#some more arabic for you all

[redr0sewrites]

i would talk about harry potter on here but no one agrees with my headcanons i fear

[legallyacceptibleurl]

of the blogs that i keep track of, there’s definitely obvious cliques. all of them have posts circulate to all parts eventually, but one thing i’ve noticed is a clear divide between the american liberal zionist bloggers and the israeli zionist bloggers in that space. the american liberal bloggers are more concerned about respectability and here and there might even push back when someone says something more egregiously islamophobic or racist (rarely tho). this is not the case at all for the israeli bloggers, they will just say shit like “all palestinians are nazis and should be wiped out” with their whole chest and then move on with no repercussions

there’s a handful of bridging blogs which keep the flow of posts between the two cliques circulating, but they rarely ever touch the more genocidal posts or reblogs

that’s where i come in I guess, i am working on posting some of the more shocking screenshots and connecting them to the people who reblog from them

i love posting examples, let’s use this one

ID: screenshot of a post that @shofarsogood reblogged from @stupid-jewishwhiteboy

@some-israeli-guy: “I want to take a few minutes to talk about my connection to Israel, as a Jew. I want to do that because some people desperately need to understand this, and also I'm procrastinating on uni homework.”

the rest of the post is cut off by me. End ID.

i often use these two because it’s by far the most infuriating example. shofarsogood is a very popular blog on here and is mutuals both with people who would be incredibly offended at being called zionists, and also just fully unapologetic zionists. meanwhile, some-israeli-guy is someone who will just straight up say “kill all palestinians”, and it’s fucking horrible but from a purely practical perspective i can appreciate the honesty because it makes my job easier. it’s like a touchstone for the level of hate speech these people will tolerate as long as it’s on their side

ID: screenshot of a reblog by @some-israeli-guy:

“Beautiful! Kill them all and erase Palestine from history!” End ID.

so, how does a post travel from the “kill them all” side of tumblr to the “we just want peace in gaza but conveniently all pro-palestine advocacy is antisemitic” side of tumblr? very easily it turns out

it starts with this

ID: a screenshot showing @homochadensistm reblogging from @some-israeli-guy. End ID.

here’s what kind of blog we’re dealing with at this point

ID: screenshot of a reblog by @homochadensistm:

“1. This poll is from the west bank, or do you think thats a place in gaza?

2. BBC reports Gazans are fed up with hamas: uuuuch WhErE dA BidEO eViDEncE

Some rando with a tumblr posts about 5 gorillion children dying in a nuclear explosion in Khan younis:”

under the text is an image of the wojak meme called “Two Soyjaks Pointing”

@homochadensistm’s tags: “#gazans will be freed of the bronze age islamists who took over them via a coup #whether u like it or not <3”

End ID.

next is this

ID: a screenshot showing @stupidjewishwhiteboy reblogged from @homochadensistm. End ID.

ID: screenshot of a post reblogged by @stupidjewishwhiteboy.

@not-antisemitic-receipts: “"Genocide Denier"

Yes, I "deny" accusations of genocide levied against Jews by antisemites, be they from Jihadist Islamofascists claiming "Palestine Genocide" or Nazi Fascists claiming "White Genocide."

"Denial" of conspiracy theories is simply common sense, Period.”

End ID.

and then it’s… wait that’s it?

ID: a screenshot showing @shofarsogood reblogging from @stupidjewishwhiteboy. End ID.

huh. i’m sure that doesn’t mean anything

oh but i’m going to be fair to everyone involved. at the time he posted that post that went around, he hadn’t yet said “kill all palestinians”. how cruel of me to expect these people to see into the future

except you don’t have to be raven fucking symoné to see that it was only a matter of time

here is @some-israeli-guy three days before his post about his connection to israel

ID: a reblog by @some-israeli-guy:

“As someone with a relative who fought in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, my first reaction was being infuriated.

My second emotion though? Hope. Same as how everything hamas and the pro hamas crowd blame Israel of, they've done themselves, everything they wish for us, they will receive. The Israeli people love life. We celebrate life in spite of everyone trying to kill us. Palestine, on the other hand, is a death cult. They worship death and find no meaning in life other than sacrificing it. Palestinian society is based on hate and death, and a society like that will never win.

