#the blood of palestine is on america's hands

[sapropel]

--Agnes Callamard, head of Amnesty International

[bleakbluejay]

you motherfuckers have no concept of what "land back" or "decolonize" even mean. you're too busy demonizing entire groups of people, terrified, shitting yourselves, that they'll do even half of the horrors to you that you've done to them for decades or centuries. this shit comes off as hella racist for real. you hate arabs so much. you hate first nations people so much. you hate black people so much. even if you sympathize with them, you can't fucking bear the idea of them gaining freedom, independence, autonomy, safety, because you're so, so scared they'll hurt you back and cause chaos in the streets. these same people who just want to rebuild. who just want to go home. who just want to see their families again. who just want food. who just want medical care. who just want dry, warm shelter. you're so focused on the ideas of colonization, of "us vs. them", of one people displacing the other for a state to exist, that you cannot comprehend coexistence, and your only idea of peace is if an entire group of people were just gone and dead.

grow the fuck up. for the love of GOD, grow the fuck up.

[usercelestial]

I know you want a revolution but to have that, you have to act, you have to get your hands dirty, and you have to vote so people who openly want a mass deportation and fervently want to murder anyone who isn't white don't take control of this country.

[lovelylunas-world]

Israel told the people of Gaza to evacuate and then as they’re evacuating they bomb them ambulance trucks and people dead. Mass genocide.

you want people to feel sympathy but this is who you support! Attacking people of Gaza ain’t attacking hamas and the Israeli government knows this they just want to kill all Palestinians

[athena5898]

Leaked list of weapons the US has sent to Israel including

2,000 Hellfire missiles for Apache attack helicopters. The Lockheed Martin precision-guided Hellfires are being used more and more extensively by Israel now that its ground operations in Gaza dominate the war.

• 30mm chain gun ammunition, also for Apache attack helicopters. General Dynamics manufactures the latest ammunition.  

• 57,000 155mm shells for artillery guns

• 400 120mm mortars 

• PVS-14 Night Optical Devices 

• M141 shoulder-fired bunker-busters, officially “bunker defeat munitions,” the Western equivalent of Hamas RPGs and designed to engage targets at short range. “Bunker buster” as described in the news media is a bit misleading as the munition is used at 250 meter range to attack above-ground fortifications.

• 75 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, manufactured by Oshkosh Defense.

• 300+ Tamir interceptors, used for Israel’s “Iron Dome” system, and manufactured by Raytheon (RTX) in cooperation with Israel.

[theriverdalereviewer]

everyone jumping to team kamala we will never experience true freedom in this country

[mercurial-cereal]

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A post shared by Palestine Museum US (@palestinemuseum.us)

[mercurial-cereal]

I'm an American, and I agree with this 💯%!

to any americans who feel "paralyzed" and "dont know what to do" to help with gaza:

reading a fucking book. i beg of you.

in a time of knowledge suppression is it your duty to arm yourself with knowledge.

read about americas occupations in the middle east.

read about 9/11 from outside of america and see how they inflicted senseless harm and violence to countless amounts of people and have been suppressing your rights for the past 2 fucking decades.

read about any of the countless wars from the past 30 years. especially from a civilian's. and the victims and survivors' perspective. listen to the horror stories and do not plug your fucking ears as to what your country is doing.

and read about fucking gaza and palestine and keep up with what is happening no matter how "sad" or "uncountable" you might get.

dont look away from this.

you dont have the right to be comfortable during countless active genocides.

if you're knowledgeable, you're powerful, and our current state doesnt fucking want that.

you have the power to change things if you open your eyes and scream to the world.

wake the fuck up.

Edit: please check the reblogs there are readings and ways to help

[starlightomatic]

I'm asking this in good faith, but also in an admitted lack of full understanding. If you don't have the energy to engage with this topic anymore please disregard it.

