#life in a border city

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

"Superman went to Metropolitan State/metropolis university" that bitch went to University of Kansas because if he went to Mizzou it would have killed his folks and we all know it

[fumifooms]

Makima, devils and self-fulfillment

Dumping some Makima and CSM thoughts after a part 1 binge bc I think about her forever and ever. I’m sure I’m forgetting some devil lore, feel free to correct what i get wrong/what’s been confirmed. On the table of contents there’s why & how Makima got fixated on Chainsaw, her revealing liking for the country mouse and discussion of her nature & emotions & desires. Was the scorpion doomed to be a scorpion?

The most of this post was thought of during a conversation with @saccharineomens and I don’t think it makes sense to jump into the spiral it sent me on without first laying down the interesting groundwork theorizing she did:

"Thinking about how makima herself wants to be deified. I wonder whether she recognizes the difference between Love As Worship and the love that Aki, Power, and Denji had. She says she wants to help humanity by having Chainsawman eat the “bad” devils, but why does she want to help humans? Because she was ordered to by the Prime Minister? No, her drive seems much more personal than that, it seems like she teamed up with the PM for contractual reasons. (In the most recent chapters we see governmental members wanting certain devils to be eaten, too. What was Makima’s relationship with them? She’s too independent to just follow THEIR orders, she’s Control.)

So is she wanting to better humanity for the accolades, or out of the goodness of her heart? She sees the big picture. She sees any small sacrifice as worth it for the end result, and she’s ruthless. Perhaps she thinks that a more sedate human race would be easier to control? But Makima doesn’t loathe humanity. She never acts like she sees all humans as lesser. She loves humanity’s creations, like good food and movies. She just wants Good Things all the time

She says she prefers the country mouse BUT adds a story where she helps exterminate country mice like vermin. She likes the simplicity yet rejects the idea of being simple. Makima the complex individual you are"

~

The story itself seems to prefr the country mouse. Well- it strikes a balance, shows that a risk to live good & fully can be very worth it, but still that stability over ambition is preferable, proning having a simple happy life over fame, a simple job instead of a dangerous one, etc etc. And I do find Makima’s answer on this so so interesting, she prefers the country mouse, but this preference isn’t out of affection or sympathy but because of how relaxing it feels to exterminate them when they cause problems.

Order satisfies her. Her order satisfies her. She likes the action of rooting out disorder. Maybe this is the devil part, like how Power especially wants blood and drinking it, I feel there’s an itch to every devil, and for Makima it’s a very rigid world view/morality/standards & making things follow her rules and submit to her order.

And maybe this is why she’s attached to humans too, why she felt it was worth it to stick with the government- because devils are chaotic by nature (it’s a whole plot point that hell is essentially a free-for-all battleground for example), meanwhile humans are the species that universally rule Earth with systems they invented and instilled. They made then enforced rules, complex and intricate webs of them. She feels alienated amongst devils but she understands the humans’ need for an orderly organised society, and now she wants to be part of it. Control and conquest require social dynamics after all, requires civilizations or groups. War is chaotic while peace is, well, peaceful— Makima resents her sisters for being death, famine and war, things that throw the world in such chaos. She wants a world of perfect order, no matter how much collateral damage there will be if the end result is control.

This is even more interesting if you consider that yes, Makima is untouchable of her own design, she deifies herself with her omnipresent amount of control and the sway over others that she seeks and encourages— There is this urge to dehumanize her for it, that yes, she is the devil of control and that means she was never going to be any different, have any more feeling be any less uncanny. And I love part 2 so much for this, because it shows us the war devil and the famine devil and we see how frankly uncharismatic with poor self-discipline they are, Nayuta too, and it helps us realize just how much Makima’s success was self-made.

She admires Chainsaw Devil, the Hero of Hell, because he had his own code and his own rules and he made Hell, the chaos pit, submit to them unfailingly. Wherever he goes he decides what he does and what happens to the people he encounters but does so consistently, he has his mechanism and his rules that he always obeys, and he fulfills them every time. It’s still a mystery the why of Chainsaw Devil’s behavior back then and how it works exactly, maybe Pochita left hell because he was tired of these rules he lived by like chains, but still, he was a servant to his code. Makima would have been glad being killed and eaten by Chainsaw Devil because it’d have been becoming part of his design, his conquest, his domination, she’d have been part of that —his— order. Through her death she would be shaping his world and be part of a conqueror’s making history. Like how she appreciates the country mice that die for the sake of order. Like how sacrifices must be made to herself, like listing the name of every person whose life was lost to the Gun Devil— All for the ~greater good~, for her vision for the world. Conquest always thinks its reasons are justified.

