#it just doesn’t compare to what’s being done to Gaza

[jewelleria]

I don’t usually talk about politics on here, if ever. But it’s been almost six months since the conflict in the Middle East flared up again, and I’m finally ready to start. Here are some of my thoughts.

I say ‘flared up’ because this has happened before and it’ll happen again. Because, even though what's currently going on is absolutely unprecedented, those of us who live in this part of the world are used to it. Let that sink in: we are used to this. And we shouldn’t have to be. 

But I use that term for another reason: I don't want to accidentally call it the wrong thing lest I come under fire for being a genocidal maniac or a terrorist or a propaganda machine, etc., etc.—so let’s just call it ‘the war’ or ‘the conflict.’ Because that’s what it is. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, who you love, or who you hate. 

This post will, in all likelihood, sit in my drafts forever. If it does get posted, it certainly won’t be on my main, because I'm scared of being harassed (spoiler: she posted it on her main). I hate admitting that, but honestly? I’m fucking terrified. 

I also feel like in order for anything I say on here (i.e. the hellscape of the internet) to be taken seriously, I have to somehow prove that a) I’m “educated” enough to talk about the conflict, and b) that my opinion lines up with what has been deemed the correct one. So, tedious and unnecessary though it is, I will tell you about my experience, because I have a feeling most of the people reading this post are not nearly as close to what’s happening as I am.

How do I explain where I live without actually explaining where I live? How do I say “I live in the Red Zone of international conflicts” without saying what I actually think? How do I convey the fear that grips me when I try to decide between saying “I live in Palestine” and “I live in Israel”? I don't really know. But I do know that names are important. I also know that, due to the various clickbaity monikers ascribed to the conflict, it would probably just be easier to point to a map. 

I haven't always lived in the Middle East. I've lived in various places along America’s east coast, and traveled all over the world. But in short, I now live somewhere inside the crudely-drawn purple circle. 

If you know anything about these borders you probably blanched a bit in sympathy, or maybe condolence. But in truth, it’s a shockingly normal existence. I don't feel like I've lived through the shifting of international relations or a war or anything. I just kind of feel like I did when COVID hit, that dull sameness as I wondered if this would be the only world-altering event to shape my life, or if there would be more. 

I've been told that, in order for my brain to process all the horrific details of the past six months, there needs to be some element of cognitive dissonance—that falling into a sort of dissociative mindset is the only way to not go insane under the weight of it all. I think in some ways that’s true. I have been terrifyingly close to bus stop shootings when my commute wasn’t over; I have felt my apartment building shake with the reverberations of a missile strike; I have spent hours in underground shelters waiting for air raid sirens to stop. 

But. I have also gone grocery shopping, and skipped class, and stayed up too late watching TV, and fed the cats on the street corner, and cried over a boy, and got myself AirPods just because, and taken out the trash, and done laundry on a delicate cycle, and bought overpriced lattes one too many days a week. I have looked at pretty things and taken out my phone because, despite it all, I still think that life is too short not to freeze the small moments. 

So I'd say, all things considered, I live an incredibly privileged life—compared, of course, to those suffering in Gaza—one filled with sunsets and over-sweetened knafeh and every different color of sand. One that allows me to throw myself into a fandom-induced hyperfixation (or, alternatively, escape method) as I sit on the couch and crack open my laptop to write the next chapter of the fic I'm working on. 

But there are bits of not-normalness that wheedle their way through the cracks. I pretend these moments are avoidable, even if they’re not. 

They look like this: reading the news and seeing another idiotic, careless choice on Netanyahu’s part and groaning into my morning coffee. Watching Palestinian and Jewish children’s needless suffering posted on Instagram reels and feeling helpless. Opening my Tumblr DMs to find a message telling me to exterminate myself for reblogging a post that only seems like it’s about the war if you squint and tilt your head sideways. 

These moments look like all the tiny ways I am reminded that I'm living in a post-October seventh world, where hearing a car backfire makes me jump out of my skin and the sound of a suitcase on pavement makes me look up at the sky and search for the war planes. They look like the heavy grief that is, and also isn’t, mine. 

Here's the thing, though. I know you’re wondering when the ball will drop and my true opinion will be revealed. I know you’re waiting for me to reveal what demographic I'm a part of so that you, dear reader, can neatly slap a label on my head and sort me into some oversimplified category that lets you continue to think you understand this war. 

No one wants to sit and ruminate on the difficult questions, the ones that make you wonder if maybe you’ve been tinkered with by the propaganda machine, if you might need to go back on what you’ve said or change your mind. We all strive for our perception of complicated issues to be a comfortable one.

But I know that no matter what I do, there will always be assumptions. So, while I shudder to reveal this information online, I think that maybe my most significant contribution to this meta-discussion spanning every facet of the internet is this: 

I am a Jew. 

Or, alternatively, I am: Jewish, יהודית, يَهُودِيٌّ, etc. Point is, I come from Jews. And, like any given person, I am a product of generation after generation of love. 

I'm not going to take time to explain my heritage to you, or to prove that before all the expulsions and pogroms, there was an origin point. If you don’t believe that, perhaps it’s less of a factual problem and more of an ‘I don’t give weight to the beliefs of indigenous people’ problem. But, in case you want to spend time uselessly refuting this tiny point in a larger argument, you can inspect the photos below (it’s just a small chunk of my DNA test results). Alternatively, you can remember that interrogating someone in an attempt to make their indigeneity match your arbitrary criteria is generally not seen as good manners. 

Now, let’s go back to thathateful message (read: poorly disguised death threat) I received in my Tumblr DMs. I think it was like two or three weeks ago. I had recently gained a new follower whose blog’s primary focus was the fandom I contribute to, so I followed them back. I saw in my notes that they were going through my posts and liking them—as one does when gaining a new mutual. Yippee! 

Then they sent me this: 

I tried to explain that hate speech is not a way to go about participating in political discourse, but the person had already blocked me immediately after sending that message. Then, assured by the fact that I surely would never see them complaining about me on their blog (because, as I said, they blocked me), they posted a shouting rant accusing me of sympathizing with colonizing settlers and declaring me a “racist Zionist fuck.” Oh, the wonders of incognito tabs.

Where this person drew these conclusions after reading my (reblogged) post about antisemitism…. I'm not actually sure. But I greatly sympathize with them, and hope that they weren’t too personally offended by my desire to not die. 

For a while I contemplated this experience in my righteous anger, and tried to figure out a way to message this person. I wanted to explain that a) seeing a post about being Jewish and choosing to harass the creator about Israel is literally the definition of antisemitism and b) that sending a hateful DM and refusing to be held accountable is just childish and immature. But I gave up soon after—because, honestly, I knew it wasn’t worth my effort or energy. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to change their mind. 

But I still remember staring at that rather unfortunate meme, accompanied by an all-caps message demanding for me to Free Palestine, and thinking: the post didn’t even have any buzzwords. I remember the swoop of dread and guilt and fear. I remember wondering why this kind of antisemitism felt worse, in that moment, than the kind that leaves bodies in its wake. 

I remember thinking, I don’t have the power to free anyone.

I remember thinking, I’m so fucking tired. 

And before you tell me that this conflict isn’t about religion—let me ask you some questions. Why is it that Israel is even called Israel? (Here’s why.) Why do Jews even want it? (Here’s why.) But also, if you actually read the charters of Islamist terrorist organizations like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah (among others), they equate the modern state of Israel with the Jewish people, and they use the two entities interchangeably. So of course this conflict is religious. It’s never been anything but that.

But I do wonder, when faced with those who deny this fact: how do I prove, through an endless slew of what-about-isms and victim blaming, that I too am hurting? How do I show that empathy is dialectical, that I can care deeply for Palestinians and Gazans while also grieving my own people? 

There's this thing that humans do, when we’re frustrated about politics and need to howl our opinions about it into the void until we feel better. We find like-minded souls, usually our friends and neighbors, and fret about the state of the world to each other until we’ve gone around in a satisfactory amount of circles. But these conversations never truly accomplish anything. They’re just a substitute, a stand-in catharsis, for what we really wish we could do: find someone who embodies the spirit of every Jew-hating internet troll, every ignorant justifier of terrorism, and scream ourselves hoarse at them until we change their mind.

But, of course, minds cannot be changed when they are determined to live in a state of irrational dislike. In Judaism, this way of thinking has a name: שנאת חינם (sinat hinam), or baseless hatred. It's a parasite with no definite cure, and it makes people bend over backwards to justify things like the massacre on October seventh, simply because the blame always needs to be placed on the Jews. 

So when a Jew is faced with this unsolvable problem, there is only one response to be had, only one feeling to be felt: anger. And we are angry. Carrying around rage with nowhere to put it is exhausting. It's like a weight at the base of our neck that pushes down on our spine, bending it until we will inevitably snap under the pressure. I’m still waiting to break, even now.

I wish I could explain to someone who needs to hear it that terrorism against Israelis happens every single day here, and that we are never more than one degree of separation away from the brutal slaughter of a friend, lover, parent, sibling. I wish it would be enough to say that the majority of Israelis (which includes Arab-Israeli citizens who have the exact same rights as Jewish-Israelis) wish for peace every day without ever having seen what it looks like. 

