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ausetkmt · 4 months ago

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Mass killer who ‘hunted’ black people says police encouraged him - The Apartheid Killer

A convicted South African murderer who shot dead dozens of black men during apartheid has told the BBC the police sanctioned his violence. Louis van Schoor says others should share the blame for the killings he carried out as a security guard. But in talking to BBC Africa Eye over the past four years, he has also let slip horrifying details that raise serious questions about his early release from prison.

Standing in the bedroom of a killer, your eyes naturally hone in on the details.

The Apartheid Killer Watch on iPlayer (UK only) or on Monday 22 July at 23:05 on BBC Two (Northern Ireland 23:35). Outside the UK, watch on the BBC Africa YouTube channel.

Van Schoor’s bed is immaculately neat - the duvet so flat it looks like it has been ironed. The air is heavy with the smell of cigarettes, their stubs piled high in an ashtray. Strips of sticky paper are dangling from the ceiling, writhing with trapped and dying flies.

The so-called “Apartheid Killer” has lost his teeth. His health is waning. Following a heart attack, both his legs were recently amputated, leaving him in a wheelchair, with painful scars. When his surgeon carried out this procedure, Van Schoor requested an epidural instead of a general anaesthetic - so he could watch them remove his legs.

“I was curious,” he said, chuckling. “I saw them cutting… they sawed through the bone.”

In speaking to the BBC World Service, Van Schoor wanted to persuade us that he is “not the monster that people say I am”. His enthusiastic description of his legs being removed did little to soften his image.

Over a three-year period in the 1980s under the country’s racist apartheid system - which imposed a strict hierarchy that privileged white South Africans - Van Schoor shot and killed at least 39 people.

All of his victims were black. The youngest was just 12 years old. The killings occurred in East London, a city in South Africa’s windswept Eastern Cape.

Van Schoor was a security guard at the time, with a contract to protect as many as 70% of white-owned businesses: restaurants, shops, factories and schools. He has long claimed that everyone he killed was a “criminal” who he caught red-handed breaking into these buildings.

“He was a kind of vigilante killer. He was a Dirty Harry character,” says Isa Jacobson, a South African journalist and filmmaker, who has spent 20 years investigating Van Schoor’s case.

“These were intruders who were, in a lot of cases, pretty desperate. Digging through bins, maybe stealing some food… petty criminals.”

Van Schoor’s killings - sometimes several in a single night - struck terror into the black community of East London. Stories spread through the city of a bearded man - nicknamed “whiskers” in the Xhosa language - who made people disappear at night. But his shootings were not carried out in secret.

Every killing between 1986 and 1989 was reported to the police by Van Schoor himself. But the release from prison of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in 1990 signalled an end to this impunity. Ripples of change swept across South Africa and, following pressure from activists and journalists, the security guard was arrested in 1991.

Van Schoor’s trial was one of the largest murder trials in South Africa’s history, involving dozens of witnesses and thousands of pages of forensic evidence.

However, the case against him largely collapsed in court. At the time of his trial, much of the apparatus of the apartheid system was still in place within the judiciary. Despite killing at least 39 people, he was only convicted of seven murders. He would go on to serve just 12 years in prison.

His other 32 killings are still classified as “justifiable homicides” by the police. Apartheid-era laws gave people the right to use lethal force against intruders if they resisted arrest or fled once caught.

Van Schoor relied heavily on this defence to maintain his innocence, claiming that his victims were running away when he killed them.

Louis van Schoor pointed out the places where he would track down intruders

The BBC’s investigation into Van Schoor scrutinised the evidence underlying these so-called “justifiable” shootings, delving deep into long-forgotten police reports, autopsies and witness statements.

The investigation was led by Isa Jacobson, and involved years of archival research in multiple cities across the Eastern Cape. The most important files were scattered among hundreds of boxes, hidden away in vaults.

“The whole scale of it is just mesmerising,” she said. “It's astounding that any court of law could allow this to happen.”

Some of the most harrowing evidence Ms Jacobson found were witness statements from people who were injured by Van Schoor, but survived. These accounts contradict the security guard’s argument that they had been running away when he shot them.

Multiple people said Van Schoor shot them while their hands were up, after they had surrendered. Others describe him toying with them, asking if they would prefer to be arrested or shot - before shooting them in the chest. Another victim described being shot in the abdomen, begging for water, before being kicked in his wound by Van Schoor.

The security guard was armed with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, frequently loaded with hollow-point bullets, which cause severe internal ruptures when entering a victim. In one case, he fired eight shots into an unarmed man.

In a particularly brutal case on 11 July 1988, Van Schoor shot a 14-year-old boy who had broken into a restaurant searching for petty change.

The boy - who we have not named to protect his privacy - told the police he hid in the toilet when he saw Van Schoor with his gun. He says the security guard called him out, told him to stand next to the wall, and then shot him repeatedly.

“He told me to stand up, but I couldn’t,” said the boy, in his recorded testimony. “While I was lying there, he kicked me in the mouth. He picked me up and propped me up against a table and then he shot me again.”

The boy survived, but he was not believed. He was charged for breaking into the building. Many young black men and boys who gave first-hand accounts of being assaulted and shot by Van Schoor faced a similar fate.

Testimonies such as this were heard during Van Schoor’s trial, but the judge repeatedly dismissed the witnesses as “unsophisticated” and “unreliable”. There are no jury trials in South Africa. The opinion of the judge is final.

At the time of Van Schoor’s trial, many members of the white community in East London supported him. One entrepreneurial businessman printed bumper stickers with pictures of the security guard. They said “I Love Louis”, next to a heart full of bullet holes.

“There was evident racial bias in the legal system,” says Patrick Goodenough, a South African journalist who led the 1980s investigation into Van Schoor. He also attended his trial.

“The support for him was massive… He would not have been able to get away with a fraction of what he got away with without it.”

There is no statute of limitations for murder or attempted murder in South Africa. In theory, there is nothing stopping the police from reopening Van Schoor’s case and re-assessing these “justifiable” shootings.

“Louis van Schoor was basically going out and murdering people for sport,” says Dominic Jones, a journalist who helped raise awareness of the security guard’s killing spree in the 1980s.

Some of the most shocking findings from the BBC's investigation came from interviews with Van Schoor himself, which strongly suggested he got a thrill from his activities.

“Every night is a new adventure, if you want to put it that way,” he told the BBC.

Journalist Isa Jacobson has spent years going through public records to scrutinise Louis van Schoor's case

Many of the businesses he protected installed silent alarms. When someone broke in, Van Schoor would receive an alert which allowed him to surprise the intruder - and identify exactly where they were inside the building. And he always went alone.