And she does mention with the country mice thing that she goes out to a friend’s farm every year! She has a human friend?? That she visits yearly and she genuinely likes it?? Ultimately she lives a busy city life because of her goal and drive and her urge & satisfaction with overseeing shaping the world herself, but part of her, like so many characters including Angel and Aki and Reze, wishes she could live a slow peaceful country life. Moviegoing and dogs and mice in a farm- Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if Makima could find fulfillment and happiness in being a farmer, in keeping control of her own farm, getting satisfaction from exterminating vermin and expertly getting everything right, the right crops grown at the right time on the right soil? Here, too, in a way it’s trying to have full control of an ecosystem, but her goals would be easier to achieve and better, without ceaseless sacrifice or much pressure. But Makima wants grandiosity and her goal does matter to her on a fundamental and moral level, she does think she knows what’s best for the world, and with the power to change it why wouldn’t she strive to? Visiting the farm is just a break, just something she does in fall to help out and just in time to see the vermin extermination. It calms her, then it’s back to actual work.

In capitalism, even the one at the very top of the ladder is ultimately alienated from others and often unsatisfied by their lifestyle, always wanting more and more power because surely that’s the extra edge they must be missing to be content— like how Makima thinks she wants to dominate Chainsaw Devil instead of being his equal. And she says it herself too, she likes humans the way humans like dogs…….. And she keeps so many dogs :( Makima prefers the country mice because they’re calming to root out, maybe because she usually mainly deals with city mice. It’s very easy to equate humans to the mice in this allegory because it’s pretty direct and she’s already likened humans to lesser animals compared to her. She’s self-isolating by design for her design but she still craves relationships and contentment, and the dogs are the embodiment or her want for bonds and occasional simplicity because there is no possible ulterior motive, no way they tie back into her wider plan. They’re her personal life— something that feels so alien when speaking about Makima. Personality and individuality and likes and preferences and friends they visit every year. She likes how easily she can train a dog and how they become putty in her hands, at her beck and call, how much they love her and how much she enjoys their love. How simple and straightforward and easy it is. She keeps them because she likes being loved by them and loving them, and she’s gotten and raised so many. A conqueror always wants more and more and more, is never satisfied.

Devils and agency

Like Power the blood devil wanting blood and having a fixation on drinking it like with Denji’s, or how it was shocking that the violence devil was pretty tame and nice and how he himself theorized it was because he was a fiend and possessing a human body… There’s something to be said about nature vs nurture with the devils. The way they reincarnate and always embody their fear makes it seem categorically like nature, that they always always end up fulfilling the role they were named after and born to fill… Outside influence they’re helpless but to conform with. Like the humans accepting their spot in the social ladder and the shittiness of their living conditions and job under capitalism. Makima craved being equals with someone despite being the control/conquest devil, Angel Devil despite claiming to be a devil who likes to see humans dying was haunted by their deaths and wanted to avoid ones like Aki’s. The Ghost Devil being ironically haunted by Himeno, seemingly helping Aki in her memory out of… Lasting affection? Or maybe it was less about being haunted itself and more about it recognizing how Himeno haunted Aki, and acknowledging that, with the memento, paying her respect to the ghost of her. It’s Angel Devil’s devil nature that makes him like human suffering, so then is it his angel nature too to still care about their deaths? Is there truth to this or is that just personality, just our confirmation bias haunting every part of their identity like it might in their own view of themselves too? We do know different reincarnations of devils do have different personalities after all.