I wish I could show the world that Israel was founded as a socialist state, that it was built on communal values and born from a cluster of kibbutzim (small farming communities based on collective responsibility), and that what it is now isn’t what its people stand for. 

I wish the world could open their eyes to what we Israelis have seen since the beginning: that Hamas is the enemy, Hamas is the one starving Palestinians and denying them aid, Hamas is the one who keeps rejecting ceasefire terms and denying their citizens basic human rights. Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, not Israel. Hamas is responsible for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And Hamas are the ones who are more determined to murder Jews—over and over and over again, in the most animalistic ways possible—than to look inwards and see the suffering they’ve inflicted on their own people. I wish it was easier to see that.

But the wishing, the asking how can people be so blind, is never enough. I can never just say, I promise I don't want war. 

When I bear witness to this baseless hatred, I think of the victims of October seventh. I think of the women and girls who were raped and then murdered, forever unable to tell their stories. I think of the hostages, trapped underneath Gaza in dark tunnels, wondering if anyone will come for them. I think of Ori Ansbacher, of Ezra Schwartz, of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali, of Lucy, Rina, and Maia Dee, of the Paley boys, of Ari Fuld and of Nachshon Wachsman. I think of all the innocent blood spilled because of terror-fueled hatred and the virus of antisemitism. I think of all the thousands of people who were brutally murdered in Israel, Jews and Muslims and Christians and humans, who will never see peace.

My ties to this land are knotted a thousand times over. Even when I leave, a part of me is left behind, waiting for me to claim it when I return. But when I see the grit it takes to live through this pain, when I see the suffering that paints the world the color of blood, I look to the heavens and I wonder why. 

I ask God: is it worth all this? He doesn't answer. So I am the one, in the end, to answer my own question. I say, it has to be. 

Feel free to send any genuine, respectful, and clarifying questions you may have to my inbox!

EDIT: just coming on here to say that I'm really touched & grateful for the love on this post. When I wrote it, I felt hopeless; I logged off of Tumblr for Shabbat, dreading the moment I would turn off my phone to find more hate in my inbox. Granted, I did find some, and responding to it was exhausting, but it wasn’t all hate. I read every kind reblog and comment, and the love was so much louder. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 🤍

Source Reading

The Whispered in Gaza Project by The Center for Peace Communications

Why Jews Cannot Stop Shaking Right Now by Dara Horn

Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet by Ala Mohammed Mushtaha

I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy by Rachel Goldberg

The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel by Coleman Hughes

Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values by The New York Times Editorial Board

There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive by Peter Beinart

The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families by Ruth Margalit

“By Any Means Necessary”: Hamas, Iran, and the Left by Armin Navabi

When People Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them by Bari Weiss

Hunger in Gaza: Blame Hamas, Not Israel by Yvette Miller

Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever by Anshel Pfeffer

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology by Bruce Hoffman

The Wisdom of Hamas by Matti Friedman

How the UN Discriminates Against Israel by Dina Rovner

This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Future of the Middle East by The Free Press

Why Are Feminists Silent on Rape and Murder? by Bari Weiss

[pattern-recognition]

it may just be the vyvanse anxiety talking, but i feel pursued by a completely enveloping dread that i can’t escape from. ive felt hounded by my impotence for years but rn it’s like everything is compounding and amplifying. on one hand there’s the political situation, both in Palestine and on the broader question of socialism or annihilation. on the former it feels like just as things are escalating they’re slowing down, the zionist pigs are delaying and delaying the invasion in what i suspect is a tactic to try and mitigate the immediate pressure they feel from resistance, while they wait for Gaza to be completely exhausted and break it down piecemeal because they’re silently terrified of the threat of Hezbollah and a wider conflict. It could just be a result of my isolation and my distorted sense of time, but it feels like the news is slowing down, like people in the west are starting to shift into a mode of complacency once again and treating it as another topic of the week to be discarded. on the personal side though, the situation is all fucked up as usual but with a distinctly new and acrid flavor, my entire world is acid reflux. Ive skipped a lot of school recently, much more than i should have, under the guise of taking the time to finish assignments that were already overdue but then just putting them off further. ive done this before and always to my catastrophic detriment, ive failed classes ive otherwise excelled in purely because of my neglect to fucking do the things that are required of me. i’m running out of money and my family is too, my parents are getting divorced soon, my father is extremely depressed and so am I, and to make matters worse my sister is also entering college soon and if my dad doesn’t break off those connections financially that will be just another burden on him, like I am. on one hand i feel like my own problems are so inconsequential compared to the world’s as to be unworthy of my time yet i seem to be unable to devote my energy to either. for the former my level of participation is barred on the basis of being an atom is a sick sea of apathy and for the latter i continuously fall into the same pathetic modes of depression and self destruction. nothing i’m doing is sustainable, nothing the world is doing is sustainable; at every turn all i see are unreconcilable relationships that are about to break from one side or the other, dialectics that are poised to synthesize in the most gruesome fashion. i just want to go into the parking lot and fucking scream at the sky until my nicotine soaked lungs give out

[otgwbgyu]

this palestine shit makes me so pissed off. all these privileged ppl brushing it aside and acting as if it doesn’t exist like fuck yall. if it was ur country getting destroyed and ur people dying from genocide you’d be desperate for help. you’d be going to extreme lengths for help. yet u lack the small amount of empathy required to give a fuck abt others

i can’t repost stuff on tiktok or send any messages supporting palestine bc my mom could easily find out abt both and i don’t even know what she’d do to/with me. twitter’s a difficult situation bc im on edtwt and other “problematic” subtwt, and bungee and potentially my mom has had access to said user so one peep and im done for. i still able to like and rt to at least boost posts’ algorithm, but that’s abt all i can do. i’m boycotting, doing my daily click, and liking and sharing/rt posts abt the genocide yet i still feel like im not doing enough. and these fat fucks go around munching on mcdonald’s like pigs and watching disney like children.

it’s so baffling how zionists have turned this into an issue regarding antisemitism when it never has been for the past century. they’re just pulling that card to victimize themselves and turn it all on the palestinians. like yeah. all palestinians hate jews. oh! and gay ppl! (???) it just baffles me that ppl look at what israel is doing and find it justifiable when they’ve broken multiple warfare laws i’m p sure. didn’t they stop white sulfur or something like that on palestine or lebanon?? i js cant believe ppl see israel slaughtering an entire country and say “it’s okay bc they hate jews” …. yeah, sure, whatever u say

israel claims they’re under attack when their “country” (heavy on the quotations) seems like a paradise compared to palestine. like gaza is in flames and knocked to rubble while israel sustains skyscrapers and city life without any disruption but ofc it’s israel that’s being attacked!! of course!!

look, i don’t hate jews. but i hate israel. not bc its a jewish “country”, but bc its a wannabe country that kills loads of innocent ppl every single day. a large portion of which r children. and those who aren’t killed are subjected to inhumane conditions and the constant fear of death lingering over their shoulders bc an air strike could hit at any minute. at that point, death sounds like a sweet release. and that should never be something an entire population has to go through

real jews and ppl with actual hearts know this very well and will strive to support palestine 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸❤️❤️

[lordyssac]

what’s going on in gaza is awful and any human being with a heart wants it to stop, but it is not a genocide and doesn’t even meet the definition of a genocide. (in ethnic cleansing one’s population does not GO UP like the population of Palestine whose population has only doubled and tripled over the years they also claim they were being cleansed, compare that to the multiple jewish populations who used to exist in the neighboring arab states who now no longer exist, and THAT is what ethnic cleansing looks like) it’s a WAR and people die in wars, millions of people can die in wars, and bad things happen, because war is hell, but it’s also a war that Hamas started when they snuck in and murdered over a thousand people, and every death toll or story coming out of gaza is from the gazan health ministry which is run by Hamas which cannot be trusted because they are terrorists (which used to be common sense but this is upside down world now)

So let’s be real here. Isreal govt and military is not beyond reproach and are no angels, no govt or military is, and for any legitimate war crimes they are proven to have done then they must face consequences and be punished. but I am tired of Hamas starting a war and then playing victim when people die in the war they started and when they’ve been offered a two state solution multiple times and reject it every single time. At some point, that’s on them. The jews are indigenous to the region and deserve to have a homeland and as events have shown, they deserve a safe place more than ever. If they cannot learn to share the land and live peacefully with Jews, who have tried to split it several times, then my sympathy is running out. How many times can you extend a hand of peace and have it slapped away before you stop trying? millions of jews are not going to just up and move, never gonna happen, so there needs to be a compromise.

(And I am tired of people misusing the word apartheid, which is also not applicable to this conflict as israel is not an apartheid state, literally arabs who live there have said it’s not, there are arabs on the supreme court ffs that’s not an apartheid!!!!!! lots of people come in from gaza to work in isreal! people just parroting talking points they see online with no critical thinking done)

Thank you for the ask. I cannot agree with you about the genocide thing based on what I've understood. I think what started as a defence war is now genocide. There’s been too many victims who have died from being bombed, being starved and being unable to get medical care. (But again, this is my perception and I'm not God so I can't see everything from nowhere.)

