#they kept their Jewish population safe

[beardedmrbean]

Sofia city council voted on March 9 to instruct mayor Yordanka Fandukova to ask the state to move the Soviet Army Monument from the centre of the Bulgarian capital city.

The monument was erected in 1954, while Bulgaria was under communist rule. It commemorates the Soviet invasion of Bulgaria at the close of the Second World War. The communist line was that the 1944 invasion, which led to the end of the monarchy and to decades of communist rule, was a “liberation”. To date, left-wing parties continue to revere the monument.

The vote to ask for the removal of the monument was 41 in favour, 13 against, with one abstention.

Those who voted in favour were the GERB-UDF group, Democratic Bulgaria, Patriots for Sofia and independent city councillors.

The request, to be made to the Sofia district governor, is to move the monument to the Museum of Socialist Art or to some other state-owned land away from the city centre.

Democratic Bulgaria tabled the proposal in 2020, but the matter did not proceed because GERB-UDF kept it off the agenda. This changed recently when GERB-UDF leader Boiko Borissov made a public call for the removal of the monument.

Some weeks ago, an inspection by municipal officials found that the condition of the monument was a hazard to the public, and it considerably exceeded the size originally approved.

The morning of the city council meeting saw protests at the monument and outside Sofia city council headquarters against the removal of the monument. Participants in the protest, in which red flags rivalled Bulgarian flags in number, pelted the city council building with eggs and red paint.

Caretaker Prime Minister Gulub Donev said on March 9 that a decision on the fate of the monument should taken only after Bulgaria’s April 2 early parliamentary elections.

[nicklloydnow]

“May I be permitted to say a few words? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic & Islamic History under William Montgomery Watt & Laurence Elwell Sutton, 2 of Britain ‘s great Middle East experts. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge & to teach Arabic & Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books & 100s of articles in this field.

I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs & that, for that reason, I am shocked & disheartened for a simple reason: there is not & has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality should anyone choose to visit Israel.

Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that many students are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, & that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Hating Israel

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies & myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a “Nazi” state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws?

None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When?

No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is a way to subvert historical fact. Likewise apartheid.

No Apartheid

For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a day in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous this is.

The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country’s 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha’is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan & elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; or anyone else; the holy places of all religions are protected by Israeli law.

Free Arab Israelis

Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran , the Bahai’s (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren’t your members boycotting Iran ?

Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews — something no blacks were able to do in South Africa.

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews & Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

Women’s Rights

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men & women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays oftn escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel & say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it’s better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

(…)

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations.

(…)

Israeli citizens, Jews & Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations & call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , & Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world’s freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the ME that gives refuge to gay men & women, the only country in the ME that protects the Bahai’s…. Need I go on?

(…)

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more.”

[makerinthemaking]

neil gaiman is a fucking zionist.

"b-but neil gaiman simply said both israel AND palestine have a right to exist!! that doesn't make him a zioni--" yes the fuck it does u privileged ignorant fucks. i shouldn't have to fuckin say this but y'all will say anything for the sake of defending the brits ig? even throwing those being mass genocided rn under the bus?

i used to admire the guy 'til i found out what he's believed, the genocidal state he supports the existence of, & continues to stand by what he said.

israel DOESN'T have a right exist.

not as it is, not as it's been & will always be. a genocidal state built on stolen land. its very citizens have shaped into a culture of discrimination, see the shit they post about palestinians. see questionnaires & statistics. segregation laws many of them gladly endorse. this ain't just the politicians (who have been loud in their prospects of ethnic extermination to allow for more land stealing) nor is it abt jews, abt neil's or anyone's jewish background. plenty jews speaking up against this bullshit, & already there were jewish ppl living in palestine before colonization (brought by an illegitimate act of imposed imperialism & not one palestinian representative in sight. the UK must also be held accountable but they won't be). dare y'all to tell me it shouldn't be the goal to give the land & the power back to its indigenous colonized peoples, regardless of the oppressing settlers already being... settled. it ain't the native peoples' problem to figure out, esp when so many of the colonizing settlers will support the shit thrown at palestinians. there's maybe like 1000 palestinians losses for very israeli casualty. US cops r trained by Israel, not to mention Israel equips them w shit to k1ll minorities in the US. Palestinians stand by BLM & gave advice on how to dodge gas & bullets during protests. they stood by Malcolm X & Black Panthers. BIPOC oppression & fight has always aligned w Palestinians'. israel freely enjoys basics & luxuries & will fuss abt the silliest shit like not getting enough diet flour at the moment, while publicly segregating & making racist mock of palestinians for literally not having access to basic shit like water & shelter & for getting their population violently cleansed & decimated while in an open-air prison. they're not even allowed to try & leave without risk of getting killed, & they're bombed even where Israel directs them it's safe to go (like South Gaza!) but why should they leave? it's THEIR land. would be successful cultural genocide. & now Israel declines offers to recover Israeli hostages just bc they don't wanna return infant Palestinian hostages, & instead Israel bombs places where ISRAELI hostages may be kept. even target-bomb hospitals, houses. freed Israeli hostages come out saying how appalled they are at how Israel failed them & keeps failing them. Israel's also been stealing & jailing/target killing palestinian children for ages. this mass killing's been going on for decades, yet Palestine is demonized by media when they try defend themselves. ain't no matter of "two sides" & "neutrality" when one side is oppressed & the other the oppressor. hamas is israel's oppression fault (& their politics actually see them as a convenience). actual palestinians have stated again & again they don't just want the genocide to end, they also want their stolen land back & the genocidal invasor state to be dismantled. which is what's right. the state of israel often has to delete its own posts cuz they're always found to be fabricated, falsified shit against palestinians, now western jewish AND christian celebrities post abt how "scared" they are, from the safety of their mansions & limos. it was already illegal to wear traditional muslim attire in anti-muslim countries such as france, now it's illegal to even peacefully protest for palestine & if u do ur thrown in jail as a terrorist or deported. these countries publicly support israel. israel has the army the means & the world's support, palestine's been in need of support & neilman ain't helping. should just shut his goddmn mouth. ain't he the one getting genocided this day. i dare that moron neilman to come at me i'll fucking have him, he's just like any other people who won't let themselves be educated anyway. not by us, much less by the oppressed people of palestine, the ones actually getting the shitty end of this situation. im so done. bland fuckin spineless "liberals". so quick to defend the british. stop fucking defending rich public figures online & do something for the persecuted ppl actually getting killed rn.

they're never on equal footing when it's 15 goliaths against 1 david.

no, israel shouldn't fucking exist & neil gaiman is a fucking zionist for even saying it should. not sorry i said this - palestinians r getting worse than rudely worded posts.

not a war. GENOCIDE.

[lacewise]

The same time the Brits caused the chaos that happened in 1948, the rest of the Middle East saw as an opportunity to expel their Jewish populations to Israel (to oversimplify, think about the reservations in Canada and the US—that’s how they envisioned Israel and how they expelled Jewish people while seizing all their belongings. A huge part of the reason many Middle Eastern countries are mad is Israel thrived anyway.)

Poland got rid of their Jewish population by literally committing the Holocaust

When you say, “Israel shouldn’t exist” or “Jewish people need to go back to Poland” what I hear is “we can have world peace if all Jewish people die” which is straight out of the “Protocols of Elders of Zion” (think “Birth of a Nation”) and “Mein Kampf”—this is also where ideas about Jewish people or a theoretical state of Israel wanting to “take over” the Middle East come from (they don’t, and you guys are ignoring actual Middle Eastern colonial empires engaged in society-wide human trafficking to scapegoat Jewish people. It’s weird, and I’m sure the victims find your callous disregard creepy, because they’ve actively said so—they would not feel safe in a room alone with you. Consider why that is.)

I have no idea if you guys realize you sound exactly like Adolf Hitler (who was inspired by “Protocols of Elders of Zion”) or Donald Trump (who kept “Mein Kampf” on his bedside table for years)

I’m frankly scared to ask

You cannot discuss Nakba without also discussing expulsions of Jewish people from both Europe and the Middle East—it’s disingenuous and I will not only assume you also support the Trail of Tears, I will tell other people you support the Trail of Tears

Think long and hard about if that’s something you want to be associated with, because I promise you, if other people look it up, they will see the similarities—they’re glaring—and they’ll also probably start asking questions like “why are you downplaying the Holocaust? Isn’t that Holocaust denialism?” (The answer is yes, by the way)

Depending on what else you say, I may also assume you support the enslavement of Black people by the tribes

Argue with your mirror, not with me

Regardless of what you know, some of the most prominent voices on antisemitic Tumblr and TikTok have almost certainly read “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and have been promoting hateful and baseless conspiracy theories found there, and either you haven’t noticed or you agree.