Yoru, war devil, is the most interesting one when talking about the nature vs nurture debate with devils. There is how through her we see the perhaps the most the consequences of a devil stopping being feared— we see a horseman for a concept as universal and horrifying as war be reduced to some bird who needs a contract with a human to have any power even just on the situation when meeting Asa. And through the story we get to know her better, and it becomes clear that her goal is fueled in good part by simply wanting to be remembered and respected through fear. Liked, validated, seen a powerful. But what is more isolating than war? Or control? We also see Nayuta accepting others’ house rules. If part 1 shows perhaps the futility of running away from the truth, with Denji’s memory, with escapist coping mechanisms, with passivity and denial under a corrupt system and with abusive relationships- running away from your own feelings and from the reality of things and from all that you are, more complex than simply human or devil or both or neither— part 2 builds upon the theme of cult of personalities, the chainsaw church, etc. The apocalypse is coming, but this celebrity superhero might save us all, or doom us all uh, dunno. The hero of hell reliving the cycle of pressure from responsibilities and expectations, maybe the part will end with Denji running away like Pochita did~

But yes, on the reverse, I think Famine is a very interesting example of how a devil’s namesake may be more innate than coerced by circumstances. One would think that a famine devil would only like inflicting famine upon others, not being famished itself, but Famine has a bottomless stomach that can never, ever be satisfied, sated. I struggle to find a psychological explanation for this, except that maybe instead of her being hungry it’s her feeling empty when she’s not eating, tasting and having that high sensory experience that releases serotonin in humans, sort of like drugs? But I do take this as a step towards the compulsion theory overall, feels like a reach in the consistency otherwise. And compulsion does not mean it’s something that they like nor that it’s something that they fight against, pretty neutral, just a nature that nudges you towards one path. Maybe it’s even just their go-to for entertainment. Maybe it’s the only thing that makes them feel right and whole. But still the debate remains, what is it, a compulsion or an urge or an itch or an active desire or a conscious chosen want? Does it change anything in practice?

And because of all of this earlier, devils being self-fulfilling prophecies with their role is not in unsignificant part nurture, because doing their atrocities is how they stay remembered— feared, powerful, known— hell and devils are a very isolating place and breed after all, and we do see devils can want companionship. Existentially, it’s their purpose and how they justify their place in the world, in the terrifyingly vast and unknowable cosmos.

We still know so little of what makes Chainsaw Devil so special, why his carnage is so self-controlled. Despite a chainsaw maybe being possibly one of the most "nature" thing you can be— a tool to cut things, a human tool that can be helpful for many things, something to be wielding by another at their judgement on what they decide, but mainly something to cut, a tool suited for carnage, to hurt and to destroy. A blade with a toothed chain, spinning around and around and around endlessly on the same road at the same pace. Such a…. Innately circular concept. And yet the Chainsaw Devil is his own, not driven by an urge or by chaos but his very own brand of order, his own unique assigned purpose, a "if you call i’ll come running to help" policy equalizing everyone. He chooses to withhold his destruction and interference otherwise, and then he chooses to be used. If it’s a choice, of course.

Maybe this is what inspired Makima so much, that Chainsaw Devil could decide what to make of himself despite expectations or innate role. Because even Hell he decided & managed to subjugate under his will and whim, with a precise vision and process. When Chainsaw Devil acts like Denji or is defeated, Makima clicks her tongue and loses her admiration and respect. Makima admired and liked Chainsaw Devil, but only as long as he matched her great image of him in her mind, as long as he followed he rules for what she thinks he should be like. She admired him for his unrivaled self-made success, but once he stepped out of that to truly embody self-fulfillment and agency, disappearing from hell to live on his own road at the beat of his own drum… Well. Surely that was a mistake she has to correct. However their second battle ends, the better conqueror will have prevailed and she’s happy about that, all in the spirit of domination and subjugation.

Imo Makima’s biggest tool, similarly capitalism’s most helpful effect for its own purposes, is complacency. Resignation and passivity helps uphold the system and go along the flow of the will of the people in power. Aki and Reze go along with orders even when knowing their job is trash, etc. In Angel Devil especially we see him go along with the flow uncaring about anyhing, and we discover it was in part due to Makima taking away memories that motivated him. If every devil decides this is just how things are and how things should be that’s what they’ll continue to be and do mindlessly, not pursuing a better life like Chainsaw Devil and Denj and not seeking to change the world like Makima. I think even Makima veils herself to a lot of things, she doesn’t like to think deeply about some things, like her desire for connection, or how making bad movies disappear is strenuous and unsustainable and requiring sacrifices at best— how her judgement is as subjective as anyone else. How liking the country mouse and her friend back at the farm and her dogs could be not devoid of sentimality. Wanting bad movies erased is her one biggest show of selfishness, of pettiness and individuality, it’s about her tastes, simple as. About how she can have tastes, and cry seeing a scene of people hug, and want things that aren’t logical, her ideology and mind twisted into a pretzel to avoid acknowledging that she doesn’t live and breathe purely for the mission she’s made a single-minded robot out of herself to accomplish. Nayuta is assertive and selfish and loud, Makima is manipulative and strategically both for her goals and for coping hollow.