But also, perhaps semantics is not what we should focus on here.

What we should focus on is how to stop this and prevent this from happening in the future. We need to decide, if the exact definition of words like genocide or zionism is the hill we wanna die on. If we could see past that, see the people with good intentions, we would finally be able to start working towards common goal: peace.

[nickyhemmick]

A Very Stressed American Jew here again,

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to respond to my ask and yes, I’m someone who loves hearing as many perspectives as possible so I’d love some sources from you. I also very much appreciate the fact you are being very careful to only reblog posts that are anti Israel, not antisemetic (which is frankly a breath of fresh air, the internet has been a bit exhaustingly full of both antisemitic & Islamaphobic content these past feel days as I bet you’ve seen)

I’ve also been to Israel on a Birthright trip. We met people who ( both Palestinian and Israeli) on various sides of the conflict and learned a ton about it, from both perspectives which I was lucky to have the opportunity to do. We even went a little into the Gaza Strip to talk to these people running a pro Palestine peace movement and it was so important to me hearing those stories.

I never said they were on equal footing militarily, they definitely are not, Israel definitely has that advantage. But you are incorrect about Israel always being the aggressor since 1948,they’ve defended themselves about as often as they’ve attacked. Isreal is a small country comparatively to the ones surrounding it, so it makes sense it defends itself heavily in case of an attack.

I 100% agree that there are too many people who are compliant with the mistreatment of many Palestinians! I’m not anti #freepalestine at all! I get why that is a thing. But I also stand with Israel( but that does not mean I condone every action they take. ) Overall I think the situation is extremely complicated and some sort of compromise should be reached.

It’s just been very frustrating to see so many people reblog things on a situation just bashing Israel because so many others are doing it. Especially when then don’t know what they are talking about or using big buzz words that they don’t know what they mean, or spreading misinformation. It’s been on both sides and has been very very draining. I just want peace and some sort of solution. It makes me extremely happy you know what you are talking about and can debate politely yet happily about it. The internet has been so ‘ either agree with me 100% or you a bad person’ about this so it’s refreshing to see you are not like that.

I’ve done a lot of research into it from as many perspectives as I can get my hands on.

Some extremest Israelis are hurting Palestinians

Some extremest Palestinians are hurting Israelis

Both sides are throwing rockets at each other and it’s terrifying.

Both sides claim the other side is brainwashed

There is so much biased propaganda out there on both ends it’s hard to know what is truly happening.

I know people living in Israel who have sent me videos they’ve taken of rockets flying over there heads and I’m so scared for them. I’m so scared for all the innocent people caught in the crossfire on both sides.

Thank you for a more nuanced response and I’d love some of your sources,

A Very Stressed American Jew

Hi anon, 

I wasn’t going to respond to this until after my math final tomorrow but I’ve spent the past two days thinking of your ask and the things I wish to articulate in my answer. 

I am going to start here: how can you say you support Israel but say you are also pro-free Palestine (as in, you said you are not anti free Palestine). In my opinion, these two ideas cannot coexist. Simply because, the entire establishment of Israel has been on violent, racist, colonial grounds. 

(Super long post under here guys)

You said you don’t support all Israel’s actions, and definitely, just because you support something doesn’t mean you can’t criticize it. However, in my opinion, if you do not support Israel’s actions against Palestinians there’s not much left to support? I admit this is a very biased view as I am Palestinian, but many things that people support about Israel have existed before its creation: as in, these are things and qualities that have existed in Judaism and are not due to “Israeli culture.” There is no Israeli culture. There’s Jewish culture--100%. But there is no Israeli culture, because Israel does not only steal Palestinian land, but Palestinian culture, too. Such as claiming Levant food is Israeli; hummus, ful, falafel, shawarma. I mentioned food from this article I know is culturally and traditionally of the Levant, and has been for centuries, it is not something that has come to culinary creation in the past 73 years. 

I do not think this is a complicated issue. I said that in the previous ask and I’ll say that again. Saying it is a complicated issue is trivializing the deaths of innocent Palestinians, the violent dispossession our ancestors endured, and the apartheid they live under. I hope if anything comes from this discussion it is you removing the “it’s a complicated issue” phrase from your vernacular. 

This is not complicated. A journalist reporting the death of martyrs only to discover that of them include two of his brothers is not complicated. The asymmetry of Israel vs Palestinian armed forces is not complicated, nor is the asymmetry in Israeli vs Palestinian suffering (which I will get to later). It is not complicated.  Destroying the graves of martyred Palestinians (or just in general, the graves of the dead) is not complicated. Little children being pulled from the rubble, children being forced to comfort one another as they are covered in the ashes of their decimated homes, attacking unarmed citizens in peaceful demonstrations (you can find videos before this attack where they were playing with kites and balloons), destroying an international media office and refusing to allow journalists to retrieve the work they are spending every waking hour documenting but claiming it was because it was a hide out for a “Hamas base,” fathers who are trying to cheer their frightened children up only to end up dead the next day, while many Israeli have the privilege and the option to go to hotel-like bomb shelters is not complicated. 

This brings me to my next point: the suffering of Palestinians cannot be compared to the inconvenience of Israeli’s. On one side, you have children who are happy to have saved their fish in the face of their homes and lives being decimated behind them to Israeli’s in Tel Aviv having to cut their beach day short to get to bomb shelters. You have mothers and fathers ready to set their lives down for their children to save them from bombs to Israeli’s enjoying their brunch only after making sure there are bomb shelters there. You have Palestinian children being murdered to blocking out the sound of sirens in the safety of your bomb shelters. (The first picture of the Palestinian child is not from footage of the recent problems). You have the baby lone survivor of a whole family recovered from rubble. His whole family, gone, before he ever had the chance to realize that he even exists, while Israeli’s decide to flee out of the country,(Translate the caption from Twitter, it checks out), or have to leave the shower due to sirens. Who is really suffering? 

I won’t sit here and pretend like the thought of rockets flying over my head, no matter which side I am on, is not terrifying. It is. It’s scary to just think about. But Israeli’s have protection beyond Palestinian’s, they have sirens to warn them (Israel does not always warn Palestinian building members that it is about to be bombed), they have the Iron Dome, they have simply the threat of nuclear power (which I am not saying Israel would use, but the simple fact they have it would make me feel a lot better if I were an Israeli citizen) and they have bomb shelters. What do Palestinians have? Hamas? That smuggles its weapons through the ocean? That only ever reacts to the action Israel instigates? And yet Gazans are branded terrorists and that it is their fault that they “elected” a terrorist organization that only was ever created due to no protection from any armed country? (There are so many links I want to add in this paragraph but it is simply impossible for me to add everything I want, a lot of what I’m referring to can either be found through a Google search, or you can stalk my Twitter account, all that I am posting now is about Palestine, and will include sources of things I cannot add in just this one post.) 

Look, I see myself in the genocide happening in Palestine right now. I see myself in this ten year-old girl. In this three year old girl. I see me and my family in videos of cars being attacked in Ramallah and Sheikh Jarrah (I cannot find the Ramallah video, should be somewhere on my Twitter), I see my father in the countless videos of fathers crying out for their children, of kissing the corpse of their loved ones (again, translate the Tweet, the man holding the body is saying “just one kiss”). I see my grandfather in videos like this (old footage). I see my younger brother, I see my grandmother, my mother, my aunts and uncles and cousins. I see myself and my life and my family were my father not lucky enough to get a scholarship to the UK and out of Palestine, were my maternal grandfather not been lucky enough to make it to a refugee camp and build a life in Jordan. I have an unbelievable amount of privilege to be born into the life I was born in to, in terms of I do not have the threat of bombs and violent dispossession around me, and I do not even live in the US. I have privilege and sheer luck that my parents were able to go to the US so that me and my brothers can be born, because now I have both the protection of the most powerful country in the world while at the same time being part of a people to have suffered so generously the past seventy-three years. 

On the other hand, you saying that Israel has “defended themselves about as often as they’ve attacked. Israel is a small country comparatively to the ones surrounding it, so it makes sense it defends itself heavily in case of an attack,” I offer you this question: why are they using military grade guns and stun grenades in mosques to “defend” themselves from rocks? And before you mention that Hamas hit Tel Aviv, I remind you that Hamas did that due to the violence in the Al-Aqsa mosque square and the attempted ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. The violence didn’t begin with us; the violence was brought out of Palestinians in resistance to the generations of oppression we have endured and the attack on Palestinian Muslims during the holiest night of Ramadan. Hamas has since asked for a ceasefire multiple times and Israel is refusing. New reports say there is a possibility of a ceasefire in the coming days, but Israel could have decided this a long time ago and spared many lives. (Remember, no matter what resistance we make, Israel is the one in power).

Israel has been the aggressor since 1948. Just read up about the Nakba! 700k Palestinian families were dispossessed violently. The only reason Israel was established at all was because it simply declared it was now a country and the US and many other countries recognized it as such. (Of course, there are many other historical details here, like the British Mandate of Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords and many others. I am aware of them but these are for a different post all together). My paternal grandfather was a little younger than me when Israel as a state was created. The hostility that followed was due to this independent declaration being listened to over Palestinian voices. 

