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steveyockey · 1 year

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I paid $5 to access séamus malekafzali’s latest substack on palestine, here’s the full text,

It is easy to be lulled into a state of complacency, even with military occupation.

Israel’s occupation of Palestine has gone on longer than many of us on Earth have been alive, now going on 75 years. The levels of that deplacement, blockading, and violence have ebbed and flowed over years and decades, but that hand around the neck has always remained, even if how much it constricts has a tendency to loosen and tighten. Over 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israel this year in its occupation. News bulletins of them dying, oftentimes teenagers, come up through the headlines of Palestinian newspapers and channels as often as the weather. These deaths at the hands of Israeli security personnel are not isolated incidents, with soldiers materializing on roadsides and at checkpoints as unfortunate coincidence. They are constant spikes in the waveform of an incessant low-grade hum of humiliation, imprisonment, and destruction that has made daily life a forced agreement to constantly exist on the precipice of death.

This framing is not meant to be a tired retread of the conflict between Israel and Palestine or the nature of the Israeli occupation. This is meant to be a bulwark against the inevitable framing of this latest battle unfolding around Gaza, as it will appear in the Western media in the days to come.

There is a tendency, a deep-set one, to report Israel and Palestine as two countries that are on roughly the same playing field internationally, as you might report on a war that might involve Israel battling against a place like Jordan or Egypt. This kind of coverage obscures how deeply interlocked Israel’s military operations are with the fabric of the Palestinian society.

In the West Bank, settlements and checkpoints have made Palestinian land into a kind of comical archipelago, where in addition to being separated from Gaza by a huge land border, they are also separated from traveling to communities only a stone’s throw away from them without going through significant anguish. In Gaza, while no Israeli soldiers walk the streets, all their land borders are essentially sealed, their ports almost completely blockaded. Israel’s continued occupation has been so pinpoint and precise that its planes have gone as far as bombing bookstores, and its restrictions did not let up even when the COVID-19 pandemic reduced one health organization to carrying only as many tests of the deadly disease as could fit in a car.

This is not a matter of moral justification; one does not need to constantly busy themselves with having to make a full ideological conversion before understanding this. This is a matter of cause and effect.

What is the logical expectation, regardless of politics, ideology, culture, and creed, when a population of people is thrust into conditions that can only be described as an open-air prison, where every individual is a criminal in the eyes of the military occupying power regardless if they pick up a rifle or not, because there is supposedly always the threat that they will one day?

These are the basic conditions that have preceded the initiation of Operation al-Aqsa Storm this morning. As dawn broke on the morning of October 7, only one day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, launched a military operation of unprecedented scope in its history. Hamas fighters would not only attempt to enter Israeli territory proper with ground troops, already in of itself an intensely bold action (though not without precedent in the past decade). This operation would be a combined incursion into Israel by both land, sea, and even air. Ground forces would cut the border fence into settlements surrounding Gaza, speedboats would make landings in southern Israel, and fighters from a newly-inaugurated paraglider division would fly over the border fortifications and then further inland.

Threats of an invasion of Israeli territory proper have been a staple of speeches from Hamas and Hezbollah and groups like it for years. There was a long-standing perception by outside observers that it was fanciful. An intentionally lofty piece of propaganda that fires up supporters while the real military wheeling and dealing is done under far more subtle and controlled terms, as with most militant organizations. After all, no Israeli-administered town, the ones occupied in Palestine during the initial 1948 war, had ever been taken in any war against the Jewish state since its creation, even by a combined force of multiple Arab national militaries.

That notion now can no longer exist.

At sunrise, Hamas fired a gigantic barrage of rockets into Israeli territory, a staggering 5,000 in the first wave alone. As Israeli military and police forces were distracted by fires and rocket destruction in residential areas of the country, Palestinian forces in Gaza proceeded to make their primary move.

After the sun rose, Hamas cut through the border fence surrounding Israel and sent both fighters on foot and on motorcycles into Israel. Images released by the group seem to tell a story in frozen figures. Israeli soldiers, strewn dead, caught by surprise, one having even rushed out so quickly that he put on his military gear but no other clothes except his underwear. An even grimmer story could be found in one of the IDF military dormitories, where an entire room full of soldiers had been massacred, only having perhaps seconds earlier gotten the alarm that Hamas had breached the perimeter, many of them seemingly mid-way through getting out of bed.

From there, Hamas made unprecedented move after unprecedented move. Hamas fighters moved as far north into Zikim, built on the former Palestinian village of Hiribya, and moved as far east as Ofakim, built on the former hamlet of Khirbat Futais. The Erez Crossing, for years the only legal border crossing that Israel operated with the Gaza Strip, came under full Palestinian control. Sderot, a city where Israelis had once gathered on couches dragged to high peaks to watch the bombardment of Palestinians, now found themselves facing down Palestinian fighters in their own streets.

An additional shock would come in Israel’s initial response. Amidst cataclysmic scenes like hundreds of ravers in the desert near Gaza fleeing on foot, neither the Israeli president nor the prime minister spoke in those early hours in the morning.

The Israeli high command, despite the continuous insistence of Palestinian factions that they would one day attempt to take the fight into Israel itself, had become complacent. They, like many observers of Israel-Palestine, believed the occupation they had constructed could go on forever, unburdened by the need to adapt. Israeli soldiers after all were now more used to sniping reporters and unarmed protesters than engaging in military conflict. Entropy was what was propelling the military occupation complex of the Jewish state, not a wholly active effort.

Despite an ungodly amount of Western military equipment, highly advanced anti-aircraft systems programmed to shoot down thousands of rockets, an international reputation for tenacity and strategic knowhow, and multiple victories against Arab nations again and again and again, all of it ended up being useless against a Hamas fighter flying in on a box fan and a parachute.

This failure is two-fold, and both are closely related. One is the expectation that things could go on as before without addressing the root of the issue (that being a military occupation of an entire state), and the other in expectation that those being occupied had no capacity to learn from experience how Israel’s military strategy operates, people who could then going on to capitalize on that knowledge.

There is a fundamental flaw in the perception of Western powers toward the Middle East in general and Arabs in particular that because the groups fighting with Israel or the United States are irregular, bereft of highly professional uniforms and dedicated gigantic military headquarters, that they do not have the same ability to strategize and to confront the forces that are occupying their countries. Flashes of how faulty this thinking is rear their head again and again, from Iraq to Afghanistan and everywhere in-between and around, but still the idea, unspoken as it may be, remains that they are fundamentally unequipped compared to the might they are fighting against. But Hamas has military strategists of its own, ones that understand the asymmetric situation they are dealing with, and ones that understand what the actual capabilities of Israel are, versus what their perception is.