Everything in her plans and goals she says is for the greater good, necessary evil, manufactured happiness the way she’ll have decided for people— and that’s the thing isn’t it, like with War, it’s the crack that shows it was all truly about herself after all. Her self-made deification still had the flaw that a self made it. Makima is not omniscient, and it’s not Chainsaw Devil the not-so-fellow-kindred-soul conqueror who gets the best of her, but a city mouse, a dog, someone she would have never thought to respect, Denji.

[rainingincale]

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[selfcarecap]

The group photos in dating apps make me so mad I can’t even explain it. Why do men think that’s a good idea ???? 😭😭 why are men so….men (I fear I still love them 🤭)

I really don’t know, the worst is when they exclusively have group pics because how do I know he’s not the ugliest one? I wonder if they get anyy matches lol. I have one group pic on my profile too but I’ve covered my friends faces like it’s my profile 😭 (I fear still love them too🤭😭)

[mawsmauls]

Day twelve of the @dragonaday-fr challenge! Vajra is primarily hired as a stonecarver, commissioned to add custom detailing to the homes of those who can afford her efforts. Though her main joy is found in woodworking, a difficult material to get ahold of in the subterranean city of Pinion.

[radioactive-cloud]

third massive drone and missile attack in four days that was launched at 4-5 am, how i love living next to a terrorist country 😍

[memories-of-unknown]

~ roaming in the city of Konstanz ~

14.10.24'

[faaun]

anyway this upcoming trip w my gf. will decide a lot i think

[cuntylouis]

Seems like Prigozhin is genuinely trying to stage a coup and a civil war is about break out between the Russian army and Wagner Group. I don't think this coup will succeed but it's going to take Russia's resources away from attacking Ukraine which is great, and i think this is probably the beginning of greater instability in Russia. I was just talking about this with my stepdad, he's an asshole but really understands the workings of military and politics, and he thinks this will eventually lead to the dissolution of the Russia Federation and probably sooner rather than later. It's what i've anticipated even before they invaded Ukraine and think it's probably the best outcome, but it's scary too especially with many different power hungry factions fighting and some of them having access to nuclear codes

[fulane-de-tal]

i think it should be required for every single usamerican within 100 miles of the coastline or the mexico-US border to learn spanish i can’t with this shit anymore

[ofmermaidstories]

you said merms bloodlust and i thought "ooh merms vampire fic? 👀"

NO BUT SERIOUSLY i hope you are feeling better and good things come your way merms lovey <3

fun fact!! i actually had a massive vampire phase a million years ago!!! like, during the Twilight/Vampire Diaries hayday, LOL. everything i wrote back then involved vampires. fanfiction, original fiction—role-play. yeah!!! your girl here used to role-play with other people online!!! i’ve written teenage-girl-stumbles-across-sexy-bad-boy-vampire-who’s-old-enough-to-be-her-great-great-great-grandfather tropes. vampire highschools, ala Vampire Knight. Vampire Secret Societies. name a trope and i probably wrote a half-assed outline for it!!! if they had sharp pointy teeth and were driven by uncontrollable bloodlust into sucking on someone they cared about’s neck then i was there!!!

i’m kinda all vamped-out these days… i much prefer my bloodlust to come in the form like, a favourite character’s head being bludgeoned-in with a rock or something, LOL. just normal, non-blood drinking violence. 🥹🪓🫀🩸 idk if i’ll ever (seriously) write a vampire!AU for BNHA—maybe more drabbles, randomly. but to me the magic of a vampire story came with like, pairing it up with teenage girlhood (including but not limited to the connotations of the whole, blood-drinking-in-the-place-of-sex thing). and idk! it’d be hard to pull that off in a x Reader without like, flattening whichever BNHA cast member we picked for the Lead. and i write (and read!) fanfic because i’m interested in them, in their complexities and lives and the things that stretch out after canon. idk!!! now that i’ve said that, watch me pull a iida/reader/tokoyami vampire!AU outta my backside. 😭

(that’s a joke; i don’t have time. 😔 but also… 🧐 you could do some pretty interesting things with a set up like that… Dark Shadow could be like, part of Tokoyami’s vampirism? And between DS and his mutation—the bird-like qualities—he has to live lowkey. 🧐 whereas Iida could be the “youngest” in a clan of regimental, powerful vampires that have successfully infiltrated the modern world with fearless business acumen… hmmm. MUCH to think about.)