Here is a very, very simplified analogy, one that can also answer some people’s questions as to why Palestinians (not Arabs, we are Palestinian before we are Arab) did not like what happened in 1948 and why they refused a two-state solution (that Israel was never going to go through with anyway). (I am also aware other Arab nations got involved, and that is perhaps what you mean when you said they had to defend themselves, but my response to that would still be we didn't start it, that we only responded to it).

Let’s say you are a farmer. You have many fields of trees, ones you have taken shelter under from the sun since you were a child, or hid behind when you wanted to avoid your parents when you misbehaved. You have seen your trees grow from a seed, to a sprout, to a flower, to a large, beautiful tree with fruits the size of a fist. You pluck the fruits from one tree, and make a jam from it. I don’t know how to make jam but I know it takes a lot of energy. So, you make this jam and from it, produce a lovely, mouth-watering pie. Once it has cooled from the oven, you take it with you outside your balcony just so that you can admire the years, months, weeks and hours this one pie has taken to be created. Suddenly, a stranger walks past and yells to you, “That pie looks delicious, I want it!” And you, shocked at their boldness but ready to share, say, “I will give you a bite.” But the stranger says, “No! I do not want a bite or a slice or whatever you want to offer me, I want the pie!” And they grab it from you. You and the stranger start screaming at one another about who the pie is for, who is allowed to decide what happens to it, and who you can share it with. Then, another stranger comes by and says, “Why all the problems? Let’s cut the pie in half and the both of you can share it!” But why should you, who has spent years cultivating the fruit and grain inside this pie, share it? Why should you give up half of the 100% that you already owned? Of what you already had? So you disagree, and now a crowd has formed around you. “What’s the problem?” someone in the crowd calls. “They don’t want to share their pie!” another voice says. Then you become branded a selfish, mean bastard. Again, this is a super simplified analogy, so don’t take it too seriously, but I am trying to show you why Israel is the aggressor.

In addition, I do not know too much about the Birthright program, just that American Jewish people are sent to Israel, all expenses paid. I tried my best to find the Twitter thread but I read it so long ago, about an American Jewish person who went on their trip and they talked about the propaganda that they were exposed to on that trip. I can’t say for sure that it is true, because I haven’t been on it and never will, but that is the first thing I thought of when you mentioned your Birthright trip. Either way, I think it is still great you went and saw the country. However, I must ask you this: are the people you met ones you, yourself, sought out, or ones you were organized to meet?

Now, I haven’t been to Gaza, so I don’t know what you really saw or didn’t, but did you speak to Palestinians who lost their homes to airstrikes? Did you speak to siblings, parents or children of loved ones who had been lost beneath the rubble of buildings and towers? Outside of Gaza, did you speak to Palestinians that live in poor quarters? Ones who have been victims of an IDF soldier shooting them, or who have family members who have died from such attacks? Did they take you guys to Ramallah, to Nablus, to Beit-Imreen, to Jenin, to small villages in the West Bank, far away from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv? Did you speak to people there? Ask them their stories? Because if you did I have a very hard time believing you still think Israel is “defending” itself.

I’ve been to Jerusalem, many times, even Tel Aviv and Jaffa and Haifa. All the times I visited Dome of the Rock there were IDF soldiers with huge guns strapped to their person, standing menacingly outside the courtyard. For what? Genuinely, genuinely for what? It is nothing but an intimidation tactic. The same way we are not allowed in through the airport. If you could see the struggle some Palestinians actually go through just to get into Palestine, through the land border, you would be disgusted. I love Palestine, it is my ancestry land, it is my culture and tradition. But I always hated going to visit because I knew the way to getting there would be hell.

My father worked in Tel Aviv through the first Intifada. My maternal grandfather was forced out of his home in the Nakba and was forced to leave behind his belongings and the orange trees that have been in his family for generations. Hell, the town they lived in was destroyed! It doesn’t exist anymore except in the memories of my aunts and uncles, who never even saw it, but just heard of it from their father!

I’m not saying there aren’t Palestinians who are racist and anti-Semitic (though, tbh, I will direct you here for that) and who support Hamas in killing Israeli’s, but talking about how there are many “extremist” Palestinians who are hurting Israeli’s and in the next line say there are extremist Israeli’s who are hurting Palestinians is not correct. There are extremist Israeli’s killing, lynching, stealing the houses of Palestinians, and there are Palestinians who are fed up and fighting back. (I am not talking about Hamas vs the IDF here, I am talking about the citizens). I have not seen one reported death of an Israeli due to Palestinian violence (if you have, from a trusted source, send it to me), but I have seen countless of the other way around. I have seen images of charred little bodies, of a baby being dug out of the rubble, of a child’s body that had been so mutilated that you can literally see the insides of their body coming out. (I don’t know if it’s on my Twitter, I didn’t want to save that shit). If this was my country I would be absolutely ashamed of myself and my people and what they are doing in the name of my protection. So you have to forgive me, and forgive other Palestinians, who don’t give a fuck about Israeli’s having anxiety over rockets flying over their heads when we see these images. Where is the protection of our kids? Why does no one seem to mention them except when mentioning the poor, innocent ones in Israel? At least more than the majority of them have their parents to comfort and rock them. At least many of them will probably be saved of ever having to be beneath the rubble of a destroyed building, or digging in it, to hope to find the parts of their parents or siblings just so that they can bury them. Just the links from the start of my answer is enough to support what I am saying.

I have soooo much more I can say, like how Israel uses religion to distort the image of what’s going on (tbh, just check my Twitter for that: language is EVERYTHING), but you didn’t mention religion in any of this and so I won’t either. The only reason I decided to respond to you in such length was because you have been one of the few respectful anons in my inbox in the past few years of me being on here talking about Israel, so I appreciate that from you. 

As promised, some more sources: decolonizepalestine is a good place to start if you haven’t used it already, it has reading materials, myth busting, and more. Here is a map list of destroyed localities from pre-1948 until 2017, run by two anti-Zionist Israelis. Here and here are the articles I promised of a former IDF soldier-turned Palestinian activist, I read these two last year in June and remember coming out much more informed than before I read them. I suggest looking into the writer and his organization, which, if I remember correctly, collects accounts from previous IDF soldiers. I would suggest not to follow Israel and the IDF accounts on any platform, or any Israel times newspaper, simply because they will not tell you the truth. In fairness, you do not have to follow any Palestinian Authority accounts (which I am not even sure there are), but to follow on-ground Palestinians like Mohammed El-Kurd, who has been speaking out since he was 12 (he is now 22) and he is part of the families in Sheikh Jarrah. I have noticed that this and this account have been translating Arabic headlines and tweets for non-Arabic speakers, I have just started following this person but their bio says they are a Palestinian Jewish person so I am interested in their view of things. You can also follow Israeli’s on-ground and see their perspective on things, but I would also advise to compare the Palestinian and Israeli side of things from the people, and critically analyze the language used in each case. Also, this article references Jewish scholars opposed to the occupation (I have not looked into them myself but I plan to after my exams), and Norman Finklestein is another great Jewish scholar to look into if you haven’t. Twitter is better than Instagram and Facebook, so I would stick to getting live-info from there, Twitter does not censor Palestinian content as much as Insta and Facebook so you’re more likely to see things there.

I will end this by saying I personally do not see any other option for peace than to give Palestinians our land back. Whether we may be Muslim, Jewish or Christian, it has always been and will always be our land. I only hope to see it free in my lifetime. 

Free Palestine. 

[thebreakfastgenie]

I get on Josh/Donna shippers in the fandom a lot for writing fic set in the early seasons that’s too explicitly romantic. I mean mostly I complain about this in private to my friends, but I think I’m on the record saying they shouldn’t get together before season 4. But I do think the show got them together too late. In my view, there are two points where the story organically wanted them to get together and the writers averted it. I’m putting this under a cut because this Josh/Donna meta I’m writing in the year 2021 is unforgivably long.

The first one is in season 4, Inauguration. There’s definitely a shift in season 4, both before and after Inauguration, to showing their relationship as more explicitly romantic. There are moments in earlier seasons, like Joey Lucas telling Josh that Donna likes him, Josh joking about sabotaging Donna’s relationships, and Amy asking if they’re dating. But season 4 really treats Jack Reese as a romantic rival in a way their previous love interests weren’t. Josh goes around asking if he can pull of a military dress saber because he’s so jealous, and notably nobody really reacts to this, implying he’s been like this before, but as the audience we’re seeing this level of behavior for the first time. I think there’s also an extent to which Donna wanted him to react this way, considering the way she describes Jack’s dress uniform in detail. And we can’t forget that before all of this started Jack was willing to back off because he didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever he thought Josh and Donna had going on. 

Then there’s Holy Night, where even Leo asks if he was being insensitive, which really requires watching the scene where he actually tells Josh that Donna left because it’s completely innocuous. The only reason Leo would think he was insensitive is if he thinks Josh is sensitive about Donna. Which he is. Leo then follows this by saying “oh, get it together, would you?” and Josh responds “I’m trying” which I think is the first clue we get that Josh is starting to figure out how he feels about Donna. I will expand on this more later. 

