need to in all areas under their control.

I cannot find one NGO that constantly accuses Israel of violating international law to uphold that same law when the lives of Arab women are at stake.

No, instead of insisting that these areas are "occupied" and therefore Israeli security must prosecute Arab abusers of women, they say that Israel must allow a separate, hostile police force into its territory - which erodes Israel's control of the area, and which is their real goal, just as the EU builds illegal Arab buildings, especially schools, specifically in Area C knowing that they will be torn down for being built without permits. 

Even for "human rights" NGOs, hating Israel is more important than women's lives.

[dilfmas]

the amount of ways we have to qualify the geoncide in gaza in order to get people to care is actually sickening to me. “it’s a feminist issue!” “it’s a disabilities issue!” “it’s an environmental issue!” like i’m sorry but even if this was happening solely to able bodied men and was causing no harm to the environment, it would still be wrong because it’s a genocide and these people are being bombed and killed and starved every fucking day. you shouldn’t need an extra label to give you a reason to care about people that are dying.

[joyishome]

That was her baby. Her whole 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥. Gone, in the matter of seconds.

[odinsblog]

This year’s Super Bowl was a weapon of mass distraction. If there’s any justice, future generations will remember the game not for Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, or Taylor Swift but for the US-funded attacks on Palestinian civilians that occurred while so many Americans were glued to their TVs. During the game, watched by well over 100 million people in the United States, Israel launched a bombing raid of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, the most densely populated area on earth. More than 1 million people had fled now-leveled Gaza City to the refugee camps in Rafah and surrounding areas. Palestinians who have survived previous Israeli strikes are now staving off disease, destitution, and fear.

Meanwhile, CBS granted the Israeli government space for an ad about the 130 hostages left in Gaza. This ad, meant to build public support and justify the slaughter of nearly 30,000 civilians in Gaza, spurred 10,000 people to register complaints with the FCC, because the commercial did not disclose that a foreign government had paid for it. Coupled with the Rafah raid, this looks more like military synergy than happenstance. 

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft also spent $7 million on an ad from his organization Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism. It features Clarence Jones, a 93-year-old former speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kraft and other pro-war billionaires use the memory of King so much, they should be paying his family indulgences for slandering his name. The ad failed to mention that Kraft has given $1 million to pro-war AIPAC and donated $1 million in 2016 to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Given that Kraft says that the Nazi march in Charlottesville was his motivation to start his foundation (Charlottesville was the one with “good people on both sides,” according to Trump), his hypocrisy is insidious.

Kraft and Israel want the same thing: a blank check to uproot Palestinians from Gaza and build settlements. One can also only imagine if a peace organization tried to buy an ad asking Israel and the United States the question: “How many dead children will be enough?” I suspect it would be denied faster than a public-service announcement about concussions.

(continue reading)

[un-ionizetheradlab]

It makes me so uncomfortable to see people post blatantly anti-Jewish content and then turn right around and stan Jewish historical figures. Like, do they hate us or love us?

[hilacopter]

conflating diaspora jews with the actions of the israeli government is not okay, yes, but have you considered it's not okay to conflate israeli jews with them either

[sky-daddy-hates-me]

While the news is talking about Iran, Israel continues to kill innocent civilians in Gaza who are just trying to get back to their homes. But no, keep interviewing Israelis who saw a few drones get shot down about how terrifying it was for them.

[chanaleah]

Today I got an ad on YouTube that said:

“I think it’s safe to say that no one has suffered more in the last hundred years than the Palestinian people.”

Read that again.

“I think it’s safe to say that no one has suffered more in the last hundred years than the Palestinian people.”

100 years ago was 1924. A whole lot of suffering has happened in the past hundred years and while of course Palestinians have suffered much since 1948 (which was 76 years ago) it is absolutely historically inaccurate to say that they have suffered the most.

For a brief recap, in the last 100 years (including ongoing events)…

WW2, (~60+ million civilian deaths) specifically the Holocaust (~12 million deaths) as well as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (~200,000+ deaths total)

The Korean War (2.5 million deaths total)

The Vietnam War (1.3 million deaths total)

6-9 million people died due to Stalin's policies in the USSR

Yugoslav Wars (~150,000 deaths total)

Conflict in Sudan (2.5 million deaths total)

Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (~100,000 deaths in Ukraine)

Syrian Civil War (300,000+ civilian deaths)

Cambodian Genocide (~2 million deaths)

Conflict in DRC (~6 million deaths)

Rwandan Genocide (~800,000 deaths)

Iraq War (~150,000 deaths total)

Afghanistan War (~170,000+ deaths total)

To say that Palestinians have not suffered would be wrong. To say that Palestinians have suffered immensely this year would be correct. But your activism for Palestinians should not ignore history or erase the sufferings of many others that have occurred in the past 100 years.

If anyone would like the sources for any of these numbers I'm happy to provide, or if anyone would like to point out an event I missed.

note below the cut

*note - civilian refers to death counts that are only civilians, ~ refers to death counts that are in-exact, deaths total refers to death counts that include combatants

[moonyluv-s]

“b-b-but From the River to the Sea is hate speech 😭😭🥺🥺” give me a break.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by David Bernstein

It's kind of horrifying that the loudest voices bemoaning Palestinian civilian suffering in Gaza will harshly criticize everyone and anyone–Israel, the US, the EU, the UN Security Council, American Jews, you name it–except for Hamas (and its allies like Iran), and the one thing they won't do is suggest Hamas surrender, even though that would immediately end the war, and also end Gazans being ruled by an oppressive medieval theocracy that steals aid money to build weapons and villas for its leaders.

