#this goes as well for the iraq wars

[guardiansing]

Throughout the progression of the Israeli IDF bombing of the Gaza Strip, I was surprised to see people I had connected to and people I trusted become either supportive or indifferent to the Israeli government. These people, whom I saw as fellow left-leaning folks, staggeringly began siding with the neo-conservative lens regarding Palestine. They say that the Israeli government is our ally and so excuse the actions of the US government, that it is simply our foreign policy as if our foreign policy is an absolute we must all respect and uphold to. They refuse to engage in learning about the history, modern or otherwise, simply because it makes them uncomfortable. They say It is unhealthy to engage in something so depressing all of the time, it is unhealthy to be agitating all of the time. The people suffering do not care if you are talking about them, and so it is best that we do not talk about them at all. We will do anything to push back against the people talking about it, we will do anything to avoid uncomfortable conversations about our shared reality, we will do anything to suppress it.

For better or worse this is the prevailing opinion I have seen in many of my circles, often those who even if they oppose the Israeli government feel that the situation is out of their hands. They continue to tell themselves that it is a foreign conflict and nothing more, and for that reason we are abstained from discussing it. To them, the most notable thing about this humanitarian crisis is that it is depressing to talk about and so would rather keep it silent. To them it is simply a fad that will go away naturally with time

Within my circles and communities, it is largely people of color, myself included, who continue showing support for the end of the invasion. To us, this is not a foreign conflict, nor is it justified by US foreign policy. To us it is the very same battle that people have been fighting ever since this country was first settled. What many Palestinians are experiencing and in fact what they have been experiencing for 80 years is not imaginary to us, it is not a statistic. We have experienced it, we know what it is like. Our wound is not so old.

I have watched on as white people within the queer community who claimed to be leftists, people who agitate for the equality of gay and trans people, grow silent in the discussion of class and race segregation. Refuse to acknowledge their material conditions or analyze their personal biases, believing in their white guilt that their queerness and/or ability at relying progressive sounding rhetoric abstains them from the blind spots of privilege. They will say that criticizing the Israeli government is anti-semantic and so they reveal that they do not see Jewish people as being truly human and non-monolithic, but instead as a race of people to whom suffering and oppression are inherent. A people to whom their government is endemic to their nation.

They reveal that they are not indeed leftists as they may claim, but instead are liberals. People believing supremely in their individual liberties and comforts. They see the world as consisting of good and bad teams, the oppressor and the oppressed instead of actions, effects, and contexts. They oppose every war except the current one and support every movement except the current one. They say it all when they describe Hamas as a terrorist group and Likud as Likud.

At the very least, they see the cause as being lost and so have already fallen into a state of depressive apathy. They are not evil, they aren't bad people. They have been hurt before and do not see a lost cause as something worth spending energy on. In an apathetic world such as ours it is easy for you yourself to become apathetic. We have very little power in what we can do as individuals. As a collective we theoretically have all the power in the world. But some have chosen to give away all their power entirely, opting for the comfort of their ivory tower.

Were Donald Trump to win the next election and the GOP preceded to do all the things promised in project 2025, I wonder if the people who hold these beliefs would be the freedom partisans they claim they'd be.

Or would they do nothing and instead choose to wallow in their apathy, seeing the cause as lost and letting it go by.

[germiyahu]

Not too thrilled that my other post is getting so many notes when I'm not satisfied with it for a multitude of reasons. Let's have a do-over, hopefully much more succinct and to the original point.

When Palestinians, actually basically all Arabs, or all Muslims, say "Jerusalem is holy to us it is the 3rd holiest city in our religion." The White Western Leftist (WWL) will say "That's so valid your religion is so interesting and beautiful Hamas did nothing wrong I love the Houthis!"

But if a Jew ever rebuts "Jerusalem is holy to us as well, it's our holiest city, basically the only one we have," the WWL will probably roll their eyes, scoff, probably say something like "Okay but like why are you still using your outdated Zionist death cult to justify colonialism? You really think the Bible justifies killing millions of Palestinians?" and start going on and on about how Judaism invented everything bad about Christianity.

My hypothesis: These people are not allies to Muslims (Palestinians). They are condescending to them. They are throwing them a bone because they feel bad about how the Muslim world has been treated, well ever since Sykes-Picot, but especially post 9/11, the Patriot Act, The War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Drone War, Libya, Nato, The Arab Spring, the list goes on. They don't think Muslims are capable of building the kind of societies they want, not without their gracious help. They don't think Muslims should have the same ideals of democracy and human rights, because they don't expect that from the Brown People. They won't ever hold them to such a standard because "Ugh where do we get off lecturing them?" even though they would never think this of Jews.

These people are not equals to Jews, something something Sartre they think they are both superior and inferior (which makes them superior). They are not just trying to hold their fellow citizens of the world to account. They are trying to put Jews in their place. They are projecting their religious trauma onto Jews because they do not understand Judaism. They see Judaism as Power. They are trying to delegitimize Judaism as a religion (and it is a religion, including the parts of religions that give atheists the "ick," including a lot of mysticism). They are trying to caterwaul about Jews being responsible for the world's ills and that they expect Jewish People to be better than this. To evolve beyond religion and community and affiliation and identity. They want Jewish to be nothing more than a box ticked off on a census. A neat little factoid about yourself, like how your neighbor Cheryl has Norwegian ancestry.

My only conclusion is that these people find Jews and Judaism repulsive, and they find Muslims and Islam primitive. Unlike their parents' generation, they appreciate the primitive. It is noble savagery to them. Unlike their parents' generation, the comparatively cosmopolitan modern secular Western sheen of Jewry (applied to Jews against their will) is not something that we almost lost from the world, but an annoying holdover of what we almost successfully purged from the world.

Because remember, while they hate their parents and everything they stand for, they still deep down want Daddy's approval. So it makes perfect sense why the psyche would displace anger and trauma and all that caused by Christianity, and look elsewhere to place blame. It falls at the feet of Jews and Judaism. Because my culture could never, there has to be a missing puzzle piece that could explain- oh there it is. The Jews did it. And wow look how easily this can slot in with every other antisemitism conspiracy theory.

The audacity to think I could make a shorter version of that post 😂 But basically it's this: The WWL, the Zoomer Left, the Tankies, whatever name you call them... they think that they can "save" Muslims by offering up Jews, and the terrorist fascist fundamentalists like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, they're on board. They're all in. Normal ass every day Muslims/Palestinians? They just want peace, they just want rights, they just want sovereignty. The WWL is not interested in that perspective.