Rather like with the dress uniform conversation later, there’s something going on from Donna’s side in Holy Night too. Donna is given the opportunity to slip out before Josh tells her he’s staying late to work, she’s even encouraged by coworkers, and she doesn’t do it. This could be because she’s dedicated to the job, which provides deniability, but it’s really not. She’s so genuine when she says getting drunk at the Hawk and Dove sounds fun. I think she’s waiting for Josh to say something. She wants him to say “yes, I wanted you to stay, I want to spend Christmas with you, I don’t want you to go to the Washington Inn with Jack because I want you to go with me.” But he doesn’t say any of that because he’s not there yet. We also notably don’t see Donna leave or even Leo telling her she can, so we don’t know how she really felt about it. My money is on happy but also slightly disappointed, but she can’t exactly tell Leo no I want to stay and wait for Josh to tell me he likes me, and even if she could at this point she wouldn’t. 

Then you have Inauguration and the snowball scene which is so explicitly romantic that I really don’t have anything to say about it. I will say that later on at the end you see a line of people walking through the ballroom and it’s the President, the First Lady, senior staff, and Will. This is because Janel Moloney is a regular, but it’s also very much set up like Donna is Josh’s date. He brings her to see Will named deputy when literally no one else is there except that little senior staff and first couple group. 

So the question is why, aside from the obvious Doylist reasons, don’t Josh and Donna get together after that? It’s a hard sell that they don’t, but there’s some room there because after the balls they have to go back to work, and I think it’s believable that with sending troops into Kundu and everything else that comes up with running the country in the following weeks, Josh and Donna don’t have the time or energy to address their relationship and just kind of slip back into the status quo. Still, it’s a little bit different, because they’re ready now, and I think that’s where you see continued development in the rest of the season, like Amy asking Donna if she’s in love with Josh. There’s a sense to which, after Inauguration, it’s more acknowledged, even if they still won’t say it. 

The second time they should have gotten together is after Gaza. I’m also on the record as not a big fan of the Gaza arc, although I’ve softened on some parts of it since realizing that Colin makes me really uncomfortable and that’s a big part of why I don’t like watching it. Before I can talk about Gaza, I need to rewind to season 2. 

I do think Donna knew she had feelings for Josh in season 1, whereas Josh had feelings for Donna very early on but didn’t realize it. But the beginning of season 2 is still a huge inflection point in their relationship. Donna is forced to confront exactly how much Josh means to her because she’s forced to face the possibility that he might die. This is explicit, with the positioning of the flashbacks. Donna has fourteen hours with absolutely nothing else to think about. Josh doesn’t go through this journey with her because he’s unconscious. This is one of the reasons the “I wouldn’t stop for red lights” line is so good and so true to them. I’m going to go on a tangent here because I don’t really want to make a separate meta post. 

The whole Point of Josh and Donna is the lines they cross for each other. That’s their whole deal. And no episode really encapsulates this better than 17 People. They’re dancing right on that line the entire episode. They’re really over the line of a professional, employer/employee relationship the entire time, but most of it can be (with some effort, perhaps) played off as a friend relationship. Josh saying “if you were in an accident, I wouldn’t stop for a beer” is right on that line. He’s saying he cares about her, but it’s also kind of the bare minimum, but he’s also being compared favorably to her old boyfriend at the time. That in and of itself is a perfectly good ship moment, especially for so early on. And then Donna just bulldozes right over that line by saying “if you were in an accident I wouldn’t stop for red lights.” But she does it very matter-of-factly. It’s just the truth. And the difference is, Josh is speaking hypothetically. Donna isn’t. The only reason she hasn’t done this before is that she was already at the hospital when she found out he had been injured (which by the way was like eight months ago). Donna is speaking from experience. 

So this is where we get to Gaza. Donna has been through this whole experience of almost losing him. When Donna is injured in Gaza it’s his turn to almost lose her, and he goes through more or less the same little journey. Gaza more than anything else is what equalizes them. And they absolutely know it. Neither one of them says it, but the body language and tone in the “I’m still here” scene serve as an acknowledgment. There’s just no way to go back after that. Obviously the writers tried to use Colin to complicate things, but really he’s not very successful at it. Donna still asks for Josh before surgery and his name is still the first thing she says when she wakes up. My personal opinion is that Josh and Donna falling out in season 6 happened because there was no other way to keep them apart after Germany. And I do think it would take a little while once they got back, Donna has to recover and Josh has a lot of guilt to process, but that’s still what should have done it. It was time. They were ready. 

And yes, you can argue that Josh is very stupid, but I think after the experiences they’ve had, at that point Donna would be willing to initiate the conversation, and if confronted he would confess his feelings for her. That’s speculation but I’m right. They’re like three-quarters of the way to being in a relationship anyway. 

I also have some Opinions about how they finally got together but that I will save for another post. This one is about how Josh/Donna are a great example of TV writers following conventional wisdom instead of letting the story and characters do what they organically needed to do. 

[anonymousbluebird]

JUDS/POLS-477 Final Blog Post

My Thoughts and Reflection on the Class

Wow! I can’t believe I am at the end of the semester. I was incredibly excited to get to sing up for this class and it did not fail to disappoint. I learned a ton on a lot of things, but I also want to keep learning more and digging into unanswered questions - and shouldn’t that be the goal for any class? I think it is difficult to sum up all my thoughts on this course but I will do my best.

It was interesting taking this class at the time I did because at this point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and really just Israel in the Middle East, not much is really ‘news’. Yes, there is another election and yes, there is an attack somewhere and these are all important and relevant. However, on a deeper level, not much has truly and fundamentally changed in the past couple decades. As we discussed in class, this course may be irrelevant down the line simply because the current path – Israeli slow takeover of the West Bank and Gaza – will eventually make it so that there is no ‘Palestine’ left to negotiate with or try to solve the problem for/of.  Three decades ago, it looked like there really could be a peace deal. Now, most of us wonder whether Palestine will ever have another election and whether Israel could just not have them for once and if these two groups will ever muster up whatever is needed to sit at the negotiating table. This is not to say that conflict and hatred between Israelis and Palestinians is inevitable or even that it is inevitable to fail to achieve a viable two state solution; digging into what is really going on shows that this doesn’t have to be the case. Nevertheless, the easy answer is to say that it is either impossible to get over differences or that they are simple to resolve. I think the most surprising thing to learn was how many actors present today or within the last decade are some of the same ones from many decades ago, even dating back to being alive during the founding of Israel. As someone born after the turn of the century, I viewed the 1950’s as way in the past, and it almost helped me better understand some of the reasons that many feelings are still so deep seeded knowing that really, some of this wasn’t that long ago. The history is still being written. Moreover, I think one of the books we used for class written by David Shipler that looks into educational sources for Arabs and Jews is incredibly telling. Textbooks and education tell us not only what the writers believe, but what the future generation will think. It is certainly worth noting how incredibly ironic and interesting it is to realize how much these two groups – Israelis and Palestinians – reflect one another. Not just in their way of thinking and viewing the other, but also in their past and how they view their past’s -  a past of victimization, tragedy, and a future where there is something that rightly belongs to them that is currently being violated or threated.

I think what struck me the most about the blogging assignment was how much current events felt like they echoed events of the past. Part of this I think is due to the fact that the class gave so much context and history to the past that the present seems to make more sense. More than that however, it is reminder how very much the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues and has yet to reach a lasting solution. There has not been a conclusion yet and a ‘conclusion’ or ‘solution’ may not come for a very long time or could come in many different forms. I think the main thing I can take away is that anyone who thinks they have the conflict completely figured out is wrong. It is incredibly layered, multifaceted, and there are plenty of individuals and groups all involved to different extents. I know I will leave this class with a lot more insight than I started – not just in terms of this conflict but in terms of the world more broadly. This is not to say that I am or will ‘compare’ conflicts as this is something that cannot be done. However, the lessons about humanity, about thinking critically and thinking beyond stereotyped perceptions, of considering the differences between individuals and how that may change outcomes, will stay with me. I loved this class and all the ways it made me think or even just allowed me to go deeper into things that I had already considered. I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about the Arab Israeli conflict or who just wants to expand their knowledge of the world more generally. The Peace Negotiation simulations we did taught me a lot of lessons but the primary takeaway is that no one has the answers on this conflict, regardless of how fun and entertaining it could be to roleplay and pretend otherwise. All I do know is that I HAVE TO visit Israel someday, and I promise myself that someday I will…

[jewish-privilege]

After months of discussion, the Highland Park Borough Council brought their resolution on anti-Semitism to a vote on Tuesday, October 29. The final result, at the end of the nearly four-hour, standing room-only meeting, was a 3-3 tie, with Mayor Gayle Brill Mittler casting the tie-breaking vote to table. The mayor had previously supported the legislation, and asked for a new version to be presented at the next council meeting on November 12.

Public comments and debate significantly exceeded the originally allotted time. Attendees in the room were, according to different descriptions, between two-thirds and one-half favor of the resolution, which would have condemned anti-Semitism and included the BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions) movement as an example of anti-Semitism.