The perception of Israel’s invulnerability versus what has actually been displayed today could not have been more different. Instead of being forced to immediately pull back, in essence making today a raid, Hamas has instead actually contested several Israeli settlements, which are still being fought over at time of this writing many hours after the initial incursion from Gaza began. A single Israeli soldier captured and held in Gaza used to capture the Israeli imagination for years; now there are believed to be not only tens of soldiers captured by Hamas, but tens of Israeli civilians as well, all now being held within the Strip. Hamas has also brought Israeli military vehicles back into the Strip, the novelty of working IDF equipment now under Palestinian control a source of celebration within the territory. Over 100 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the first day of Hamas’ attack, and nearly 1000 injured, a shocking early casualty count in an ongoing conflict where casualties on the Palestinians’ side are usually far more lopsided.

Israel’s response so far to Hamas’ operation has been to escalate rhetorically, with Netanyahu now calling this a war, and escalating its usual military strategy with Gaza, with carpet bombing now on an intense, concentrated scale. At the time of this writing, almost 200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in only a few hours, with that number expected to rise significantly in the days to come. Already, news has come in of Israeli planes having leveled Gaza’s second-largest building, the Palestine Tower, which housed a plethora of media offices, in scenes reminiscent of Israel’s bombing of another tower block of media offices in 2021 that infamously took out the local bureau of the Associated Press.

As fighting continues into the night in ways never seen before since 1948, the question remains: after all these decades, why now?

The ostensible justifications of what the clincher was that sparked this operation are innumerable, but two appear to be most clearly illuminated: the recent increased activity of far-right Zionists at the al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem (hence the name of the operation itself), but just as well the indications that the Saudi Arabia and Israel may be close to a normalization deal, which would be the largest such development in the Abraham Accords yet. Hezbollah mentioned this operation as being a “message” and a “decisive response” to Arab nations pursuing the idea of normalization with Israel. Still, it is important to recognize that pinning the undertaking of a completely gigantic operation of this scale as just a simple message to Saudi Arabia would be reductive. As the Los Angeles Times’ international correspondent Nabih Bulos says of the matter:

“To pretend that Hamas did this to be a spoiler of KSA-Israel normalization is just downright epic in its navel-gazing nonsense.”

What is important to always return to is that eternally governing line above everything: the low hum of constant occupation, and who has been causing its spikes. Israel’s government, its most far-right in its history, has been on the warpath almost immediately from its inauguration, with figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, now thrust to the forefront, doing everything large and small to provoke a Palestinian response. The hope is that the inevitable Palestinian response can mobilize the Israeli society, that it can be swiftly defeated by the Israeli military, and that the Israeli state can use such an opportunity to impose its sovereignty over what little of Palestine governed by Palestinians remains, and perhaps even what lies beyond it.

But that formula relies on the Palestinian side only accepting being provoked, themselves having no strategy of their own outside of firing rockets and yelling on television. Military occupation breeds a feeling of annihilation, but that annihilation is enclosed with it inevitable feelings of rabid and desperate hope, inspiring within irregular groups desires to try things never tried before. These are not always guaranteed to be successful: one may look at Aleppo when rebel groups managed to come together and break the siege on the city in the final stages of the battle, only for it to fall in the months to come anyway. Nevertheless, there is a real perception within Israel, communicated out to the world by its media and by its intelligentsia, that it is a nation on the verge of internal collapse, brought to the precipice by far-right forces it has let fester for decades without envisioning its eventual conclusion.

What does looking at how Israel is faring now communicate to Palestinian factions in Gaza? What do young people in Gaza, who make up 47% of the Strip’s population, imagine might lie ahead for them as they see these events unfold? What does a Hamas fighter imagine might be possible when, as the writer Josef Burton says, he exits a 25 by 7-mile space he’s never left in his entire life?

#reading #palestine #from the river to the sea 💗#I’ve debated caving and giving séamus my money many times before and today was like well. okay 👍🏻

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deepdisireslonging · 2 months

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Remembering the Forgotten

The Reader revisits the beach that looks up at her dig site. But on this trip, something or someone in the water calls to her. When she answers, who she meets is more ancient than any artifact she’s ever held. And all he wants to do is possess and pleasure her to thier heart’s content.

Pairing: Sea God!Loki x Archaeologist!Reader

Warnings/Promises: cw food mention, bad night-swimming safety, magic, SMUT, oral (female receiving), p in v, shadow tentacle/magic bondage, overstimulation, ritualistic-ish smut, divine sugar baby proposition, mutual pining, bad archaeology humor

Word Count: 5500 (oops)

Note: I had another dig in Cyprus and I got to revisit my favorite beach. Which of course gave me a few ideas. Unlike the reader, I did forget my water shoes. If you ever go to Cyprus, don’t be me. Sorry not sorry for this blatant self-insertion fic I came up with on my last day of the dig. Happy reading!

With squeals of delight, you and your girl friends dashed into the waters. The waters off Kourion beach in Cyprus were barely rippled by waves. Last weekend, with the entire island lacking a breeze, the sea had been as calm as lake water. But this weekend, they managed several soft breaking waves. Which was a wonderful escape from the high temperatures ravaging the summer. And this year, you had not forgotten your swim shoes to combat the pebbles that outlined the beaches like a low defense wall.

And the beach was packed with tourists. And locals. Pooling your money, your little group had snared the last rentable chair and umbrella.

Your friend, Chiara, sighed as she let a wave wash over her shoulders. “This is why we let you talk us into these trips.”

The last of your trio, Lara, re-emerged after dipping her head under the water. “Almost makes all of those visits to your sites worth it.” She spun in place, digging a hole in the sand with her toes. “This is the perfect way to wash off all that sweat we made in Paphos.”

“Hey. I made sure you both wore enough sunscreen. And we all had enough water.” You pouted, a little hurt by Lara’s disdain. “I warned you guys that Paphos was luminous. The Romans loved white stones. Which unfortunately reflects every ounce of sunlight, but it was helpful back before electric light. Some of those stones were dimmed because the Romans also liked to purposefully weather the stone. They thought it gave their structures a worn, domestic look.” You were only a little miffed that both of your friends didn’t enjoy the archaeology of the site as much as you did. Then again, you were the one who dug here. They had to be bribed into this non-dig trip with promises of shopping in Nikosia and Omodos.