Someone on your post noted the comparison of Israel-Palestine to that of the Native Americans, but the way I read it it seemed like they were putting Palestinians in the role of the native Americans and Israel as the colonizing force, but historically wouldn't it be the Jewish people who are the Native Americans in that comparison? I ask because from what I know it would be the Jewish people in what is now Israel at the same time in history as the Natives in the Americas. Am I misinformed about that? I'm not trying to say Palestine would be the colonizing force in that comparison btw, just that if we're talking about natives to the land, it seems to me like it'd be the Jewish people.

tbh neither maps on exactly

the expulsion of jews from what is now israel/palestine started in 70 AD and then was a gradual process over the next few hundred years as people moved out due to oppression by various rulers, poverty, etc

palestinians, as far as i understand it, likely descend from a mix of some of the jews who were left behind and arabs who conquered the land. they've been there for hundreds of years, and some families have owned the same land for all of that time

the thing about indigeneity as it's been explained to me is that it's not about origin so much as relationship to colonization. and the founding of israel was colonization -- herzl actually used that word himself in his writings.

you know the jnf? the original purpose was to exploit a feature of ottoman land law. if you planted a tree on someone's land and they didn't remove it for a certain number of years, you could claim ownership of that land. this and other methods were used to steal parcels of land from palestinians.

"your ethnicity stole the land from our ethnicity, to whom the land belongs" is a fucked up framework that seems really akin to blood and soil (as does "our ethnicity has rightful ownership of this land from ancient times, so your ethnicity needs to clear out"), but genuinely wresting ownership from individuals owners really can be said to be stealing land.

also, the nakba was a series of massacres and fighting that led to a huge influx of palestinian refugees from many areas in israel/palestine, and israel seized control of the land and homes they vacated to hand over to jews. israel used the jnf, again, to cover the ruins of many palestinian villages with trees to obscure the fact that they were ever there. in general israel built over many palestinian villages and the mindset in israel is not to know and not to think about it.

personally i think the indigeneity debate is not useful. it feels sometimes that jews think that if we can prove we lived in israel in ancient times (we did, a lot of people insist we didn't because it is inconvenient), we can justify things like the above. my position is that it does not justify it, because it is not an excuse for causing human suffering.

however, many people use a framework that is not about human suffering, but about how invading foreign jews stole the land from the "rightful" ethnic group. i don't agree with that either. especially when it becomes an excuse to support ethnic cleansing in the other direction. that is to say: they locate the crime not in the invasion but in the foreignness. such people are motivated to deny the historical fact of jewish origins in israel, because their argument is based on jewish foreignness.

but anyway, the comparison to indigenous peoples in the americas refers to the way that palestinians experienced the establishment of the state of israel -- starting with small groups of settlers, involving violence early on and then massacres, and later ethnic cleansing and displacement. cities and towns destroyed. shoved into small areas with few resources. lack of power and autonomy.

in addition, the way the early zionist leaders conceptualized themselves as enlightened europeans colonizing land with disdain for the existing residents.

[bruciemilf]

Amidst the horrific, inhumane, disgusting treatment the people of Palestine are facing day by day, I want to remind every single person of one thing;

Countries like America, the UK, Western supremacies, are always always always going to be colonizers. They're always going to be slavers. They are always always always going to be oppressors. Always. These countries have blood on their hands. They have no right to escape it.

Blood isn't washed; It's hidden.

When this is over, when the last mother has cried, when the last child has bled, when the last bomb drops, and humanity comes back to life, like it always does, don't ever, ever forget what Israel did. And don't let Israel forget, either.

[lady-raziel]

I'm angry. I'm really, really furious right now. I am absolutely livid that when the stakes are so high-- not just for Americans at risk from project 2025, not just for people in Europe being threatened by Russia, not just for people in Palestine, but for pretty much widespread global stability-- that the elites of the Democratic party would dare, would have the fucking gall to let Joe Biden run for a second term in the first place, and then when the magnitude of their own hubris is revealed, would not correct the mistake. And even worse, now, after what we've seen over the past two weeks-- that many of them, including some of the most progressive, would look out upon the people who they claim to be champions of, the diverse and varied America who will suffer at the hands of the conservatives' agenda--and they would EVER dare to say that YOU are wrong to point out the truth before your own eyes.