“I was barefoot. It’s quiet. You don’t have your shoes squeaking on tiles and stuff,” he said.

He would never switch the light on. Instead, he relied on his sense of smell.

“If somebody breaks in, the adrenaline gives off an odour. And you can pick that up,” he said.

Van Schoor claims he never went out “with the intention of killing black people” and says he is not a racist. But he admits he found stalking them in the dark “exciting”.

Before becoming a security guard, Van Schoor was a member of the East London police force for 12 years. He used to handle what he calls “attacker dogs”, which he used to track down and catch protesters and criminals - almost all of whom were black.

He compared this to “hunting, but a different species”.

Tetinene “Joe” Jordan, a former anti-apartheid activist who was operating in East London at the time of Van Schoor’s killings, remembers this well.

“He was hunting, literally hunting people,” he says.

Van Schoor strongly denies he is a “serial killer” and believes everything he did was “within the law”. If people feel aggrieved over his killings, he says they should blame the South African police.

He says the police never criticised or warned him, but actively supported and encouraged him.

“Every officer in East London knew what was going on… all the police officers knew,” he said. “Not once did anybody say ‘Hey Louis, you’re on the borderline or you should cool it or whatever’… they all knew what was happening.”

In the police records held in public archives, Ms Jacobson found instances of killings where officers had been present at the time of the shootings. At no point did they appear to question Van Schoor as a suspect.

In many instances, the police failed to take photos of the deceased at the scenes of shooting and failed to collect key forensic evidence, such as bullet casings. Van Schoor was often the only witness to his shootings, so this evidence could have been crucial for determining what had actually happened in each case.

“These were cover-ups… He had the backing from police officers from junior rank and senior rank,” said Mr Goodenough.

“They wouldn’t investigate. They’d sit down with him and have a cigarette while chatting, with bodies lying nearby.”

In all cases Van Schoor pulled the trigger - but between the police and the businesses that hired him, an entire community played a role in the killings which took place in East London.

“Van Schoor was a serial killer because there was a society that allowed him to be one,” says Ms Jacobson.

For the relatives of Van Schoor’s victims, his freedom, and the failure of the state to thoroughly investigate his killings, is a constant source of pain. Some never recovered the bodies of their loved ones.

“It seems like we are stuck in this phase of being heartbroken, being angry,” says Marlene Mvumbi, whose brother, Edward, was murdered by Van Schoor in 1987. His remains were dumped in an unmarked grave by the authorities without the family’s consent.

“Lots of people are still missing and not even in the graveyard… there is no closure.”

Van Schoor’s case pre-dated South Africa’s 1995 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which gave compensation to many victims of apartheid-era crimes.

Sharlene Crage, a former activist who played a key role in pressuring the South African authorities to prosecute Van Schoor, is outraged that he was ever allowed to walk free.

“It’s a shocking miscarriage of justice,” she said. “There is no reason his case shouldn’t be reopened.”

Louis van Schoor admitted he found tracking intruders down thrilling

Van Schoor was sentenced to more than 90 years in prison at the conclusion of his trial in 1992, but the judge allowed him to serve each term concurrently. He was freed on parole in 2004.

The early release of apartheid-era killers from prison has become a contentious issue in South Africa.

In 2022, there were protests in Johannesburg over the parole of Janusz Walus, who killed anti-apartheid politician Chris Hani. A few years previously, Eugene de Kock, in charge of a death squad responsible for the abduction, torture, and murder of dozens of black activists was also freed.

Nowadays, Van Schoor spends most of his time watching rugby, smoking and playing with his pet rottweiler, Brutus. He says he has no memory of many of his killings.

Some reports have stated, without verification, that he shot as many as 100 people. Van Schoor denies this, but concedes his number of shootings may exceed the documented number of 39.

“I honestly don’t know how many I shot. Some say over a 100, some say 40… Let’s say for argument’s sake I shot 50 people,” he told us.

He says he is proud of his past actions.

“I don’t feel any guilt,” he said. “I’ve got no remorse inside.”

The BBC contacted the South African police for comment, but they did not respond. The authorities have given no explanation for why Van Schoor’s killings have not been reassessed in the post-apartheid era.

“There is too much pain, and for now I don’t feel that there is enough that is done for us to heal,” says Marlene Mvumbi.

“It’s not only the ones that were killed by Van Schoor. The ones that have similar stories from the killings of the apartheid regime.”

#Mass killer who ‘hunted’ black people says police encouraged him - The Apartheid Killer #Apartheid Killer #Mass Murderer #South African Mass Murderer #white supremacy #white hate #Van Schoor was sentenced to more than 90 years in prison at the conclusion of his trial in 1992 #but the judge allowed him to serve each term concurrently. He was freed on parole in 2004.#Van Schoor shot and killed at least 39 Black people

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childoftimeandmagic · 5 months ago

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A dear friend of mine asked me today to be in her wedding.

A different friend took her three week vacation time to visit her grandmother in Khan Younis at the end of September. I lost contact with her in November. Her mother believes she's dead.

I got a client out of county who should have never been there in the first place today.

Mothers I will never know watched their children burn to death not even two weeks ago and I'm forced to do my job like the world's nor actively destroying us.

My sister's girlfriend is all moved into my sister's apartment today after a year and a half apart.

Queer Palestinians are once again facing a pinkwashed genocide.

My cat is turning 21 this year. She's been with me since I was nine.

How many families in Gaza have had to abandon their pets who they loved as fiercely as another family member to save the rest of their loved ones?

My best friend has been dead for the last three years. Her husband still cries on her headstone everyday, like she died yesterday.

How many husbands, fathers, sons, men have no place safe to grieve tonight in Gaza? How many graves have been destroyed, how many partnerships, families, and communities torn and shredded asunder???

I'm 5,634 mi or 9,067 km from Gaza but its pain, it's plight, it's heartache, it's destruction paid for by my taxes and with my elected officials gleeful greedy cheers is never more than a thought from my mind.

#how can you still say its nuanced or complicated #why do you defend the dangerous actions of a Terrorist nation #((israel if you got confused))#it has never been complicated it's been profitable #it's never been moral good or right it's been politically advantageous #israel is an apartheid state #israeli settlers are the equivalent of serbian militia men in Bosnia #israeli soldiers are the modern equivalent of the Nazi or Japanese armies in WW2 #its not to late to say you were wrong or you didnt know.#but one day it will one day you will been seen as much as a criminal as the “ordinary Germans” were viewed after WW2 #or how the White South African Government of the apartheid state and its supporters are viewed as criminal degenorates today #i pity your soul for being unhoused by loyalty to a state who'd kill you for a micro acre of land

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thethief1996 · 1 year ago

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I can't stop thinking about the news out of Palestine. Israel is sieging al Shifa hospital. Videos of people's limbs being severed off are haunting (graphic video tw). The hospital has ran out of fuel and 39 babies in incubators are fending for their lives by themselves, because Israel has stationed snipers around the hospital and is shooting all medical crew that walks into their sight.