Lara dipped her head apologetically. Glancing up at the cliff-face that abutted the coat, she asked, “so where’s your site? Can we see it from here?”

“Oh, yeah.” You pointed from one side to the other. “That white tarp structure on the left is the House of Achilles, named for the mosaic inside. It’s next to the back exit of the site. And right there is where the paragliders take off, off the cliff. The whole stretch here is the city. And there, just right of that dip in the cliff, is my site. Past the curve there is the house of Eustolius, a rich guy who built a bathhouse for the city after the earthquake in the fourth century. But the whole top there is Kourion.”

A rogue wave nearly topped the three of you, making you all laugh even as you sputtered around the salt water. When the water leveled out, you could touch bottom again. The sand under your toes was soft and completely devoid of seashells.

Chiara looked back to watch for more rogues. “That’s still cool that you worked here. Have you ever thought about moving to the island? You obviously love it here. With so many museums, and all your professor’s connections, you could probably get a job. Easy.”

You dipped your head underwater to delay your response. This topic was a secret sore spot. “I don’t really have the personal credentials for the museums around here. My Greek is tolerable.”

“But it would get better the longer you’re here,” Lara added. She jumped with you as a wave rolled through.

“Perhaps. But,” you licked your salty lips, “I’m not a fan of the schmoozing you have to do at events. I would like a museum lab job. But not if it requires me to make… appearances. Makes me feel like I’m an animal in a zoo.”

“That’s fair.” As a preacher’s kid, Chiara knew what it was like to be constantly on display. Never able to step out of line in case it reflected bad on her dad. “Maybe we can find you a rich British guy who wants to vacation here permanently.”

You all giggled at that. Almost like they had been summoned, a group of three guys waved and hooted at your trio. It made you all burst out laughing. But before they could swim close, you all took off over the waves for “deeper” water. Being Kourion, the water didn’t actually get deeper. But definitely further from the shore.

Chiara didn’t let the subject go. “Come on. You’ve joked that a good, arranged marriage would be excellent for your school’s archaeology department.”

“Yeah,” you said, rolling your eyes. “But I’m more likely to get hit on by a Russian than a Brit here.”

Lara gracefully drifted the conversation to something less embarrassing for you. She and Chiara began to plan the next shopping adventure.

But your focus had been stolen. Further out, near the line of buoys that kept people from swimming out to sea, you could see a man. His dark hair stood out against the bright horizon. The longer you looked at him, the stronger you could feel the current pulling at your legs.

“Earth to Y/N?”

“Hmm?” You turned back to your friends, barely noticing the sudden drop in current. “What?”

“Are there any sites you want to see around Famagusta?”

“Yes… but we’re not going to Famagusta.”

“Why not?”

“It’s in the North!” While you re-gave them a quick history of the island and it’s split into more-or-less two countries, you could feel eyes prickling over your skin. When you looked into deeper water, you could have sworn that your dark-haired man was joined by someone with hair like the sun. But then Chiara was dragging you all back towards the shore for gelato.

A wave swelled up from out of nowhere, quickly overtaking your trio. It wasn’t a rogue. But it’s undertow fought your arms paddling in the opposite direction. Like the sea wanted you not only to stay in the water. But to go out deeper.

Which was ridiculous.

All the same, as the three of you crossed the small stones to the hot sand, something from the water called to you. You looked back. Your dark-haired mystery was gone.

***

“Why can’t I have her?” Loki slipped outside the buoys to the deep-water side. From there, nobody on the beach would be able to see them. While the mortals had put the line there as a deterrent for swimmers, he had applied magic to the rope long ago. “Brother, it has been a long time since I called a mortal to me. I have been patiently waiting.”

At his side, Thor crossed his arms. “These days are not like the old ones. The mortals will miss her. We can no longer take who we want while their families consider it a blessing. Now they send boats and pray to younger gods.” He followed Loki’s gaze in your direction. “Forget her, brother. Like you have all others.”

Loki nodded, even if that last statement was wrong.

Sure that you were far out of his brother’s mind, Thor dipped under the waters and swam out to sea.

But the dark-haired god lingered. With his magic, he could see you clearly sitting under that gaudy umbrella. He could smell the sweet sugar of your gelato. The warmth of the sun on your skin was cooled by the shade. He could taste each remaining rivlet of saltwater running down your arms and legs.

Loki leaned over the buoy. “Look at me,” he willed. After an eternity of seconds, you did. He knew you’d barely be able to see him over the waves and the glare of the sun. But he saw your head tilt to one side; curious.

He willed toward you another command. There wasn’t a chance that you’d swim out that second. But he could wait. He could relax under the waves until you stepped back into his domain, called by his silent whisper in your ear.

“Come back to me.”

***

Nightlife on Kourion beach was less stressful than the daytime. With the sun gone, the waves took on a foreboding warning. The only light on the waters came from the few restaurants sitting on the sand. Your trio was sat at the more expensive one in the middle. Next to your morning’s umbrella. This was also the one with the good gelato and other sweets behind display glass.

Chiara and Lara were happily munching on their desserts. You hadn’t ordered one. Instead, you were content to stare off into the waves, counting the stars that glimmered overhead.

The waves still called to you. Their relaxing pulse and crash pulled on you like a current, or like a string attached to your chest. You made up your mind.

“I’m going for a swim.”

Startled, Lara looked out into the waters. “Are you sure? It’s going to be really dark out there.”

You stood, shedding your wrap-around skirt and folding it over the back of your chair. “I’ll stay where you can see me. I promise.”

With the drop of the sun, the sand was cool under your toes. The water was pleasantly warm. Without your water shoes, you gingerly crossed the stones. Stepping into the sand on the other side was a relief. And further out, you could swim in waters less choppy than that morning.

Then you kept swimming out. And further. And further.

Looking back, you could still see your friends as if you’d never left the stones. And you could steadily stand on the perfectly smooth sand beneath the water. You could walk. Calmly, watching the stars and the shore, you kept walking backwards completely oblivious to how far out you were.

Until your shoulder blades bumped into the buoys.

“Hello.”

With a start, you dove into the water to swim away. But when you came up for air, you hadn’t moved.

The dark-haired man on the other side of the rope slid his eyes over you. They were bright, the same color as the Mediterranean on a sunny day. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I’m not sure what else you’d thought would happen. Poppin’ up outta the ocean like that.” Your heart thundered in your ears. The gentle movement of the water circled around you until you were calm again. “What are you doing out this far? In the dark?”