The nazis lost. The nazis always lose, and my relative survived and came to Israel.

#israel #jumbIr #palestine is a death cult #i/p #palestine”

there were also a couple tags in hebrew that i cannot copy paste. End ID.

hell, let’s take a look at the tail end of the post that got reblogged by everyone and their fucking mom

ID: “To anyone who call us "colonizers": These "ancient" Israelites don't just share a religion with us, they ARE us. We were expelled from our homeland, but we kept our identity, we refused to let go, we kept wishing to come back home. We were always indigenous to Israel. We don't belong anywhere but here.

And now they're are trying to tell us that some people with a name invented by Rome to erase Judea and Israel, with a religion and language from Arabia, who didn't have a distinct cultural identity other than "Arab" until a few decades ago, belong here more than we do? I don't think so.”

End ID.

[lesbianralzarek]

why does every article reporting on idf war crimes go "hamas, who started the war on october 7th with their brutal terrorist attack slaughtering innocent israeli civilians, has condemned the idf's use of-"? like, nearly verbatim every single time. we know about october 7th. we know by now. half the time, hamas isnt even relevant but they gotta find some way to sow doubt and numb any potential compassion responses. will you get fired if you show sympathy for murdered palestinian civilians without first adding a disclaimer saying its all their fault for being born in gaza? if you call "palestinians under 18" children? if you use the words "murdered" or "brutal" or "massacre" for acts that didnt occur on october 7th? if you call a spade a spade? why are israeli reports front page news without proper fact-checking but palestinian reporting is always "allegedly" even when theres video evidence? why does the idf not get the hamas treatment of reminding everyone that theyre biased before treating their words as law, like they havent been caught bold-faced lying again and again?

[smonk-wonk]

There is FAR more antisemitism right now than there is racism against Palestinians TRUST ME

Ok

[asitrita]

I just spent half a day arguing with someone who claims aph Spain is practically Arab because of Al Andaluz and I can't with people

That person didn't know any basic history. If Spain is Arab because of Al Andalus, India must be an exact copy of Britain and the quintessential Anglo Saxon society. And at least they do speak English, lol.

That person probably fed on all the Orientalist propaganda and ridiculous stereotypes about Spain. But the influence Arab culture had in Spain is minimal and superficial. Sure, there's some Arab influence, but it is pretty superficial and non transcendental to Spanish culture, society, or identity. Its biggest contribution to Spain was it acting as its adversary, hence reinforcing the Roman and Christian identity of Spain's population. They should just ask themselves what language do Spaniards speak and what is the predominant religion in Spain.

Also, just ask the person if they think Arabs are responsible for mass genocide in Spain and killed all native inhabitants so everyone in Spain is Arab now.

Tbh, I'm sure they don't even distinguish between Arab and North African/Berber culture, nor are aware of the process of Reconquista, let alone know the difference between Emirate and Caliphate, or the existence of the Taifa kingdoms.

Anyone who thinks Spain is an Arab country, or even somewhat Arab, because of Al Andalus, is either an ignorant/delusional fool, or a troll, or maybe both.

As for aph Spain, I would think nation personifications represent the people living in those regions. Since people living in Spain today are not Arab, not even remotely so, and are descendants of the Northern Christian people who repopulated the south + buckets of Christian people who lived in the south under Muslim rule but who never converted and were later assimilated again within a Christian, Greco-Roman, and Medieval European context and culture, I see absolute no reason to make aph Spain Arab, nor anything remotely similar. That would make as much sense as creating an OC of the Mexica (Aztec) empire and making him/her Spanish, or making India a Saxon warrior, or Nigeria a Viking sailor (actually, maybe even less sense, if that's even possible).