After the NATO press conference, where Biden absolutely had to prove he was not on the decline, and resoundingly failed to do so, I was appalled to go on Twitter (I'm still not calling it X, sorry) and see favored Democratic insiders claiming that the performance I had just seen was GOOD. That I should be PROUD of this. That I should WANT to vote for this.

How dare you. How dare you say that I should be proud, should wholeheartedly endorse the candidate at the head of a party who, time and time again over the past 30+ years, has only ever chosen to raise up its own aging elites, and occasionally younger people if they met the right demographics to portray the image of the "diverse party of the people."

No. It became evident a long time ago that you only ever cared about yourselves and consolidating your own power. Time and time again you have destroyed the chances of any candidate that strays beyond what you consider the bounds of acceptability for yourselves. There were good candidates in 2004-- and instead, the Democrats gave us John Kerry and handed the Republicans another four years of Bush. Hillary Clinton first ran for president in 2008-- had Barack Obama not been so compelling, had the idea of having the first African American president been so appealing, would you have allowed him to stand a chance? In 2016 you again and again ignored what the average person had to say, ignored concerns that had been brewing for decades that your commitment to "diversity" only mattered if it could be wielded against conservatives and used to prop yourselves up, and destroyed Bernie Sanders' campaign in service of an elite no one wanted.

The seeds of Donald Trump had been brewing for a long time, and instead of doing something about it then, you rested on your laurels and held on to your power instead of raising new people up to move the mission forward. And now, when the situation is MORE CRITICAL than it has EVER been-- still you refuse to listen. Still you refuse to change. Biden literally said in that press conference they aren't listening to polls anymore--is there ANYTHING that will get you to see that you are fucking this up???

So no, Biden campaign surrogates on my Twitter feed, DNC donation-prompt texts, endless barrage of emails one after another-- I see no reason to my proud of this. For many of us, this election as well as the last one was ALWAYS a strategic calculation to prevent worse things, empower local-level candidates, and allow a party structure to exist in some form in hopes of change. This was ALWAYS a dispassionate choice made with the full knowledge of complex situations in order to play the long game.

How dare you say I too should wholeheartedly believe the emperor is dressed in robes of splendor when he and the rest of you have lain bare for the longest time, while those of us trying to keep things from getting worse have to convince the rightfully angry people who still care to ignore the nakedness of who you are--to prevent people cloaked in blood from taking the reins. Shame on all of you, honestly. I wish I could say that this might be a learning moment for the Democratic elite, but I have little hope, and I expect to hear you pontificate on end regarding how "young people just don't understand the political process and that's why we lost" as we all go down together.

Fuck you.

[bloodycoolfrye]

A little girl from Gaza delivers her message to the world: until the last drop of blood in her soul, she will not leave Palestine.

Among Palestinians, steadfastness knows no age. Even the youngest of our people understand the catastrophe of exile, choosing hunger and danger over abandonment of their land.

From Gaza to Jenin, from Safad to Jaffa: Palestine is ours, and we will not be moved!

[girlactionfigure]

1948 as the original sin

MAY 21, 2024

1948 AS THE ORIGINAL SIN

There is only one country in the world whose right to exist is persistently cast into question: the State of Israel. It’s no coincidence that it is the world’s only Jewish state that is subjected to this delegitimization, not only in private conversations, but in university lecture halls, the top newsrooms in the world, and the General Assembly of the United Nations. For centuries, the right of Jewish people to live — the “Jewish Question” — was cast into doubt. Today, the Jewish state is subjected to the very same rhetoric. How is “does Israel have a right to exist?” even considered a legitimate question? Why are we even entertaining it, instead of flagging it for what it is — blatant xenophobia, at best?