[rangers-arecool]

For: Boromir :: @menelvagor Muse: Almáriel Place: Minas Tirith

She hadn't intended on getting a temporary one way pass to the Healing Halls of Minas Tirith. Hadn't been anywhere close to needing the assistance of their Healers. Not when she was used to dealing with this type of injury on her own. A Ranger of the South, who's permanent post was just inside Mordor's border with Ithilien, keeping silent watch over it.

But apparently Faramir and Anborn thought differently.

Which, seeing as the golden haired young woman had actually passed out, might have been a good call by her Captain. Dark grey eyes blinked open and stared up at the familiar ceiling of her rarely used apartment, just behind the main part of the Healing Halls. As very few people actually had access to aforementioned place, it meant Faramir had actually brought her here himself.

Barely a second after that thought, the memories of why she had needed the Healers in the first place returned. Faramir nearly getting himself caught by the Dark Lord's minions. The pain never registered as Almáriel shot into a sitting position and straight into a coughing fit, alarming the younger of the Steward's sons.

"Pass me that glass of water please, big brother? Mari, breathe."

"What the everlastin'.. fuck do you.. think I'm tryin'.. ta do, Faramir...?" She answered, the coughing fit beginning to ease so that she could finally straighten. Only then, did the Ithilien Ranger notice who else was in the room with them.

"Lord Boromir."

[saharalajrami]

Don't skip just read this please

Hi world , it’s Sahar

Please read this as if I'm a member of your family . maybe your sister, daughter or a friend and as if my family who's under death now is yours.

My name is Sahar. A marketer shopping from Gaza, athe dreams she worked for but found herself losing the city she’s living in and losing any hope of a better future with it . And after a whole 4 years of studying and internship, the war had another idea.

I have 4 children: Hala the oldest, Rital, Odi, and Talin. We had a house full of love, dreams, and hopes that we strive to achieve one by one, but the war came and destroyed everything. We strive to travel outside Gaza to preserve our lives and obtain safety.

. In 15th of January 2024 my son Odai has An injury in his leg byShooting from a quadcopter aircraft in a shelter belonging to the UN Relief Agency

This loss circle didn’t end here, cause after more than 5 times of being displaced and having to leave our house escaping from rockets and death, we returned to our house and found it almost wiped off, more than half if it was destroyed and became an unlivable place leaving us not only with tired hearts but also without a place to stay in

Our Home

We are suffering in the UNRWA shelter center from overcrowding, the spread of diseases, pollution, and the difficulty of obtaining water and entering the bathroom due to the large number present in the place. It has been a year since this suffering.

Look what this horrible war has done to us. It has turned our lives upside down. It is hard for your mind to imagine. You were living in a villa with all your necessities and luxury items available until the war transferred you to live in a school for more than 13 months. We saw death 100 times a minute. I have attached pictures of the suffering of living in the school.

The situation after almost 13 months of this genocide is that the borders of Gaza are still unfortunately closed and no one can get out of it, of course unless you pay the most money to save your life and cross the Rafah crossing to reach Egypt, as crossing the Rafah crossing costs about $25,00 to $5,000 per person, and as a family of 9, the amount we have to pay just to get to Egypt seems impossible to bear.

So, this is how the money will be spent:

* Paying about $5,000 for each member of my family of 9 to cross the Rafah crossing and safely reach Egypt

* About $5,000 covers the GoFundMe transaction fees (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction)

* The rest of the money will be for housing, food, etc. for a period of time in Egypt

Asking for your help is the only way to save my family’s life and future, and your help may become our hope when hope is far from us under these circumstances, every dollar you can help with may save a life, bring hope to a tired heart and save a young future.

Please don't read this as a tragedy, I am here to ask you to prevent further tragedy and help us start our lives over. I am here to ask for your help not your sympathy, to ask you to take action either by donating or by sharing this with everyone you know who can help, please read this with your heart and take action as if it were your family, your mother and your siblings who are living in these circumstances.

Here is the donation link. Don't be stingy with me, even if it is a little. You will have contributed to preserving the lives of my family. With best wishes.