He grinned, dipping his head to face the water. “I was… I was waiting for you.” His eyes glanced over your lips. “The sea called to you, didn’t it? That’s why you came this deep. In the dark.”

For a split second, you considered diving under the waves to swim away again. But something about him… you had a feeling you would make it about as far as last time. “Who are you?”

Again, he grinned. This time, he kept eye-level with you. His canines were curved and sharp, like the teeth of a barracuda. He took your hand as you shivered. “I am known as Loki.” His hand, shimmery with salt water and the hint of scales, dragged you closer to the buoy. He kissed over your knuckles. “And you have nothing to fear with me.”

His kiss left your skin tingling. With a start, you realized why you had been so drawn to him that morning. “You… you visited my dig. Last season.” The tall, suited man. You had thought it odd for someone to wear so much black in so high a heat. But the kiss he laid on your knuckles was the same. The current of him was the same. As were his eyes.

Loki glanced back over the deeper call of the sea. “That – that I did. Though I would appreciate you not repeating it. I’m… I’m not supposed to visit land.” The water shuddered around him. “But, yes. We have met before. I was enchanted by you, Y/N. On land, I couldn’t call you to me. But when you and your friends came back to my beach,” he nodded, “I don’t usually believe in luck. Today has altered my perception.”

Your perception was changed too. The scales. The teeth. You should have been terrified. Instead, every word he said swam around your head like a sweet perfume. And like perfume, even if you did manage to get away, his thrall would linger. “Why me?”

“Why not you?”

“Because, I’m – I’m just—”

“Just you?” Before you realized what he was doing, the rope of the buoy drifted away, and he tugged you closer to his chest. The rope closed back behind you. “Just you: the archaeologist. The one who remembers the forgotten. Who gives stories to the lost. A woman who sees through dust and grime the beauty of the ancient and shares it with this new world.” He trailed his fingers across your forehead. “You chose this lonesome life.”

You started and reached back for the rope. When had it gotten so far away? “I am not lonesome. There was a whole crew up there with the same skills.”

Loki reached out, detangling your hand from the rope like a parent would their child from a sweet. “You saw things they didn’t.”

“It was my unit. My square of dirt to uncover. It’s my job to see things they don’t.”

His face drifted closer to yours. “But your view is unique.” Nose to nose, he smelled salty sweet. His grip moved further up your arm, leaving a tingling trail in its wake. “Let me show you ‘why you.’ Let me show you a unique view.”

This was crazy. He was probably dangerous. But, the scientist side of your heart, the one always yearning to learnt he unknown, wanted to see how this would play out. You wanted to know that ‘unique view.’

He smiled as you nodded.

The rope drifted further away.

“Wait!”

Loki stopped.

“I need… promise me that you will return me to my friends.”

“I promise: I will return you to your friends.” His words made the still waters ripple. The same way water echoes around a crocodile as it calls its mate.

“Whole and in one piece.”

His smile deepened. “I promise: I will return you to your friends. Whole, and in one piece.”

When the water stopped rippling, his arms wrapped around your waist. Above you, the stars barely moved. Around you, the water dragged on you like the wake of a large ship. The next time you blinked, Kourion beach was gone. In front of you, a large white stone, shaped like a clamshell, stuck up out of the water. The final steppingstone in a trio from the beach.

“That’s,” you gasped, “that’s Aphrodite’s rock.” You pushed him away to spin around. “But- but that’s two hours down the coast!” When you swam back into his space, you noticed dark tendrils surrounding his shadow under the water. “Who are you?”

“I am Loki.”

“Loki… what are you?”

He circled his thumbs over your shoulders while he looked out to sea. “I am the forgotten. The story-less. Will,” he whispered, “will you remember me, Y/N?”

The eyes that bored into you were more green than blue. And they were filled with so much desperation that your chest ached. You slid your hands up his bare arms to his shoulders. You rubbed your thumbs into his skin, mirroring the movement that he had stilled. “But… Aphrodite. Isn’t this her… her territory?”

He chuckled. Giving you gentle push, the water moved out of the way until your back was against the rough rock. “She won’t mind. We’re just borrowing it.”

You reached up to cup his face. This was crazy. He was acting as if… as if he was some sort of god. Long forgotten. Maybe he was. Who knew who all the ancients worshiped? How many temples and high places had gone missing through the millennia? In your own excavated villa… it was missing ninety percent of its painted frescos. All that lost data.

He was asking you to remember him.

“I don’t know if I can remember you.” Your lips trembled with shuddered breaths as he moved closer. His chest was warm under your hands. “I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or not. If I wake up—”

“Why does it matter if this is a dream?” He ran his nose along your cheek. “Are you willing to dream it? To dream it with this ancient artifact?”

You grinned, mirroring his movement with your nose and his cheek. “Old? You don’t look a day over nine hundred.”

“Why thank you.”

As he spun with you in his arms, you laughed. He laid you on a flat place on the rock that jutted out into the water. The waves were picking up. They drifted over your chest, your breasts sticking half above and below their touch.

Biting your lip, you ran your fingers through his dark hair. “You know, they say if you swim around this rock seven times… Aphrodite blesses you with her beauty.”

“You don’t need such a blessing.” Loki crawled over top of you, kissing your forehead. “And you’ve been talking to a younger crowd. The older story is that she re-grants you your virginity for swimming around. Will you want such a blessing after tonight with me?” His mouth fell open as your tongue darted out to wet your lips. His heaving breath said he could taste the salt on your lips.

“Depending on how this goes…” you arched your chest up into his. “Seven laps won’t do the trick. And, if I am to remember you… why would I need the blessing?”

Eyes glowing, you couldn’t tell whether it was with moon light or desire, Loki dipped his head to press a deep kiss against your lips. Your whole body responded. Immediately, your hands dug into the soft skin of his back. Your legs wrapped around him, tangling you two together like old lovers. When he kissed the under curve of your neck, his sharp teeth dragging over the sensitive skin, you trembled.

Was this a trick? Had he brought you here to drain you?

“You have nothing to fear from me, Y/N.” Loki kneaded his hands over your breasts. His body rocked into yours like a beginning storm. He whispered, “nothing to fear.” With a snap, your swimsuit was gone. Which left more of your skin to slide against his. The soft scales that covered his body made him look like he was filled with moonlight. Their edges caught at your skin like thousands of tiny kisses.