The anti-Israel crowd justifies its flagrant bigotry by depicting Israel’s founding as illegitimate, thereby delegitimizing the country in perpetuity. This, of course, is a blatant double standard from the get-go, as hundreds of countries across the globe had bloody establishments. What’s worse, though, is that to delegitimize Israel’s founding, these people push a blatantly false narrative. According to their story, European settler-colonizers with the backing of the European empires, America, and/or the United Nations violently came to Palestine, seized lands, and, in 1948, massacred and displaced Palestinians to establish the Jewish state. Except this is not what happened.

To be sure, Palestinians were massacred and displaced in 1948, with 750,000 fleeing or being expelled from their homes. The displacement of Palestinians completely fractured Palestinian society, and it remains an open wound to this day. 

But the very real suffering of Palestinians should not be used to fuel an ahistorical narrative with the purpose of delegitimizing the Jewish state, and, by extension, the lives of nine million people in it. 

SO WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

The outbreak of the 1948 war was the culmination of almost three decades of Arab-Jewish violence in Palestine. The first of these violent incidents took place in 1920, during the Nebi Musa festival, when Arab rioters descended upon the ancient Jewish population of Jerusalem, murdering, pillaging, looting, and shouting “Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs!” and “death to the Jews!”

It was this event that first prompted the Jewish community in Palestine to organize a paramilitary. Arab antisemitic violence continued to escalate, with massacres in 1929, 1936, and 1938. In 1936, the right-wing Jewish paramilitary, the Irgun, began carrying out retaliatory attacks against Arabs. 

Given the rapid escalation of violence, in 1937, the British first proposed partitioning Palestine into one Jewish and one Arab state. The Jews accepted the plan reluctantly — to quote future first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist movement was prepared to accept a state “even if it’s the size of a tablecloth” — but the Arabs rejected it, so the plan was scrapped. But it wasn’t only partition that the Arabs were opposed to, seeing that two years later, the British offered the Arabs an entirely Arab state, so long as they could guarantee the rights of a tiny Jewish minority. The Arabs rejected the proposal — they wanted no Jews, period — and would continue to reject such proposals well into 1947. 

In 1947, the British handed the problem over to the United Nations, which voted in favor of partitioning the land. The Jews accepted the plan, while the Arabs infamously rejected it. For months, the Arab states had been threatening genocide of Jews should partition come to pass. After the partition vote, the Arab leadership in Palestine issued a leaflet quite explicitly threatening a second Holocaust in the Middle East, writing, “The Arabs have taken into their own hands the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will soon be driven out.” 

It wasn’t just threats. The morning after partition, Arab mobs in Palestine attacked Jewish buses, marking the start of the Palestine Civil War, which later turned into the 1948 war, after five Arab states invaded immediately following Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14. 

THE JEWS OF 1948

Contrary to the ahistorical depiction of European settler-colonizers with the backing of European empires, the Jews fighting in 1948 were largely refugees and Holocaust survivors. An international arms embargo had been placed on Palestine, affecting both Jews and Arabs, but the Arabs already had established militaries and even the unofficial support of the British, whereas the Jews had nothing and had to go through incredibly risky lengths to obtain the necessary arms and equipment. 

It’s really important to remember that all this took place less than three years after the end of the Holocaust, which eradicated nearly 70 percent of Europe’s Jewish population. For the Jews of 1948, the Arab threats of extermination felt very much existential. For example, prior to the partition vote, the General Secretary of the Arab League had threatened, “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades…We will sweep [the Jews] into the sea.”

Imagine this for a second: before World War II, the Jewish population around the world stood at 16 million (to this day, our population still hasn’t recovered). Just six years later, the global Jewish population had dwindled to 10 million. Three years later, the Arabs, outnumbering Jews about a million to one, were threatening to carry out another genocide against the very same people.

Of the Israeli casualties during the 1948, about one third were Holocaust survivors. Many were also Jewish refugees from elsewhere in the Middle East, as the Arab countries expelled some 850,000 Jews from their homes in retaliation for the 1948 war. No country in history has ever had to absorb as many refugees proportional to its total population as Israel did, in such a short amount of time. Because of this, conditions in Israel were dire, with an economy on the brink of collapse and food shortages. This picture is the opposite of that of a powerful foreign empire coming to conquer.