They have not once in their lives thought of what they could possibly do in terms of reparations. No no, tweeting and marching for a weekend are quite enough. They have not once in their lives turned inward and self reflected on the ways they benefit from and their own role in these systems of supremacy, that have harmed Muslims around the world. Jewish blood is more than enough to pay for operation Iraqi Freedom. Jewish lives are a fetching price to assuage the Westerner's guilt. You know since they have so much trouble turning inward and reflecting on their own contribution to Islamophobia, it might do them good to practice a little תשובה... but I don't know 😌

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

If you remember the Bibas family, they were all kidnapped to Gaza on Oct 7, the father Yarden who left their house first, to protect his family, and then the mother Shiri, 4 years old Ariel, and the baby, 9 months old Kfir.

It is now confirmed that they were not kidnapped by Hamas, but rather by one of 26 terrorist organizations in Gaza, each one so small that they're usually referred to as terrorist factions, rather than terrorist organization. This one specifically has adopted a pattern of always cooperating with one of the bigger terrorist organizations (like Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad), so we can assume that's what they did on Oct 7 as well. The first 45 seconds or so from the following vid is what it looked like when Shiri, Ariel and Kfir were being kidnapped, you can see how terrified she is...

Below is new CCTV footage that the IDF has uncovered from a street in Khan Younis, so now we know which city in Gaza the three (Shiri, Ariel and Kfir) were kidnapped to. Shiri is seen barefoot, Ariel's head is sort of visible, Kfir isn't, but it's assumed he's under the blanket, and Shiri holding him close to her body. Because this footage is from Oct 2023, there's so much we still don't know. Are they still there? What's their current state? Nobody knows, but the IDF spokesman has confirmed that there is grave concern for their lives.

Yesterday, a Hezbollah attack drone crashed into Arbel, the mountain on which Tiberias (one of the 4 holy cities in Judaism) is built. For some reason, the siren didn't go off. The drone crashed not too far from a kindergarten, but thankfully no one was hurt. In response, Israel has struck Hezbollah's weapon warehouses in Lebanon. To the best of my knowledge, they're still checking why the siren warning failed, and which country was the drone launched from, Lebanon, Syria or Iraq.

A French report says that the terror tunnels Hezbollah has been digging for years on Israel's northern border are more complex and dangerous than the system Hamas has dug under Gaza. That's what Israeli soldiers will have to tackle if the northern front goes to a full scale war. The terror tunnels Hamas has dug since 2007 under Gaza are so much more developed, extensive, complex and dangerous than Israel has realized, and the IDF has had to develop new ways of fighting in and around them, which we did not have when the war in Gaza started. Hamas' terror tunnels were estimated to be bigger than the London Tube (underground train system) back in Dec 2023, and there have been more tunnels located since. Just to put things in perspective, London's size is 1572 square kilometers (607 square miles), more than 4 times bigger than Gaza, at 363 square kilometers (140 square miles), and has a smaller underground tunnel system, according to what we knew about Gaza two months ago. But people want Israel to sit back, and let these threats to the lives of Israeli civilians continue to grow freely... Just a reminder, on Oct 7, the way the terrorists got to the border fence, to destroy the cameras there, without being spotted on the way was thanks to their terror tunnels, and those tunnels allow them to hold Israeli hostages captives, and it allows Hamas terrorists a place to hide and strike from, and it's where some Israeli hostages were murdered.

Today in our corner, "Suuuure, it's anti-Zionism, not antisemitism, but somehow it keeps targeting Jews and Jewish identity," we got two stories from the UK. One is of a Jewish family sending their baby girl's birth certificate to issue her a passport got the document back torn and defaced, with the word "Israel" under "father's place of birth" scribbled over.

The second story is of how the Amy Winehouse statue, which has stood in Camden Market for essentially 10 years, has also been defaced, specifically the Star of David was covered with a Palestinian flag sticker.

This is Elyakim Libman.

On Oct 7, he worked at the Nova music festival as a guard. Survivors of the massacre there say he helped save quite a few people. At a certain point, he went back to retrieve the body of a murdered young woman, so it wouldn't be taken hostage by the terrorists, and that's when he ended up being kidnapped himself. He's been in Gaza for over 4 months, including during his birthday. The other day, he became an uncle. He was supposed to be his nephew's godfather, but didn't get to. His family said explicitly they want no terrorists to be released in order to free him, and that if Elyakim could weigh in, he would say the same.

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

[kinardsevan]

something something about Tommy being in the army and finally feeling free to be himself at least a little bit because he no longer lives with his father, and even though he's living in the world of DADT, meeting a boy in basic, falling for him a little.

They're assigned to the same platoon, ship out to Iraq together, know their lives are on the line, but what starts out as a friendship becomes something more, with them sneaking around, stealing moments where they can, even though it's not safe.

And the thing is, it's good. It's really good. They're moving through the ranks, getting their jobs done, even dealing decently well when they get separated for more extensive training in different squads.

It goes on a few years. Maybe things get a little messy here and there. After all, they're 20-year-olds in a war zone, trying to figure life out. And there's never a family introduction because no one can know, but they fall in love. When they're lucky enough to get a short trip home, it should be great because they're safe, but it sucks because it's at different times.

And then about three and half years in, Tommy gets an offer. He's shown interest in becoming a warrant officer, is finishing up the degree required to pursue it, and his battalion chief wants to put his name in for the next round.

Except, his boyfriend is looking at special forces. That would split them up, send them in different directions, keep them apart for far longer than they ever have been before.

So initially, Tommy says no. Special Forces includes flying, even if it isn't the forefront of things. He presents himself as showing interest there, even though it's not really what he wants.

Weeks turn into months, and things fall apart. His boyfriend knows it's not what he wants, even though Tommy's trying to force it. It gets to a point where all they do is fight. Conversation about being a warrant officer comes back up. He wants to say no, but his boyfriend tells him he should say yes. He agrees to attend a meeting with the guy in charge, gets held back when his team is sent out on a basic retcon mission.

Except. Half the team doesn't come back. Unexpected enemy combatants, they say. No way they could've known, they say. Their team members died heroes, they say.

And Tommy sinks. In to grief, into depression, into loss. He doesn't get to tell anyone the real reason why. He doesn't even get to attend the funerals. But yet, in the midst of it all, things are going right. More right than he'd like, but right. He gets into warrant officer school. He gets to learn how to fly helicopters. He gets commendations through it all.

And it's not okay. It never just becomes something he's alright with living with. But one day, a few decades down the line on a bad night, Eddie mentions losing his whole platoon. Tommy tells him about the day half his team died in a shoot-out. When Evan picks him up from the bar later that night and takes him home, he tells him the part he didn't tell Eddie. Tells him about the boy he fell in love with half a world away in the middle of a combat zone. About the life he had planned in his head even though he knew even at 21 that it was unrealistic and would never happen. And Evan listens, because he's told Tommy about Abby and what that did to him, and he's not sure what he would've done if Abby had died.