First, the narrative was Israel would never bomb hospitals. Now, the hospitals are Hamas bases. Then, we respect journalists. Now, we have a fucking kill list of journalists because they are Hamas collaborators. First, we are not letting fuel in until the hostages are released. Now, we are not accepting the hostages back because that would stop our ground invasion and let Hamas win. And I could go on about every single lie they're making up. If you look up "Hamas rape" on google, the first link leads to Times of Israel saying Israel has found no forensic evidence of sexual violence, and only one eyewitness testimony out of 3.5k people attending the rave. If you Google "Hamas beheaded babies" the top links say they have no evidence for the claim besides word of mouth from extremist soldiers. Israeli extremists think about the ugliest goriest scene they can make out in their sick heads, tell that to a international journalist and they run away with it like it's gospel.

And children are being killed in the name of these lies. Thousands are being displaced in images that remind me of the pictures of Tantura 75 years ago, with their hands up so the tanks don't shoot them. Amputees are leaving the hospitals in wheelchairs hours after their surgeries because they are being shot at. Elders who survived the Nakba on 48 are having to walk towards Southern Gaza on foot (imagine walking from one end of your city to the other on foot), displaced again. People are cheering for the haunting images of white phosphorus bombs being dropped over Gaza. Gazan workers who were arrested in the West Bank are being thrust back into the bombings wearing numbered labels.

This is not normal. We are seeing the early stages of the settler colonial genocide of an indigenous population. Native leaders who have visited Gaza say its refugee camps look eerily like reservations. We can stop this. For the first time we are able to see wide scale accounts from the hands of the people suffering the genocide, and Israel is so scared of it they have cut all communications in Gaza.

This is our litmus test. I think we have never seen more clearly, with Palestine, Armenia, Congo and Sudan how colonialism has made our world a rotten place to live in.

The South African apartheid collapsed due to boycotts. We have to do everything in our power to stop Israel's hegemony. Even talking to a group of friends about Palestine changes the status quo. There's no world where we can live peacefully if Israel accomplishes their goals.

Keep yourself updated and share Palestinian voices. Muna El-Kurd said every tweet is like a treasure to them, because their voices are repressed on social media and even on this very app. Make it your action item to share something about the Palestinian plight everyday. Here are some resources:

Al Jazeera, Anadolu Agency, Mondoweiss

Boycott Divest Sanction Movement

Palestinian Youth Movement is organizing protests and direct action against weapons factories across the US

Mohammed El-Kurd (twitter / instagram)

Muhammad Shehada (twitter)

Motaz Azaiza (instagram) - reporting directly from Gaza.

Hind Khudary - reporting directly from Gaza. Her husband and daughter moved South to run from the tanks but she stayed behind to record the genocide. The least we can do is not let her calls fall on deaf ears.

You can participate in boycotts wherever you are in the world, through BDS guidelines. Don't be overwhelmed by gigantic boycott lists. BDS explicitly targets only a few brands which have bigger impact. You can stop consuming from as many brands as you want, though, and by all means feel free to give a 1 star review to McDonalds, Papa John, Pizza Hut, Burger King and Starbucks. Right now, they are focusing on boycotting the following:

Carrefour, HP, Puma, Sabra, Sodastream, Ahava cosmetics, Israeli fruits and vegetables

Push for a cultural boycott - pressure your favorite artist to speak out on Palestine and cancel any upcoming performances on occupied territory (Lorde cancelled her gig in Israel because of this. It works.)

If you can, participate in direct action or donate.

Palestine Action works to shut down Israeli weapons factories in the UK and USA, and have successfully shut down one of their firms in London.Some of the activists are going on trial and are calling for mobilizing on court.

Palestinian Youth Movement is organizing direct actions to stop the shipping of wars to Israel. Follow them.

Educate yourself. Read into Palestinian history and the occupation. You can't common sense people out of decades of propaganda. If your arguments crumble when a zionist brings up the "disengagement of Gaza", you have to learn more.

Read Decolonize Palestine. They have 15 minute reads that concisely explain the occupation (and its colonial roots) and debunk popular myths, including pinkwashing.

Read on Palestine. Here's an amazing masterpost.

Verso Book Club is giving out free books on Palestine (I personally downloaded Ten Myths about Israel by Ilan Pappe. If you still believe in the two states solution, this book by an Israeli professor debunks it).

Call your representatives. The Labour Party in the UK had an emergency meeting after several councilors threatened to resign if they didn't condemn Israeli war crimes. Calling to show your complaints works, even more if you live in a country that funds genocide.

FOR PEOPLE IN THE USA: USCPR has developed this toolkit for calls, here's a document that autosends emails to your representatives and here's a toolkit by Ceasefire in Gaza NOW!

FOR PEOPLE IN EUROPE: Here's a toolkit by Voices in Europe for Peace targeting the European Parliament and one specific for almost all countries in Europe, including Germany, Ireland, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Greece, Norway, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Austria, Belgium Romania and Ukraine

FOR PEOPLE IN THE UK: Friends of Al-Aqsa UK and Palestine Solidarity UK have made toolkits for calls and emails

FOR PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA: Here's a toolkit by Stand With Palestine

FOR PEOPLE IN CANADA: Here's a toolkit by Indepent Jewish Voices for Canada

Join a protest. Here's a constantly updating list of protests:

Global calendar

Another global calendar (go to the instragram of the organizers to confirm your protest)

USA calendar

Australia calendar

Feel free to add more.

#free palestine #free gaza #save gaza #gaza under attack

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malditodeojo · 1 year ago

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Don't feel bad bout telling my younger sibling's 20 y/o Self Identified Democratic Socialist buddy teo "go outside and eat some gravel I don't give a shit" bout 5 mins in to him talking about how the uk's healthcare system is a Great Model

#Yes he's from the UK and yes I found out thru my sibling his family r white south Africans. KILLS. Dude why are u friends w this mf

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apollos-olives · 11 months ago

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that anon who talked about the Israelis leaving is 100% correct, I would know because I’m South African and this is what happened. This is the racial demographic of South Africa:

Black African at 80.2%, White at 8.4%, Coloured at 8.8%, Indian/Asian

[coloured is mixed race. It’s complicated to explain, but think of mixed people]

what happened was, after apartheid ended 29 years ago, a huge lot of white people thought that the black people were going to kill them all. “They’re going to kill the boer!” Also, a lot of white supremacists would have rather killed themselves than see POC (especially black people) as equals after everything they had done to ensure that POC would remain in servitude so they left en masse.