And you could feel him.

His length laid across your lower tummy. You hesitated to look down at it. Chiara’s spicy books had nothing on the heat and weight of it. The weight of him, ready for you. Waiting who knows how long for your return so he could have you. You felt precious. Like a beloved artifact newly found.

You cried out as his fingers curled into you. Out to sea, the waves crashed higher and higher. As did your pleasure. Loki sucked deeply at the valley between your breasts. You arched into his taste and ground down into his touch. Impossible as it was, you felt more than his two pairs of hands traveling across your skin exposed to the water. You thought about the tendril shadows you’d seen. Your definition of impossible was changing by the second. Especially when Loki mouthed at the side of your breast, then licked your nipple into his mouth. You were receiving lovemaking from a god. Your mind spun.

Digging a hand into his hair, attempting to move him as you liked failed. Loki knew what you needed. How, you didn’t care. But his fingers curled when you needed. They scissored you open in time with your gasps and moans. And his thumb circled your clit before you could begin to beg. But you begged anyway. Here was a god. Pinning you down to a goddess’s rock in the middle of the night. You begged for more. More of him. You wanted to feel him. Wanted to be full with him.

“All in due time, my love.” He kissed you deeply, darting his tongue between your teeth to taste more of your mouth. “I need to prepare you.”

“I’m ready. Please. Fill me. Fuck me. I’m yours, Loki. Please.”

He growled. The rumble pressed into your chest, making your thighs tremble around his hips. Curling his fingers rougher, Loki hummed with delight as your slick seeped into the sea around his touch. He slid back into the water, disappearing underneath it. But he dragged your waist further down the rock, until your hips were underwater too. Only then did he dip his tongue into your heat. You cried out to the empty night sky as he ravaged you with his long tongue. Fingers and tongue toying with your walls and your clit, your vision blurred quickly. His tendrils pinned down your writhing hips before you could crawl away from him.

And he kept going. Through a second and a third of your release. The sharp teeth at the edges of his mouth teased with danger. When he finally brought his head up out of the water, he stared you down like a creature untamed. His green eyes shined like back-lit emeralds. He placed his hands on your tummy and rested his chin there.

“Do you still want more, mortal?”

Despite a voice screaming in the back of your head that you’d had plenty… your body begged louder for more. Every cell was alight. Every nerve ending crackled with desire for what Loki was offering.

You reached for him. His fingers tangled with yours. Leaning up, he pinned your hands to the rock on either side of your head. He kissed your forehead while his cock rutted into your sex.

“That wasn’t an answer, my love. I need an answer. Or perhaps you’d like me to take you back to your friends already?”

Frantic, you shook your head. “Please. Fill me. Loki… need you.”

“Of course.”

Despite your whimpered pleas, Loki entered you slowly. You breathed out one breath in time with his thrust. And had to inhale for another. The drag of him teased with your sensitivity. With a final thrust that Loki groaned through, you came again. Your hands clawed the air, still pinned down high above your head. Loki panted. He watched your face as it contorted in pleasure. His scales rippled as your sounds washed over him.

“I could keep you forever,” he murmured.

Was that a threat or a promise?

He didn’t give you time to consider it either way. Fully seated, he refused to move. Instead, his fingers slowly circled your clit. The stars disappeared from your sight as you closed your eyes. Pinned down by your wrists in his other hand, you did your best to roll your hips to inspire him to move. But dark shadows wrapped around your thighs. They pulled your thighs away from Loki’s waist, spreading you open and capturing your movements. Loki increased the speed of his fingers. Unable to move, your voice made up for the difference. You cried out his name, Begging. Pleading. For what, you could never specify. But he understood. Loki gaze focused on the place where your bodies connected. A few moments later, he watched your body spasm around him. Your walls clamped down on his cock, making him moan.

“Only a few more to go.”

“What?” You opened your eyes. Under the starlight, you barely saw the tendrils dart through the water. But you felt them. You felt them wrap around every inch of you that was possible of shifting or arching. They took hold of your wrists, pinning them together. A few wrapped around your waist, pressing you into the rock. More crisscrossed over your chest, between your breasts, squeezing them and pinning down your torso. Within seconds, you couldn’t move a muscle. Except for the ones currently wrapped around a god.

Loki slid his hands up the underside of your thighs. “Look at you,” he purred. His thumbs smoothed just shy of holding open your lower lips. “Gorgeous and spread out, just for me. My brother be damned.” He thrust once, joining your cry with his own. “All mine.”

Every movement was his own. You could do nothing. Except make every sound that your body willed. Pinned as you were, it heightened every in and out. Every delicate tracing of his fingertips across your skin was like fire. And you were very willing to burn. Or drown. The water crashed against you with the same force as his hips. A tendril kept your head above water. But as Loki’s pace stuttered and faltered, the shadows lost their strength.

You whimpered, “cum with me. Loki, let go.”

“Not yet.” He restarted a steady pace.

“Why not?”

“You’ll see. It’s part of the view.”

The view. The only unique view you cared about at this point was how Loki, your great god of the sea, looked like he was about two seconds from going feral sea monster on you. His eyes were wild and wide. Like he could see every tremble and tremor of your body. His breath stuttered as if he could feel your crashing pleasure like earthquakes. Your eyes crossed, blurring your vision of him. But that was part of the view too. As pleasure once again crested over your body, Loki’s grip tightened around you everywhere. His reaction was a mirror of what you were doing to him.

As your body came down from it’s high, the tendrils lightly squeezed and massaged. You fought to catch your breath. When you opened your eyes, Loki was panting above you. He cupped your face in his hand, pleased when you pressed your cheek into his palm.

“Can you give me one more, love?”

“Oh, Loki…”

“Just one more. I know you can. You’re doing wonderfully.” With a flick of his wrist, the tendrils moved away until you could only feel him. He leaned down to kiss your forehead. The mixture of salt from the sea and your sweat made his mind spin. Quickly, he gripped the base of his cock. Still impaled within you, the fluttering of your walls kept him on edge. “Just one more. And then you’ll be mine.”

A smidgen of clarity tugged at your mind. “What?” What was he doing to you?

“One more, Y/N. Then all will be revealed.”

Finally free, you reached up to wrap your arms around his shoulders. It brought Loki close enough that you could feel his breath on your skin. It made you breathless, his last first drag out of your sex. When he slammed home within you, his shout rang against the stone under your head. Yours traveled to echo against the sky. You felt blissfully numb. With so much thrumming of your nerves and how worn out your pussy was, you were about ready to pass out into your deepest sleep ever.