THE SIN OF MORAL EQUIVALENCE

Both the Jews and Arabs — including, yes, Palestinian Arabs — were responsible for expulsions and massacres during the 1948 war. In many cases, events described as “massacres” were actually battles between the two opposing parties. All of this, of course, happened within the context of a war. Framing it otherwise is a blatant distortion of the facts of history. 

Palestinians were not expelled from their homes because of their identities as Arabs or Palestinians; in the cases in which they were expelled, this occurred within the context of the Jewish paramilitaries and later the Israeli army battling with a hostile village, though, of course, innocents were caught in the crossfire and suffered the consequences. Any attempt to frame it as persecution of Palestinians on the basis of them being Palestinian is to try to draw a moral equivalence to the Holocaust, a crime which was entirely unrelated to the German war effort during World War II; in fact, the Nazi extermination campaign of Jews at times hindered the war objectives. The Nazis persecuted Jews because they were Jews, not because they were members of a hostile nation during wartime. 

“Nakba,” just like “Shoah,” the Hebrew word for Holocaust, means “catastrophe.” Constantin Zureiq, the Syrian intellectual who coined the term “Nakba,” described the Nakba not as the tragedy of the displacement of Palestinians, but rather, as the tragedy that “seven Arab states declare[d] war in an attempt to subdue Zionism, then stop[ped] impotent before it, and return[ed] on their heels.” 

The catastrophe, according to Zureiq himself, was notthat innocent people had been displaced from their homes, but that the Arabs had lost the war that they started. 

ERASURE OF ARAB ATROCITIES IN 1948

The anti-Israel crowd depicts the 1948 war as a case of an oppressor (Israel) versus the oppressed (Palestine). In reality, there was was a victor (Israel) and a loser (Palestine), with both sides committing war crimes. As far as who started the war, there is absolutely no question that the Arabs were the aggressors. As always, the true victims of the war were the innocent civilians.

The anti-Israel narrative consistently ignores the Arab atrocities that very much shaped Zionist morale during the 1948 war. The Arabs besieged 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem, depriving them of food and water, and destroying all relief trucks en route to the city. In fact, it was this siege that, four months into the war, prompted the Zionists to go from the defensive to the offensive, and subsequently led to the expulsions and massacres of Palestinians. 

Though the Arabs ended up conquering few Jewish communities, those communities that they did conquer suffered from expulsions and massacres. For example, on December 30, 1947, Arab mobs lynched 39 Jews in Haifa. On April 13, 1948, the Arabs attacked a Hadassah Hospital medical convoy, killing 79 people, mostly patients, doctors, and nurses, and burning most of them beyond recognition. On May 13, 1948, 157-220 Jews were murdered, many execution-style, by the Jordanian and Palestinian Arab forces in Kfar Etzion, with at least one attempted rape documented. When Jordan expelled the entire Jewish population of East Jerusalem, 600 Jews were murdered. The Arab forces also decapitated and paraded the heads of Jewish soldiers, disemboweled pregnant Jewish women, mutilated and dismembered Jewish women and prisoners of war, and more. 

The Palestinian Arabs were not the pure innocent victims of the war. They were the losers of the war. Those are two different things. 

Notably, while Israel has declassified many of its 1948 archives, the Arab countries have not and probably never will. As such, the historiography of 1948 is inherently biased, and the true extent of the atrocities the Arabs committed against the Jews might never be known.

THE EVOLUTION OF NAKBA MEMORY

About 750,000 Palestinians were displaced in 1948. Of these 750,000 refugees, 100,000 or so of wealthy means left Palestine before any documented expulsions. The majority of Palestinian refugees of the war, as is usual during wartime, fled out of fear, with many fleeing their villages before the Jewish forces even captured them. About 5 percent of Palestinians were actively forcibly expelled by the Jewish forces, while some 10 percent were evacuated or encouraged to leave by the Arab forces and/or the British. 