For the first time in a long time, Tommy lets himself cry about it. It's not something he dwells on much--his life is different now, and he has Evan, who he sees an entire future with, beyond what just exists inside his head. A future with Evan is tangible, exists beyond a tiny sandpit in a war zone. It's a whole life with a family, siblings, impending plans to bring home a pet soon (they keep going back and forth over a black cat or golden retriever), more talk about what the future holds. But for one night, he lets himself grieve the past and the life he didn't get. He lets down the walls he keeps up around his own trauma, lets Evan see beneath the façade.

(this was literally like a three sentence idea I had this afternoon. oops.)

[bcolfanfic]

If you're still accepting young vets au requests - would you be up for exploring more of how they fell in love when they were in the service? Did Buck have a Marge at home? Were they both 'out'? etc etc

Thanks!

standard disclaimer that i am not an expert on the us air force or the afghanistan war- ive done a little research so i have a basic grasp on things but not much. i know because my brother was in iraq that he wasn't just gone for years at a time like the 100th was in wwii which makes this is a littttleee more complicated. but here goes.

in my mind, they enlisted at around the same time and met in basic.

and then after basic they both got sent to the same tech school in texas. this is where bucky did his EOD training stuff. in my head gale's "outside of flying thing" was security forces.

they became fast friends in basic, and then only got closer when they got to texas. maybe gale was originally going to get sent to a different base for tech school, and poor bucky was quite bummed about that!

but then things got moved around and how happy he was that gale *would* be going with to texas made him a little hmmm. maybe this is something i should unpack! not now though!

samesies for gale. he's excited that he gets to go to texas with his buddy. if there's something nagging at the back of his mind about why exactly he's so excited, he ignores it.

according to the internet the dorms are 3 ppl per, so maybe that's where they meet curt and become buddies with him.

gale and bucky start getting closer and well, curt is gay too. he has the spidey senses.

but poor gale and bucky are uh not as in touch with their sexuality and about jump out of their skin when curt ribs them a little saying if they ever want some SpAcE they can tell him to scram.

i don't think it really goes much farther, conversation wise or otherwise, till they're overseas.

esp bc bucky has to finish his EOD training in florida so he does have to, much to his chagrin, leave gale for a bit. they stay in touch, which is much easier with today's technology, but in my head this is when gale and curt get quite close.

gale does have a girl at home, but he breaks up with her in the ten day leave between tech school and leaving the country.

he tells her it's because things are really volatile and she's a good girl who he doesn't want to force to wait around for him.

which isn't a lie per say. but if he leaves out that the more late night talks with curt he has the more he thinks he might be gay well. that's his own secret.

the buckys meet again at their first deployment. in my head its not straight to afghanistan (though maybe for curt it is) and they're in africa first.

very sweet reunion- they missed each other. and now looking at his face on the other side of all those late night talks with curt, gale is *really* like oh. oh.

one night not long after they get to africa they're talking and gale tells him he broke up with his girl. bucky is a little surprised and when he prods gale gets a nervous and just blurts out that he thinks he might be gay.

bucky, though he's a little scared by labels, has been involved with people uh ~across genders~, so he tries to make him feel less nerved out about it. tells him its nothing to be ashamed of etc etc. and then question of the hour, can i ask what the 1+1=2 here was y'know?

sweet gale just looks at him all wide eyed. and bucky knows, knew before he asked him the question.

*fade to black*

[marvel-ousmondays]

Iron Man (2008)

As mentioned in last post, when I went to Iron Man I literally had no idea that such a superhero existed. (I thought Sherlock Holmes with RDJ came out first but apparently not so I had essentially no knowledge of the actor either.) My friends and I decided to spend the day out at the nearest town big enough to have a book store, craft stores, and a Target, as well as a Drive-In movie theater. I was now a college student and enjoying the freedom of no curfew, rebel that I was. I'm pretty sure the movie prior to Iron Man was the Narnia: Prince Caspian movie. I mention this because I hated that movie. It bastardized the book something awful and after the first movie was so faithful an adaptation, this was incredibly disappointing. However, this meant I was doubly primed to appreciate the awesomeness that Iron Man ended up being. I've watched it a few times since then, but usually as background to something else. I decided for this challenge I did REALLY want to watch the movies/shows. No other distractions- just it. I can take breaks (it took me 3 days to finish Iron Man due to various constraints last week) but when I'm watching, I'm JUST watching.

Here were my takeaways this time

The differences in Terrence Howard's Rhodey and Cheadle's Rhodey are always a bit mind boggling and part of what makes Iron Man feel really different from the later films. We're also just starting MCU so while they aren't LACKING budget, it's not the level it would be later. This doesn't hurt the movie at all for the record, if anything I think it meant the story had to be more well-developed and the actors better.

But this first film has a seriousness and a somberness that most of the other films only flirt with (notable exception being Infinity War of course).

The scene where Tony goes back to help Gulmira, Yinsen's home, and we see the 13 year old boy screaming and crying as his father is pried away from their family, the soldiers clearly planning to execute him and all the other grown men. The young boy tears himself away from his mother to his father, determined to keep him, to save him. His father, begging his son to go, so that he will live even though he knows- he KNOWS he will not. This moment of utter terror made personal just before Tony shows up is incredible and all the more so when put into historical context. The U.S. was still in Afghanistan and Iraq at this time and it was easy for citizens here to paint everyone in those areas with the same brush. But in this moment you CAN'T. You HAVE to see the family ripped apart right alongside the terrorists and be forced to realize that race, ethnicity, language don't make terrible people- actions do.

A common criticism of Marvel movies is they don't let a moment sit- that they always break a serious moment with a joke. But this one doesn't do that. There are multiple heavy moments- after Yinsen's death for one and when Pepper nearly quits (because she can't watch Tony self-sabotage and possibly die) and he tells her:

"I shouldn't be alive... unless it was for a reason. I'm not crazy, Pepper. I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right."

This moment sits between them so clearly, so starkly and it is not ended with a joke, but with Pepper grabbing the flashdrive and asking what to do. (Thinking back, I'm wondering how many of those MCU "broken" moments are by Tony. He's the one uncomfortable with emotion. Him breaking those moments with humor is actually 100% in character. Something to pay attention to as I watch.)

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, some of the key themes of this movie just strike to the heart.

Death from a distance is easy to ignore or even be complicit in, but death up close rips us apart. Tony sold weapons that he knew took lives for years but it wasn't until he watched Yinsen die that I think he really understands what that means. Yes, his parents had died before but he wasn't THERE, he didn't SEE it. This death, this is the one that makes him really know what it means.

