#or biased in a way that makes Israel out to be the aggressor

[jilyandbambi]

the ceasefire would still be on rivht at this moment had Hamas not broken it with the terrorist attack in Jerusalem and by repeatedly reneging on its agreement to release Israeli hostages.

[nachobsns]

Hello - I was impressed and extremely relieved by what you wrote in the post about the cult mentality of the Left RE Israel and accusations of genocide. You mentioned that you bought into the mindset until recently. If it's all right for me to ask, what was it that helped you break out of it? (Please feel free to delete/ignore if you'd rather not answer!)

thank you!! and no worries about asking— i think i put something in my pinned post about how people are welcome to send asks about this stuff, although my story isn’t super interesting. i fell down the typical online rabbithole, a couple weeks after october 7; i knew what had happened, at least vaguely, but the posts trickling onto my dash were all about the (undeniably tragic) loss of life in gaza, with little to no acknowledgment of the hamas atrocities that had started the war, so my narrative was pretty one-sided from the beginning. it just continued to snowball as the months went on and people became more radicalized, calling into question the reality of the 10/7 attacks and the humanity of all israelis. i never went all the way down the pipeline to full-on endorsing hamas or justifying their attacks, at least on a personal level, thank god, but i would reblog other people’s posts referring to hamas as a “resistance movement” and calls to boycott starbucks and mcdonald’s and condemnation of the “zionist media” etc etc etc. what pulled me out of it wasn’t any one thing— if someone had directly called me on my flawed logic and antisemitic biases while i was in this mindset, i doubt it would have done much, just reinforced my belief that i was on the “right side of history” and zionists were aggressors who couldn’t be reasoned with. it was mostly just passive observance and a slow exposure to other perspectives. i’m pretty sure the first post that led me to question my thinking was an ask on jewish-vents, which popped up on my dash in like, late july. this led me down another rabbithole, first scouring every single post on jewish-vents, then moving on to more popular jewish blogs that i had seen on “zionist blocklists” (applesauce42069, xclowniex, and spacelazarwolf were probably some of the blogs that influenced me the most, though i told myself i was just hate-scrolling at first, lol). i felt incredibly guilty seeing all the harm the movement i was a part of had caused to random jews and israelis just trying to live their lives and i realized how it went against everything i believed about how minority groups should be treated. from there, the aspect of actually undoing my thinking and changing my behavior for the better still took several weeks. denial of jewish indigenity to the levant in the face of tantamount archeological and cultural evidence was the first to go, as well as any ambiguity in my feelings about hamas. after that, it’s mostly been a slow process of redefining the idf’s actions from a “genocide” to a “war.” i still believe that what’s happening in gaza is unconscionable and horrific, and that too many innocent civilians have died, but i also understand how difficult it is to fight against a terrorist group that systematically embeds itself in civilian populations, and that the ratio of militant to civilian deaths is incredibly low compared to most urban warfare. i quietly deleted my old blog in early august— if i had directly engaged in harassment against jews, i likely would have kept it to make amends to the harmed parties and put a face to my actions, but as was, i had just contributed to the larger atmosphere of antisemitism on this site, and i felt uncomfortable knowing that i had a blog full of sentiments that no longer matched my values and beliefs. i decided i would be better if i took my endorsement out of the equation entirely, because when you’re looking through the notes of a post, it obviously doesn’t matter if someone who’s reblogged it no longer agrees with what was said— their notes still count as tacit approval, and i did not want approval of this “activism” attached to my online presence. i still have unwanted kneejerk reactions that crop up sometimes, particularly around the fundraiser posts from people “in gaza”; even though i know logically that they have all the markers of scams, there is still a part of me that really wants to believe i could help.