Vetted by :@bilal-salah0

Vetted by :@90-ghost

Vetted by :

@gaza-evacuation-funds

Vetted by :

@gazavetters , my number verified on the list is ( #264 )

☑️☑️

[jewishvitya]

A pro-Palestine Jew on tiktok asked those of us who were raised pro-Israel, what got us to change our minds on Palestine. I made a video to answer (with my voice, not my face), and a few people watched it and found some value in it. I'm putting this here too. I communicate through text better than voice.

So I feel repetitive for saying this at this point, but I grew up in the West Bank settlements. I wrote this post to give an example of the extent to which Palestinians are dehumanized there.

Where I live now, I meet Palestinians in day to day life. Israeli Arab citizens living their lives. In the West Bank, it was nothing like that. Over there, I only saw them through the electric fence, and the hostility between us and Palestinians was tangible.

When you're a child being brought into the situation, you don't experience the context, you don't experience the history, you don't know why they're hostile to you. You just feel "these people hate me, they don't want me to exist." And that bubble was my reality. So when I was taught in school that everything we did was in self defense, that our military is special and uniquely ethical because it's the only defensive military in the world - that made sense to me. It slotted neatly into the reality I knew.

One of the first things to burst the bubble for me was when I spoke to an old Israeli man and he was talking about his trauma from battle. I don't remember what he said, but it hit me wrong. It conflicted with the history as I understood it. So I was a bit desperate to make it make sense again, and I said, "But everything we did was in self defense, right?"

He kinda looked at me, couldn't understand at all why I was upset, and he went, "We destroyed whole villages. Of course we did. It was war, that's what you do."

And that casual "of course" stuck with me. I had to look into it more.

I couldn't look at more accurate history, and not at accounts by Palestinians, I was too primed against these sources to trust them. The community I grew up in had an anti-intellectual element to it where scholars weren't trusted about things like this.

So what really solidified this for me, was seeing Palestinian culture.

Because part of the story that Israel tells us to justify everything, is that Palestinians are not a distinct group of people, they're just Arabs. They belong to the nations around us. They insist on being here because they want to deny us a homeland. The Palestinian identity exists to hurt us. This, because the idea of displacing them and taking over their lands doesn't sound like stealing, if this was never theirs and they're only pretending because they want to deprive us.

But then foods, dances, clothing, embroidery, the Palestinian dialect. These things are history. They don't pop into existence just because you hate Jews and they're trying to move here. How gorgeous is the Palestinian thobe? How stunning is tatreez in general? And when I saw specific patterns belonging to different regions of Palestine?

All of these painted for me a rich shared life of a group of people, and countered the narrative that the Palestininian identity was fabricated to hurt us. It taught me that, whatever we call them, whatever they call themselves, they have a history in this land, they have a right to it, they have a connection to it that we can't override with our own.

I started having conversations with leftist friends. Confronting the fact that the borders of the occupied territories are arbitrary and every Israeli city was taken from them. In one of those conversations, I was encouraged to rethink how I imagine peace.

This also goes back to schooling. Because they drilled into us, we're the ones who want peace, they're the ones who keep fighting, they're just so dedicated to death and killing and they won't leave us alone.

In high school, we had a stadium event with a speaker who was telling us about a person who defected from Hamas, converted to Christianity and became a Shin Bet agent. Pretty sure you can read this in the book "Son of Hamas." A lot of my friends read the book, I didn't read it, I only know what I was told in that lecture. I guess they couldn't risk us missing out on the indoctrination if we chose not to read it.

One of the things they told us was how he thought, we've been fighting with them for so long, Israelis must have a culture around the glorification of violence. And he looked for that in music. He looked for songs about war. And for a while he just couldn't find any, but when he did, he translated it more fully, and he found out the song was about an end to wars. And this, according to the story as I was told it, was one of the things that convinced him. If you know know the current trending Israeli "war anthem," you know this flimsy reasoning doesn't work.

Back then, my friend encouraged me to think more critically about how we as Israelis envision peace, as the absence of resistance. And how self-centered it is. They can be suffering under our occupation, but as long as it doesn't reach us, that's called peace. So of course we want it and they don't.

Unless we're willing to work to change the situation entirely, our calls for peace are just "please stop fighting back against the harm we cause you."