You don't have to change everything to be a better person. Tony is still self-centered. He still likes attention. He's still arrogant and as we will see next movie, open to playing the field as Pepper and him haven't committed. But not only has he stopped being complicit in the deaths of the innocent, he's taken on the mantle of protecting them.

Lastly, who the good guys are is largely a matter of perspective. This obviously gets hit harder again in Ultron (oh that glorious train wreck- I'm looking forward to writing about you), but it matters here. Tony was fine manufacturing weapons because he assumed he was supporting the "good guys", the 'Muricans. But not only was Obadiah dirty dealing, he is forced to learn the good guys aren't always as discriminatory with their weapon use as they purport to be. That it's easy to start painting with broad brushstrokes in areas where precision is actually called for.

Overall I'm really glad I PAID attention to this one this round. The grittiness and the depth really hit the way they did the first time or even more so. Onward to The Incredible Hulk, even though it's only semi-canon now.

Note for me:

Directed by: Jon Favreau

[texas-gothic]

So, let's talk about Jet. Both the episode and the character. I think I've discovered here the core philosophical flaw that's really going to haunt the rest of the Last Air Bender's runtime and exponentially expand in Legend of Korra.

Before we really get into this, I will acknowledge a boldness to Avatar: The Last Air Bender. This came out in 2005. So, Bush has just been solidly re-elected, the imperial invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are in full swing, and the American propaganda aparatus is firing on all cylinders to ensure public support for all of this. That a story about fighting colonialism and imperialism would even come out of a major studio (Viacom) at that time is nothing short of a miracle. It was a very brave story to tell at the time.

That being said, we still have a problem. Despite this story's core conceit of anti-colonialism, it remains a fact that, like most Western creatives, the creators of Avatar are Liberals. And while from a distance they might obviously be able to agree that imperialism is terrible, it very much hinders their ability to engage with liberation movements. A problem that we see for the first time in Jet.

Watching the episode, and seeing the way this story deals with this character, I can't help but be reminded of every time I've gotten into a conversation about Palastine and been brick walled by "But what about Hamas!?" Because that's exactly what the Freedom Fighters are meant to stand in for. They are the liberation movement that goes too far. Hamas, the IRA, the Mau Maus, etc. Righteous goals but just too much violence and inconvenience for Western Liberal sensibilities. Scratch a Katara and an Ozai bleeds, apparently.

Maybe Jet just had to be a sacrificial lamb to get the whole project off the ground. Like I said, the American propaganda aparatus was Hell bent on promoting not one but two imperialist wars at the same time, and maybe a "Well, don't fight colonialism too hard" is what was required to keep the green light on. But considering how quickly the Legend of Korra descends into bare faced anticommunism in its first season, I'm not really inclined to believe this was just a solid they were doing for the network.

And I guess the thing that really grinds my gears about this is that Jet is never forgiven for this. In a story where a genocidal warlord like Iroh can find redemption, the angry 16 year-old boy who lost everything to colonial atrocity can not. He is doomed and eventually condemned to death by this offense against the Liberal worldview of his creators. Executed for being unpalatable.

[lostinthewiind]

Hi! Hope you're having a good day! You are so right, the Generation Kill fics are very rare, it's a shame.

Could you please write something for Nate Fick where the reader is oblivious and doesn't realize that he loves them?

Thaaanks!

Atypical

Nathaniel "Nate" Fick - Generation Kill

Rating: All ages

It had been a long tour. Iraq was brutal from start to finish, and even now, when you knew you would be heading back to the States in a couple of days, it still didn't feel real.

Staring out at the vast Iraqi desert that surrounded the base camp, you exhaled long and deep—a last-ditch attempt to expel the weeks of dust that accumulated in your lungs.

"Ready to head back home?" A familiar voice came from behind you.

You smiled to yourself as you scooted over, making room for your visitor in the back of the truck you had found refuge in. "And here I was thinking I had finally found a moment of peace and quiet in this damn war."

Nate smirked as he sat down next to you, his bright blue eyes practically sparkling in the sun. You had seen a lot of things you wouldn't ever forget while in Iraq, most of them bad—but Nate's eyes were one of the few good things that lingered in your mind.

"Sorry to disturb your personal oasis in the back of this Motor T rust bucket." The truck made a worrying sound as he shifted his weight and he quirked a brow. "Point made."

"Well maybe if you had whipped your men into shape more, I wouldn't have to feel as though Motor T is the only place I can go for some quality alone time," you told him as you tilted your head toward the sunset.

"Manimal trying to buy your underwear off of you again?"

You choked on your next breath. "How the hell do you know about that?"

Nate laughed. "I know about everything that goes on in my platoon."

"Either way, no, that wasn't happening ... not again, at least." You shook your head. "I was just trying to take some time to reflect. I thought going home would be a happy feeling."

"You're not happy?"

"I am. But I'm also not." You tried to explain your complex feelings. "I don't know, the possibility of never seeing any of you guys again isn't as much of a relief as I thought it might be. Don't tell anyone I said that."

"I won't," Nate assured you with a chuckle. "For someone coming into a group of guys who have been together since Afghanistan, you really held your own. It'll be weird if we ship out again and you're not there."

You watched as the night sky shifted from a brilliant shade of orange into a dark purple. "Give it some time and I'll be as ready as you are to be done with this war and go home."

"How do you know I'm ready to go home?" Nate asked.

"You're not the only observant one," you answered, earning a dubious look from Nate. "... and I overheard you and Brad talking."

Nate nodded when you confirmed his suspicions. "That sounds more like it."

"Hey, I am plenty observant!" You smacked him on the shoulder. "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. It's a pretty important quality for a marine."

"True. But still."

"But still?"

Nate turned away from the sunset to look at you. His mouth opened to respond, but before he could get a word out, he decided against it and averted his gaze. "Nothing."

"No, no, no." You grabbed his face with your hand and forced him to look at you once more. In that moment, you didn't think about the fact that you were technically laying hands on your superior. "But still what?"

"I think it's a conversation better had at a later date," he told you as he gently pushed your hand away. "When there's less sand and less gunfire. When we're just normal people, not a Lieutenant and his Corporal."

"You know we could die tomorrow, right?" you reminded him. "Or right now. There could be a sniper lining up the head shot as we speak. What if I died right now and you never got to tell me whatever it is you're being so secretive about?"

Letting out a defeated sigh, Nate reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a ring. It wasn't just some class ring either; no, it was an honest-to-God gold banded ring with a diamond on the top.

"Lieutenant Fick?" Your eyes darted between his face and the ring.

"Please do not call me Lieutenant when I'm holding an engagement ring."

Your mouth fell open. You were at a loss for words. "What ... what the fuck, Nate?"