Compounding the problem was that the resolution put up for vote was slightly changed earlier in the evening, replacing the working version that had been posted on the council website last week. The resolution spoke of condemning all forms of anti-Semitism from “both ends of the political spectrum,” including bias, hate speech, discriminatory behavior, and hate-based groups, and charged that “components of BDS activities” are anti-Semitic.

In introducing the new resolution, Councilman Matt Hale noted that the council was in receipt of approximately 100 emails and three petitions, with approximately two-thirds in favor of the resolution and one-third against. He also called out the lack of civility in discussions about the topic and implored the audience to keep the discussion respectful and polite.

Among supporters of the resolution, community resident John Kovac urged the Council to “say no to hate,” adding that anti-Semitism exists in societies specifically when it is unchallenged. Jeff Schreiber reminded the council that the Holocaust era began with the boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany and that BDS should be considered anti-Semitic because it singles out the only democracy and only Jewish country in the Middle East, while other countries with terrible records on humanitarianism are given a pass.

Andrew Getraer, a Highland Park resident who serves as director of Hillel at Rutgers University, said the resolution condemning BDS and anti-Semitism was unique because all the local Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative rabbis agreed—something that does not happen very often. If the council wants to eliminate anti-Semitism, it must eliminate all forms, including BDS, he said.

Rabbi Phillip Bazely of Congregation Anshe Emeth (Reform) in New Brunswick said he stood in agreement with the community rabbis in support of the resolution. He nodded to Rabbi Yaakov Luban (Ohr Torah, Orthodox, Edison) and Rabbi Eliyahu Kaufman (Ohav Emeth, Orthodox) and others.

There were close to 20 speakers who opposed the resolution, for a variety of stated reasons. While not all objections focused on BDS, anti-Israel and other comments were made with varying degrees of rancor. One speaker questioned why Israel exists and “why the Arabs have to pay for what the Nazis did.” Another said it was a misappropriation of government funds to support the state of Israel.

One commenter felt that the resolution should include racial discrimination for condemnation and address each incidence of bias separately. The resolution’s language including Israel’s self-determination was questioned as the resolution doesn’t include the same rights for the Mohawk, Navajo, Lenapi, Catalan and Kurdish peoples. Many of the speakers against the resolution brought up how their Jewish roots led them to feel support for the oppressed Palestinians and the shameful living conditions for Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

As the resolution went to a vote, Councilman Josh Fine said he agreed that the resolution was imperfect, but for many reasons, he was supporting it. Councilwoman Elsie Foster-Dublin said she was conflicted about the resolution; so many Jews were fighting each other on both sides of the resolution. How could she, a non-Jew take a stand on any side? She voted to “table.”

Councilman Phil George began his comments with the fact that Highland Park was deliberately targeted with the “P is for Palestine” reading. He researched all sides of the issue and ultimately compared the resolution discussion to the issue of immigration reform where President Trump was putting politics over the truth. Adding that the resolution makes things worse than before and that people won’t change their positions, he voted “no.”

Councilman Hale voted in support of the resolution after noting that there were many complicated issues involved. He noted that there are a large number of people in town who are extremely frightened of anti-Semitism from the right, left and center of the political spectrum. He shared that when he started working on the resolution he had no idea how complicated it would become, but said that anti-Semitism is growing in the community and has to be stopped. He voted “yes.”

...Councilwoman Susan Welkowitz agreed that a new version agreed upon just that day was an issue, but the council was working to a point of exhaustion to get to the heart of the matter. The mayor had asked for an anti-Semitism resolution and they created one. The addition of BDS to the resolution made things more difficult but it could not be “walked back,” she said. She was concerned that the educational component to promote awareness and fight anti-Semitism was perceived as promoting pro-Israel propaganda. Adding that this was never an issue limiting free speech for those who dislike Israel or align with the Palestinians, she can “smell, taste, and feel” that BDS is anti-Semitism and something needs to be done. Weeding out anti-Semitism, does not mean that people don’t care about Palestinians. She voted “yes.”

Mayor Brill Mittler began her remarks noting how disappointed she was with the process and that Highland Park is a diverse community, and with that comes responsibility. There is freedom of speech, but BDS tactics are anti-Semitic. She said she requested a resolution on the topic seven months ago and brought Rabbi Esther Reed from Rutgers Hillel to the borough’s Human Relations Committee to present evidence of the horrifying rise in anti-Semitic activity in New Jersey, Middlesex County, and specifically Highland Park. Brill Mittler said she found it hard to understand why seven months later the situation is still unresolved, adding that the addition of BDS verbiage “blew everything up.”

After noting her family ties and expressing love for Israel, Brill Mittler said her primary concern was keeping the residents of Highland Park safe. If people felt that the addition of BDS language makes people feel unsafe or targeted, then she cannot support the resolution. The mayor ultimately voted to table the resolution.

When pro-BDS attendees applauded, the mayor admonished them. Saying that she cannot tolerate Highland Park residents being attacked in the streets and the council needs to come back at the next council meeting on November 12 with a new resolution. In the meantime, residents have to feel safe and stop fighting one another.

Exiting the meeting, Michael Gordon noted that this outcome was what the ADL had predicted. “Kicking the can down the road emboldens BDS supporters” and their future activities. Others leaving the meeting noted the fallacy of the signs on Highland Park lawns saying “Hate has no home here.” Someone was overheard grumbling that an asterisk should be added to the signs saying “except for Jews.”

Community activist Josh Pruzansky took to Facebook after the meeting. “Last night we faced an uphill battle with the anti-Semitism resolution in Highland Park and almost won. I don't view it as a loss but rather as a step in the process for our community of being heard and respected. The bottom line is although we lost the vote, and I attribute it to members of the Council being unprepared for this vote; we still accomplished much,” he wrote.

[thevividgreenmoss]

Discussions about Zionism tend to take us away from Israel’s egregious record, but I have tried to remain focused on how Zionism in practice in Israel leads to a Jewish supremacist state. I shouldn’t be surprised, but the flagrancy of Stephens’ disingenuousness is truly shocking. Mr. Stephens can scream, gnash his teeth, throw a tantrum, and loudly assert this point until he is blue in the face, but it doesn’t make it true. Stephens is ignoring the long history of anti-Zionist Jews, secular and religious, who opposed the creation of the state of Israel and now oppose a Jewish supremacist state that affords special privileges to Jews and discriminates against non-Jews. To dismiss them as anti-Semites or self-hating Jews is not just intellectually lazy, but it actually puts him at odds with a significant swath of the Jewish community. His colleague Michelle Goldberg writes that “Anti-Zionism isn’t the same as anti-Semitism.” Peter Beinart, yet another Jew, writing in Haaretz observes that “No, anti-Zionism isn’t anti-semitism.” Without offering any evidence, Stephens’ promulgation can be easily dismissed. In fact, Jewish Voice for Peace, an American anti-occupation organization comprised of thousands of Jews, recently formally declared itself anti-Zionist. Even President Jeremy Ben-Ami of the liberal centrist J-Street, a pro-Israel lobbying organization, parted ways with Stephens, explaining: “We do not accept the contention that all anti-Zionism should be automatically defined as anti-Semitism.”

...Stephens continues with another reckless accusation of anti-Semitism: 

“To claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, when manifestly it is not, is anti-Semitic because it’s an attempt to Nazify the Jewish state.”

It remains unclear here whether Stephens believes that it is anti-Semitic to accuse Israel of committing genocide if it is committing genocide, or whether it’s only anti-Semitic because it’s false. The arguments in favor of applicability of the g-word are straightforward enough. Gaza has been described by conservative Prime Minister David Cameron as a “prison camp,” Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling said in 2003 it was “the largest concentration camp ever to exist,” and in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz used the phrase the “Gaza ghetto.” One Israeli government official said that they intended to “put the Palestinians on a diet”. Infrastructure is crumbling. Borders are strictly controlled by Israel and Egypt, and a harsh blockade has been imposed so things like fruits, vegetables, and construction materials have historically been prevented from entering. Every two years or so, Israel “mows the lawn,” killings hundreds, injuring thousands, destroying sewage and power plants, mosques, schools, houses, and chicken farms. With only 2-4 hours a day of electricity, Gaza is unlivable. 97 percent of the water is undrinkable. What do you call an open air prison in which the population is being poisoned? (For an excellent book on Gaza, check out Norman Finkelstein’s Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom.)One needs to be able to use accurate language. If use of phrases like “concentration camp” would “Nazify” Israel and therefore definitionally be anti-Semitic, then Israel cannot, no matter what the actual facts are, ever be accused of creating a concentration camp. This gives an extraordinary license for abusive behavior: If Israel cannot be accused of anything that was also done by Nazi Germany, because to do so would be to compare it to Nazi Germany, then it will be impossible to speak honestly when the Israeli government commits particular crimes with historical precedents. Walling off particular allegations as impermissible—regardless of the facts—offers a dangerous kind of immunity from scrutiny.