One of the main organizers is implicitly pro-other genocides and constantly spreads barely concealed hatred and bad paraphrases of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as threats directed at specific Jewish people and organizations. I have no idea how you all missed that, but I’ve always found people filled with gleeful hatred are easily distracted from both the particulars and the main facts

And you know what they say about Nazis—if one Nazi is welcome to a seat at your table, it’s a table of Nazis

The Nazism is not misguided. The calls for the death of every living Jewish person are not accidental. The flags calling for genocide did not appear out of overzealousness. It’s the point. Nazism, theocracy, fascism, and eugenics do not value mercy, and they will not give any to you, no matter how much you beg them. If you don’t quickly find your way out, you’ll find yourself dragged down, the rest of your actions discarded as tainted, and your names inscribed in the history books next to the rest of them. Decide if you want to be the shame of your families and cultures for decades to come.

May the memories of all those lost be a blessing, and may we find a way to stop repeating the mistakes of the past.

—signed a non-Jewish woman who knows how to read. You should really try it sometime.

Find a way to deradicalize yourselves.

P.S. In my offline research, I’ve found that in almost every subject, the popular information going around online is not just misinformed, but counterfactual. Especially on social media, it is the exact opposite of what every respected expert and researcher says. It’s often exact opposite of what primary sources say. If you’re getting a lot of your information from the internet, then the first thing you need to do is find offline sources. I didn’t have the information literacy to recognize how terrible the situation actually is before I started, and chances are, you don’t either. I would also recommend talking to people who spend time offline and getting some hobbies.

[meowkavian]

Very long and complicated post about Japan and Judaism/Israel ahead. Please read if you can.

A video of a pro-Israel Japanese demonstration kept popping up and it was making me think and gave me a hefty feeling of worry and skepticism.

I shouldn’t have to preface this also by saying I don’t support the decisions of the Israeli government, but people with no nuance on this site love to think Jews are a monolith, and I don’t want to go into the whole “good Jew bad Jew” “dual loyalty” thing because that’s a WHOLE other thing.

I also preface this by saying that I’m not a Japanese citizen. However, I did live and work in Japan and have been traveling there since 2016 for internships. I do not claim to be an expert on Japan or Jewishness. All that follows is what I experienced as a Jewish person that lived in Japan.

Japan is a country with a very little Jewish population (estimated less than 2000, most of which are not legally considered citizens) with a significant lack of knowledge of actual Jewish people or culture, with very few safe spaces for people who are Jewish to have community. More on this later.

There isn’t a lot of knowledge, among young people especially, about the Holocaust, for instance, that hasn’t been watered down at least a bit, in my experience. This isn’t just a problem with Japan’s comfort with Jewish people and Judaism, but with its own lack of accepting and owning up to its own bloody histories especially during World War II. Whitewashing history isn’t just a Japanese problem obviously, but it’s a pretty egregious one Japan has in respect to mistreating indigenous cultures, ethnic Koreans and what is disgustingly called “comfort women”.

While I was working in Japan I assisted in the set up of a peace exhibit which in part, due to my efforts, discussed the atrocities of the Holocaust and the artwork from the children kept in the Terezin concentration camp. I was in touch with one scholar who was essentially the voice on Japanese knowledge of Terezin. I brought up my Jewishness multiple times, but it always had a feeling it was being brushed over.

A lot of the panels lent to us by her mentioned Judaism only from the idea that we were victims, without discussion of anything about our culture or context. Even when the scholar spoke of the atrocities, Judaism was barely mentioned outside of being a descriptor of something banned from schools, or put into ghettos.

So many people who visited the exhibit knew nothing about Terezin, had never heard of it, never knew the extent of the horrible conditions in the camps. Some reacted openly by sobbing and crying out during her speech, proving the lack of knowledge. I was raised alongside the children of Terezin’s pictures as a young Jewish child; I grew up with stories of the Holocaust and pogroms from such an early age I never had a chance not to know it.

The majority of what I experienced as a Jewish person who has lived in Japan for some time exposed me to the fact that the majority of what touts itself to be pro-Jewish resources is Messianic Judaism, which is not Judaism. Many of the Jewish resources other than that are from Chabads, of which there are maybe a handful scattered around Japan. Even less of these are Jewish community centers or synagogues. A multitude of fringe, new and Christianity based religions that lay claim to Israel do have presences here. Many of those religions, including Messianic Judaism are known to appropriate Hebrew as a “sacred language”.

Antisemitism is rampant in Japan, even if it’s not always outright. Nazi symbolism appears in cosplay and decorations and fashion as an image of “counterculture” or “punk.” When it’s not outright, it’s ignorance and the discussions of new world orders. It’s a common thought that there really aren’t any Jews in Japan.

When I saw that pro-Israel demonstration, I looked for any outward display of Judaism. In Japan there’s a strong possibility that by participating in protests or demos you can get your visa revoked and get deported.

In that demo there was no one wearing kippahs, or tallit. They sang in Hebrew but it didn’t make me feel better. It just made me wonder, where is this coming from? Because if your support of Israel really and truly meant your support of Jewish people, it doesn’t seem like it.

[freetheshit-outofyou]

I have kept my opinions on the attack on Israel to myself for a reason, but this shit right here is happening in schools at all levels. I have no issue with the Palestinian people, for all I know they are good, honest people. Where my line of separation is, is people who support groups whos primary targets are unarmed civilians, who commit atrocities mainly against civilians, and take civilian hostages. I do however have issue with civilian populations who cry victim, who have not stood up to the terrorist's that took power in 2007 and they have done almost nothing to fight power from them. When you do nothing to improve where you are and accept the yoke the terrorists have put on you while blaming Israel for all your ills you have become a huge part of the problem. If you support groups that primarily target civilians becasue they are easy to shoot, because their deaths put pressure on the governments you want removed and becasue you need hostages to make money you are a fucking terrorist and there should be no place safe for you in the world. If you are a person who supports such groups you should never know a day of peace in your life, I don't care if you support one or more of the groups listed below or some other groups that wants to kill and burn (KKK, neo-Nazi, Moorish Sovereign Citizens) civilians as an ends to a means get the fuck out of here. I hold no allegiance to Israel, the Jewish side of my family ended in German, post-WWII. (Running joke in our family is during WWII my family hated itself.) None of us have ever picked up the faith since immigration, so I have no dog in the religious fight. Where my fight is, is with people who can't act as decent humans. I will always fight those who attack civilians for not other reason than they are easy targets, mostly unarmed targets becasue the terrorist are to cowardous to fight as professional Soldiers. I will always fight those kinds of fuckers. This is a short list of Palestinian terrorist groups some new some old, if you support them fuck you and I hope you die a long slow painful death. As a matter of fact of you support any group that's primary function is terror fuck you and I hope you die a very slow very agonizing death. I say this knowing my Karma can handle it.

Abdullah Azzam Brigades

Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades

Abu Nidal Organization

Aknaf Bait al-Maqdis

Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades

Alliance of Palestinian Forces

Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades

Arab Liberation Front

As-Sa'iqa

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Fatah al-Intifada

Fatah al-Islam

Force 14

Free Palestine Movement

Hamas

Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades

Jaljalat

Jenin Brigades

Lions' Den (militant group)

Liwa al-Quds

Al-Najjada

National Resistance Brigades

Palestine Liberation Army

Palestine Liberation Organization

Palestinian Freedom Movement

Palestinian Liberation Front

Palestinian Liberation Front (Abu Nidal Ashqar wing)

Palestinian National and Islamic Forces

Palestinian Popular Struggle Front

Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (1991)

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command

Popular Resistance Committees

Al-Quds Brigades

Galilee Forces

Sabireen Movement

Sons of Zouari

Tanzim I was 15 when the PLO/PLF killed Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish American man, and threw him overboard off the Italian ship Achille Lauro. Some shit you just don't forget.

[soulfairre-slamamancer]

If you are a Zionist, i do not like you!!