[argumate]

I've mentioned before that the recent outburst of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict over the past year or so appears to have driven a lot of people mad in a way that the Russia/Ukraine conflict did not, and I think it's because that conflict produced a lot less emotional dissonance to a Western audience: Russia is already typecast as a natural aggressor, Ukraine was quickly upgraded from corrupt Eastern European fail state to plucky Western ally, and the gradual stalemate of the war allowed it to slowly sink out of the spotlight.

in contrast, the nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is that it is always arguable exactly who qualifies as the aggressor, but the Palestinians are clearly losing, making them the underdog; and yet Israel is the side receiving Western support, both militarily and domestically, making it difficult to escape the sense of complicity in oppression and potential genocide.

and that's aside from the fact that many people have weird and deeply conflicted and in some cases crazy beliefs about Judaism and Jewish people, which make the discourse absurdly toxic in every direction and leave everyone feeling that the media environment is irretrievably biased against them.

fundamentally it comes down to some unavoidable problems:

people are dying, awfully and unnecessarily

one way or another we are complicit in their deaths

nothing we do or say appears to make a difference

what do we do?

it's no wonder it's driving everyone mad.

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

In addition to not being Ainu and having never claimed to be, I remember reading some of the extras that went with the FMA manga. Arakawa sometimes went on anecdotes and during one comic she explained how she interviewed veterans of WWII when doing research for FMA. One can see the parallels between Amestris’ atrocities and Japan’s own imperialism during that time period, with the remnants of those beliefs still present in other works such as Attack on Titan.

With that in mind, I guess it makes sense the FMA is so skewed in favor of the military’s perspective because it seems Arakawa didn’t interview any of the victims of Japanese war crimes, which occurred in mainland Asia. She also seems familiar with American media, and Americans have a lot to say about how Japan hurt them first.

But the conflict between Japan and America was between two colonial powers of fairly equal standing; So I can see Arakawa’s Both Sides take being influenced by this, as well as a lack of perspective from the victims of Japanese atrocities in mainland Asia. I think these factor into FMA’s lack of Ishvalan perspective. Likewise, Ishval becomes a center for commerce for Amestris and Xing at the end of the series, and I can’t help but wonder if knowing how Japan was occupied by the US after WWII, and turned out relatively fine (in her eyes at least) influenced this writing decision as a ‘desirable’ outcome for Ishval.

The Ainu claim really is just a network of broken telephone rumours meant to cleanse the mind of critical thinking regarding mangahood's politics. I have to laugh when anyone perpetuates the "Arakawa is Ainu" rumour.

Like American and European media that centers around their own involvement and perspective of the world wars, with their tendency to soften the horrors committed by whichever nation produced the stories in question, Japanese pop media carries its own biases that tends to absolve/soften Japanese imperialism and atrocities. This fact alongside Arakawa's interviews with Japanese WW2 vets is such an important point to bring up, so I appreciate this ask very much.

What stuns me is the (potential) implication that the Ishvalans could ever be a stand-in for an equal imperial power. Despite how desperately mangahood pushes the both sides perspective, nothing in its canon illustrates Ishval as a powerful nation state on its own, let alone one of any imperial might. Yet all the same, given Arakawa's focus on the perspective of Japanese WW2 vets (so traumatized by the slaughter, rape, sexual slavery, and fascism they carried out in Korea, China, the Philippines, etc) and the horrific dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, I can see how this becomes the bedrock for mangahood's politics. Of course inspiration and a direct analogy are two different things. I won't claim that Arakawa "definitely sees Ishval as a stand-in for xyz powerful nation," but it does seem that she mapped the experiences of an imperial aggressor eventually made to heel at the foot of another imperial power onto her fictional non-imperial victims of genocide. (The USA should have never occupied Japan, but that occupation was in many ways quite unlike the bloody, often genocidal occupations the USA has done in, for example, Afghanistan, Iraq, and its ongoing military proxy of Israel occupying Palestine.)

Keeping in mind that part of the inspiration for the Ishvalans are the Ainu, and remembering Arakawa's place as a Japanese settler in Hokkaido, it would seem that settler-colonizer anxieties and guilt is at play here too. That any animosity towards the settlers from the Indigenous populace is no less "disruptive" towards peaceful coexistence. With the added layer of imperial aggressor vs imperial aggressor (and victims invaded by these aggressors thrown under the bus entirely), the focus on the experiences of veterans from her own nation sans mainland Asian and Polynesian victims, the patriotism for Amestris that may echo her own perspective on the duties of citizenry and soldiers, and a deeply liberal "apolitical" lens filtering these matters down to the most trite, wishful perspective possible, we end up with mangahood's politique.