...Like the United States, Israel has a shockingly discriminatory criminal justice system. A teenage Palestinian girl was sentenced to eight months in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier who was trespassing on her property (shortly after her cousin had been shot). An Israeli soldier that shoots a disarmed Palestinian in the head gets a slap on the wrist and is celebrated as a hero. A Palestinian woman faced up to eight years in prison for her poetry, which she posted to Facebook, and ultimately served five months, while the Israeli military perpetrates war crimes with impunity. Palestinians are tried in Israeli military courts which have a 99.7 conviction rate. If this two-tiered legal system isn’t enough to convince you, there’s an actual (illegal) separation walldividing the two peoples, one of which has a state and one of which does not.Social discrimination is rampant. Take incidents like this: Hundreds of Israelis turned out to demonstrate against the sale of a home to a Palestinian family. The former mayor, who joined the protests in support, explained “The residents of Afula don’t want a mixed city, but rather a Jewish city, and it’s their right. That’s not racism.” In July the country passed a law which declares that “the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people” and contained other parts that favored Jewish Israelis. (Then there are all these other discriminatory laws.) It is helpful, in clarifying our thinking, to imagine how we would feel about every defense of Israel if it substituted the terms “white” and “black” for Jewish or Israeli and Arab or Palestinian. The reason the apartheid analogy is useful is because it allows us to see why things that have been normalized are actually so repugnant and absurd—the argument that destroying Israel as a Jewish state would destroy it altogether is like arguing that destroying South Africa as a white state would destroy it—only true if the nation’s identity is bound up entirely with ethnic supremacy.

[clementine-lominsan]

The Political Persecution of Dinesh D’Souza

by PAMELA GELLER, 15 Jul 2015 What is being done to Dinesh D’Souza is an outrage, and all Americans who love freedom should be protesting. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/15/the-political-persecution-of-dinesh-dsouza/#disqus_thread I am no D’Souza fan. One only need watch the debate between Dinesh D’Souza and Robert Spencer at CPAC 2007 to know where I am coming from, but that’s not the point. The idea that Dinesh D’Souza would be hounded and punished for something that Democrats do every day – that’s the point. In my 2010 book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America, I gave the details of illegal contributions to the 2008 Obama campaign – from Hamas-controlled Gaza, no less. No one so much as batted an eye. But the idea that Dinesh D’Souza would have to undergo psychological examination for breaking the rules to support conservatives – that’s a new Stalinist mode of American politics. Breitbart News reported in September 2014: “In addition to his five-year probation sentencing and eight months of confinement in a community confinement center — or restitution center, which will likely be completed in San Diego, California where D’Souza resides — Judge Berman ordered D’Souza to undergo ‘therapeutic counseling.’” The idea that Dinesh would have to undergo psychological counseling is Maoist. It’s what Mao Zedong did to intellectuals and political dissidents in China. And as could have been predicted by anyone who is aware of how totalitarians have used psychology as a weapon, the psychological counseling hasn’t gone well. On Monday, Judge Berman “read aloud a report from a court-appointed psychologist who called D’Souza ‘arrogant’ and ‘intolerant of others’ feelings.’” This was in the context of Berman emphasizing that D’Souza had “to do eight hours each week for the entire five years he’s on probation and not just the eight months he was confined to a halfway house.” Since when did being “arrogant and intolerant” – that according to a court-appointed psychologist – become a crime? The psychologist also claimed that “the client tends to deny problems and isn’t very introspective.” If that were a crime, Barack Obama should be serving a life sentence. If being arrogant and intolerant were a crime, you’d have to arrest the entire mainstream media. Where is the outcry? Where is America? I don’t care if the enemedia isn’t writing about it. Where are decent Americans? It’s chilling. If Dinesh D’Souza is psychologically damaged in some serious way, so are millions of conservative Americans. And that’s the insidious point of his “therapeutic counseling.” The persecution of Dinesh D’Souza is the latest manifestation of a disturbing new trend in American politics. After the Benghazi jihad attack on September 11, 2012, Hillary Clinton promised that the maker of the Muhammad film upon whom the Obama administration wrongly blamed the attack, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, would be arrested. And he was, on the flimsy pretense of a probation violation that was far less serious than comparable violations that U.S. courts and police ignore every day. Whatever the pretense, Nakoula was a political prisoner. He was jailed for blasphemy. And he remained the U.S.’s only political prisoner for a full year. If he hadn’t made the video, he wouldn’t have been in jail. The filmmaker was hunted down like an animal, and was in jail for trumped-up charges in an act of submission and surrender to Islamic law. This was a complete abridgement of our freedom of speech rights. This was Obama sharia enforcement in America. Obama brought down the gavel on free speech at the UN when he said in the wake of the Benghazi attack, “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Now we see, with the persecution of Dinesh D’Souza, that as far as the arrogant and intolerant autocrat in the White House is concerned, the future doesn’t belong to his political opponents, either. In some Muslim countries, if you leave Islam, you risk being committed to an insane asylum. Is that what we are coming to in the United States? If you dissent from the dominant opinion, you will considered crazy and committed? All charges against Dinesh D’Souza, and the ridiculous and insidious order that he undergo psychological counseling, should be dropped now – unless every Democrat who has skirted campaign finance laws is likewise prosecuted and persecuted. The use of the legal system to persecute political opponents is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. This is how low the Obama administration has sunk.                                                                    

[cyber-front-blog]

The Future of War Will Be ‘Liked’ | Foreign Policy

In the social media age, what you share is deciding what happens on the battlefield.

BY PETER W. SINGER, EMERSON BROOKING

| OCTOBER 2, 2018, 10:00 AM

It was, perhaps, the strangest demand in political history:

“The middle photo is taken from Hungarian porn. Stop using fake photos to ‘trick’ people into supporting your lost cause.”

This Nov. 18, 2014, tweet from a now-defunct Twitter account run by the U.S. State Department offered an early glimpse into a new front in the future of war: trolling. The message was the outgrowth of an effort the department had launched in 2011 to track and counter terrorist propaganda, first against al Qaeda, then against the fast-growing Islamic State that had spun out of its Iraqi remains.

The campaign may have sounded sensible, but it soon backfired. Instead of cheering on the online battle against extremism, Twitter users piled on with more questions than the staid Foggy Bottom bureaucrats manning the account were prepared to answer. “How did the State Dept. know it was Hungarian porn?” @SpaSuzy asked. “dude … it’s really weird you know so much about hungarian porn,” @7thhorse added.

How did the State Dept. know it was Hungarian porn?  #TheXXXFiles

After an avalanche of criticism, the State Department decided it was inappropriate for the U.S. government to get stuck in the muck of social media—better to stick to airstrikes—and pulled the plug on the Twitter account.

Four years later, such scruples seem almost quaint. In an era in which President Donald Trump didn’t just rise to power through his deft use of the same medium, but then even used it to fire his first secretary of state, the old notions that government should stay above the social media fray have evaporated. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have become crucial battlegrounds for politics, war, and even truth itself. Social media has emerged as an arena in which virality—how far and wide a message spreads—trumps veracity. In this domain, attention is power. Win enough of it and you can reshape the very fabric of reality.

A generation ago, the new notion of what was called “cyberwar”—the hacking of networks—began to take conflict into a new domain. Today, what we call “like wars”—the hacking of the people and ideas on those networks—mark the latest twist in the ever-evolving nature of warfare.

* * *

On the surface, many of these battles waged on social media can seem like mere propaganda and an often silly version at that—like teenaged trolling transposed onto the global stage. In August 2017, for example, the Ukrainian government’s official Twitter account attacked Russia with a mocking South Park GIF; in June 2018, the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., answered a fire-and-brimstone threat by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with a Mean Girls meme; and in May 2018, the U.S. Air Force cracked jokes about airstrikes in Afghanistan while the Taliban returned the favor by poking fun at former U.S. commander David Petraeus’s illicit love affair.

The goal for all such actors is not merely the lulz but to ridicule their foes and expand their influence, in a world where online sway can drive real-world power. Yet beneath it all, a more serious side of conflict also takes place, its ammunition the bevy of images taken from actual battles. Today, nearly all our moves are tracked, including those in anything from election campaigns to military ones.

Some of it is intentional: selfies taken in the midst of battle, observers watching events, smartphone in hand. Others are captured in the background: be it images that lay in the distance or even information in the digital background, from the geolocation of CIA black sites revealed by guards’ use of exercise apps to the metadata that accompanies every online post. The result is that the smallest of firefights is observed by a global audience, while terrorist attacks are even shared out live by the killers themselves. Open-source intelligence analysts then use these very same digital breadcrumbs to reveal new secrets, documenting war crimes that would go otherwise untracked or assessing the strength of enemy formations that would go otherwise unobserved. It works for both good and bad: Terrorists use this information to win new recruits; human rights activists use it to highlight the plight of civilians caught in harm’s way and even steer rescues their way. During the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul—the most livestreamed and hashtagged siege in history—thousands of virtual observers waited for each new snippet of content, spinning it to all of these ends at once.

These battles that play out in the digital shadows are not just about unveiling secrets but burying truths—and even shaping hearts, minds, and actions. Russian sockpuppets and botnets, for instance, did quite a bit more than simply meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They used a mix of old-school information operations and new digital marketing techniques to spark real-world protests, steer multiple U.S. news cycles, and influence voters in one of the closest elections in modern history. Using solely online means, they infiltrated U.S. political communities so completely that flesh-and-blood American voters soon began to repeat scripts written in St. Petersburg and still think them their own. Internationally, these Russian information offensives have stirred anti-NATO sentiments in Germany by inventing atrocities out of thin air; laid the pretext for potential invasions of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania by fueling the political antipathy of ethnic Russian minorities; and done the same for the very real invasion of Ukraine. And these are just the operations we know about.