White supremacists are the same everywhere, they would rather die than coexist with you, so the Israelis are sure to leave in huge numbers. Instead of focusing on wHaT aRe iSrAeLiS gOiNg To dO”, I would focus on how Palestine is going to focus on citizenship and right of return for diaspora Palestinians, that’s what I’ve been thinking about recently.

yep!! you've said it all. white supremacists would rather die than coexist with the people they've oppressed. that's why the french left algeria, that's why white people left south africa, and that's why israelis WILL leave palestine. yes, some israelis will stay and decide to live with us, but majority of israelis are genuinely racist and cannot fathom staying there with palestinians. and inshallah the world will be our witness to see a free palestine within our lifetimes.

#i read “born a crime” by trevor noah so i understand what you mean by colored ppl #good book that helped me understand a lot abt south africa from a “colored” persons perspective #even if it was a bit more comedic yk #palestine #free palestine

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mermaidsirennikita · 2 months ago

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I gotta say this is also very unsuprising casting when you think about it. Like as soon as the shock had worn off I was like...yeah of course she cast them.

Oh yeah, it does make sense because Emerald isn't about what's good for the project, Emerald is about what makes Emerald happy. Which is why I fundamentally can't get into her creatively.

Because of course, any creative has their aesthetic, their sensibility, their work. And I respect that, as a creative.

But you also have to kill your darlings. And we think of that in the writing sense most often—cut that sentence, that scene, that chapter if it doesn't truly serve the work. Scrap the whole thing and start over if it's truly not what it should be.

I'm a STRONG believer in that, to be fair. Brutal. Maybe too much so? Lol. Or I'd have a book out by now.

But anyway, it applies to every type of creative work, imo. You don't cast someone because YOU like them, particularly in an adaptation of a work as iconic as Wuthering Heights. You cast them because they are right for the role.

Heathcliff and Cathy, especially Heathcliff, are two of the most groundbreaking and influential characters in literature of the past 3 centuries. Heathcliff's lack of proximity (for his era) to whiteness is particularly central to the role, and I don't know anyone who seriously takes this work apart and isn't like... actively racist... who interprets Heathcliff as white. It's so crucial to his character that he is "other" in his society.

It's just TRULY a shame to me that she not only cast someone as subpar as Elordi, but someone so, so white. Like, I wouldn't want a white actor I love to play Heathcliff. And this is a fabulous role for a man of color, too.

The last adaptation did cast a man of color, but it was frankly not a very high profile project and not well done.

(I also think it would be compelling to cast a man of Roma descent OR a man of Asian, specifically South Asian descent because the text literally uses a contemporary term for Indian men to describe him... Though Nelly also speculates that he has Chinese heritage, and there are definitely some implications that he could be descended from presumably African enslaved people. The latter I could definitely see being an interpretation when you factor in the speculation that he's Mr. Earnshaw's illegitimate child. I think there's always this idea that "catch-all" terms were probably being used to describe Heathcliff's appearance, but I've thought for a while that I would personally most love to see a Roma actor or a South Asian actor play him.

But like. Literally any other than a white guy.)

This will be much more high profile, with way more attention, and it just really sucks that Emerald decided to use it to push one of her faves. It tells me that she has very little respect for the text. On what planet would anyone, even in the 1800s, look at Jacob Elordi and think that he was anything other than a white guy.

And again, I think Margot is way too old to play Cathy, and honestly doesn't read in any way as Cathy to me. I say that as someone who, again, considers her a very strong actress when she's in her element. I just. Ugh.

#wuthering heights #BLECH.

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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year ago

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We come alongside fellow Christians in condemning all attacks on civilians, especially defenseless families and children. Yet, we are disturbed by the silence of many church leaders and theologians when it is Palestinian civilians who are killed. We are also horrified by the refusal of some western Christians to condemn the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine, and, in some instances, their justification of and support for the occupation. Further, we are appalled by how some Christians have legitimized Israel’s ongoing indiscriminate attacks on Gaza, which have, so far, claimed the lives of more than 3,700 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children. These attacks have resulted in the wholesale destruction of entire neighborhoods and the forced displacement of over one million Palestinians. The Israeli military has utilized tactics that target civilians such as the use of white phosphorus, the cutting off of water, fuel, and electricity, and the bombardment of schools, hospitals, and places of worship—including the heinous massacre at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrios which wiped out entire Palestinian Christian families. Moreover, we categorically reject the myopic and distorted Christian responses that ignore the wider context and the root causes of this war: Israel’s systemic oppression of the Palestinians over the last 75 years since the Nakba, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the oppressive and racist military occupation that constitutes the crime of apartheid. This is precisely the horrific context of oppression that many western Christian theologians and leaders have persistently ignored, and even worse, have occasionally legitimized using a wide range of Zionist theologies and interpretations. Moreover, Israel’s cruel blockade of Gaza for the last 17 years has turned the 365-square-kilometer Strip into an open-air prison for more than two million Palestinians—70% of whom belong to families displaced during the Nakba—who are denied their basic human rights. The brutal and hopeless living conditions in Gaza under Israel’s iron fist have regrettably emboldened extreme voices of some Palestinian groups to resort to militancy and violence as a response to oppression and despair. Sadly, Palestinian non-violent resistance, which we remain wholeheartedly committed to, is met with rejection, with some western Christian leaders even prohibiting the discussion of Israeli apartheid as reported by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem, and as long asserted by both Palestinians and South Africans.

An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians

#christianity #israel #palestine #gaza

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itsbansheebitch · 7 months ago

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Have some critical thinking, please and thank you

is it just me... or do Israel's government's supporters have the same vibe as:

"Actually, it doesn't matter that Jeffery Dahmer tortured and killed people, since he's gay, which makes him a saint actually. Those boys should have just gone to the police, not that that's necessary, since, again, he's a saint."

Like... that's literally the shit I hear every time you ask "So... why, again, was is necessary to kill tens of thousands of people?" and they SCREAM antisemitism, even when Holocaust survivors are saying that Gazans are facing similar conditions that they faced in the camps. Even when Jewish people chain themselves to the White House fence, ya'll will STILL talk over them.

When people say "Don't talk over minority groups, listen to what THEY have to say." THIS is what they mean. Don't talk over a minority group that is protesting the systematic torture and killing of another minority group.