This explains the dogged insistence that all players in a conflict (a term that easily implies both sides as well) are to blame for any and all violence. That all wars can be solved if we all awoke to the fact that we're all people and connected to one another. If we're all capable of great harm, then acknowledging the harm done should be enough to move forward with forgiveness. (Don't retaliate, that makes you just as bad.) It's all so frivolous and frustrating.

It's such a capitalist-colonial dream, that a former geopolitical enemy (who had been ethnically cleansed and torn apart by imperialism) can be resuscitated into a thriving economic arm of more powerful nations. And somehow peace will be established in this transformation. You could be onto something, that there's a belief that since Japan was so devastated by America's atomic bombs yet its occupation by America, in part, led to its restructuring as a capitalist, "advanced" society, therefore the same could be mirrored with Ishval and Amestris. Hm.

What a mess.

[laughingcatwrites]

To my followers, please, please look a little deeper into posts about what's happening on Israel and Gaza right now before you reblog them. I've been guilty of some of that myself, but I'm seeing mutuals reblogging more and more things that a quick peek at the comments will reveal are biased or oversimplified to the point of misrepresenting what's going on.

Some red flags I've found helpful to realize you need to dig deeper into a post: calling the conflict "simple," implying one side is the only aggressor or only victim, claiming that all media is being controlled by a pro-Israel government (Israeli, US, British, take your pick), any mentions of colonialism or ethnic cleansing, referring to the people involved as "Jews" or "Muslims" rather than referring to their nationalities, and also generalizing actions out to the entire region of people involved rather than specifying the group (e.g. "Palestinians" rather than "Hamas," "Israelis" rather than "Netanyahu" or "Israeli militia").

This is an incredibly complicated situation that is causing incredible harm and loss of life for both sides. It has been an incredibly complicated situation since well before Israel existed, and since before Mandatory Palestine existed, and since before the two states (territories? countries?) that made up Mandatory Palestine were first absorbed into the Ottoman Empire.

Right now what is happening is horrible, and it takes time for news to make its way out, and then be fact-checked, and then be corrected. But claims like 'what's happening in Gaza is ethnic cleansing by Israel' or 'this is all Palestinians attacking Israelis' do nothing except increase tensions and decrease the likelihood of tumblr users being willing to listen to people with opposing viewpoints in real life.

So please. Take the time to look into posts before reblogging them. I'm probably going to spend an evening or two going through my previous reblogs to make sure none of them are misrepresenting what's going on, but until I do that, just assume that the only posts I've done a deeper dive into are the ones from this point forward.

[petri808]

You assume I believe the articles claims. It doesn’t have to be accurate, the POINT of the article is to infuriate and cause anger, and so people will pay attention because too many are not and allowing this genocide to take place. Heavy rains caused flooding, which causes the sewer systems to overflow, which causes bacteria/viral outbreaks, that lead to disease and potential deaths/illness, and because of Israel’s attacks, people in the area are often unable to get to proper medical care. They are diasporas stuck in that area BECAUSE of Israel.

Western media is being wholly biased in their portrayals of what’s going on in the region. That’s called propaganda hun, meant to sway the views to one side or another. I don’t care whose side is saying what, the issues are what’s actually happening and sorry, but carpet bombing residential areas to kill specific targets borders on Geneva violations. You don’t kill a cockroach with a bazooka unless you don’t care what happens to the area around it. There’s plenty enough evidence of the behaviors of Israel and its soldiers committing crimes against humanity coming forward. There’s no arguing it anymore.

The creation of Israel itself is an act of colonialism which we now deem to be wrong. You can’t just march into another country and take it and that’s exactly what the Allies did after WWII. They literally flexed their muscles after the war and stole land. I don’t care about the ancient clan feuds of the area. The Palestinian people became the native inhabitants and that’s it, so be it. It’s not the job of outsiders to disregard sovereignty just because they don’t like something, aka what colonizers do. No surprise that colonist countries thought this was okay to do. It was such a slap to the face of Palestine too. The allies went in and said we’re taking this area to make a new county (Israel), too bad what you think. Oh and by the way, we’re not going to recognize you (Palestine) as a real country but we are going to recognize Israel. What a crock of bull.