“Give me one more, Y/N. Can you feel it? How perfectly you fit into my arms? How every pulse and beat of your heart matches mine? Can you see it? How well we fit together?” Loki gripped your chin, making you refocus on his face. “Please. Stay with me.”

Something about his tone told you the plea wasn’t just for tonight.

Then he was moving like the sea in a hurricane and you couldn’t think. Your hands clambered to feel him everywhere. Your thighs tightened around his hips. Your legs wrapped around him, locked closed at your ankles. He had pinned you into place. Now it was your turn.

He moaned as your nails dragged down his back. Panting and falling forward, Loki glared at you with a smile as you clamped your walls around his length. He kneaded your breasts in retaliation. Pinching your nipples between his fingers, he tugged on them to guide your body into an arch. It deepened the reach of his cock. Delighted, he wrapped an arm under the small of your back as you wailed his name. He could feel your release coming. And this time, he had no desire to hold back on his own.

“Come with me, Loki.” You ran your trembling thumb across his cheek. “Make me yours.”

“Yes, my love.”

The waves crashed against the rock around you. Gently misted with sea foam, you finally smiled as Loki filled you. The rush and heat of his release sent you spiraling into an orgasm of your own.

Loki continued to thrust, chasing the final sparks of pleasure. When he finally stopped, he gently pushed your sweat-stuck locks of hair off your face. He kissed your forehead. You closed your eyes under the tenderness of it.

When you reopened them, Loki had you stretched out on your own square of soft sand on Aphrodite’s pebble beach. He stretched out beside you, finally giving you the view of his whole form. His fingertips ran up and down your arm. You splayed out your hand on the sand, steadying yourself. How many times had he made you cum?

“Seven.”

“Hmm?”

He grinned. “One orgasm for each magic lap you could have taken.” Laughing with you, he especially watched some beads of water pool in the hollow of your throat as you laid back. “Stay with me.”

“Loki—”

“You will want for nothing. While I am mostly confined to the water, on land you will have everything you need. You can do archaeology year-round, if you want. Or only once a year. I can arrange everything. You need not struggle with finding a place to belong. You won’t have to… how did you put it? Schmoozing.”

You laughed, but felt a weight grow in your chest.

“The mortals are building new villas near here. You can pick one out. They’re an area that’s going to be called Aphrodite’s Hills.” He scoffed. “Since when do gods stay in the place of their birth? I can assure you, the one they sometimes call Zeus does not visit Crete.”

“Loki… I can’t.”

He froze, staring up at you. “Why?”

“For starters… you promised to take me back to my friends.”

His body shuddered. “Whole. And in one piece.”

“Yes.” You licked your lips. “I’m sorry. It’s just… I need – I don’t know what I need.”

Loki took back his touch. He dragged his finger through the sand instead, carving runes and spirals into the granules. “You’re not leaving for a while yet, right?”

“We leave a week from tomorrow.”

He nodded. As his voice stuttered, his eyes bored into yours. Begging. “Then think about it. You don’t have to decide right now. But… before you leave, visit the beach. Any beach. And bring me an answer.” He looked back down at the sand. “Even if it’s no.”

You curled your finger under his chin, guiding him to look at you. “I will.”

It only took a minute to give you back your swimsuit and return you to Kourion beach. The glow of the restaurant illuminated your friends in the distance. Loki held you close and pressed his lips to your forehead. “Come back to me,” he whispered.

“I will.” You kissed him back. It took everything within you to pull away. “And no matter what happens… I will not forget you, Loki.”

He smiled, dipping his head before he could overwhelm you with how much he didn’t want you to leave. You drifted away, back under the buoys. With a nod, he sent a wave that carried you back to the beach. When you looked back, he was gone.

Lara waved as you walked out of the water. “There you are. We lost sight of you for a second when the waves got big.” As you joined them at the table, she shrugged. “Still not much of a swim. You were only out for, what, five minutes. Was it too dark and scary out there?”

Five… five minutes?

Chiara interrupted, “hey, we were just talking: you sometimes lick pottery to see if it’s glazed right?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the oldest thing you’ve licked?”

You stammered, trying to think while your body was trying to recover from your divine experience. “Um, two- no. Three… thousand years old. My first dig was in the Levant. An Iron age site. I couldn’t tell pottery from bone. Bone sticks to your tongue while ceramic doesn’t—”

Lara laughed. “The oldest thing you’ve licked was three thousand years old. Damn! Would make a good t-shirt: I lick ancient things. Am I an archaeologist or did I go down on the old gods?”

Slapping at her shoulder with a giggle, Chiara urged her to be quiet as the people at a neighboring table looked over. But you were too busy thinking to notice. If you took up Loki’s offer, perhaps you could be one archaeologist who could boast of having done both.

*** An earlier trip to Cyprus: Aphrodite’s Rock (S, Bucky Barnes x Reader)

Masterlist

Other Loki Fics:

When in Paris (S, AR)

Sweet Revenge (S)

To Love the Sea: Y/N is the daughter of a sea-side innkeeper. The area is known for its draw for pirates, but one pirate is feared above all others: Captain Loki. He offers to take her on adventures; is she willing to take the plunge? [Series Master] (S, complete)

#loki x reader #loki smut #loki fluff #marvel smut #avenger smut #marvel fanfiction #loki fanfiction #reader insert

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fredomotophoto · 5 months

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Parapente sur le site de la FFVL (Fédération Française de Vol Libre) de Kervijen -Je ne faisais que faire des photos ce jour là, je suis pas assez téméraire pour m'envoler suspendu à ces bout de ficelles sous une bâche aussi fine que du papier à cigarette...

Paragliding on the FFVL (French Free Flight Federation) site in Kervijen -I was only taking photos that day, I'm not reckless enough to fly away hanging from these pieces of string under a tarpaulin as thin as cigarette paper…

#photographers on tumblr #original photographers #outdoor #artist on tumblr #bretagne #france #finistere #paragliders #paragliding #flickr #canon eos r #sigma 24-105mm f/4 dg os hsm art #sigma lens #seaside #coast #cliffs #water #ocean #sea

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hallowmoon-art · 2 months

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Things I think the TouchStaved LIs like to do at the beach ⛱

Ais (assuming he isn't banned)

During the day, dig a big ass hole or build the most amazing sand castle anyone has ever seen.