Without downplaying the pain of displacement, it’s really important to note that, unfortunately, every war produces refugees. What happened to Palestinians was sadly not unique. Yet Israel-detractors frame it as such to characterize Israel’s founding, and therefore, its entire existence, as uniquely evil and unjustifiable. If Israel was born out of sin, then Israel’s entire existence is a sin, and therefore, the moral thing to do would be to destroy it. 

As mentioned, the originator of the term “Nakba,” Constantin Zureiq, was describing the Arab military defeat, not a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people. 

Since then, however, the story of the Nakba has been distorted to completely de-emphasize the actual circumstances of the displacement, the genocidal war that the Arabs started.

The allusions to the Holocaust are intentional, beginning with the choice to use the word “Nakba,” a direct translation of the Hebrew word for “Holocaust,”  “Shoah.” In reality, the Nakba and the Holocaust have absolutely nothing in common; a more apt comparison would be the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923 or the Hindu-Muslim population exchange during the Partition of India in 1947. But nothing could possibly delegitimize the Jewish state more than comparing the Jewish state to the Jews’ worst historic oppressors. In fact, many Palestinian writers, such as Edward Said, even depicted themselves as the ultimate victims of the Nazis (despite the Palestinian leadership’s alliance with Nazi Germany). 

rootsmetals

let me tattoo this onto my forehead because people love putting words in my mouth: not a single word in this post is excusing, justifying, denying, or supporting any atrocities committed in 1948. Read that sentence again, please. groups like Hamas attack Israel because they believe that Israel is an illegitimate entity that must be wiped from the map at all costs. This idea rests on the premise that the State of Israel could only come into being through an act so egregious, so inhumane, that it has rendered Israel’s entire foundation, and thus, its entire existence, unacceptable. THAT’s why it’s important to address this distortion and weaponization of history. I’m not writing this to minimize the suffering of Palestinians.

[news4dzhozhar]

The double standard is truly staggering

[ysabelmystic]

Spent some time trying to see if there was any logical reasoning amongst the Americans refusing to vote for Biden and honestly, not seeing any. There seems to be a complete inability to think ahead.

Honestly, ask yourself:

1) is trump going to be better for Palestine than Biden?

The answer is no. Fuck no.

2) is there anything you can do personally to help Palestinians?

Donate money and protest. Are people being attacked for exercising their free speech on the matter? Yes, and that will continue to happen, possibly to a more extreme extent, under Trump. This country sucks ass.

So all they’re really doing by trying to punish the Democratic Party is convincing themselves that they will avoid having blood on their hands. Somehow, this same logic does not apply to them when it comes to the inevitable outcome, which, since there is no viable third party option, is that republicans win. I guess the republicans can do whatever they want to Americans, Palestinians, and people around the world, and these arrogant, “well read” fools will continue to pat themselves on the back, saying that America was already fascist anyways, that this couldn’t be prevented, that America deserves to fall actually, that voting does nothing, and aren’t they just so enlightened and moral for using “the real tools of the revolution” (which is almost always something that they aren’t willing to do themselves). If 2016 and 2020 taught them nothing, I suppose they’ll be harping on about it until the internet gets shut down.

It’s not a “Zionist take” to want my community to live. This isn’t a choice between Palestinians and Americans who aren’t cishet white men. This is a choice between shit staying the same amount of fucked and possibly improving, and full blown Christian nationalism. I’m guessing most of these people don’t know what that is. They probably didn’t grow up around it and they probably don’t live around it. They probably live in blue states or very blue cities and haven’t experienced right wing religious people consistently enough to really understand the extent of that threat. Or maybe they don’t care about themselves enough to feel like they have skin in the game at all (so fuck the rest of us I suppose).

Grit your teeth and vote for Biden, and if you think you’re too good for it and Trump wins, I hope you experience the fallout in the most direct way possible. If basic logic doesn’t work, maybe some personal experience will, that is, assuming you’ll still be able to vote in 2028.