"I suppose that's better." He clasped his hand firmly around the ring so it was no longer in sight. "When I first met you, I wrote a letter home and mentioned you. Told my folks all about how we had this woman riding with us and how I didn't think she'd last a week."

You were too impatient to wait for the follow-up. "And?" you prompted.

"And my mother sent me back the family ring and told me to let her know when the wedding was."

You laughed. You were aware how incredibly insensitive it was but in that moment, it was the only outlet you could think of for your overwhelming emotions. "What the fuck, Nate?" you whispered.

"You already said that."

"Well, I'm sorry I'm a little shocked in a moment like this. Can you blame me for not exactly expecting a proposal when I didn't even know you had feelings for me?"

Nate rolled his eyes. "I never actually asked you to marry me, now did I?"

"Then what's the ring for?"

"Well obviously it's for engagement!"

"What is happening right now?" You couldn't believe what was going on. Surely, you must have been dreaming. "Did you hit your head when I wasn't looking? Do I need to call Doc Bryan?"

"Oh, my God. I've really fucked this." Nate stuffed the ring back into his pocket. "This is not how I meant to approach this topic."

"What topic?"

"That I'm in love with you!" Nate proclaimed before burying his face in his hands.

A beat of silence passed and you were suddenly very grateful that you had chosen an abandoned corner of the camp to watch the sunset from.

"Nate?" you whispered once more.

"Yes?" he whispered back, his voice even more muffled from his hands.

"Did you just tell me you're in love with me?"

"Yes."

"And that engagement ring in your pocket is for me?"

"Yes." He finally lifted his head to look at you. "Not right now, of course. But yes, theoretically, at some point."

You couldn't help but laugh again. "This is so weird."

Nate made a strangled, embarrassed sound. "You're killing me here." He stood up to leave. "I should just go. This was clearly a mistake."

"Oh, settle down." You grabbed him by his uniform and pulled him back down. "Yes, I had a bit of a strong reaction at first, but considering the circumstances, I think I'm allowed that much. I never said I didn't love you back."

Nate's blue eyes lit up. "Do you?"

"Well, I don't know. I hadn't thought about it until now," you answered. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" That same sound slipped past his lips. "That's romantic."

"Okay, it's not that I've never thought about. You're obviously very attractive and all that," you rephrased. "I've just never thought about it seriously. In case you haven't noticed, we are in the middle of a war."

"I noticed. Which is why the ring's been burning a hole in my pocket until now." He drew in a deep breath, and when you didn't share another thought, he spoke again. "Now what?"

Reaching into his pocket, you fished out the engagement ring and handed it to him. "Now you ask me to marry you."

"Really?" His fingers trembled slightly as they plucked the ring out of your grasp. "Here?"

"Right here." You nodded.

"Okay. Right. Yes." He cleared his throat and jumped down from the back of the truck. Then he offered you a hand down, and once you were both standing on solid ground, he dropped down onto one knee. "Y/N, I know we haven't known each other very long. I know the typical thing is to date for a while before asking this question; hell, the typical thing is to actually have feelings for one another before asking this question. However, as a fellow marine, you know that typical is merely a suggestion. Either way, meeting you has been the highlight of this war, which I know isn't saying much but still ... I'd like for you to be the highlight of the rest of my life as well. Will you marry me?"

Your heart swelled at the gentle words falling from the mouth of one of the toughest men you had ever met. The way Nate looked up at you, as if you had the answer to every question in the world, was beyond endearing. You could truly picture a long, happy life with him.

"No," you answered.

Nate's hopeful smile fell. "No?"

"That's what you get for springing a goddamn engagement ring on me like this." You plucked the ring from his hand before inspecting it. "It is a rather beautiful ring though. Ask me again in a couple months and I'll gladly take it off your hands."

Nate shook his head as he stood back up and dusted off his knee. "And until then?"

"We date," you said matter-of-factly. "As typical as it is, I've had enough atypical for one lifetime."

Nate smiled wide. "I can't wait to marry you."

[dragoneyes618]

In the room where we often called for G-d to bring peace, the students and faculty around me watched a screen and celebrated like our prayers had been answered.

It was September of 1993, and my classmates and teachers cheered watching the historic handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

I did not.

A friend berated me.

“What’s wrong with you? You don’t want peace?” he asked.

I was 15 but knew enough about critical thinking to understand that to be for or against something, you need to know the details. I had watched on TV where they said some issues would not be included in the deal and would be left to a later time.

There was tremendous peer pressure back then – as there is today –in order to look virtuous, to proclaim you were in favor or against something.

I attended the Frisch School in Paramus, N.J., which was a rigorous and great school that helped prepare me for life, and from meeting current students I can say without bias that it is one of the best high schools in the country.

But there is a new challenge that all Jewish schools must meet. There needs to be a class called “Debating the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” It should start next year.

The majority of Jewish high schoolers will not go to Yeshiva University. And many will go to Ivy League schools, despite the recent protests, as well as to other schools where professors have been indoctrinating students to believe that Israel is a white colonizer.

Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro and Hillel Fuld all articulate cogent messages about Israel but I don’t know that all Jewish high school students are aware of them.

Jewish schools teach the kashrut question of batel b’shishim. If, for example, a drop of milk fell into a pot of chicken soup, if the drop is not greater than 1/60th of the soup, it may still be deemed kosher.

It’s a good idea to teach that. It’s also a fine idea to teach the same students important facts about Israel so that when they hear slander, they don’t feel like 1/60th of a Jew.

We now live in a reality where people, especially younger people, are inundated with message from TikTok and other social media that are anti-Israel. From watching TV and podcasts alone, I must have seen it said that Israel is committing a genocide at least 500 times, mostly with nobody disputing it.

Two great examples of someone speaking against it were Coleman Hughes, an author and speaker who was the guest on American’s top podcast, “The Joe Rogan experience.” The other was a man named Steven Borrelli, who goes by the moniker of Destiny, who was on a show called Breaking Points, debating Omar Baddar.

Hughes told Rogan (who by his own admission is not knowledgeable on the topic) that if including estimates of those in Hamas who were killed the ratio of combatant to civilian is similar to when American soldiers fought in Mosul, and that if Israel did not go into Rafah, that would create a blueprint for any future group to jump over the border and kill civilians, then go back and hide among civilians with impunity. Rogan had no counterpoint.

Destiny explained the same thing regarding the ratio, and in this and other debates he asked why only Israel is accused of genocide, but America was not for Iraq or Afghanistan, or World War II, and explained that there is a double standard.

We just finished Pesach where we teach about the son who doesn’t know how to ask. Too many Jewish youngsters don’t know how to ask at colleges: What is your definition of a genocide? Why would Israel give warnings? What is the ratio of civilian/combatant?