At night, drink and relax on the beach but ends up crack skulls of all the drunk ppl that think they can take him in a fight. (Probs why he was banned) Would go to clubs with Vere of he isn't banned from those as well.

Kuras

Day time, take long walks to find pretty sea shells and observe those little waves pools with the starfish and other little creatures. I can also see him wanting to visit historical land marks and lighthouses.

At night, sit on the beach or condo balcony and star gaze while listening to the waves.

Leander

During the day? All the activities. Boogie boarding, paragliding, jet skies, vollyball, the whole nine yards. But he begs everyone to do everything with him even tho they don't wanna.

He would let Ais and Mhin bury him in the sand as long as they gave him a mermaid tail and titties. (Spoiler, they leave him buried with a bucket over his head)

At night, bar crawl, arcades, mini golf, go kart courses. And he stays until forced to leave. Anyone with him is absolutely exhausted.

Vere

During the day, lay out on the beach and tan all day. Lucky bastard never burns.

At night, hit all the clubs and bars with live music.

Mhin

Hates the beach bc like me they burn like toast. No amount of sunscreen will help. Stays huddled under the umbrella with a book least they have to go to the ER with sun poisoning and 32nd degree burns.

At night, they will be sitting with Kuras looking at the stars.

BONUS MCs

Yzme

Daytime, diving for sea shells and helping Ais build his exact sand sculpture replica of Eridia. Would also play vollyball with Leander so she could continuously spike the ball at his head.

At night, hunting for those little glow in the dark crabs (and scream loudly when one scuttles over her foot) Also bars and clubs.

Aelia

During the day, walk with Kuras some but mostly huddle under the umbrella with Mhin. Baby burns easily as well.

At night, visit one arcade for like 2 hours and get ice cream on the way back to the condo then stargaze with Kuras and Mhin.

Kirian

Daytime, just swim in the ocean. Maybe go paragliding with Leander.

At night, wants to visit all of the souvenir shops before they close and buy all the clothes that say what beach they are at.

#touchstaved game #touchstaved headcanons #touchstaved ais #touchstarved vere #touchstarved kuras #touchstarved leander #touchstarved mhin #touchstarved mc

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breannasfluff · 1 year

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Hyrule’s hope for a relaxing evening is broken by Wind’s question.

“So, we’ve compared battle scars, but who’s come the closest to death?” His sense of after-dinner conversation leaves a lot to be desired.

Twilight groans where he sits on his log and Time frowns, likely judging whether this conversation should be derailed or not.

Sky breaks in before anyone else. “Actually, I fell off Skyloft one time.” His ears redden as they swivel to stare at him. “I was maybe drinking at the inn, okay? And one of the older knights was supposed to give me a ride because I didn’t have my loftwing yet, but he was drunk too. So, over I went, misjudging the edge, and he was, ah…a bit slow to pick up on the fact he needed to catch me.”

Warriors zeroes in on the most important detail, “You get drunk?”

“It was one time! Never again!”

Too late; Four is pointing and laughing. “The great Chosen Hero almost met his end before his journey even began!”

Sky grumbles under his breath; red, but not too mad at the laughter at his expense. “What about you, Wind?”

“Oh, easy, there was this storm at sea one time.” A faint shudder at the memory. “Everyone had to tie themselves on so they didn’t fall off, but if the ship went down, we’d be done for. I’m pretty sure I kissed the sand when we made it back to shore.”

“What about you, Hyrule?” Twilight glances up from where he’s stripping twigs idly off a stick.

“Me?” He pauses to sort through his adventure. “Um, well there were these assassins after me and—”

“Yiga!” Wild’s sharp voice breaks through his story.

“What?”

The champion’s eyes go wider as if realizing a slip. ‘What?’ he signs back.

Confirmation he didn’t mean to share that, then. “Who are the Yiga?”

‘No one. You were saying?’

Hyrule can’t help but frown at the blatant misdirection but lets it slide. “Well, there were these assassins and…” The atmosphere of the group is going decidedly downhill and he scrambles mentally to change direction. Right, near death in this cause doesn’t seem to be linked to journeys to save Hyrule.

“Okay, so this one time I was looking for a hidden entrance to a cave behind all these bushes. Burning them down was going to be the fastest way to find it. But, ah, I might have misjudged how dry the bushes were…and set the whole area on fire.”

Wild’s laughing, likely familiar with the strategy. He’s careful with fire in their eras, but his can weather a burnt field better.

Legend gives him a sharp look like he’d like to know where the assassin story was going, but Hyrule only responds with a serene smile. There’s no need to ruin the evening. “Wild? What about you?”

“Oh!” Wind breaks in with excitement. “I bet you have some great story with bombs and your paraglider and—and arrows, all while fending off a Kraken!”

“What on earth do you think Wild did on his journey?” Four says.

Wind rolls his eyes. “Kicked ass, duh.”

“Language, Wind.”

Read the rest here!

#linked moments #linked universe #lu wild #lu hyrule #lu wolfie #lu sky #hurt/comfort #breannasfluff #linked universe fanfic #linkeduniverse #my writing

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mariacallous · 11 months

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“Did Israel Avert a Hamas Massacre?” That was the question posed by the headline of a Vanity Fair exposé published in October 2014. The investigative report laid out a sophisticated plot by the Islamist terror group to kill and kidnap Israelis on the Gaza border. The plan: to use underground tunnels to infiltrate nearby civilian enclaves on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, when the communities would be at their most vulnerable. As one intelligence source put it, the operation had two goals: “First, get in and massacre people in a village. Pull off something they could show on television. Second, the ability to kidnap soldiers and civilians using the tunnels would give them a great bargaining chip.” The Israel Defense Forces subsequently confirmed this reporting to other media outlets, but not the specific date.

The tunnels were real. But at the time the massacre-that-wasn’t received little additional media coverage. It seemed too cinematic and convenient. Maybe it was a Hamas pipe dream that was never operational. Or maybe it was a worst-case scenario concocted by the Israeli security services and leaked to the media to justify their own ever-expanding countermeasures. Years passed without a mass border incursion, the tunnels were gradually detected and blocked, and I came to the conclusion that the skeptics were right about the plot being too lurid even for Hamas.