It is really quite simple. You don't accidentally get taken to court for genocide accusations. You don't accidentally snipe CHILDREN. You don't accidentally murder over 30,000 people. You don't accidentally attack civilians when they try to get food.

When native people, Irish people, and South Africans ALL are on the same side, the one that says, "Stop killing Muslims (again, by the tens of thousands) and give the native people their land back" and you are AGAINST that side, you are pro-colonialism. Hell, Israelis are protesting their OWN government. Even under the threat of torture, they STILL get up and protest. Why can't you?

You are a reflection of your ancestors that took native people's land before you, and you will never be the end of your family's line of thinking UNTIL you question your own beliefs. UNTIL you decide that you aren't going to call children "fodder" and are going to let go of the idea that America just NEEDS it's grubby hands in the middle east. until you let go of those ideas, until you let go of your hate for Muslims, you will NEVER be anything more than a reflection of your colonizer ancestors.

The fact that you cheer on the death of tens of thousands of people, should be enough for you to know that. The fact that you proudly say that Muslims are "inherently violent" should be enough for you to know that you only stand up for minorities when it suits YOUR needs. You will ONLY have BLM in your bio if it goes with your blog's aesthetic. You will NEVER, in any meaningful way, be an ally.

Not to mention, you make Jewish people look like bloodthirsty monsters, like holy hell, is this a smear campaign or what???

#free palestine #palestine #israel #politics #us politics #world politics #islamophobia #colonialism #imperialism #us imperialism #antizionism #nakba

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matan4il · 8 months ago

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I have a query and I'm sorry that this question is going to upset you in advance. I see a post circling on here about Holocaust survivors apparently saying that Palestinians are exactly like them during attacks on Gaza. I just scroll past it because I have poor attention span that cannot stay focused more than one sentence but I wanted to know your opinion on this post or if you have seen it. Again, deep apologies that this ask is upsetting. Thank you for still being here and sharing with us.

Hi Nonnie!

Thank you for the kind way you approached this.

I have seen a post that might be the one you're referring to... It's a screenshot of a tweet:

The original tweet shows an interview with one Holocaust survivor. The response falsely expands this to survivors, in the plural, as if this one tweet shows a whole movement of Holocaust survivors, that people simply refuse to listen to.

The original tweet comes from an account that calls itself a "media company," but has no website (something I would expect from an actual media company), and is at least 80% tweets that are anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. I'll give you an example. We all know Elon Musk has allowed antisemitism to thrive on Twitter, all kinds of it, including the white supremacist type, and others that have nothing to do with Israel. In an attempt to educate him, he was invited to a tour of Auschwitz. But apparently, according to this "media company," that was just meant to stop anti-genocide speech on his social media platform:

Of the up to 20% of tweets this "media company" posts or shares, many are anti-democratic or in support of dictatorial regimes.

This account also amplified the words of Julius Malema, leader of the South African EFF party, as he justified the Oct 7 massacre, and demanded support for the (genocidal) Hamas and its "resistance."

Malema himself has repeatedly sang, "Kill the Boer," a song which many understand as a genocidal chant against the Boers, the South Africans of Dutch descent. This guy is a controversial figure at best, doesn't seem to have an issue with an actual genocide, and this "media company" upholds his words as if he is a role model.

But if this account tweets Israel hate, then I guess the Tumblr user who passed the tweet along has no issue with how questionable of a source this is.

I recognized the face of the survivor. This is what it looks like in the cut off screenshot in the Tumblr post I saw:

So how did I recognize him? Because the number of anti-Zionist Holocaust survivors is SO small (around 5), and I have seen every single one of them repeatedly tokenized by antisemites so much, that I'm familiar with the name and face of each. The man in this vid is Hajo Meyer, who died in 2014. He couldn't possibly make any comments about Hamas' massacre on Oct 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza since, unless this "media company" has managed to somehow contact the afterlife. Here's a screenshot from Google, showing a recent re-upload of this vid to IG:

And here's a very brief bio, mentioning his date of death:

I'm guessing that "media company" didn't name him, or specify the date out of the vid, because it didn't want people to know the guy was dead, and the views he expressed were pre-Hamas' massacre.

Hajo Meyer was, without a doubt, an anti-Zionist. But would he still be using this rhetoric after Oct 7, after the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, after better understanding the kind of threat that Israel and Jews worldwide (since Hamas has tried to target Jews in European countries as well, including in the Netherlands, where Meyer lived) are facing from this genocidal terrorist organization ruling Gaza? IDK. I'd like to think he would be better than to continue distorting the Holocaust through this false comparison, but I can't say for sure, and I'm not about to claim that I do, putting words in his mouth just to exploit a dead Holocaust survivor. The fact that the anti-Israel crowd would continue to tokenize (meaning, exploit) a dead survivor like that, as if anyone could know for sure that Meyer would continue to toe the same line, just shows there really is no moral low they can't stoop to.

And here I wanna emphasize how wrong this antisemitic practice is, tokenizing Jews. Because no marginalized group is immune to the hatred spread against it, there will ALWAYS be some of its members, who will internalize and embrace poison aimed at it. There were gay Nazis (the notorious Ernest Roehm was the highest ranking one) and we also have contemporary gay neo-Nazis. So, should we use them in order to pretend that Nazi ideology is not homophobic? That it didn't harm hundreds of thousands of gay people? No, we know that the overwhelming majority of gay people suffered due to it, and would insist that Nazism IS homophobic. So, using those few exceptions to ignore (and embolden) the homophbia of this ideology, ends up being homophobic in itself. Embracing the unrepresentative few over the representative, mainstream majority of a marginalized group in "exonerating" what the group says is hateful and harmful towards it, ends up being hateful and harmful in itself.

And that's what people who only listen to the few anti-Zionist Holocaust survivors are doing. They're basically saying, "Listen to Holocaust survivors!" but they mean only the few who say what the anti-Israel movement does. All the other survivors they ignore, dismiss, silence or even erase.

They're ignoring the voices of the overwhelming majority of Holocaust survivors who WERE (and are) Zionist. Who do not agree with this distorted narrative. Yad Vashem estimates that two thirds of Holocaust survivors came to Israel at the end of WWII, and many more supported Israel even when they chose to settle elsewhere. Just recently, we had a group of 870 American survivors (along with their descendants, altogether 2,500 Jews) thank Biden for standing with Israel after the Hamas massacre. These anti-Israel haters are also erasing the survivors who were themselves targeted on Oct 7, whether threatened, kidnapped, injured or murdered (I've talked about several in my posts on this blog). This anti-Israel mob is exploiting Hajo Meyer even in ignoring that if he had been alive and present in Israel, even just to visit a friend or family member, he would have been targeted, too. These haters are ignoring survivors who said that what Hamas has done is similar to what the Nazis did (I've talked about several of them in my posts on this blog, too. All can be found in my Israel tag).