Zionism has brought about the modern "state" of israel, a european controlled war colony.

The israeli occupation is a colonizing force meant to stake claim to land and give control to european countries.

Jews do not need a country for our people, what we need is to be seen and treated as equal.

Jews are indigenous to the land of Palestine, and while what you think of when you hear Palestinian may not be all the same as Jews, they are an arabized population, largely assimilated into a culture from the Arabian peninsula-they are our sister people.

They may not be as born from the land as we were, but they belong to it too.

Zionism is the belief that the jewish diaspora can only be safe through the occupation of the homeland.

Jews can be safe, but only once our sistering people are safe too.

As an american jew, i had to stop going to temple as a kid because my mom was so worried due to bomb threats, shooting threats, stabbing threats, so on and so forth. The cementation of the state of israel would not fix this.

The existence of the state of israel implies that we are something else. that we are something different meant to be kept separate.

What we need is an end to the war. What we need is peace back in our homelands, to be able to live there with our sister people, or even just visit, in safety.

Our lands are not safe, not while the modern israel is as it is now.

Just because jews have a right to our homeland doesnt mean Palestinian claims to indigenity are null, it doesn't mean that the Palestinian people do not belong. They have lived there for hundreds of years alongside us, they do not need to be pushed out so that we may have peace.

Israel is killing more of its own people than Hamas is.

Israel is killing hundreds more palestinians than palestinians are killing israelis.

Hamas is a terrorist group.

So is the current Israeli government.

Both are committing atrocities. BOTH NEED TO BE STOPPED.

If Israel dropped their guns today, Hamas would keep attacking until international forces stopped them, and they could let palestinians return to what's left of their homes.

If Hamas dropped their guns today, Israel would continue their slaughter of innocent palestinians, and jews would still not be safe.

Both the Israeli government and Hamas are horrible and are run by horrible people, both are in the wrong.

Nobody wins in war, but Israel is the greatest of the two evils in this.

The line between them is not very thick, but the Israeli government can afford much more dangerous weapons in much greater quantities than Hamas currently can.

A lot of anti-zionists take it too far and speak with antisemitism, but the state of Israel needs to be put to an end, and either disbanded or restructured.

Israel is not just killing Palestinians.

Thats why I'm against the modern state of Israel.

It is not just killing the group it demonized, not just the "them" they have singled out and attempted to make the world's enemy, but its own people.

Israel is killing its own people at nearly the same rate it is killing Palestinians.

That's why i want to free Palestine.

Because to free palestine, the war must be stopped.

For the war to stop, both the Israeli government and Hamas must be handled.

The Zionist/Anti-Zionist and the Pro-Palestine/Anti-Palestine makes it seem so cut and dry.

It is messy and crumbling, if you were to grab it, it would fall from between your fingers like bloody sand.

It is cold and melting, frigid and unstable.

It is hot and wilting, it burns and is crushed in your hand.

It has never been as simple as good vs bad.

No one party is in the right and no one party is in the wrong.

Both sides are groups of innocent people drowned in a messy blanket of the monsters they are lead by.

It takes nuance, understanding, you must always be willing. Read as much as you can from all sides.

It had been simplified beyond sense;

To say you support Israel, you are supporting the slaughter.

To say you support Palestine, you want to free the people and stop the bloodshed.

If you want to support Israel because the people are dying, you cannot support Israel itself.

If you want the want to support Palestine, you have to denounce Hamas.

If you are a human being, you should want to stop Israel's military action. Once it's stopped, almost all damage being done to both Palestinians and Israelis will cease, and once Hamas is dealt with, then is a possibility for peace, for an end to the bloodshed.

If you think it is as simple as "this side all wrong/this side completely right" you are too comfortable. In your privilege and greed you have become blind.

Listen to the people in need. Those in refugee camps do not beg for vengeance, they beg for peace.

[dragynkeep]

Would you like to talk about how you see Adam as a Jewish allegory?

considering how much violently antisemitic hate this concept got recently, hell yeah i would lmao!

there's a few minor / character related things for adam that i think relate to him as totally unintentional jewish allegory, & then some larger scheme aspects in regards to the faunus as a whole & some other jewish concepts that apply. again, this is all totally unintentional in the eyes of the writers as they themselves are also incredibly antisemitic, but i'm jewish so those goy can suck my dick.

red hair!

red hair, while incorrectly associated with irish people — we have phenotypically dark hair & light eyes — was also a marker for jewish people, especially ashkenazi jews. the stereotype seems to stem from all the way back in the talmud: where david & esau were referred to as "admoni", basically meaning redhead. by time it came to medieval europe & the spanish inquisition: red hair was a mark of jewish "otherness" & dishonesty / treachery. adam himself having red hair ties into these tropes, he's othered by society due to his faunus nature & is seen as the "traitor" in the narrative of others.

his name!

a lot of "western" / "christian" names are hebrew in nature, due to the violent colonization & oppression of jewish people. these names were anglecized / westernised to strip them of their roots, but they are hebrew all the same. adam itself not only refers to his red hair / the red earth, but to adam in the bible.

his faunus type!

aside from the faunus in particular just being really applicable to jewish oppression & survival in the midst of goyishe oppression: adam's specific faunus type can also allude to the golden calf. the sin of the calf, aka the worship of the golden calf idol when moses went up mount sinai, is an important part of the book of exodus.

the golden calf itself wasn't just a sign of insolence from the israelites following moses, but their fear & anxiety that he wouldn't return & they would once again be in danger. adam being tied to this bull & the narrative of the whole tale could very well tie into his own fear of ever being placed back into the horrors of slavery in the sdc & the violent oppression there: becoming his own calf idol in order to lead the white fang in a way that he sees fit to keep himself safe.

his colours!

adam himself is associated with the colours : red, black & blue. red obviously brings forth the very biblical concept of blood & wrath & rage: but i also like to really tie it to the lamb's blood put over the doorways of jewish homes when g-d's justice for us against the egyptian oppressors came at the loss of their first born sons. that blood, that sacrifice in the moment meant that we were kept safe while our oppressors suffered for their decisions, which tbh can be very applicable to adam.

blue is an interesting one in judaism because it's a holy colour for us, it's usually the colour on our tallit alongside black & white. it's also tied with jewish reclamation & hanukkah: a holiday centred around violence being used as liberation from a violent oppressor. the fact this colour is in adam's eyes could very well show that he sees the way that will need to be taken against the violent human oppressors in remnant.

his brand!

the way jews were borderline branded with the number tattoos in camps such as auschwitz is basic knowledge of the horrors surrounding the holocaust: adam being branded by the oppressive sdc company that exploits faunus labour while simultaneously dehumanizing them, brutalizing them & often being complicit in deaths under that exploitation — see: ilia's parents — very much parallels this in my eyes, though obviously not to the same horrific extent.

the fact that the schnees are a very german coded family & corporation does little to dissuade this comparison btw.

the faunus as a whole!

this one's a lot more generalizing to the entire faunus population which we completely acknowledge had taken primarily from black struggles & oppression in the mid 20th century america. however there are a lot of parallels to jewish oppression also, such as them being ethnically segregated into an ethnostate, the various attacks on faunus being seen as pogroms, a lot of the featured animal types of faunus in the show featuring in the torah & other things.

the faunus has overall just become a blob of "insert oppressed minority here", in a far less tactful way than other groups like them in media such as the x men but hey ho.

so yeah! this is why i see adam, personally, as jewish allegory & why people reducing him to just a "sociopathic abusers", ableism aside, ends up being incredibly reductive because this character is the one who faces the most racialized violence in his life, he was literally a former child slave, he is canonically pushed to actions he didn't want to take & in the end of it, adam's death is treated as the cure to faunus racism because it's never brought up again post this event.

overall it's just really disappointing to see this incredibly marginalized character who, not unintentionally, is constantly compared to an actual jewish character based on combating jewish oppression without respectability politics in magneto, essentially just used as a very blunt tool by very dumb, very ignorant non oppressed writers.