I am a native of a place that was colonized and forcibly stolen by the United States, so don’t you tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. There is NEVER a good reason to usurp another country. It’s always a nefarious reason, mainly natural resources or religious reasons. That said, trying to establish a place for the Jews wasn’t the bad thing, it’s the method they used to do it that’s a big problem and what we are seeing now are its consequences. In the last 80 years the predominant aggressor in this this war has always been Israel, not Palestine, and that’s because of the protection and support of the United States. Palestine isn’t the only country either, Israel has been bullying the other countries in the Middle East too. It’s like the little guy calling someone out in a fight because they know behind them is the biggest, toughest kid in the school ready to fight for them.

And don’t you dare try to say the Allies actually gave a damn about the Jews in WWII and that’s why they’re protecting them now cause that’s bullshit. It was to protect themselves. They didn’t lift a finger to stop Germany’s attacks on Jewish citizens until AFTER Germany breached their borders and started attacking neighboring countries. The U.S. didn’t enter the war until AFTER they were attacked themselves at Pearl Harbor. Not altruism, just self-serving.

The #1 reason for colonialism was to spread the colonizers religious beliefs to the “savage” unbelievers. The other top reasons were because that area had natural reasons they wanted for themselves to fuel the Industrial evolution growing at those times. Hawaii was for its strategic military location in the Pacific Ocean and because the sovereigns were close to England so they needed to act first. The U.S. (among others) did in fact try to weasel their way into Japan as well which is the root of where their dislikes of foreigners come from. The movie The Last Samurai actually does have some historical significance. I am a descendant of the Aizu area.

These posts will never have all the information necessary to make full conclusions, but as long as you understand that, it doesn’t make it wrong to share. It’s not our fault that others that read it lack critical thinking skills because if it’s not shared, it may never be known. This is the benefit of the internet today that information can be spread easier. Unfortunately, it’s also a time when critical thinking skills has significantly waned in the population. I don’t know why they stopped teaching logic in schools, but they need to bring it back.

Oh, last thing, STOP FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ACTIONS to make a conclusion and look at the whole picture, the whole history. Look at the timeline, the progression, the domino effects because there is ALWAYS consequences to actions, whether positive, negative, or neutral. The things we are seeing in the world are not the result of only the last few years, but likely not the last few centuries of things that have developed and festered and finally exploded.

Ok ok seriously last thing

THE FIGHTING IS FUCKING STUPID! Jews, Christians, Muslims, Catholics and all their spawns are fucking related! These abrahamic religions are like cousins fighting over an estate. It’s fucking ridiculous. No one needs to be right or wrong, just leave each other alone already. Learn to share, you know, like they teach toddlers in preschool. LEARN TO FUCKING SHARE.

[the-tired-tenor]

You can condemn the actions of Hamas while still remembering that Israel is a colonizer state that has treated the Palestinian population as subhuman for decades. You can condemn the actions of Hamas while remembering that Israel's apartheid against the Palestinian population is no less disgusting than the way white settlers treated native Americans, or the way white settlers treated the aboriginal peoples in Australia, or the way the Spanish treated the Aztecs and Mayans, and it is not antisemitic to say so. You can condemn the largest killing of Jewish people since the holocaust without pointedly refusing to acknowledge that, in this case, the Israeli government caused this to happen through their constant abuse of the Palestinian people.

If you have a problem with Israel because it's governed by Jewish people? That's fucked up and you should feel bad and examine your shitty biases. Also, consider fucking yourself with a large metal pipe. You've been a shitty person up til now; I invite you to learn more about the culture you've so readily demonized and leave your bigotry behind you. Maybe start making reparations in the form of donations to your local synagogue.