In short, no matter how much they purport to care for Palestinians, their biggest priority is that Israel not emerge victorious over Hamas. I won't go so far as to claim that they don't care about the Palestinians. I will claim, strongly, that they hate Israel much more.

A perfectly good (but hardly the only) example is Karen Attiah, who has a sufficiently influential position as world opinion editor at the Washington Post that someone like her deciding that hey, maybe Hamas should just surrender and release the hostages could help move the needle, given that Hamas is counting on world opinion to stop Israel's offensive and keep it in power. Even if Hamas is beyond world opinion, its patrons and allies in Turkey, Qatar, and even Iran are not.

And the folks I'm referring to won't even suggest that they want Hamas to surrender for rhetorical purposes. Like, "Of course my preference would be for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages, but if that can't happen, and it looks like it can't, to end the civilian suffering Israel should cease fire." Nope, they won't even suggest that they would *prefer* Hamas to surrender. How twisted does your mind have to be to think Hamas is the relative good guy here? And that you won't even pretend you think otherwise just to help persuade, because you can't bring yourself to even do that?

[sunbeamedskies]

“Noa Argamani was treated well!”

She was kept as a hostage slave in a wealthy family’s apartment, forced to clean it whenever they knocked without warning, for EIGHT MONTHS. Just because they fed her does not mean she wasn’t a hostage and a slave. Her mother also has terminal cancer and was afraid she was never going to see her again.

If you start justifying human rights abuses against women, Jews, and Asians (she is half Chinese) because they are Israeli, you were never against antisemitism, misogyny, or wanted to stop Asian hate.

You can support both Palestinian and Israeli civilian lives.

[nientedal]

What progress at home has biden enacted? What policies of his show that he is making progress that prove he is actually different than trump?

I like to pretend I have faith in humanity, so I'll answer as if you're asking this in good faith.

Biden's DEA has lifted restrictions on telehealth prescriptions to make appointments and assistance more accessible.

He put a funding package into place to help unhoused people get access to mental and physical healthcare, as well as short-term and long-term housing.

He has attempted and is still attempting to get student debt relief through - this was blocked by Republican judges appointed by Trump, but he's still working on it.

Infrastructure repair - his administration has budgeted funds to actually fix some severely-damaged and frequently-traveled bridges.

Trying to expand access to healthcare to include undocumented immigrants who came to the USA as children (Dreamers) under the Affordable Care Act. Support for Navigator programs and outreach has also been increased.

He has vetoed Republican-led bills that were attempting to overturn environmental protections - one that would have forbidden investment fund managers to consider climate change in their portfolios (I have two degrees in accounting and this is actually huge), and another that would have overturned restrictions on agricultural runoff into our waterways.

He and his administration worked for ages to get rail workers paid sick days.

This is just some of what he's been doing. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republicans want to criminalize the lives of LGBT people like you and me. They want to eliminate no-fault divorce and force births that will kill parents or devastate them financially. They have stated flat out that they want to install a military dictatorship in the USA. They attempted to put that in motion on January 6th, 2021. They failed once. They will do better next time.

One party wants to house the homeless and expand social safety nets, while the other one wants to criminalize homelessness. One of them wants a future in which I might be able to vote to change how much of a war machine my country is, while the other one wants to eliminate my ability to vote entirely. Those are not the same. Those literally are opposites.

At the end of the day, all you and I can do is choose to do the least amount of harm possible. You and I cannot choose to do no harm. This is the USA, we sell war, you and I cannot choose to do no harm. I wish we could, my god do I wish we could, but that is not an option. So we grieve for the harm we couldn't eliminate and work to minimize the harm that is done. Despite all the crap they support, Democrats are the minimum amount of harm right now. Acting like they aren't is exactly what brought us to an election where our options are a future where we are either wading in blood or drowning in it.

Not voting for Biden will not help Palestine. Not voting for Biden will guarantee a Republican president who will make the situation in Palestine WORSE. AND it'll hurt a lot of other places as well, both at home and abroad, because Republicans are about business and the USA is in the business of war! And I would very much like that to change someday! I would very much like to someday be able to choose to do no harm! And I know what I have to do to try for that future, so what are YOU going to do? There is no standing off to the side in this. If you aren't helping pull, you're the dead weight we're pulling. Are you going to dig your feet into the mud and blood and drown us there? Or are you going to get the fuck off your ass, grit your teeth, and help us pull free?

[geminibubblegumbitch]

You can't be antizionist and pro-indigenous. You have to pick one.

You can't support "land back," but then say that Israel has no right to exist. You have to pick one.

Or are you only pro-indigenous and pro-landback when it isn't The Jews™️?

[it-was-me-zion]

“they have to dig for their history in this place” yeah cause you fucking buried it

[cata613]

[marbledew]

Do you condemn the murder of children? Or is it complicated when it’s middle eastern children? When it’s brown children? When it’s Muslim children? Is it complicated when they don’t speak English? When you can’t understand their cries for help? Is it complicated when the news tells you it is? When they lie? Is it complicated because you can’t let go of the idea that your friends and your politicians know everything, or is it complicated because you don’t care for the lives dying in this genocide?

The evidence is undeniable by anybody with a shred of morals and a brain at all. Only the uneducated, stupid, ignorant, or evil continue to support the Israeli government’s war crimes, genocide, and apartheid state. It isn’t antisemetic to support Palestine, it’s the intellectually and morally correct stance. Free Palestine, fuck Israel.