[mycorrectviews]

Beyond the Carnage: Credo of a democratic Zionist

October 2023

No Monopoly on Barbarism

We buried our cousins in four freshly dug graves at Kibbutz Revivim, 40 miles as the crow flies from the killing fields of Kibbutz Beeri where they made their home.  Chen, a burly farmer, the kind of guy you want in your corner;  Rinat, a veteran social worker;  17 year old Alon and 14 year old Ido.  Two smaller siblings survived when Rinat and Alon spread their bodies over the little ones, like a blanket at bedtime, taking the bullets in a final act of love.  Hundreds of people wept in silence, an extended family of farmers from agricultural communities across the Gaza envelope, dozens of them young men and women on "funeral" leave from their reserve units, rifles slung over their civilian clothing.  Rinat had texted the family that dark October morning, as I huddled with my partner and nine-year-old son in our own safe room, just 10 miles north of Beeri.  We were sure that Chen – veteran of an elite IDF reconnaissance unit – would get them out.  Electricity and cell phone service were down all morning at our kibbutz as fighting raged on the perimeter fence.  By the time we received her message, she was likely dead, as scores of heavily armed killers hunted for Jews -- Gazan civilians in tow, rounding up livestock and home appliances like shoppers on black Friday.  Did the Hamas warn them that their own homes would soon be reduced to rubble by the inevitable IDF response?   For 21 hours I stood at the threshold of our safe room, listening for sounds of the battle raging at the edge of our own kibbutz, knowing that if they broke through, we'd be next.  Only the resourcefulness and bravery of a handful of volunteers kept the killers at bay until we could evacuate.  At Revivim, rows of fresh graves extended beyond the funeral site, waiting to receive another hundred members of Kibbutz Beeri. It was a scene to be repeated throughout the country for other communities who shared the same fate.  At Kibbutz Nir Oz, a quarter of the population was murdered. A day before I had debated a friend about whether the massacre resembled the German Einzatzgruppn or 19th century Russian pogroms.  Either way, I reflect, Islam has no monopoly on barbarism.  And Israelis are not immune either.   

The Jewish State or the Boer State

Siblings and schoolmates eulogized the Even-Segev family in a quiet ceremony, closed to the press, soft Hebrew music playing in the background.  The grief was palpable, but the word "revenge" was not to be heard.  No room in their hearts for gratuitous hatred or racism.  Never was.  These folk work with Bedouin farmers and colleagues on a daily basis, and many remember a time when personal and commercial interaction with the Gaza Strip was routine.  Here in the Negev, civil society has a depth and breadth that crosses ethnic boundaries and ideological preconceptions.

Elsewhere, however, things look different.  Right wing groups have draped banners from overpasses around Israel demanding revenge, as if a dose of their sickening screed could reverberate through a society already numbed by atrocity.   They may be right.  Just over the Green Line in the West Bank, nationalist fanatics are already creating their own, violent fantasy world.  Since October 7th, at least seven Palestinian farmers have been shot dead by Israeli settlers.  The occupation of this swath of Palestinian territory was once justified by the need to secure a defensive line along the Jordan rift valley, a formidable geographic barrier against invasion from the east. No longer. Today the IDF is tasked with protecting the 460,000 Israeli settlers who live between the Jordan and Israel's internationally recognized boundaries to the West under a separate and unequal legal regime designed to preserve and extend their hegemony; and controlling their 2.6 million Palestinian neighbors who subsist in a legal twilight zone, bereft of political rights, their civil liberties and freedom of movement curtailed and their land often confiscated for Israeli use.  Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, has called this apartheid. Indeed, today's West Bank might be properly described as a kind of Boer state, where armed colonists are the law and even the Israeli army treads lightly for fear of incurring settler wrath. Israel's infantry provides the muscle that keeps armed Palestinian groups at bay. But security coordinators in the settlements – settlers who are deputized, armed and trained by the IDF – often call the shots on the ground. A pervasive atmosphere of lawlessness invites violence against Palestinians. Brutal and primitive in its tactics, it has included defacing mosques, burning fields, destroying olive groves and vandalizing property. In the Palestinian village of Hawara, perpetrators set 200 buildings and 30 cars ablaze, killing one resident.  Now, with the armed force of the IDF massed on Israel's northern and southern borders, their wildest fantasies may seem within grasp.

Hamas or no Hamas, the Boer state is a dilemma of our own making.  No Israeli government, save those of Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, has had the courage – or the incentive – to defy settler political clout. This must change.  Once this war is over and the IDF eradicates the Gazan terror regime, Israel must be asked to choose:  advanced American weapons systems or housing developments on the West Bank. Israel needs robust US military aid to survive.  But every home, industrial zone, municipal subsidy, road, streetlight, or sewage pipe for Israeli settlements in the West Bank should be deducted from that sum. Put these funds in an escrow account to help relocate settlers to new homes within within the Green Line. Or use them to compensate Palestinians for loss of income due to restricted access to farmland.

Always a Reason to Kill Jews

Some folks insist on seeing Palestinian victimhood and Jewish malfeasance whenever innocents are killed, like some uncontrollable, Pavlovian response, no matter how Orwellian the logic.  Thus on October 8th, with the killing still in progress, Mohammed R. Mhawish explained in 972 magazine that "for us [Palestinians]. . . It is the moment when we defend our very existence and right to live peacefully in freedom."  UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres ruffled a few feathers when he proclaimed that the October 7th massacre "did not happen in a vacuum.  The Palestinian people have been subject to 56 years of suffocating occupation."  Without justifying the murder spree itself, Gutteres seems to have identified its cause as the 1967 war.  More often than not however, critics of Israel point to the blockade imposed on Gaza in 2007, after the Hamas took over the enclave, as the proximate source of violence. "The international community has for years neglected the plight of the 2.3 million Palestinians living under a 16-year-long Israeli siege," explains Jonathan Kuttab of the Arab Center in Washington, DC.   Indeed, back in 2008, the Red Cross had already warned that 70% of Gaza's population suffered from food insecurity and chronic malnutrition as a result of Israeli policy.  Perhaps mass murder is a natural response from people who have been starving to death for 15 years, though one wonders if it is biologically possible to starve for so long while building an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets, hundreds of miles of military tunnels, and highly trained death squads.  Or perhaps one might ask why food was lacking, if it was lacking, with such plentiful military resources on hand.  But the ultimate reason Hamas does its thing, according to some observers, is the Naqba, the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians by Israel in the war of 1948, ground zero – we are told – of the Arab Israeli conflict.  Historian Ilan Pappe sums up the events of October 7th with the pithy insight that "[Israel's] present genocidal policy towards Gaza are [sic] part of the ongoing Naqba."  2007, 1967, 1948, take your pick. But don't stop there.  In 1929, long before the Naqba, Palestinian marauders killed 133 Jews in Hebron, Safed, Jaffa and Jerusalem, most of them ultra-orthodox, with no connection to the Zionist movement, many of them neighbors with whom they had lived for years.  As Hillel Cohen painstakingly explains in his landmark study, Palestinians had come to see all Jews as representatives of the same Zionist enterprise. So it was and so it is.  Any organized Jewish national presence in this land, apparently, is a legitimate cause for "armed struggle." Perhaps it is time someone reexamined the causal relationship between this culture of death and the Naqba, occupation and blockade that followed.

When a Zionist Sees Palestine in the Mirror

Palestinian nationalism may be irredeemably poisoned by nihilism, but Palestinian identity itself defines the very humanity of millions of people, some two million of them Israeli citizens.  If our democracy is to rise again after the war, we must learn to distinguish between the two and embrace the latter – nuanced as the idea may be.  I have devoted my own career to building a more inclusive paradigm of shared culture for Jews and Arabs in the Negev.  Below the surface, civil society may now be laying its foundation.  In the midst of the crisis, dozens of grass roots initiatives are mobilizing Jews and Arabs for collective action to help everyone in need, from Jewish farmers in the Western Negev to the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the east. Some 15 Arab citizens have been killed by Hamas rockets and another dozen were murdered or kidnapped on October 7th.   In this wartime emergency, even the most innocuous display of Palestinian colors can lead to arrest, termination at work or suspension from university.  This will have to stop.  In the end, Jews must be able to see in the pain, pride and determination of the Palestinians a reflection of our own.  No, we cannot bridge the unfathomable political gulf that separates us.  But a dose of mutual respect would serve us well. 