Another fallacy is that Jews are not allowed to criticize the Israeli government. That is of course, false, but the problem is when too large a portion of criticism is put on Israel and little blame to terrorists. (It is also important to acknowledge the pain and suffering of Palestinians who have been under the thumb of Hamas.)

Another question one must ask: What are the details? You may be in favor of lunch, but not if the waiter then brings you a plate of fire.

Many ignored part of New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer’s speech when he said Palestinians must drop their demand for a complete right of return (because the demography would mean there would be more Palestinians than Israelis in Israel) and a Palestinian state would be demilitarized. Schumer’s speech likely encouraged these protests, but absent from his talk was that there is no indication Palestinians would agree to both conditions or care what he says in that regard, let alone what the Israeli people want.

There is a video of a UCLA student Eli Tsives who questions a woman who claims to be a professor at UCLA. He does know how to ask, and the woman is so flummoxed she asks for help. The reason she has no answer is that bullying works until you come up against someone who is not afraid and knows how to ask the right questions.

It is very telling that when journalists ask questions to the protestors, most have no answer.

The protests against Hamas are small but should be larger. And Jewish schools should prepare students to be able to know what questions to ask and how to give an answer. Jewish schools in New York should also have trips to the Nova Exhibit which I went to and I interviewed survivors; I also interviewed Hannie Ricardo, a woman whose daughter, Oriya, was murdered by Hamas.

I held back tears as Ricardo told me she took some solace in knowing that while her daughter was murdered, she was not burned or defiled.

On that same day, back in 1993, my Judaic Studies teacher, Mr. Zucker spoke with me.

I asked him if he thought there would really be peace.

“Nobody knows,” he said. “We’ll have to see what happens.”

[komsomolka]

(Article's date: 2014) I think that President Obama’s attempt to destabilize Russia will be seen by history as disastrous as George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Like the Iraq war, the de facto declaration of “war by other means” against Russia will accelerate the very dynamic that it intends to halt: the steady weakening of U.S. imperialism’s grip on the world. It will increase the resolve of a host of nations to disengage themselves from American madness and to strengthen collaboration and cooperation among many countries, and not just Russia and China.

The result will be the exact opposite of Washington’s intention. The attempt to isolate and destabilize Russia, the other nuclear superpower, may appear to some to be an act of brashness, a flexing of American muscle, an act of imperial overconfidence and recklessness. People thought the same thing when Bush went into Iraq. They were shocked and more than a little bit awed. In fact, sometimes I think that Americans are more shocked and awed by the American military than anybody else. But the Iraq invasion, and the brazen offensive against Russia, as well as the so-called “Pivot Against China” and the octopus-like U.S. military entrenchment in Africa — these are really symptoms of weakness and desperation.

U.S. Imperialism is losing its grip on the world and responds to its weakening condition with massive campaigns of destabilization. Destabilization characterizes U.S. foreign policy today more than any other word. The purpose is to reverse the general dynamic of global affairs today in which U.S. influence and power shrinks in relative terms as the rest of the world develops. U.S. and European hegemony — and that is the ability to dictate the terms of economic and political life on the planet — has daily diminished in myriad objective ways, ways that we can measure by the numbers. China’s soon-to-be status as the world’s biggest economy is just one aspect of that decline.

The process is inexorable and it’s gaining momentum. The trajectory of imperial decline has been firmly set ever since the Western capitalists decided to move the production of things — that, is the industrial base — to the South and the rest of the planet. Inevitably power and influence follow and imperial hegemony diminishes. This is of course unacceptable to the rulers of the United States who now find themselves in objective opposition to all manifestations of collaboration and mutual development under terms that are not dictated by Washington. They are in objective opposition to all manifestations of independence by countries in the world. This applies not just to China, not just to China and Russia, but to the rest of the BRICS and to other developing nations. And it even applies to America’s closest allies.

That is because hegemons don’t really have allies. All they have are subordinates, and so the U.S. is quite prepared to do serious harm to European economic interests by pressuring them to break long established economic ties to Russia. They will ultimately do the same thing in the pacific region with China and cause great destabilization there. They do so not because of strength but because of growing relative weakness. Their desperation compels them to risk war because their only clear superiority is in weapons.

However, the net end result, if we survive these flirtations with all-out war, can only be further isolation of the United States and the further weakening of imperialism. I think there is on what passes for the left in the United States a tendency to describe U.S. aggressions like the Iraq war, like the current offensive against Russia, as mistakes and miscalculations: “They didn’t mean to do that.”

In reality the U.S. goes to the brink and beyond the brink of war because it perceives itself as having no other choice. Its soft power is fading. It has few other means beyond the military to strategically influence events. It recruits or buys allies where it can get them, be it jihadists or Nazis. As imperialism’s sway in the world shrinks, so do its options.

U.S. policymakers surveyed the world in 2002 and in 2003 and they concluded that the dynamic in Asia was going against them. They knew that most of the world would be horrified with a war against Iraq, but they rolled the dice anyway and invaded. The net result was the opposite of what they intended. The U.S. was humiliated and the U.S. was humiliated so badly that the rulers of the United States chose to put a dramatically different face on U.S. power — a Black face, Barack Obama.

Iraq was supposed to be a forward U.S. base in Asia to disrupt China’s growing ties in the region. Instead the Iraq war exposed U.S. imperialism’s weaknesses. In the days before that invasion, we wrote in Black Commentator that the U.S. had reached too far and succeeded only in accelerating the process of its own decline. Today Barack Obama is rolling the dice just like George Bush did. To sever Russia’s ties to Europe, Washington has surveyed the global scene and concluded that it has no other choice. The result will be a strengthening of ties between Russia and China, a great anxiety and rethinking among Europeans about their ties to the United States which is about to harm their economy, and an acceleration of imperialism’s death spiral.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

A wonderful person - not very like a woman, you know?

T.E. Lawrence on his friend Gertrude Bell

In many ways the life of T.E.arc Lawrence and Gertrude Bell was similar and overlapped in many ways. Two remarkable persons who represented the height of the British Empire heroism.

Lawrence is undoubtedly the more famous of the pair, branded in Orientalist film history by Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, headdress and all. But historians and contemporaries would arguably say, rightly in my opinion, that Bell’s influence on the Middle east region may have outweighed that of her overly confident friend and colleague, T.E. Lawrence. The First World War made Gertrude Bell into the icon she was to become after her death.

At the same time the First World War and its aftermath are a story of disappointment and depression for Gertrude Bell. Early on, she sees the war as the “end of the order we’re accustomed to” - a Whiggish order in which she had believed that British power could be exercised for good; she witnesses and fears the general abandonment of the belief that “there’s room enough in the sun” for everyone. Scales fell from her eyes earlier for her than for others of her class charged with redrawing the map of the Middle East and especially the fate of the Arabs.