It is unconscionable, to treat most Holocaust survivors like they don't count, and only see a (literal) handful of anti-Zionist ones as if they do. And it certainly does NOT show the respect the anti-Israel haters imply survivors are owed, through the demand that we all defer to the opinion of the survivors, but ONLY the few anti-Zionist ones.

All that said, off the top of my head, here's a small number of HUGE differences between the Holocaust, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, and anyone ignoring them IS guilty of distorting the Holocaust.

-> The Holocaust did NOT start due to Jews repeatedly murdering Germans on German soil, in an attempt to keep Germans down and prevent them from establishing self rule in the German ancestral land. The Holocaust was completely unprovoked, unjustified and one-sided. Every oppressive measure taken by the Nazis against the Jews, was motivated by antisemitism, and was NOT a reaction to Jewish anti-German terrorism, that the Nazis had to protect their German citizens from. Speaking of unprovoked, unjustified and for a very long time one-sided, that describes the Arab anti-Jewish violence that preceded the establishment of the State of Israel by almost 100 years. But Jewish self-defense in this conflict, which only started about 50 years after said violence began, was provoked, was justified, was a response to what was done to the Jews first.

-> The Holocaust did NOT consist of Jews on German soil collaborating militarily with several Jewish countries surrounding Germany, with the goal of these combined Jewish armies invading and wiping it off the map, in order to prevent German self rule. Guess what the Arabs did to the Jews...

-> The Holocaust did NOT entail repeated German efforts to find a solution for how Jews and Germans could live together on the same land. In pre-state Israel, Jews did try repeatedly to reach an understanding that would allow Jews and Arabs to peacefully share (and co-exist in) the Jewish ancestral land.

-> When Jews finally started rebelling against the Nazis, they did NOT try to get as many Jewish civilians as possible killed. On the contrary, the outbreak of the most famous Jewish revolt, the one in the Warsaw Ghetto, was postponed until the Nazis entered, and the Jewish fighters believed this to be the final 'liquidation' of the ghetto (meaning, the deportation and extermination of the roughly 60,000 Jews still alive there). Only then did they fight back, because (in their own words), they did not want their decision to rebel to cost another Jew "even one hour of life." Compare that to how Hamas has been using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Or even to the Arab leadership back in 1948, which did not hesitate in risking or displacing the entire Arab population in the Land of Israel, in favor of fighting what they called "an extermination war" against the Jews.

-> The Holocaust did NOT see a single day where Germans worked en masse to try and alleviate the suffering of Jews, whether by providing them with humanitarian aid, or by moving them to areas where they would be safe from death. That's in direct contrast to Israel's efforts to make Palestinians' lives better, whether through humanitarian aid, work permits in Israel that guarantee a higher salary and better social rights, medical treatments, warnings when a terrorist target is about to be struck, etc.

-> The Holocaust was NOT supposed to end with even one Jew alive at the end of it. The Germans were going for total extermination of the Jewish people. All Jews who had German citizens were stripped of it in 1935, even before the most murderous parts of this genocide commenced. In contrast, Israel did NOT seek to kill all Arabs, there were many calls for Arabs not to flee Israel and the war which the Arab leadership had started, at the end of the war Israel gave citizenship to 150,000 Arabs who did not leave and did not take arms against Jews, and there was even an offer for tens of thousands of Arabs to return (Weitzmann presented it to the UN), if they do so peacefully. Just a few thousands accepted that offer, but those who did, got citizenship and land.

-> The Nazis were so eager to kill every Jew, that they came to the conclusion they HAD to industrialize their genocide of the Jewish people. That's why they built extermination camps with gas chambers at their core. Auschwitz alone could, on certain days, kill about 20,000 people. No Jew was meant to leave those camps alive. The crematoria were mass murder factories. ANY crime that you want to compare to the Holocaust specifically, you have to show that it includes this industrialization element. Currently, NO GENOCIDE, no matter how horrific, has. And God help us all, I hope it stays that way (this is one of the reasons why the Holocaust mustn't be distorted or minimized. We can't prevent something from happening, if we don't understand what HAS happened, and that we're trying to stop from being repeated). There is not a SINGLE thing in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict that comes CLOSE to being an industrialized form of massacre. Even the brutality of Hamas on Oct 7, the single bloodiest day in the history of this conflict for either side, doesn't come close.

-> While there are still Jews around, meaning the Holocaust as conceptualized by the Nazis failed, it was so deadly, that it DID lead to the murder of around 70-80% of the Jews living under the Nazi occupation over a short number of years. Even more than 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, Jews have not recovered demographically. Meanwhile, the Palestinian population has increased by about 10 times since Israel's Independence War. But let's say people wanna claim that just this current war is comparable to the Holocaust. There are presently around 7 million Arabs in the territories of the Jewish ancestral land, of which about 2 million are Israeli citizens. I'm gonna go with the anti-Israel narrative for a second, which claims ALL of them are occupied and oppressed by Israel (even though they're not). In order for the ruin of Palestinians to be indeed on the same level, that would mean 70-80% of them would have to be murdered by Israel during the war. Let's go with the lower percent, so it's easier for the anti-Israel crowd to reach the number of deaths that would support their claim. To have killed 70% of 7 million, that would mean Israel would have to kill 4.9 million Arabs in this so-called "genocide." Even if we exclude Israeli Arabs, and only focus on the 5 million Palestinians living in areas where the Israeli army currently operates (imagine the German Nazis allowing Jews safety inside Germany, and only killing them outside it *eyeroll*), that would mean at least 3.5 million Palestinians killed. But after almost 5 months of this war, the number of Palestinian fatalities, as claimed by Hamas, is around 30,000 people (I'm putting aside the fact that at least 12,000 are Hamas terrorists). The gap between what is happening, and what people who make this false comparison are implying is happening, is incomprehensible.

Sorry for the length, but I hope this is helpful!

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

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reasonsforhope · 10 months ago

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"Thousands of demonstrators converged opposite the White House on Saturday to call for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza, while children joined a pro-Palestinian march through central London as part of a global day of action against the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Palestinians in 75 years.

People in the U.S. capital held aloft signs questioning President Joe Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate because of his staunch support for Israel in the nearly 100-day war against Hamas. Some of the signs read: “No votes for Genocide Joe,” “Biden has blood on his hands” and “Let Gaza live.”