Rethinking Ukraine

The international show of support for Israel so far has been impressive.  Biden, Macron, Scholz, Sunak, Ursula Von der Leyen – leaders from across the democratic world have rushed to embrace Netanyahu, a man whose signature contributions to Israeli diplomacy have been to drape Likud headquarters with a massive poster of Vladmir Putin, embrace Victor Orban and glorify Donald Trump.  It must be humiliating for Bibi to bend the knee in gratitude to the liberal order he has done so much to disparage, but this is no mere personal matter. America's massive resupply of military hardware – a replay of Nixon's strategic airlift in 1973 -- and the deployment of two carrier strike groups to protect Israel against a regional conflagration, should be a stark reminder to Israel's political class as a whole that sometimes you have to choose sides.  Israel's flirtation with Russia and the Visegrad bloc was, perhaps, the product of Bibi's own delusions of self importance, but Israel's shameful failure to support Ukraine in its struggle to survive was an act of cowardice that crossed political lines.   Biden's Oval Office address linking aid to Ukraine and Israel was a formative statement, and something this country would do well to ponder.  Israel turned a cold shoulder to Ukraine, it is widely assumed, for fear of provoking Russia to launch its S-300 antiaircraft rockets in Syria against Israeli jets, thereby limiting our ability to strike Iranian proxies in that country.  Those rockets are a serious consideration, to be sure, but if Biden is willing to take political risks for Israel, we can show a little moral fiber as well.  Russia has interests at stake in Syria too, and striking Israeli jets would put those at risk.  In 1970 Soviet personnel manned Egyptian anti-aircraft batteries that fired on Israeli planes, and Israeli jets held dogfights with Russian pilots over the Suez Canal.  Not a few Russian servicemen paid with their lives.  When the present crisis is over, the time will come for Israel to take a stand – for Ukraine, and for the democratic prospect writ large.

Going Home

No, I'm not a farmer. Everything I know about wheat comes from the back of a cereal box.  For the past six years I've been at Kibbutz Nir Am, never of Nir Am. It was simply where I slept and parked my car before heading off to work in the morning.  But something has broken in my own suburban, residential paradigm.  The government says kibbutzim such as Nir Oz will take years to rebuild.  Nir Am, we hope, will bounce back sooner.  While my family is settling in to its temporary refuge in Jerusalem, we are eager to get back to our community on the Gazan border fence, replant and rebuild.  Rehabilitating the kibbutzim and the towns of the Gaza envelope, caring for the orphans and shattered families, reconstructing the homes, nurturing devastated communities back to emotional health, and weaving the multicultural fabric of life back together in the Negev will be the final challenge of my generation, and the first one for that of my son.  We owe it to our country.  We owe it to Chen, Rinat and their kids.  

[beardedmrbean]

PHILADELPHIA – In the City of Brotherly Love, Gemma Levy sometimes doesn’t feel safe.

Levy decided to attend the University of Pennsylvania partly because of its long history of tolerance toward Jewish students like her. But with recent events – pro-Palestinian protests, antisemitic chants, university President Liz Magill’s perplexing remarks about genocide and her subsequent resignation – the campus hasn’t seemed all that tolerant.

“I’ve felt super unsafe at times,” Levy, a freshman cognitive science major from Brooklyn, said while hurrying to class along the tree-lined Locust Walk in the oldest part of the campus. “It’s a weird experience to feel that way.”

It’s an unsettling experience for the city, too.

Philadelphia, known as the birthplace of the United States, is where the Founding Fathers met and debated the future of the new country. Founded on the principles of religious freedom, it’s home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the country.

The University of Pennsylvania, founded primarily by Benjamin Franklin and now regarded as one of the nation’s premier schools of higher learning, kept its doors open to Jewish students when Harvard and other Ivy League colleges implemented quotas and other measures to limit their enrollment or keep them out altogether.

Today, though, Philadelphia and the university are at the epicenter of the clash over free speech and antisemitism, the Israel-Hamas war and the right to feel safe and secure.

How did that happen? In Philadelphia of all places?

“We’re a microcosm of society,” said Michael Balaban, president and chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

Antisemitism is a virus that mutates over time and is easily spread through the prevalence of social media, Balaban said.

“We see it online in vicious ways every single second of the day,” he said.

'Vile, antisemitic messages'

Antisemitism in Philadelphia has turned up online, on campus and in the streets.

In November, the university responded to what it described as “vile, antisemitic messages” threatening violence against the Jewish community. Antisemitic emails were sent to a number of staffers, and antisemitic language was projected onto several campus buildings. The school said it planned to increase security across the campus, including at Penn Hillel, a Jewish student organization.

A month later, an off-campus protest by pro-Palestinian demonstrators was widely condemned for targeting the Jewish-owned falafel restaurant Goldie. Video posted on social media showed a large crowd gathered outside the restaurant, chanting: “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the restaurant was singled out because its owner, Philadelphia-based Israeli chef Michael Solomonov, had raised over $100,000 for an Israeli nonprofit that provided emergency relief services to Israeli Defense Forces soldiers after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Regardless, the White House, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and others condemned the protesters’ actions, calling them antisemitic and reminiscent of a dark time in history.

Then came Magill’s downfall.

Magill and the presidents of two other elite universities – Claudine Gay of Harvard and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – already had been under scrutiny over how their institutions had responded to a rise in antisemitism on their campuses when they agreed to testify last week before a GOP-led House congressional panel.

Lawmakers lobbed a series of tough questions at the three college leaders, who hedged when Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., asked whether calls for the genocide of Jews violated their schools’ code of conduct against bullying and harassment.

Appearing to sense a trap, Magill and the other two presidents gave carefully worded responses that sounded scripted and lawyerly but failed to directly answer the question. In one exchange, Magill called those decisions “context-dependent” but conceded that calls for genocide could be considered harassment “if the speech turns into conduct.”

The backlash was fast and brutal. To some, the presidents’ responses raised questions about whether the schools would adequately protect Jewish students. The White House condemned their answers, donors threatened to withhold millions of dollars, and the House committee announced an investigation into the universities' policies and disciplinary procedures.

Magill tried to walk back her comments, but the damage was done. She resigned last Saturday but will remain at the university as a tenured law professor. Scott Bok, chairman of the university’s board of trustees, also stepped down.

Julie Platt, the trustees’ interim chair, declined requests for an interview but said in a statement after Magill’s resignation that a leadership change at the university was “necessary and appropriate.”

While Penn has made strides in addressing the rise of antisemitism on campus, “we have not made all of the progress that we should have and intend to accomplish,” she said.

Magill, who had been president for just a little over a year, was already on shaky ground even before her testimony. She had come under fire in September over a Palestinian Writers’ Festival that was held at the university and drew criticism for including speakers who have been accused of antisemitism. Magill and others had raised concerns about the program but did not stop it, citing support for “the free exchange of ideas” – even those that are controversial and “incompatible with our institutional values.”

Last week, a pair of Jewish students sued the university, claiming it has become a lab for "virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment and discrimination."

Author Jerome Karabel, who has written about the history of exclusion at Ivy League schools, said it is ironic that Penn is facing charges that it hasn’t done enough to quell antisemitism on campus. At some point, all of the other Ivy League schools tried to limit Jewish enrollment. Penn never had any such limitations, he said.

“You could argue that Penn, historically, has been the friendliest of the Ivy League schools for Jewish students,” Karabel said.

'An inclusive and welcoming community for all students'

On campus, there were few outward signs of turmoil this week. With final exams under way, students hurried to class on a cold, blustery late-fall morning. Stickers and fliers supporting the Palestinian people and urging a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war were posted on billboards and along walkways and pedestrian bridges.

At Houston Hall, which the university says is the oldest student union in the country, a small group of students has been staging a sit-in since mid-November to show support for the Palestinians. Early one afternoon this week, protesters nestled in big chairs and slept under sheets on cushions. Others painted posters and fliers listing their demands: A cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. The protection of freedom of speech on campus. “Critical thought” on the subject of Palestine. A place for Palestinian studies.

“Nobody here is calling for the genocide of Jews,” insisted Clancy Murray, who is working on a Ph.D. in political science.

Murray said several Jewish students have joined the sit-in but acknowledged that some feel unsafe in the current environment. Some Palestinian students on campus aren’t comfortable being visible either, Murray said, because of threats and the possibility of doxing, harassment and even violence and hate crimes.

As for Magill’s departure, Murray said it’s concerning “that she was driven out” and that “there are a handful of donors who are empowered to dictate what is and what is not acceptable speech on campus.”

