#the legitimacy of israel

[gayjaytodd]

one argument I keep coming across in relation to Israel is that "no one deserves an ethnostate" and, even ignoring my own discomfort at applying a white supremacist term to a Jewish state, it's an argument I hate for a few reasons:

It's wrong - Israel may be a Jewish state and thus built on Jewish traditions, culture and religion (but is that any different than Muslim nations like Pakistan, or even Western countries which have Christianity built into their foundations?), but not all Israelis are Jewish; there are Muslim Israelis and Buddhist Israelis and Christian Israelis

'ethnostate', by virtue of having been coined by white supremacists, bring to mind a swathe of white, US/European colonisers, and while many Israelis have European/USamerican ancestry, there are Israelis from North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia as well - many of whom came to Israel fleeing persecution in their own lands, which brings me to:

the argument is ignoring historical context; Israel is not the result (solely) of a European imperialist mindset - why do Jews, specifically, get a state of their own? Well, because historically, we have been kicked out or (attempted) ethnically cleansed from all other countries - the fear of pogroms, the anxiety of wondering when we'll have to flee again, is built into our culture, traditions, our DNA, and the only way to avoid a government that'll suddenly, from one day to the next, decide that it hates Jews and wants us dead, is to make our own country and our own government

and finally: it's a useless point to make. Whether you think Israel is a legitimate state or not doesn't actually matter or make any difference; the fact of the matter is that Israel is an internationally recognised state, and that's the fact we have to work off.

Does all of this mean Israel hasn't committed war crimes? No. Does this mean that Palestinians deserve to be murdered and driven from their homes? No.

But it does mean that, once again, leftists online need to come and join the rest of us in the real world - which includes nuance and historical context and other such complicated things - if they want to help foster real change.

[sataniccapitalist]

https://x.com/Megatron_ron/status/1761958257340362766?s=20

I dare you to watch Click the Twitter link to see. Notice the robotlike, preprogrammed reaction to a dying man from the Secret Service agent.

"I will no longer be complicit in genocide”

US airman sets himself on fire outside Israeli embassy in Washington | Reuters

[some-stars]

sure do love reading posts about how zionism is a special, different kind of colonization that makes it actually fine and okay :)

like there were a LOT of antizionist jews in the early 20th century. there are a lot of us now. and it’s not because we just don’t Understand the Complexities of the israeli political situation. it’s because all forms of zionism, from their inception and to this day, have all always been morally wrong. israel was founded with a massive act of ethnic cleansing and murder because there is no other possible way to move large amounts of people into a place where other people already live that ensures the people arriving have all the political power. there was never a Good israel and there was never a Good zionism. it was rotten from its inception and it cannot be fixed or repaired or cleansed of the blood it demands.

you can dress up your explanations in lots of long paragraphs but the actual definition of all zionism is simply “we get to force everyone who was already living in this place to leave or be subservient to us or simply be killed.” there is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

[shame-kink]

j///wishlivesm///////////ter is 100% a genocide apologist for the record

addendum: it has come to my attention that at least one antisemite (or someone posing as such) has found this post. fuckoff. nothing you say will get me to agree with you on being antisemitic (OR decide we need an ethnostate for protection if thats what you are after) this is about a tumblr user and the blogs that person interacts with not all of us as a collective. eat shit.

addendum 2: i have obscured the username though i’m not entirely censoring the thing

[chaiaurchaandni]

israeli definition of victory:

killing 9000+ civilians (70% children and women)

bombing several hospitals + ambulances

bombing solar panels + fishing boats (means of sustaining life despite the seige)

[news4dzhozhar]

[chewwytwee]

This just in, tumblr user who’s only learned about Palestine over the past few months feels incredibly emboldened to tell everyone what they think about the ICJ ruling and the history of Palestinian resistance

[nando161mando]

Funny how they still think they hold legitimacy after gleefully funding a genocide

[canichangemyblogname]

I hate, hate, hate how ‘western’ media and countries are already engaging in genocide denial regarding Gaza.

“The Gaza Health Ministry has claimed the death toll in the enclave reached 20,000 today. We would like to note that the Health Ministry is controlled by Hamas and as such, these numbers may be inaccurate. [Insert News Site] has also been unable to independently verify this statistic.”

In the US, this trend began after the ADL publicly called for news organizations to report on the Health Ministry’s “clear bias.” They reasoned that the Ministry has a “clear propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible,” and as such, news organizations must caveat the numbers they report as potentially inaccurate. This trend also emerged following the bombing of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

And I don’t know what’s more dystopian. Watching leaders and news organization platform and legitimize death denialism? Or the fact that every time I hear a news organization make this caveat, they cut to commercial afterwards, and the first one to aire is always either for the Holocaust Museum or the Jewish United Fund?

Personally, I see this as nothing short of a repulsive weaponization of Jewish tragedy. It’s tone deaf and irresponsible.

[rlyehtaxidermist]

while I think this is a dumb move by Hamas (they're not known for their international legitimacy - leave it to the aid NGOs, who Israel will accuse of being you anyway) I do think it's funny that these two are back to back. a study in contrasts

[pocket-deer-boy]

wait shit this post is from 2021 and eurovision isn't on right now why is this being passed around right now?

@ fellow eurovision haters and palestine supporters, palestinian activists have called to hijack the hashtag #eurovision to talk about the occupation of palestine and share the crimes committed against palestinians. on top of that, israhell is represented by an ex-IOF who is singing a song called, and i kid you not, “set me free”, which is completely egregious. if like me u love annoying the shit out of people, head over to twitter and use the hashtags #eurovision alongside #GazaUnderAttack and other tags used by the palestinian online resistance such as #SaveSheikhJarrah and #FreePalestine

i never thought the day would come where i’d be like “get this hashtag trending” but here we are, using the tools of our times for some guerilla campaigning for palestine. once again for ppl who don’t get it, palestinians want the horrors they’ve lived and are living through to be shared as widely as possible through, among others, social media so if u have an account and five minutes to spare now’s a good time for some spamming

and fuck the eurovision!

[schoolhater]

answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:

tl;dr:

israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.

with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.

the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.

as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.

the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.

ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.

and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.

all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!

long answers under the cut!

if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks

not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices

i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.

unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.

this was posted on abc a few days ago

it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.

even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.

with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.

[narrative-theory]

What Will Happen after Assad?

Outcome of Assad Toppling: Not What Western Commentators Think

[heritageposts]

If Israel ends up winning, that's the EBU's problem, not ours.

Don't watch, don't vote.

Israel doing well in Eurovision is a completely predictable result of the boycott. The people who are watching & voting in Eurovision are now at best willfully ignorant and apathetic and at worst actively pro-Israel, meaning there will be a disproportionate amount of people willing to vote for Israel and even people voting for them because of the boycott.

But saying that means that boycotting Eurovision was the wrong call completely misses the point of the boycott. The point is not "Israel should not win Eurovision", it is "Israel should not be allowed to compete in the first place". The point of the boycott is not to give the EBU views or money, so if you've been boycotting... don't give them money or legitimacy by voting for someone tomorrow to prevent Israel from winning. If Israel does win, that does not mean boycotting failed; it only further delegitimizes the competition and confirms we should burn the whole thing down.

[news4dzhozhar]

For a "country" that endlessly claims victim status and that they are the good eyes, they love silencing journalists one way or another. If a single newspaper can "harm the legitimacy" of Israel the legitimacy must be pretty weak.