In this video, Shlomo Yitzchak shares how he changed his mind. His story is much more interesting than mine, and he's much more eloquent telling it. He mentions how he was taught to fear Palestinians. An automatic thought, "If I go with you, you'll kill me." I was taught this too. I was taught that, if I'm in a taxi, I should be looking at the driver's name. And if that name is Arab, I should watch the road and the route he's taking, to be prepared in case he wants to take me somewhere to kill me. Just a random person trying to work. For years it stayed a habit, I'd automatically look at the driver's name. Even after knowing that I want to align myself with liberation, justice, and equality. It was a process of unlearning.

On October, not long after the current escalation of violence, I had to take a taxi again. A Jewish driver stopped and told me he'll take me, "so an Arab doesn't get you." Israeli Jews are so comfortable saying things like this to each other. My neighbors discussed a Palestinian employee, with one saying "We should tell him not to come anymore, that we want to hire a Jew." The second answered, "No, he'll say it's discrimination," like it would be so ridiculous of him. And the first just shrugged, "So we don't have to tell him why." They didn't go through with it, but they were so casual about this conversation.

In the Torah, we're told to treat those who are foreign to us well, because we know what it's like to be the foreigner. Fighting back against oppression is the natural human thing to do. We know it because we lived it. And as soon as I looked at things from this angle, it wasn't really a choice of what to support.

[mcnjushcge]

https://www.gofundme.com/f/v77vfk-help-my-family-escape-war-in-gaza?utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet-first-launch&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&cdn-cache=0

hi everyone, my dad and his siblings have been desperately trying to get my aunt and her whole family out of gaza. I’ve watched him have multiple breakdowns over seeing the conditions they’re living in. they haven’t seen each other in person in literal decades. my aunt’s home in gaza city was completely destroyed and her family have had to repeatedly flee from the devastation. they deserve a better life than this, her kids deserve a better future than this.

it costs an insane amount to get over the egyptian border. please, donate if you can or rb this, it would mean a lot. thank you

[northgazaupdates]

EMERGENCY🚨Help a new mother and her baby find food, medical care, and safety

Suad Ahmad is an engineer from Gaza. She graduated from university at the top of her class and was rapidly excelling in her career as an instructor, consultant, and team leader.

Suad, her husband, and their family were overjoyed to find out she was pregnant. Sadly, this was only a week before occupation began its illegal scorched earth campaign against the people of Gaza. Suad's home (left) and workplace (right) were destroyed, and she and her husband's family were displaced from the north.

After building a scaffolding structure for their family in the supposed “safe area” in Rafah (left), the occupation attacked the city and forced their evacuation. Suad and her family were then displaced to Deir al-Balah, where they procured a tent (right). As you can see, these are small, vulnerable structures, completely exposed to the elements. They were exposed to multiple disease vectors while also being unable to procure enough food. During this time, Suad became extremely sick with gastroenteritis, a dangerous condition during pregnancy.

On the day she went into labor, Suad had to walk a great distance to the hospital. Upon arrival, she found that the hospital was operating at bare minimal capacity. There was not even a bed for her to use. Suad’s baby was born with minimal medical support, and the ordeal was extremely difficult. The occupation then began bombing the vicinity of the hospital. Suad and her baby were in immense danger, with nowhere to turn.

Unfortunately, the situation has only gotten worse. Suad and her infant are now living in a tent in extreme heat. IOF attacks continue, putting their lives in immediate danger. The occupation’s blockade on Rafah Crossing and the destruction of roads and infrastructure has led to increased, extreme food scarcity. Suad cannot find enough food to feed herself or her baby. She has not been able to recover from the difficult birth, and her baby is missing out on crucial nutrition needed for neonatal development.

Suad has had a campaign open for several weeks, raising support so that she, her husband, and her husband’s mother and sister could evacuate to Egypt. Sadly, progress has been slow. She was unable to collect the necessary resources to evacuate before the occupation illegally seized Rafah Crossing, the only border crossing that would enable evacuation.

However, international pressure continues to mount on the occupation to depart the crossing. Once they do, Suad and her baby need to be able to evacuate to Egypt for their health and safety. You can help make this possible by directly supporting them at the link below.

Please, help give Suad and her baby a better chance at life. If you cannot give, please reblog this post and repost the link▶️ (https://gofund.me/ebaee2af) across all of your social media accounts.

Verified by @nabulsi