David Donovan, who was on his way to his daughter’s graduation from Penn’s nursing school, said emotions surrounding the Israel-Hamas war are charging tensions on campus like never before.

“We are more sensitive to the feelings of other people, and that’s a net positive, I believe,” said Donovan, a history teacher from Morristown, N.J.

When it comes to deciding what constitutes free speech vs. hate speech, Donovan said, “we still have to be very apprehensive and think very carefully that our positions are backed by reason.”

“We need to err on the side of free speech,” Donovan added, acknowledging, “That’s an easy thing for me to believe as a straight, white man.”

The community at large is also grappling with issues of free speech. Some Jewish families are rethinking outward expressions of Judaism, Balaban said.

At his home in the Wynnewood suburb, Balaban flies both the Israeli and American flags in the front of his house and displays a menorah in the window. Before, “that would never have been a question in my mind to do it or not to do it,” he said. But with everything that has happened, “in my household, the question was, ‘Are we OK doing this?’” he said.

“Of course, the answer is, yes, we're going to,” Balaban said. “But did we worry that someone may do something? The answer is yes. I think we will always display an Israeli flag with pride. We will always display symbols of our Judaism. But there was a pause of what does that mean.”

'We will come through this difficult moment'

So what's next? How do the community and the university heal after the trauma of the past few months?

"This is a strong community built on a sturdy foundation.  We will come through this difficult moment," the university promised in an email message to students this week.

The university pledged to redouble its commitment to ensuring that Penn is a place where “intellectual growth is cultivated” and students are “supported as a person.”

“Initiatives recently launched to address bigotry and hatred on our campus will continue, and this will be an inclusive and welcoming community for all students,” the message said.

Levy urged school administrators to be more proactive and less reactive.

“I hope,” she said, “instead of being on the defensive and apologizing after things happen, they’ll take steps to actually stop these incidents in the first place.”

[dwarf-vader-of-middle-earth]

Fucking love when I'm driving home and I see white nationalist fuckers AGAIN only like 1,000ft from my house. They show up like 2-3x a year in this area, on this road, always pulling the same shit holding a banner that says, "White lives matter." And this time they're also holding flags with the iron cross. All are dressed in pure black clothes with face coverings so you don't know them, the stereotypical bullshit.

All I can say is at least they're not hooked to megaphones and speakers again to spew their hate. They did it at my job downtown last summer. Last summer they also showed up at the only shopping center in town and got evicted by highway patrol. The year before that it was this very same street as today, but about 200ft to the left, outside my brother's old job, and he was the manager on duty and customers kept complaining about the idiots spewing hate and asked him to do something. My bro called but the cops wouldn't remove the guys of course, even though the police station is literally directly in front of where the nationalists were, and the actual property owner for the store land they were on wouldn't evict them.

I've got pics and everything from the multiple years this has happened. Hell, the fucking idiots in like 2019 went to the same shopping center as always, but that time they stuck antisemitic flyers on every person's windshield beneath the wipers, which told tons of conspiracy theories and spread hateful propaganda.

Mind you, the vast majority of this town and the surrounding areas are POC, mainly black, Indian, and Spanish-speaking folks. And as for the white population, our town has a HUGE amount of Jewish people specifically. Hell my neighbors on both corners of the streets are Jewish, specifically Orthodox. And I just hope they don't see these racist fucks today. I pray that everyone is safe, and the nationalists are somehow evicted and told to leave.

It fucking sucks that I literally can't do anything because what CAN be done?? You can't report people who just stand there doing nothing but. And that's all cops see. They don't see hate, in that they don't care what these fucks promote. They just see people standing there. Nothing else.

[cletusthurstonbeauregard]

Trump breaks silence on Israel's military campaign in Gaza: 'Finish the problem'

Story by Vaughn Hillyard and Allan Smith

 

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump declared Tuesday that Israel must “finish the problem” in its war against Hamas, his most definitive position on the conflict since the terror group killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages on Oct. 7.

“You’ve got to finish the problem,” Trump said on Fox News on Tuesday when asked about the war. “You had a horrible invasion that took place that would have never happened if I was president.”

When asked on the program whether he supported a cease-fire in Gaza, Trump demurred, avoiding an explicit position on Israel’s military effort that has now also left more than 30,000 people dead in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The likely 2024 Republican nominee has not provided his own position on U.S. or Israel's strategy throughout the five months of the war. 

Though a stalwart defender of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration during his presidency, Trump has also attempted to strike an anti-war posture on the campaign trail in the last year, attempting to contrast himself from President Joe Biden and his remaining Republican rival, Nikki Haley. 

“Frankly, they got soft,” Trump said on Tuesday about the Biden administration, claiming that the aggression by foreign adversaries would not have happened if he were still president.

“That should never have happened. Likewise, Russia would never have attacked Ukraine," he said.

While Tuesday’s comments offered the strongest signal yet from Trump of what direction Israel should take, he has yet to offer specific thoughts or proposals on how much the U.S. should be involved financially, how hostage negotiations should be handled, the plight of Gaza’s civilian population or whether leaders should pursue a one- or two-state solution to the conflict.

Reached for comment by NBC News, the Trump campaign promoted the former president’s record on Israel and blamed Biden for the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East.

“President Trump did more for Israel than any American President in history, and he took historic action in the Middle East that created unprecedented peace,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said in a statement, adding, "When President Trump is back in the Oval Office, Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end.”

Just days after Hamas attacked Israel, Trump, in a video posted from his Mar-a-Lago estate here, declared: “I kept Israel safe. Nobody else will. Nobody else can. And I know all of the players — they can’t do it.”

Trump did lay out a few markers in the three weeks that followed the Hamas attack. He said on Oct. 11 that a future Trump administration would “fully support Israel defeating, dismantling, and permanently destroying the terrorist group Hamas,” while telling the Republican Jewish Coalition later that month that Hamas fighters “will burn forever in the eternal pit of hell." That month, his campaign also said that, if elected again, he would bar Gaza residents from entering the U.S. as part of an expanded travel ban.

In the four months since, however, the former president’s once-ardent public backing of Israel has gone mostly quiet.

That silence has run parallel to Biden increasingly coming under fire from left-wing and Muslim American voters for his support of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack. A coalition of voters is campaigning for Democratic primary voters to vote “uncommitted” or for similar ballot choices, as some backed in Michigan, where the “uncommitted” vote earned more than 13% in last week’s Democratic presidential primary there — a small uptick from the nearly 11% who voted “uncommitted” in the 2012 primary, when then-President Barack Obama ran unopposed.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has increased its criticism of Israel but has stopped short of cutting off military aid. Biden is currently pushing for a six-week cease-fire deal that includes the release of dozens of hostages still held by Hamas.

The Biden campaign declined a request for comment from NBC News.

In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, Trump expressed his ire at Netanyahu, who congratulated Biden after his 2020 election win, saying the Israeli prime minister had “let us down” by allegedly backing out of what Trump said was supposed to be a joint U.S.-Israel operation to launch the airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020. Days later, Trump posted to his Truth Social platform that he stood with the Israeli premier after pushback from some GOP rivals. 

Robert Jeffress, an evangelical pastor of a Dallas megachurch and a close Trump ally who led the prayer during the dedication of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in 2018, told NBC News last month that he was not “concerned about his [Trump’s] position waning on” Israel.

The prominent pastor, who leads a congregation of more than 10,000 in Dallas, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in February and discussed the support of evangelicals. 

“We would love to hear from President Trump what he’s been saying for the last nine years and that is his unconditional support for the right of Israel to exist,” he said.

Maureen Maldonado, an author and a Christian radio host, said she understood why Trump wasn’t as vocal on Israel as some supporters might expect.

“He’s a friend of Israel,” she said. “It’s all political, and he needs to get into office before anything. He’s got to play the game.” 

[circlecast]

Overcoming Fear

Let's go back to the first night your wife told you she wants a divorce. How did you act or what did you do?

You had thoughts racing through your head like, She's going to take the house. I am going to have to live in an apartment again. She is going to take the kids away from me. Followed by tons of questions that get answered with scary thoughts.

That first night and the rest of the week were pure hell. You were wondering where she was going each night while you stayed home with your mind cranking out thoughts and feeling scared of the future.