[m00ngbin]

Something that drives me fucking insane is when zionists insist that Palestine can't be a country because "ohhh but- but they (Palestinians) don't even have the pronunciation for P in their language. 🥺 They can't say their own name, ohhhh ohhhhhh it can't be real." Are you fucking stupid. You're blatantly trying to erase the existence of a country and people using a fact that doesn't actually have any real base. You know that different languages have different pronunciations for different letters right? J in Spanish and J in English sound completely different. And you know that people native to a country usually have a different name for their country right? Like people in China aren't calling China China, I'm like 90% sure they usually call it Zhongguo. People in other places aren't saying like United States of America, even in the other Latin based languages. Spanish speaking countries say Los Estados Unidos, and that's pretty different even though SPANISH ONE OF THE CLOSEST LANGUAGES TO ENGLISH. LOOKING YOU DEEP IN YOUR DISGUSTING FUCKING EYES ARE YOU STUPID

[bijoumikhawal]

got reminded of the "saying Arabs conquered and colonized North Africa is Zionist because obviously no one saying that coulx possibly draw a distinction between North African Arabs and Palestinian Arabs, and even drawing a distinction between Arabs and Imazighen is colonizer shit" school of thought

[g36a2]

not the worst of lapham's crimes but tommy's short hair being a symbol of recovery was evil.

[glassrunner]

.

[montanabohemian]

so yesterday i had someone comment on a post i made on IG telling me how "offended" they were because i'd simply ended my post with the phrase "end the occupation and free palestine." so much of what they said was actually insane racist islamophobic bullshit and they managed to end their comment by calling all muslims terrorists and literally parroted the "they want to kill americans" fucking horseshit.

the person that made this comment was by someone i've literally known since grade school. i'm not close friends with them but i've gotten to know them over the years and never once thought they'd say anything like this. i actually thought it was a bot account for like a full minute.

i'm sadly not surprised at the rhetoric because that's where we are. we're right back to twenty years ago during the post 9/11 / war in iraq / war on terror fervor kicked off. i'm just. i had to fight this shit twenty years ago and here we are all over again, except this time with the added benefit of fucking social media.

if simply saying "free palestine" is so inflammatory for you, then that is your fucking problem to work through.

[martyrbat]

[ID: two screenshots from a TikTok video. In them, we see a Palestinian's hands as they show a MRE (Meals Ready-to-Eat) package that was air dropped. On it, we can see the instructions include pouring water to activate the flameless ration heater. The second photo shows one of the items is peach applesauce. White text over the photos read: “This is the shit America sent to Palestine. Expired army food. You can hear a man saying "this is not halal". Shame on the USA”. Above that is text in Arabic which reads: “What is in US aid??” END ID]

A reminder that the sodium level is dangerously high—being from 1.6g/meal to 2.3g/meal and you have to eat two to three to consume the proper amount of calories since each contains around 1.2k cals. The recommendation for sodium is less than 2k milligrams (1g) a day. These are used as a quick military meal/training one and because of the high intensity activities and the physical health that a soldier is require to have, the levels aren't as dangerous since they're expelling the excess sodium. And MRE aren't meant to be the only meal, even for the military the DoD policy requires MREs to be replaced or paired with fresh foods when able to because these lack essentials nutrients like fatty-acids and fiber

Sources & additional links (many of these are pages to PDFs, you can use Firefox to open them without downloading):

Original TikTok video

DLA website — Homepage for MRE's, page with several photos of the food after time passed (and with different storage conditions) and where it shows the 'menus'. The one in the video is Menu 12 and the last time it included hot sauce (as shown in linked video) was 2020 (MRE XL) and the first time was in 2016 (MRE XXXVI). As found on the homepage link, the shelf life is 3 years unless it was stored in the cold.

During Hurricane Katrina, a 77 year old man had heart failure after primarily relying on MREs for his every meal because they're not meant for usual civilian aid. He was able to make a recovery after having hospital aid, something Palestinians aren't given due to the blockade to medical supplies — Military Medicine (Oxford Academic)

MREs not being sustainable or healthy, especially for long-term use: Total Prepare, Military Medicine, ScienceDirect

MREs usually require water to work and can lead to faster dehydration and blood pressure due to the sodium levels. However, Gaza has been under a water crisis for years in both quantity and quality because of Israel's blockade, which has only grown more dire since Israel's increased attacks — +972mag (January 16, 2024), NPR (December 29, 2023), UNICEF (June 2022)