Just before the installation of Prince Feisal, the not-yet-Iraqi tribes rebel. The colonial administration wants to adopt the position vacated by the Ottomans and demands of each tribe a poll tax. These are the the tribes that had been promised sovereignty. That is why they’d fought the Ottomans and sided with the allies: to be rid of their masters, not to swap them for some new ones. When the tax goes unpaid, the aerial bombardment of villages starts.

Gertrude Bell writes home, distraught, already blaming the curse it is that oil has been discovered in this land. Churchill had seen from the start of the war that oil independence for the empire would be the great strategic prize of the war as well as a tactical military requirement. There was never anything innocent in the War Office’s late recruitment of Bell to the Cairo office to work alongside T.E. Lawrence (who, in what is presumably for him the highest of compliments, writes of her that she is “not very like a woman”).

As the war and the aftermath of the Paris Peace 1919 gives way to the realpolitik of the grab for oil-rich Ottoman lands in the 1920s, she tries to warn that “no people likes permanently to be governed by another”.

Dutifully, she draws the boundaries of the new Kingdom of Iraq to balance Sunni and Shia numbers – “to avoid a theocratic state”. The Cairo Conference in 1921 set out to achieve this end and resulted in Feisal being given a Kingdom in Iraq and his brother the throne of neighboring Transjordan.

However in the end, she concludes that “making kings is too great a strain” because, we feel, she knows that Britain’s promises of sovereignty will be empty.

The talent and sympathy of the likes of Gertrude Bell don’t count for much against the onward march of power and the interests of those who wield it.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

POV: You're playing a progressive game.

Dude, you wanna play "Mission Impossible: Israel Edition"?

Yeah, sure.

It's 1947 and the UN the land of Israel to a Jewish state and an Arab state. As a Jew, your mission is... survive!

That's it? Okay.

Let's draw the first card... War! Local Arabs attacking Jews all over the land, joined by the armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Do you fight back or surrender?

If I surrender, do I survive?

No.

Then I fight back.

OK, let's draw another one... You lose a huge amount of your population but miraculously manage to win. Are you willing to give back some of the territories you gained in exchange for peace?

Of course, I just want to survive.

Great and now we have... Terror! Hundreds of Israelis killed by Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza. Do you wish to surrender, hunt the terrorists or give the Palestinians autonomy so they can form a peaceful and independent society alongside Israel?

Let's give them autonomy.

OK you get... More terror! Over a thousand Israelis die in countless attacks all over Israel.

Oh wow, I won't be able to survive like this. Let's fight the terrorists in the West Bank and withdraw from Gaza completely. I'll even give the Palestinians all the facilities we created over there. I'm sure they'll find a use for it.

Interesting... The people of Gaza elected Hamas as their ruler and it swore to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. They also dismantled the infrastructure you gave them and used it to build rockets which they fire towards you. How do you respond?

Okay let's talk to Egypt and together we'll form a tight border around Gaza to control what goes in and out.

Okay... People are mad at you because you formed a blockade.

But they'll kill me if I won't... well then let's give Gaza electricity, fuel, supplies, and billions of dollars.

Okay you get... Even more terror! Hamas uses all the aid to develop terror infrastructure while the people of Gaza remain poor.

This game is not that easy...

You waited too long and now Hamas crossed the border, killed 1500 Israelis and kidnapped 240, all in one day!

OK enough is enough. I enter Gaza to destroy Hamas.

Let's see... Many of your soldiers die fighting in urban territory. You're having trouble because Hamas hides among civilians.

Oh man. Let's use the Air Force and target Hamas officials only.

Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Do you wish to proceed?

Look, I'll put tremendous efforts into targeting Hamas only with as few civilian casualties as possible.

Let's see... Hamas builds military bases inside residential areas, schools, and hospitals, so, unfortunately, civilians die.

OK let me think...

While you were thinking, 30 Israelis died.

Wait a second...

50 Israelis more. Your people fear for their lives.

OK I'll notify the people of Gaza before striking so they have time to evacuate.

Hamas blocks the roads so civilians can't leave.

What do you want me to do?

Now Hamas says that Israel is just the beginning and they want to take on all Western democracies.

OK now I'm sure the world will understand if I keep fighting Hamas while trying as hard as I can to avoid collateral damage.

Let's see... Most people accuse you of performing a genocide and demand you cease fire.

OK, happy to, but only if Hamas will surrender and return the hostages.

They refuse. You are now accused of ethnic cleansing and considered a war criminal.

I'm starting to think I cannot win this game.

==

"Israel is the only country in the world never allowed to win a war." -- Douglas Murray

Remember when Boko Haram kidnapped 300 girls and everyone was all #BringBackOurGirls? Let's leave aside the fact they also kidnapped 10,000 boys and nobody said a word.

What are we currently hearing from Western countries, and particularly from western elites? Motions and calls for a "ceasefire." Not a demand for Hamas to surrender and #BringBackTheHostages, but for everyone to put their guns down so the terrorists can regroup, rearm and reload, and plan even more of the atrocities they've already promised.

I saw one person on social media say "couldn't they start with asking Hamas to please surrender?" I thought they were kidding. They were not. Which is like "why are there still monkeys?" Apparently scientists just never considered this, and Israel just never asked nicely.

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." -- Hamas Covenant, 1988.

Who is making demands of Hamas? Nobody actually expects anything of them, because they know they're terrorists. But they're the ones of which we should be demanding the most.

The only thing you can do when being assaulted by wokescolds, of any variety, is to just do the right thing and ignore them. When they have aligned themselves with full-blown terrorists who have a fatwa issued against them, they don't have the moral high ground.

https://fatwacouncil.org/2023/03/09/hamasfatwa/

FATWA | Palestinian Human Rights in Gaza March 9, 2023

The Islamic Fatwa Council (IFC) deems the recently publicized audio and video material containing testimonies of Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip to be both alarming and concerning. It is the responsibility of the Islamic Seminaries to take a clear and firm stance in light of the inhumane actions of Hamas.