Because of that fear, you were not taking action. You sat on the couch and kept thinking of more scenarios that ended in disaster and created more fear and anger and resentment in you. So what do you do? How do you get out of fear so you can take action?

What is fear?

Fear is an emotion and if you look at an emotion wheel you often see that fear is the opposite of love. It is a base emotion that builds other feelings. Fear builds out to be anger, jealousy, resentment, bitterness, anxiety, and more negative feelings all coming from an element of fear.

The thing is when we really look at it fear is us resisting a feeling. We are afraid that we might be humiliated. we fear being called out and feeling like an imposter. We fear the emotions that may rise up if we are rejected. We avoid it because the feeling might be unpleasant. However, emotions are nothing more than a vibration we feel throughout our bodies. Our life is 50/50 as is.

Why is fear avoided?

It doesn't feel good. Who wants to be afraid

We want to use fear as an excuse and that's all it is. A story you are telling yourself.

You living an unintentional life. Brooke calls it a mismanaged mind

Some say that fear is your mind and past experiences telling you that you are in a place that will get you killed. And that isn't the case at all. Fear is going to happen. Fear is the opposite of love and it destroys. Fear will keep you away from your dreams. Fear will keep you playing small.

All because you are afraid of what someone will think. What someone will say. Or how someone will act. We will tell ourselves all these stories about why something won't work when we are operating out of fear.

I have written and talked about fear before and needs to be reiterated from time to time. From why fear is actually a compass to what fear means to your goals. There are a lot of thoughts about fear. Fear is what keeps us from finding contentment and fulfillment in our marriage. Why we find ourselves missing opportunities is thanks to fear. It is the 400-pound gorilla in our life.

Fear is an emotion that keeps us from success. However, all of these are invalid reasons. Why? because if you want what you desire you have to pierce that veil of fear. and it actually is a very thin transparent opaque veil. We can't fully see the other side so we don't know how hard we need to go at it. what if there is a hole in the floor? Maybe a bear under the table? We don't know so we had better not try to get to the other side of the veil. Let's sit here till we have more information. What more info do you need? What you desire is on the other side of that fear. All you have to do is pass through it.

Will it be uncomfortable? oh heck yeah! but that discomfort is the currency for your dreams.

Does fear actually help you? Yes. It keeps you from jumping off a cliff. It keeps you from stepping out in front of the bus. Fear is used by your brain to keep you safe. The problem is that it has overdone it. We are afraid to even try to go for our dreams because we have been told it is hard. We can become horrible monsters when we are faced with fear. Look at the germans from the 20s to the 40s The fear in Germany caused them to actually blame their own shortcomings on a group of people. A madman was able to pour all the fears the bavarian people had into the Jewish population and people turned their brains off and performed the holocaust.

So how do you overcome fear?

You first have to understand what fear is and when you are in a state of fear. This could be a point of inaction or you making excuses. Now, this fear isn't when you are in a state of panic. Your amygdala has wrenched control away from the thinking part of your mind and you are in Fight flight or freeze. So that is when you need to have your after-action report run.

1) Recognize when you are in fear. Write out all your thoughts you are having about the circumstance you are in doesn't matter if they are thoughts or feelings just get them all written down.

2) Separate the thoughts from the feelings

3) Examine each thought you had and ask if that is really true. Get to the bottom of why you think that thought. When you understand the why, then you can start to change that thought and be able to move forward

4) If you are feeling fear at the moment allow it to flow through you. Just stop what you doing if you can and just name the feeling and state that is what you are feeling. You can even take the time to describe what you are feeling though out your body.

As you do this you will notice that the feelings are not as intense and they are fading away. Emotions only last about 1-1.5 minutes. The reason you keep feeling fear or other emotions for longer is that you keep having the same thought over and over. Change your thought and you change your results

Now I would like you to do me a favor and write down what it feels like when you are fearful. Describe your fear to me. then send it to me

Newest podcast episode to change your Mindset

[girlactionfigure]

Irena Sendler: The Woman Who Saved the Lives of 2,500 Jewish Children During the Holocaust

Irena Sendler -- one of the great, unsung heroes of the WWII who led a secret operation that successfully smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, saving them from almost certain death -- was born on this day in 1910.

One of the great heroes of WWII led a secret operation to successfully smuggle 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, saving them from almost certain death — yet until recently, few people had heard Irena Sendler's incredible story. This Polish Catholic nurse and social worker defied the Nazis at great personal risk, and nearly paid the ultimate price for her courageous actions. And even when she was tortured by the Gestapo, she never told them the names or locations of the children she had rescued. Her story is one of tremendous moral fortitude and the determination to fight evil, no matter the cost.

Born in 1910 near Warsaw, Sendler began aiding Jews as early as 1939, after the Germans invaded Poland. At first, she helped to create false documents for over 3,000 Jewish families, but she later joined the Żegota, the underground Polish resistance organization created to aid the country's Jewish population. In 1943, Sendler became head of Żegota's children's division and used her special access to the Warsaw Ghetto, granted to Social Welfare Department employees to conduct inspections for typhus, to set up a smuggling operation. She and her colleagues began secretly transporting babies and children out of the Ghetto by hiding them in an ambulance with a false bottom or in baskets, coffins, and even potato sacks.

Once the children were out of the ghetto, Sendler arranged for them to be given false identities and placed them with Polish families or in orphanages. However, she never gave up hope that, after the war, the children might find their families and resume their Jewish identities. In hopes of that, Sendler kept meticulous lists of each child's real name. In the wrong hands, these documents would have been fatal to Sendler, the others in her network, and to the children they saved; to protect them, Sendler sealed the lists in jars and buried them. Only she knew where the information lay, waiting for the day that she could safely dig them up again.

After rescuing over 2,500 children, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and sentenced to death. Fortunately, Żegota was able to bribe the German guards as she was on her way to execution; now it was Sendler's turn to be smuggled to safety. Sendler was forced to live in hiding for the remainder of the war, although she continued her work for Żegota under a false name. After the war was over, Sendler and her colleagues gathered the records with the details about all of the children that had been placed in hiding, but almost all of their parents had been killed in the Treblinka extermination camp or were listed among the missing. In 1965, Sendler was honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations for her wartime efforts.

A fascinating part of Sendler's incredible story is that it was almost entirely lost — but was saved by the impressive research efforts of several high school students in Kansas. In 1999, high school teacher Norm Conard encouraged three of his students, Megan Steward, Elizabeth Cambers, and Sabrina Coons, to work on a year-long National History Day project. Starting with a short news clipping that mentioned Sendler, the girls conducted a year-long investigation into her life and, ultimately, wrote a play about Sendler entitled "Life in a Jar." The play ignited interest in Sendler's story and it has been performed hundreds of times across the US, Canada, and in Poland.  The story of Sendler and three high school girls was also told in a moving book, Life In a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project.

After their play became an unexpected success, the young researchers had an opportunity to meet the forgotten hero whose amazing story they had helped bring to light in 2001. The students were so inspired by her that they also organized a campaign to nominate Sendler for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was nominated in 2007; however, she was not eligible to win because one of the requirements of the prize is that the individual meet the criteria of "significant activities during the past two years" and the accomplishments for which she was nominated had taken place decades earlier.

Irena Sendler passed away in 2008 at the age of 98, but today, her story stands as one of the great examples of quiet heroism during the second World War — even if she never considered herself a hero. "Heroes do extraordinary things. What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal," Sendler once said. "You see a man drowning, you must try to save him even if you cannot swim."