On the flip side, if you're hiding behind "oh, but our people have been victims of genocide before" or "this is the largest killing of our people since the holocaust" in an attempt to somehow imply that, because you were victims of a horrible tragedy, you are unable to be the aggressor? I have a beachfront house in Ohio to sell you. Having horrors visited upon you does not excuse turning around and inflicting horrors on another group of people. Those people were not targeted for being Jewish, they were targeted for being colonizers who forced Palestinians out of their homes and treated them like second class citizens; while I cannot condone the behavior of Hamas (which again, is specifically horrifying), I also cannot blame the Palestinians for turning to violence given that no other avenue exists for them.

You can condemn what Hamas is doing and condemn Israel's Colonialism at the same time. Palestine still deserves to be free regardless.

[shut-up-rabert]

I posted 263 times in 2022

That's 263 more posts than 2021!

139 posts created (53%)

124 posts reblogged (47%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@pulihora

@suvarnarekha

@navaratna

@ramayantika

@shanti-ashant-hai

I tagged 256 of my posts in 2022

Only 3% of my posts had no tags

#desiblr - 173 posts

#hindublr - 21 posts

#hinduphobia - 10 posts

#hinduism - 8 posts

#kashmir - 7 posts

#jammu and kashmir - 6 posts

#kashmiri hindus - 5 posts

#kashmir genocide - 5 posts

#kanhaiya lal - 5 posts

#pakistan - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 123 characters

#won’t even be surprised if kashmir genocide is represented as “a dark time when young kashmiri girls couldn’t go to school”

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Movie concept: students from pan India living together in a hostel but instead we get less represented states like 7 sisters(+sikkim), Odisha, Karnataka, MP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Goa in lead along with correct representation of states like Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerela, Andhra, Bihar, J&K&Ladakh in the background

46 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

#4

Just read a comic where UK and Canada were referred to as North Punjab and West Punjab and I haven’t been okay since

49 notes - Posted September 21, 2022

#3

Why isn’t mass media more neutral?

Disclaimer: I’m not taking any sides here, nor am I provoking any of you to say it, but this has been on my mind quite a bit and I feel like saying it now: Honestly saying, I’ve always felt like the media favours Palestine over Israel way to much even tho media is supposed to be neutral.

Essays in exams, front pages of newspaper, stars on social media always talk about Palestine but seem to be painting a rather black and white “Palestine good Israel bad” picture but never seem to be willing to dwell deeper into the topic, and when they they go somewhat below the surface it’s always from Palestine’s perispective only, nothing explaining Israel’s side of story as passionately even if at all. Even in India vs Pakistan wars, you’ll find motives and aggressions from both sides easily enough if you looked.

“Stars” like Bela Hadid raise slogans demanding Israel’s dissolve under the ruse of Palestine’s independence and no one bats an eye. The founder of Human rights watch left the organisation saying that it was being biased towards Palestine and has forgotten its original purpose. A lot of funding of these pro palestine news channels comes from Pro Islamic nations organisations, most of the said countries being Palestine supporters.

Palestine is suffering, yes, but it’s not just Israel that’s making it suffer. Hamas has a major role to play too. It kills its own civilians more than Israel does. Palestine has seen some serious bloodshed since Hamas came into power but no one seems to focus on that. There’s little to no discussion about how Palestine is bleeding internally due to hamas, but only the stuff that can be used against Israel.

You’ll hear about how Israel “attacked” Gaza and most of the times it turns out to be some retaliation. We always hear about civilian deaths whose names are never revealed but no one ever wonders what civilians were doing around militant bases. We talk about how palestinians are being thrown out of Israel to show them as big aggressors and it turns out that the land was originally Israel’s territory to begin with.

I’m not being pro-Israel here, And I very well admit that it can have its fair share of violations, such as killing of the one Al-Jazeera reporter , accident or not (look, I fucking hate that platform but that doesn’t mean I condone killing of someone who didn’t do anything) but this is something that has always made me curious. It can’t be as simple as “Israel evil”, can it?

53 notes - Posted August 29, 2022

#2

Hassi to ye sochkar aati h ki mera hone waala abhi kisi aur ke saath jeeney-marne ki kasme kha rha hoga

62 notes - Posted August 5, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

What you see:

What Desi kids see:

156 notes - Posted November 11, 2022

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