Vendors were also selling South African flags as protesters chanted slogans in support of the country whose accusations of genocide against Israel prompted the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, to take up the case...

The plight of children in the Gaza Strip was the focus of the latest London march, symbolized by the appearance of Little Amal, a 3.5-meter (11.5-foot) puppet originally meant to highlight the suffering of Syrian refugees.

The puppet had become a human rights emblem during an 8,000-kilometer (4,970-mile) journey from the Turkish-Syrian border to Manchester in July 2001.

Nearly two-thirds of the 23,843 people killed during Israel’s campaign in Gaza have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory...

“On Saturday Amal walks for those most vulnerable and for their bravery and resilience,“ said Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk Productions. “Amal is a child and a refugee and today in Gaza childhood is under attack, with an unfathomable number of children killed. Childhood itself is being targeted. That’s why we walk.”

London’s Metropolitan Police force said some 1,700 officers would be on duty for the march, including many from outside the capital...

The London march was one of several others being held in European cities including Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin, where thousands also marched along the Irish capital’s main thoroughfare to protest Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian enclave.

Protesters waved Palestinian flags, held placards critical of the Irish, U.S. and Israeli governments and chanted, “Free, free Palestine.″

In Rome, hundreds of demonstrators descended on a boulevard near the famous Colosseum, with some carrying signs reading, “Stop Genocide.”

At one point during the protest, amid the din of sound effects mimicking exploding bombs, a number of demonstrators lied down in the street and pulled white sheets over themselves as if they were corpses, while others knelt beside them, their palms daubed in red paint.

Many hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Paris’ Republic square to set off on a march calling for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the war, a lifting of the blockade on Gaza and to impose sanctions on Israel. Marching protesters waved the Palestinian flag and held aloft placards and banners reading, “From Gaza to Paris. Resistance.”"

-via AP News, January 13, 2023

#sorry about the partial inaccuracy of the previous post #that was genuinely my bad and coming out of my own dismay at the underreporting of a lot of key events and milestones of the war #all the more reason I should have fact checked #palestine #free palestine #cw war #israel #ceasefire #gaza #palestinian genocide #protests #direct action #united states #washington dc #london #paris #rome #hope #good news

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hussyknee · 11 months ago

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Jesus is Under the Rubble

“This Advent, while global Christians prepare to commemorate the arrival of the Prince of Peace, our Palestinian kin in Gaza suffer unthinkable violence. Their cries of deliverance, echoing those of two millennia ago, seem to be falling unheard on the United States.”

youtube

— by Kelly Latimore icons. All proceeds from sales of this digital image will go toward Red Letter Christians trusted partners in Gaza.

Transcript: Christ in the Rubble A Liturgy of Lament Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church Bethlehem Saturday, December 23rd, 2023 We are angry…

We are broken…

This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.

Twenty thousand killed. Thousands under the rubble still. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways. Day after day after day. 1.9 million displaced! Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. A genocide.

The world is watching; Churches are watching. Gazans are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares? But it goes on.

We are asking, could this be our fate in Bethlehem? In Ramallah? In Jenin? Is this our destiny too?

We are tormented by the silence of the world. Leaders of the so-called “free” lined up one after the other to give the green light for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover. Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, they veiled the truth and context, providing political cover. And, yet another layer has been added: the theological cover with the Western Church stepping into the spotlight.

The South African Church taught us the concept of “The state theology,” defined as “the theological justification of the status quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism.” It does so by misusing theological concepts and biblical texts for its own political purposes.

Here in Palestine, the Bible is weaponized against our very own sacred text. In our terminology in Palestine, we speak of the Empire. Here we confront the theology of the Empire. A disguise for superiority, supremacy, “chosenness,” and entitlement. It is sometimes given a nice cover using words like mission and evangelism, fulfillment of prophecy, and spreading freedom and liberty. The theology of the Empire becomes a powerful tool to mask oppression under the cloak of divine sanction. It divides people into “us” and “them.” It dehumanizes and demonizes. It speaks of land without people even when they know the land has people – and not just any people. It calls for emptying Gaza, just like it called the ethnic cleansing in 1948 “a divine miracle.” It calls for us Palestinians to go to Egypt, maybe Jordan, or why not just the sea?

“Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they said of us. This is the theology of Empire.

This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it is the color of our skin. Maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of the political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. As they said, if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant” then so be it! We are not humans in their eyes. (But in God’s eyes… no one can tell us we are not!)

The hypocrisy and racism of the Western world is transparent and appalling! They always take the words of Palestinians with suspicion and qualification. No, we are not treated equally. Yet, the other side, despite a clear track record of misinformation, is almost always deemed infallible!

To our European friends. I never ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again. We are not white— it does not apply to us according to your own logic.

In this war, the many Christians in the Western world made sure the Empire has the theology needed. It is self-defense, we were told! (And I ask: how?)

In the shadow of the Empire, they turned the colonizer into the victim, and the colonized into the aggressor. Have we forgotten that the state was built on the ruins of the towns and villages of those very same Gazans?

We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear: Silence is complicity, and empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action— are all under the banner of complicity. So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. Gaza was hell on earth before October 7th.

If you are not appalled by what is happening; if you are not shaken to your core— there is something wrong with your humanity. If we, as Christians, are not outraged by this genocide, by the weaponizing of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and compromising the credibility of the Gospel!

If you fail to call this a genocide. It is on you. It is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace.

Some have not even called for a ceasefire.

I feel sorry for you. We will be okay. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we will recover. We will rise and stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far the biggest blow we have received in a long time.

But again, for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this?

Your charity, your words of shock AFTER the genocide, won’t make a difference. Words of regret will not suffice for you. We will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done, has been done. I want you to look at the mirror… and ask: where was I?

To our friends who are here with us: You have left your families and churches to be with us. You embody the term accompaniment— a costly solidarity. “We were in prison and you visited us.” What a stark difference from the silence and complicity of others. Your presence here is the meaning of solidarity. Your visit has already left an impression that will never be taken from us. Through you, God has spoken to us that “we are not forsaken.” As Father Rami of the Catholic Church said this morning, you have come to Bethlehem, and like the Magi, you brought gifts with, but gifts that are more precious than gold, frankincense, and myrrh. You brought the gift of love and solidarity.

We needed this. For this season, maybe more than anything, we were troubled by the silence of God. In these last two months, the Psalms of lament have become a precious companion. We cried out: My God, My God, why have you forsaken Gaza? Why do you hide your face from Gaza?

In our pain, anguish, and lament, we have searched for God, and found him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus became the victim of the very same violence of the Empire. He was tortured. Crucified. He bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain— My God, where are you?

In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.