Such online skirmishes may appear insignificant compared with real fights conducted with real weapons, but they have become just as important. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the highly decorated former commander of Joint Special Operations Command, stated at a military conference in 2017, for the foreseeable future what happens on social media will be crucial to the outcome of any debate, battle, or war. The reason, he explained, is that battles are now being waged over truth itself. In these fights, “the line between reality and perception will be blurred,” he said. “Separating fact from fiction will be tough for governments but almost impossible for populations.”

McChrystal’s comments may seem to echo the ravings of the notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose website Infowars uses the tagline, “There’s a war on for your mind!” But that doesn’t make them any less truthful. With our personal and political understanding of the world increasingly filtered through online sources, images and ideas distributed and created on social media may become more important than objective facts. As McChrystal put it, “Shaping the perception of which side is right or which side is winning will be more important than actually which side is right or winning.”

Indeed, the messages coursing through social media today shape not just the perceived outcomes of conflicts but the very choices leaders make during both military campaigns. Russia, for instance, has crafted its information operations into a potent, nimble weapon that can target U.S. voters or pinpoint artillery strikes in Ukraine, using what happens in the online world to geolocate soldiers—and then message their looming death right before the cannons fire. Social media even shapes the overall flow. A 2016 study by the American University professor Thomas Zeitzoff of the Israel Defense Forces’ 2012 air campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip found that the conflict followed the pace set on Twitter; the tempo of operations and targeting shifted depending on which side was dominating the online conversation at the time. The military officers and civilian leaders were watching their social media feed and reacting accordingly.

Sometimes, social media posts can even spark new fights, especially when they play to long-standing tensions or hatreds. The Sri Lankan government blamed viral Facebook rumors for stirring up the hatred that led to a brutal assault on the country’s Muslim minority this March. In June, false reports circulated among India’s 200 million WhatsApp users spurred a spate of lynchings. Meanwhile, racist messages and rumors shared on Facebook continue to fuel the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.

Mounting evidence suggests that these online tug of wars may not just start fights and mass killings but also make conflicts harder to end. Criminologists who study the spike of murders in cities such as Chicago note how an increasing share of gang violence is attributable to social media trash-talking. Sometimes, the spark is a disrespectful emoji; other times, it’s a long-forgotten post, dug up in a moment of escalating tensions. Unlike the interaction in the street (or by diplomats in a traditional negotiation), it doesn’t matter if the original insult was made a year ago or hundreds of miles away. All that matters is that the world is watching and the internet never forgets. It’s easy to see how a similar dynamic will haunt future cease-fire negotiations, whether the end of an insurgency or the conclusion of a major interstate war. There’s always some people intent on keeping the violence going. And online, they never lose their voice.

Daunting as all this may seem, however, social media has only just begun to shape the future of war. Only half the world is online, while the tools of “like wars” today are like the biplanes of air war. Indeed, new machine intelligence is making it ever harder for humans to discern truth from lies and is possibly reshaping our conception of reality itself. Over the last year, the techniques needed to create “deep fakes”—hyper-realistic digital forgeries generated by advanced artificial intelligence neural networks—have become increasingly accessible. This technology, currently used mostly by cutting-edge computer scientists and inventive pornographers, will soon flood the internet with pitch-perfect voice imitations, photo-realistic video fabrications, and vast networks of chattering bots indistinguishable from their human counterparts. And like everything else, deep fakes are also likely to be weaponized, both in elections and even battles. We’ve already had a taste of it; in its run to seize Mosul, the Islamic State was able to use a mix of real and fake news to help spur retreat by Iraqi Army units. Even U.S. information war units now train at sowing false digital trails to misdirect their foes. We may one day even face the prospect of a digital Gulf of Tonkin, where the very case for a real war is built wholly on AI-constructed lies.

These changes reshape the speed, experience, and even the reach of conflict. In the social media age, every election, every conflict, and every battle is simultaneously global and local. Even as the physical experience of war grows more alien to the average Westerner with each generation, it has also become more personal than ever. Our choices of what to “like” and share (or not) shape not only the outcomes of elections and battles but also what our friends, family, and the wider world treat as real. You may not be interested in like wars, but the future of war and politics is very much interested in you—and your clicks.

Peter W. Singer is a strategist and senior fellow at New America. He is a co-author of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media. Twitter: @peterwsinger

Emerson Brooking is a former research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a co-author of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media. Twitter: @etbrooking

[philosophyofpolitics]

Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era

AMY GOODMAN: We continue our interview with Noam Chomsky, world-renowned dissident, linguist and author, now in Tucson at the University of Arizona. I asked him about a recent mix-up on Fox & Friends, in which the hosts thought they were interviewing former Democratic congressional candidate, a current one, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, who supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, but, in fact, they were actually speaking to a Massachusetts Democratic congressional candidate, Barbara L’Italien, who opposes ICE. Here is how the interview started.

SEN. BARBARA L’ITALIEN: Good morning. I’m actually here to speak directly to Donald Trump. I feel that what’s happening at the border is wrong. I’m a mother of four. And I believe that separating kids from their parents is illegal and inhumane. I’m actually Barbara L’Italien. I’m a state senator representing a large immigrant community. I’m running for Congress in Massachusetts. I keep thinking about what we’re putting parents through, imagining how terrifying that must be for those families, imagining how it would feel not knowing if I’d ever see my kids again. We have to stop abducting children and ripping them from their parents’ arms—

ROB SCHMITT: OK—

SEN. BARBARA L’ITALIEN: —stop putting kids in cages—

ROB SCHMITT: You want to—

SEN. BARBARA L’ITALIEN: —and stop making 3-year-olds defend themselves in court.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Barbara L’Italien said a lot there, but she was then cut off, with the shock of the Fox & Friends crew in the morning that they had the wrong Democratic congressional candidate. But this kind of media activism also just goes to the whole issue of the media, Noam Chomsky, the issue of Fox News becoming really state media, with—you have the person who supported the sexual harasser Roger Ailes, Bill Shine, now a top aide to President Trump in the White House. That’s gotten little attention. So you have Fox being a mouthpiece for Trump and a place for him to hear what people have to say, and the other networks very much running counter to Trump, on certain issues, CNNand MSNBC. But your thoughts?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, my frank opinion is that—I must say I don’t pay much attention to television, so I don’t know a great deal about it. But, in general, I think the media—first of all, Fox News is, by now, basically a joke. It’s, as you said, state media. The other media, I think, are focusing on issues which are pretty marginal. There are much more serious issues that are being put to the side. So, the worst of—even on the case of immigration, once again, I think the real question is dealing with the roots of immigration, our responsibility for it, and what we can do to overcome that. And that’s almost never discussed. But I think that’s the crucial issue. And I think we find the same across the board.

So, of all Trump’s policies, the one that is the most dangerous and destructive, in fact poses an existential threat, is his policies on climate change, on global warming. That’s really destructive. And we’re facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage. The effects are already visible but nothing like what’s going to come. A sea level rise of a couple of feet will be massively destructive. It will make today’s immigration issues look like trivialities. And it’s not that the administration is unaware of this. So, Donald Trump, for example, is perfectly aware of the dangerous effects, in the short term, of global warming. So, for example, recently he applied to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels. And Rex Tillerson, who was supposed to be the adult in the room before he was thrown out, as CEO of ExxonMobil, was devoting enormous resources to climate change denial, although he had, sitting on his desk, the reports of ExxonMobil scientists, who, since the '70s, in fact, were on the forefront of warning of the dire effects of this accelerating phenomenon. I don't know what word in the language—I can’t find one—that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the literal—the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word “evil” doesn’t begin to approach it. These are the kinds of issues that should be under discussion. Instead, what’s being—there is a focus on what I believe are marginalia.

So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies—what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to—calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president? And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of—foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.

I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to those who elected them. There’s nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in the United States. There’s ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters’ attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they’re basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent—the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector. The elections—Tom Ferguson’s stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, U.S. elections have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign spending. That’s only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you something about the way the society functions. So, if you’re concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.

And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable. So, he’s perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia. Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes—Russia shouldn’t refuse to deal with the United States because the U.S. carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done. But they shouldn’t refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn’t refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better—right at the Russian border, there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal for the species and life on Earth. We’re very close to that. Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it’s because NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama. The U.S. has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That’s the kind of a heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns. So, yes, there’s tensions at the Russian border—and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well, those are all issues that should be of primary concern. The fate of—the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I think those seem to me the fundamental criticisms of the media.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, author and linguist, now a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He taught for 50 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tune in next week when we continue our conversation with Noam Chomsky about Gaza, Israel’s new nationality law, the recent Trump-Putin summit, Iran, North Kora, the war in Yemen and more. In December, Noam Chomsky will be celebrating his 90th birthday.

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