Mighty Girl

[yinseal]

anyways time to talk about sakura’s xingese heritage and family while living in amestris and also how this ties in to her modern verse + her familial relationships, under the cut as always for length. art cred.

to sum up one of my earlier posts on sakura’s heritage, i personally headcanon that xing went through periods of political instability as a direct result of the heir deliberation         that rival clans competing to get their heir chosen as the next emperor could and did have adverse consequences on the population of xing. this would cause native xingese to leave the country for safer territory and,  knowing that there did at one point exist a trade route between amestris and xing,  many xingese would have escaped into amestris when the country was not yet closed off.  in amestris,  the xingese would form a close-knit community that offered protection and support for each other.

once amestris locked down and unleashed its full xenophobic and racist face,  many xingese and other minorities would have either fled the violence,  or settled deeper into society,  trying fervently to blend in.  once the trade route was destroyed,  the xingese in amestris likely had no other option but to hide their cultural identity,  maintaining links,  but otherwise spreading out to avoid detection from the amestrian dictatorship.

i headcanon that sakura’s paternal great-grandparents were one of the last xingese to come into amestris before the borders were locked down.  on both sides,  her family maintained links to their xingese culture,  but outwardly presented strong amestrian display.  

sakura’s parents met and married in amestris,  and outwardly presented a fiercely patriotic,  dogmatic stance in the amestrian military        prompted in large part by their residing in central,  which had the largest military presence and strongest anti-foreigner stance.  there had been discussion of moving elsewhere in amestris,  but their livelihood was tied in large part to the restaurant owned by them;  without guarantee of income,  success elsewhere seemed unlikely.  

many xingese born in amestris were given traditionally xingese names,  and more traditional  “amestrian”  names to blend in.  sakura’s parents were kizashi and mebuki haruno,  respectively;  they adapted the names  “hiram”  and  “margaret.”  this is keeping in with the jewish influence in the fma universe  (  hiram being a reference to the king of tyr and the ally of king david,  margaret  being of both greek and persian origin.  )   

notably,  kizashi and mebuki chose not to give sakura an amestrian name,  choosing instead to keep her xingese name entirely.  the elder harunos were notably terrified of the amestrian military and went out of their way not to provoke them,  so the naming was unusual;  nevertheless,  their daughter didn’t fit any whitewashed namesake,  and it felt like a small,  safe rebellion in an overly complicated and painful dictatorship.

sakura was raised in private xingese faith and cultural practice         she was fluent in xingese,  and lived as both a xingese woman and an amestrian.  she experienced a bit of a distance from her heritage as she grew older;  part of it out of natural caution towards the amestrian military,  but a part of it prompted too by the death of her mother.  mebuki was,  in many ways,  sakura’s foil and her twin flame;  both of them immensely stubborn,  both of them loyal and bound by their bonds,  both of them driven to succeed.  mebuki,  who had sacrificed so much of her own identity to stay safe and keep her family safe,  irked sakura as a child;  as an adult,  sakura could fully grasp just how much her family had suffered to live here,  and to give her a start.

living on her own in dublith,  sakura’s cultural ties to xing become reduced to small habits she never thinks about         brewing tea like her mother did,  her grandmother’s kimono kept safely in the attic,  swearing under her breath in xingese when she burned herself on the stove.  her heritage is placed on the backburner;  she did not,  strictly speaking,  look fully amestrian,  but she did not present as  “foreign,”  and her medical skills were such that anyone who might have asked questions chose to look the other way.  protected by both her own amestrian upbringing and her valuable skills,  sakura simply responds to anyone foolish enough to ask that she and her family were amestrian,  born and raised,  no other identity possible.

when the war in amestris ends and the xenophobic practices begin to fall away,  sakura finds herself for the first time free to celebrate her heritage and culture.  her father,  still cautious after so long,  never manages to discard his  “hiram”  identity,  but he delights in having grandchildren who learn their old language,  and xingese no longer being a dirty secret to hide.

sakura remains in touch with much of her family,  both maternal and paternal,  and writes to them on occasion,  but also forges new bonds as she opens her practice in dublith.  doctor marcoh becomes a surrogate father to her as they travel amestris;  discovering his betrayal is something that shocks and infuriates sakura worse than her own mother’s death.  sakura also becomes close with izumi and sig curtis,  who live just a few blocks down.  originally helping out as a doctor for izumi when her regular physician is off,  sakura becomes a surrogate daughter to the curtis’,  who gleefully accept her growing family as their own    (  including greed,  whom izumi never lets forget broke her hand.  )

ultimately,  sakura chooses to embrace both aspects of her identity         ethnically,  culturally,  and racially,  she is a xingese woman,  but she also firmly identifies as amestrian,  albeit an amestrian that  she  defines.

this translates over to modern verse,  where sakura is a japanese woman born and raised in america.  her father was first generation american,  and her mother was born in japan and moved to america;  sakura often navigates the divide of being a japanese-american,  and the frustrations that comes with.  although her family does not hide their japanese heritage,  sakura is encouraged to embrace american identity politics,  to give her an equal chance in a still prejudiced and racist society.  sakura is far more open and proud of her heritage,  but she does not like to be defined  solely  as a japanese woman:  like being a woman,  or a doctor,  or having green eyes,  these are  parts  of her,  but not the entire identity.

[a-s-fischer]

So I have come up with a concept and term for this kind of thing, because I have seen it a lot in reactionary circles both on the left and the the right. And the key thing to remember is that there are large groups of people who are absolutely uninterested in nuance or complex ideas, or even actually solving problems, and what they really want is to sort the world into good people and bad people and have the good people fight the bad people. So they need a tool to sort the good people from the bad people and really what they are most concerned with is rooting out the bad people. And in service of this, they use what I have taken to calling a pump label.

A pump label is one that is very broad when deciding who it encompasses, to suck people into the label, and very very narrow when explaining why this group is extra good or extra bad, usually extra bad. Why in short, this broad group belongs on either the unequivocally good or unequivocally bad side. And again, it's usually the bad side.

Pump labels are a subset of this common phenominon where groups who know their ideology is not widely held, make use of a split definition model for terms, one definiton that is the in-group definition, and one that is the generally held definition. On some level, the people using split definitions, including pump labels have to know what they're doing because they use them so consistently. Indeed, dogwhistles fit into this category, and we know those are employed deliberately.

And with pump labels, this is extra obvious, because frequently the thing that will put you into the broad definition of the label is directly at odds with the definition of the narrow definition of the label. For example, I am a middle of the road two/multi-state solutionist, who thinks that the ideal and most practical result of a peace process between Israel/Palestine is one or more fully independent democratic Palestinian states, and the continued existance of an Israel with less terretory than it currently has. Like most middle of the road two state solutionists, I want Palestinian children to grow up happy, safe, and free, and I want the same thing for Israeli children. Also like most middle of the road two state solutionists, I want to dropkick Bibi off a cliff. So I belong to the broad definition of the label Zionist. The narrow category of Zionist is someone who wants a genocide against Palestinians, and also loves sucking Bibi's cock. You might notice this is directly contradictory to the views that put me into the Zionist category in first place.

But that doesn't matter, because I have been successfully sucked up with the broad definition of the label and pumped out into the narrow definition of the label where I am safely on the bad side and can be safely hated. The key thing with a pump label is that when the definition narrows, The people sucked up by the broad definition are not released. They are insistantly kept, and their views decided for them. Any attempt to insist that no, this is not what they believe or what they do, is reframed as lying. If for example I talk about how I want Palestinians to be safe, happy and free, I am lying and covering up a genocide. And because I have been judged an evil Zionist who lusts for the blood of Palestinian children, anything bad that happens to me is richly deserved and a noble act of fighting evil.

And as I said, I'm actually pretty middle of the road. I actually identify as Zionist. You can get sucked into the definition of Zionist just by acknowleging that Hamas is a brutal organization that both oppresses Palestinians and also commits acts of violent terror on Israeli civilians. You can get sucked into the definition by not being okay with all Jewish Israelis being expelled or killed. In many cases, you can get pulled into the definition simply for being Jewish.

And once you've been sucked up from the normal population and pumped out into the bad category, you are now made useful to the people doing the pumping. A pump label is designed to find people that it's okay and safe to hate. It's no coincidence that this turns into bigotry real fast, especially since frequently, the purpose is not to find people to hate, but to justify hating the people you already do. When you divide the world into good people and bad people, and think all problems should or can be solved by the good people fighting the bad people, and you feel utterly helpless, then the best feeling in the world is locating bad people and making them pay. The fact that this in reality helps no one and in fact usually hinders the cause they claim to be fighting for does not matter. It feels good.

Anti-Zionist types seem to do a frustrating little two -step where sometimes when they say “Zionist” they mean “having any sort of connection to the state of Israel, or the concepts of Eretz Yisrael or Am Yisrael, or with Jews as a self-determining collective” and sometimes they mean “Kahanism” (even though most of them probably don’t know the terms “Eretz Yisrael”, “Am Yisrael”, or “Kahanism”) and because they have already previously defined both as “Zionism”, they then define any sort of connection to Israel as a state, or Israel as a concept, or Jews as a people who self-determine who we are, as Kahanism to be shunned/protested/etc. it is literally maddening.