And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is to be found not on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. In a cave, with a simple family. Vulnerable. Barely, and miraculously surviving a massacre. Among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is found.

If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza. When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble.

When we rely on power, might, and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble.

When we justify, rationalize, and theologize the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.

Jesus is under the rubble. This is his manger. He is at home with the marginalized, the suffering, the oppressed, and displaced. This is his manger.

I have been looking, contemplating on this iconic image….God with us, precisely in this way. THIS is the incarnation. Messy. Bloody. Poverty.

This child is our hope and inspiration. We look and see him in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says: “just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” “You did to ME.” Jesus not only calls them his own, he is them!

We look at the holy family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair. While the world discusses the fate of the people of Gaza as if they are unwanted boxes in a garage, God in the Christmas narrative shares in their fate; He walks with them and calls them his own.

This manger is about resilience— صمود. The resilience of Jesus is in his meekness; weakness, and vulnerability. The majesty of the incarnation lies in its solidarity with the marginalized. Resilience because this very same child, rose up from the midst of pain, destruction, darkness and death to challenge empires; to speak truth to power and deliver an everlasting victory over death and darkness.

This is Christmas today in Palestine and this is the Christmas message. It is not about Santa, trees, gifts, lights… etc. My goodness how we twisted the meaning of Christmas. How we have commercialized Christmas. I was in the USA last month, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights, all the and commercial goods. I couldn’t help but think: They send us bombs, while celebrating Christmas in their land. They sing about the prince of peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land.

Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger. This is our message to the world today. It is a Gospel message, a true and authentic Christmas message, about the God who did not stay silent, but said his word, and his Word is Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized. He is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness.

This manger is our message to the world today – and it is simply this: this genocide must stop NOW. Let us repeat to the world: STOP this Genocide NOW.

This is our call. This is our plea. This is our prayer. Hear oh God. Amen.

(Source)

I found these on Twitter a while ago. Original creator unknown.

I can't stop you ascribing hateful, paranoid meanings to these images, but they're not about blaming religions. Jesus was a Jew born to a community of Jews in Palestine, the cradle of the Abrahamic faiths. He was raised and loved by them, betrayed by their rulers* and killed by Romans. He's a Prophet of Islam. End of.

*Y'know, like how the people of the Arab and Muslim nations love Palestine and crying to help them, except their leaders are greedy and rotted to the core. The ruling class will always only serve the empire.

Edit: alt text provided by @this-world-of-beautiful-monsters

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safety-pin-punk · 2 years ago

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Punk History Resources: Vol. 1

This is a compilation of resources found and recommended by various alternative bloggers, each of whom are credited for their contributions. This started because I was getting SO MANY asks about resources such as videos, books, and websites to use to learn about punk history. Admittedly, my own list isn't that long, so I thought it was best to reach out to some others and share their knowledge with everyone. So thank you again to everyone who helped out with this!!

@raggedyfink @lovintheaesthetic @punk-patches @my-chemical-ratz

YOUTUBE:

Punk/Goth Docs Playlist on Youtube (77 Videos) (raggedyfink)

1991 The Year Punk broke (lovintheaesthetic)

She's Real (Worse Than Queer) (lovintheaesthetic)

Don't Need You, The Herstory of Riot Grrrl (lovintheaesthetic)

The Long Queer History of Punk (lovintheaesthetic)

The very Black History of Punk Music (lovintheaesthetic)

Punk's Not Dead (lovintheaesthetic)

BOOKS:

Phantoms the Rise of La Deathrock (raggedyfink)

Too Tough to Love by Roxy Ramone (raggedyfink)

I Slept With Joey Ramone by Mickey Leigh (raggedyfink)

Please Kill Me, The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Rock (punk-patches & lovintheaesthetic)

Encyclopedia of Punk (punk-patches)

The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho-Punk, 1980-1984 (my-chemical-ratz)

The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk (my-chemical-ratz)

Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (lovintheaesthetic & my-chemical-ratz)

Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (my-chemical-ratz)

Punk Rock: An Oral History (my-chemical-ratz)

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution (my-chemical-ratz)

Queercore: Queer Punk Media Subculture (my-chemical-ratz)

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution: An Oral History (my-chemical-ratz)

Spider-Punk: Banned in D.C.(this doesnt have anything to do with history but i love spider punk so) (my-chemical-ratz)

MOVIES / DOCUMENTARIES:

The Punk Singer (punk-patches)

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution (punk-patches)

Punk's Not Dead (punk-patches)

Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band (punk-patches)

Queercore: How To Punk a Revolution (my-chemical-ratz)

Afropunk (my-chemical-ratz)

Punk in Africa (my-chemical-ratz)

A Band Called Death (my-chemical-ratz)) (link courtesy of @wrench-p, but is unavailable to watch in the US))

ARTICLES:

(some of these are found on JSTOR, but you can sign up for a free 100 articles per month)

Muslim Punk in an Alt-Right Era (my-chemical-ratz)

A History of Punk (my-chemical-ratz)

Jews, Punk and the Holocaust: From the Velvet Underground to the Ramones: The Jewish-American Story (my-chemical-ratz)

What is Punk and Why Did It Scare People So Much? (my-chemical-ratz)

An Account of a South African Punk Rock Music Collection (my-chemical-ratz)

Queer As Punk: A Guide To LGBTQIA+ Punk (my-chemical-ratz)

Did Punk Matter?: Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture During the 1980s (my-chemical-ratz)

ZINES:

(some may not be *about* history, but they’re a huge part of it!)

Punk Planet archive (my-chemical-ratz & safety-pin-punk)

Queer Zine archive (I personally like the anon boy collection haha) (my-chemical-ratz)

Archive.org in general has a lot of zines :) (my-chemical-ratz)

ETC:

(These aren’t about punk history itself but could be helpful in learning about the politics that go with being punk)

A History of Punk from 1976-78: A Free Online Course from the University of Reading (safety-pin-punk)

Punk History Reading List (safety-pin-punk)

Essays about socialism (my-chemical-ratz)

Leftism 101 (my-chemical-ratz)

Rights as an American protester (my-chemical-ratz)

Social justice classes (I’m really excited to go through these!!) (my-chemical-ratz)

Stamped (my-chemical-ratz)

How To Be An Anti-Racist (my-chemical-ratz)

Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm (my-chemical-ratz)

I would love to make a Vol. 2 post at some point in the future, so if you have resources and want to share, PLEASE message me!!

#punk 101 #punk culture #punk history #punk #punx #punk resources #resource list #friends!!!#making this post legit made tumblr crash on my desktop soo uhhhh let me know if anything is fucked up please!

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