I was wrong. Last week, Hamas executed something quite like the attack on the Gaza border that it had planned all those years ago. Instead of tunneling underground on Rosh Hashanah, it invaded aboveground on another Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah. Some 1,500 terrorists stormed nearby civilian communities by land, air, and sea. They murdered babies in their cribs, parents in front of their children, and children in front of their parents. They burned entire families alive. They decapitated and mutilated their victims. They wore body cameras and documented their destruction as though it were a video game. They executed a grandmother in her home and uploaded the snuff film to her Facebook page. They deliberately targeted elementary schools. They kidnapped toddlers and a Holocaust survivor. They paraded a battered, naked woman through the streets of Gaza like a trophy. All told, they murdered more than 1,300 Israelis, almost all civilians, and abducted some 150 others, including babies and the elderly. The death toll continues to rise as rescue workers recover more remains and reassemble mangled corpses for identification.

Somehow, few saw this eruption of inhumanity coming. Several months ago, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, then the European Union ambassador to the Palestinians, performed what he called Gaza’s first paragliding flight to advocate for a future where “anything is possible in Gaza.” Hamas terrorists would later use paragliders to massacre more than 250 civilians at an Israeli music festival, which is presumably not what the envoy had in mind. And he wasn’t the only one naive about the Hamas regime’s intentions.

The consensus was that Hamas was a mostly rational actor that could be reasoned with. To hawks, although the group was an anti-Semitic Iran proxy, it could be deterred through political and economic incentives, because it felt responsible for the welfare of the Gazan people. To doves, Hamas was a quasi-legitimate national resistance movement whose occasional bouts of violence were simply intended to draw attention to that struggle.

Successive Netanyahu governments and security officials, far less sympathetic to the Gazan plight, nonetheless spent recent years lifting economic restrictions on the enclave, granting thousands of work permits for Gazans, and transferring hundreds of millions of Qatari dollars to Hamas in exchange—they thought—for relative quiet.

But it turned out that Hamas wasn’t being pacified; it was preparing. The group was less committed to national liberation than to Jewish elimination. Its violence was rooted not in strategy, but in sadism. And in retrospect, well before the Rosh Hashanah plot, the signs of Hamas’s atrocious ambitions were all there—many observers just did not want to believe them. What Hamas did was not out of character, but rather the explicit fulfillment of its long-stated objectives. The shocking thing was not just the atrocity itself, but that so many people were shocked by it, because they’d failed to reckon with the reality that had been staring them in the face.

First, there is Hamas’s notorious charter, a Frankensteinian amalgam of the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the modern era—the very same that have motivated numerous white-supremacist attacks in the United States. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” the document opens. “It needs all sincere efforts … until the enemy is vanquished.” The charter goes on to claim that the Jews control “the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.” According to Hamas, the Jews were “behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about,” as well as World War I and World War II. The charter accuses Israel of seeking to take over the entire world, and cites as proof the most influential modern anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian fabrication that purports to expose a global Jewish cabal.

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” Hamas declares in its credo. “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews.” In case anyone missed the point, the document adds that “so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” In 2017, Hamas published a new charter, but pointedly refused to disavow the original one, in a transparent ruse that some respectable observers nonetheless took at face value.

In any case, Hamas communicated its genocidal intentions not just in words, but in deeds. Before it took control of Gaza, the group deliberately targeted Jewish civilians for mass murder, executing scores of suicide bombings against shopping malls, night clubs, restaurants, buses, Passover seders, and many other nonmilitary targets. Today, this killing spree is widely blamed for destroying the credibility of the Israeli peace movement and helping derail the Oslo Accords, precisely as Hamas intended. And it did not stop there. Since the group took power in Gaza, it has launched thousands of rockets indiscriminately at nearby civilian towns—attacks that continue at this very moment and that have boosted the Israeli right in election after election.

Hamas’s anti-Jewish aspirations were evident not only from its treatment of Israelis, but from its treatment of fellow Palestinians. Despite being the putative sovereign in Gaza and responsible for the well-being of its people, Hamas repeatedly cannibalized Gaza’s infrastructure and appropriated international aid to fuel its messianic war machine. The group boasted publicly about digging up Gaza’s pipes and turning them into rockets. It stored weapons in United Nations schools and dug attack tunnels underneath them. (Contrary to what you might have read on social media, Gaza does have underground shelters—they are just used for housing Hamas fighters, smuggling operations, and weapons caches, not protecting civilians.)

When dissenting Gazans attempted to protest this state of affairs and demanded a better future, they were brutally repressed. Hamas has not held elections since 2006. In 2020, when the Gazan peace activist Rami Aman held a two-hour Zoom call with Israeli leftists, Hamas threw him in prison for six months, tortured him, and forced him to divorce his wife. Why? Because his vision of a shared society for Arabs and Jews, however remote, was a threat to the group’s entire worldview. Jews were not to share the land; they were to be cleansed from it.

Simply put, what Hamas did two weekends ago was not a departure from its past, but the natural culmination of its commitments. The question is not why Hamas did what it did, but why so many people were surprised. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, quick to discern anti-Semitism in any effort to merely label Israeli products from West Bank settlements, somehow overlooked the severity of the genocidal threat growing next door. Journalists like me who cover anti-Semitism somehow failed to take Hamas’s overt anti-Jewish ethos as seriously as we should have. Many international leftists, ostensibly committed to equality and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis alike, somehow missed that Hamas did not share that vision, and in fact was actively working to obliterate it.

Today, in the ashes of the worst anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust, some analysts have admitted their error of sanitizing Hamas. “It’s a huge mistake that I did, believing that a terror organization can change its DNA,” the former Netanyahu national-security adviser Yaakov Amidror told The New York Times. Others on the left have clung to their tortured conception of Hamas as a rational resistance group, despite it having been falsified by events. Perhaps some fear that acknowledging the true nature of Hamas would undermine the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. But in actuality, it is the refusal to disentangle Hamas’s anti-Jewish sadism from the legitimate cause of Palestinian nationalism that threatens the project and saps its support.

In 1922, The New York Times published its first article about Adolf Hitler. The reporter, Cyril Brown, was aware of his subject’s anti-Jewish animus, but he wasn’t buying it. “Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded,” Brown wrote, “and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers.” Two years later, the Times published another news item on the future architect of the Holocaust: “Hitler Tamed by Prison.” The Austrian activist, the piece said, “looked a much sadder and wiser man,” and “his behavior during his imprisonment convinced the authorities that [he] was no longer to be feared.”

Many got Hamas wrong. But they shouldn’t have. Again and again, people say they intend to murder Jews. And yet, century after century, the world produces new, tortuous justifications for why anti-Jewish bigots don’t really mean what they say—even though they do.

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