Israel denying essential supplies, including food, water filtration systems and purification tablets, medical equipment, anesthesia, etc. and murdering Palestinians when aid does get through— CNN (March 2, 2024), UN Human Rights (March 5, 2024), Al Jazeera on the Flour Massacre (March 5, 2024), Twitter thread of IOF shooting and killing starving Palestinians even before the Flour Massacre (warning for graphic imagery), Eyes on Palestine via Instagram (March 1, 2024)

Defense.gov saying it dropped 'over 36,800 meals' in it's second airdrop. The first was 38,000. Using both numbers (if each MRE was able to be received), a person will need 3 meals required to meet their calorie requirement for one day. If meeting the requirements, it'll feed only 24,933 people for one day out of the over 2.3 million people who are being starved. If you divide it for one meal per person, it'll only feed 74,800 people.

Biden still funding Israel despite the massive aid blockade that's killing thousands — CBS News (March 5, 2024)

Airdrops are incredibly inefficient in delivering aid. They supply less while being more expensive, they're unreliable to be received (especially considering the state of Gaza after being bombed consistently for almost 5 months, landing in the ocean, wind that has blown some in Israeli territory, IOF soldiers still murdering Palestinians if out in the open, health crisis from malnutrition, stampede risks, etc) The fact that they're saying it's being used as 'a last resort' when Isreal is refusing thousands of aid trucks from entering and are using them as bait to murder Palestinians when they do allow entry is beyond insulting. — The Electronic Intifada, NPR, BBC

The effects of starvation: your body eventually starts eating your muscles for protein after the fat reserves are exhausted (which makes receiving the airdrops even more dangerous). Your heart walls grow weaker and the chambers grow larger which makes pumping blood harder, making you more at risk of heart failure. You're fatigued, your immune system is dangerously weak and your organs physically grow smaller as your body eats itself and your organs fail. — NPR, Disease-related Malnutrition: An Evidence-based Approach to Treatment, PCRM, Starvation Response

So the "food" that the US dropped to Gaza is MREs. Expired. Saw a stitch of this video from a woman saying this is the same thing they did with Hurricane Katrina survivors.

MREs are shelf stable for 7 years. Total. These ones were over 15 years old.

And ofc there were people in the comments being like "ummm well our military eats them just fine, they were expired when I was in the army too" THATS NOT OKAY THO?? NO ONE SHOULD BE FORCED TO EAT EXPIRED FOOD!

Fuck the US, fuck the Israeli government, and fuck you if you think that this is any kind of help to the people of Gaza. They're starving to death and the US is sending expired applesauce while also giving bombs to their murderers.

[etherealspacejelly]

i think we should all start using arabic words and phrases more often because its a beautiful language and also theres not really. english equivalents that have the same vibes

theres also the comedy potential of it. you guys dont know the joy of having your muslim friend text you "hopefully the racists in our city will all get sick and cant go to the protest" and you, as a pasty white guy, responding with "inshallah they get covid"

its a one hit KO every time. its fucking hilarious. theres no english word that has the same effect.

he also once texted me that he got over a mysterious illness he came down with (i think? i cant remember the exact context) and i responded with "subhanallah he is cured"

again, one hit KO. he lost his shit.

what im saying is we gotta normalise arabic. its just a language like any other, and it has some great words. its just like saying "thank god" or whatever, but theres so much variety and nuance. its beautiful

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[idontmindifuforgetme]

Wanted to bring attention to the fact that Bisan called for mass protests today (April 1st). It’s okay if you can’t march yourself, but please make it a point to spread this so that those who can march do so—and also take this as your own checkpoint to ask yourself if you’ve been faltering in terms of sharing information about Palestine, doing what you can to fund humanitarian aid in Palestine, and staying informed as to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Some might say it has been 6 months of this, but to me that’s all the more reason to make noise now more than ever. This is one of very few spaces on the Internet where Palestine has not been abandoned in people’s endless efforts to dehumanize Arabs. Please continue amplifying the dialogue surrounding this genocide. Free Palestine. Free Palestins always.

[kavehater]

Hmmm I want people to yap to me about kaveh and alhaitham but I’m horrified of using the tags on here lest I attract the demon spawns - h//ik//veh fandom in the flesh