Based on the requests of countless believers, The Islamic Fatwa Council has reviewed extensive documentation of Hamas behavior towards Palestinians in Gaza, including their recently publicized testimonies. Our findings - which are also displayed in our jurisprudential reasoning - result in our ruling that:

1. Hamas bears responsibility for its own reign of corruption and terror against Palestinian civilians within Gaza; 2. It is prohibited to pray for, join, support, finance, or fight on behalf of Hamas - an entity that adheres to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Furthermore, The Islamic Fatwa Council joins The UAE Fatwa Council and the Council of Senior Scholars of Saudi Arabia in declaring the Muslim Brotherhood movement and all of its branches as terrorist organizations that defame Islam and operate in opposition to mainstream Islamic unity, theology and jurisprudence.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

I heard a report that every day, Hamas steals at least a few aid trucks with food, and as we've seen in multiple pics, vids and testimonies from angry Gazans, the terrorists don't hesitate to use force against civilians to do so. A few days ago, a Hamas "policeman" shot and killed a young man trying to get some humanitarian aid. The young man's family was angry enough to burn tired outside a Hamas police station in the city of Rafah.

The leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, published a letter to his terrorists, in which he lies about how well Hamas is doing in the war (Israel estimates that at least 8,000 of its members have been killed, and that there is no organized Hamas command in northern Gaza anymore), while promising he won't surrender.

Just a reminder, that if Hamas surrendered, the war would be over immediately, and there'd be not one more Palestinian, civilian or otherwise, killed. What Sinwar is saying, is that despite being painted by certain westerners as a Palestinian liberation movement, it refuses to save any Palestinian lives. Same goes for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second strongest terrorist group in Gaza after Hamas.

Sometimes, the terrorist puppets and their financial masters disagree on what false excuse to give, regarding why they jointly made sure Jews would be massacred. Iran said it was one of the responses for the assassination of Iranian military senior Soleimani (by the US, in 2020), while Hamas denied this claim, and said that the massacre was to protect the Al-Aqsa mosque... (right, 'coz Jewish babies murdered in their crib in the south, born to the most left wing, peace seeking families in Israel, were SUCH a threat to the mosque in Jerusalem. This is the same false excuse Islamists have used repeatedly, like in May 2021, going all the way back to its invention in 1929 by the Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini, at a time when there was no State of Israel). Apparently, even the worst of terrorists, and the biggest financiers of terrorism, don't think the west will respond well to the more truthful, "We just want to kill all Jews."

There was a blast next to the Israeli embassy in India, and now Indian news outlets report that there was a letter found nearby, which tied the attack to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.

Dawn Lev and Matan Peretz, two funny Israeli Jews, answer some very serious questions, that were the most searched ones on Google when it comes to Hamas.

If it helps Dawn, I laughed. XD

While Iran is funding the attacks on Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the cyber attacks on Israel (including on Israeli hospitals), and has reportedly attacked an Israeli-related ship at least once directly, it has also increased its levels of Uranium enrichment, which is what they need to build nuclear weapons. We should all be VERY concerned.

Here is an op ed, with yet another testimony regarding the systematic rape, torture and abuse carried out by Hamas on Oct 7. I found it hard not to post all of it, but if I did have to highlight only one part, this would probably be it:

This is 26 years old Shaul Greenglick:

For the Eurovision fans, he was a very talented candidate for this year's contest in Sweden, who auditioned on Dec 3 to represent our country. He was on leave from the army, so he performed while still in uniform. He was killed yesterday in Gaza. This is his audition, where he got to show off his stunning voice:

This is 33 years old Maor Lavi:

Two days ago, he was interviewed on Israeli TV, because he had an urgent mission. While fighting in Gaza, they found a Hanukkiah in one house. As there are no Jews living there, it was most likely stolen during the Oct 7 massacre. Maor wanted to share the story, so he could find the family that owned the Hanukkiah and give it back to them. Yesterday, he was killed in Gaza, too. This is the Facebook post that Maor published in the hope of finding the rightful owners:

May their memories be a blessing.

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

[cosalphonse]

i've been in graduation hell for the past month but i'm finally free!!!! (until grad school in the fall but we'll get there when we get there LMFAO)

before i was swamped with work i was sporadically watching fma 03 with friends and man i miss it :`) watching it with them in sub is a very interesting experience since i've only seen a handful of episodes and scenes subbed. it gives me a further appreciation for the differences in each one and it really goes to show how sometimes being less word-for-word faithful in translation (and adaptation in general) can create a better end product. but i'm probably biased since i've watched the dub so many times and think that it's really well adapted for an american audience that is heavily influenced by the beginning of the iraq war

[eretzyisrael]

Jewish refugees are begrudged that little sliver of refuge called Israel

By bataween on 14 December 2023

With the rise of antisemitism, Jewish refugees from Iran who found refuge in the USA now worry that they might have to uproot themselves once again. Alex Abel tells one’s family’s story in Jew in the City:

Hebrew version of the 12th century Persian poet Nizami Ganjani’s “Khosrow va Shirin”.

In all this talk about the Jews “colonizing” Israel, so many don’t even know that Israel was the place Jews had to go to because they were kicked out of somewhere else. It wasn’t just a fun mission of conquering a land (which by the way is completely indigenous to the Jews), it was a place of refuge. For some, it was refuge after the Holocaust. For others, it was there when they were actually kicked out of all the other Arab lands around them.

Israel represents a little sliver of hope, freedom and simply existence for the Jewish people. That’s why it’s so infuriating that the world doesn’t even want to allow us that much.

Today, November 30, is the day the Israeli Knesset actually adopted as a national day of commemoration for the 850,000 Jewish refugees who were displaced from Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century.

Jews lived in Arab lands for thousands of years and many of their communities were actually there before the advent of Islam. In the 20th century, Arab nationalism rose around them and it was no longer safe to be a Jew in many of these places.

According to the Israeli government, “Arab states expropriated property of their native Jews, and denaturalized, expelled, arrested, tortured and murdered many of them.”

Ariel Homapour (who goes by Ariel Laurent now) knows this story well. His mother and father left Iran and Pakistan, respectively, after experiencing fear and oppression there. Ariel himself is the eldest child in his family and the first born outside of Iran in the last thousand years of his family’s history.

His father, Morris, left when he was just 16 years old in 1987. At that age, you could be drafted into the military in Pakistan. Laurent says they didn’t have time to actually train the teenagers taken into the army and even with that, would just take them straight to the frontlines right away and naturally, many were killed right away.

Ariel’s grandmother hid his father in an underground cellar for six months so he wouldn’t be drafted. After that, they paid someone who was driving a caravan to Iraq to smuggle him out (which was a common practice at the time). The first person they paid actually stole their money and left. The second worked out though and so Morris was driven covertly across the border.

Once they got there, they were getting shot at by the Islamic regime. He ran the rest of the way.

In Baghdad, there was no clean, running water. It was muddy, with worms coming out of it. He knew if he drank that water he would get very sick so lived off of Coca Cola for 5-6 weeks. From there, he took a flight to Vienna, Austria where he waited for a few months before he could get into the United States. He survived in Vienna by shoveling ice to make money.

When he got to America, he stayed with his uncle in Queens. He worked at a flea market selling random odds and ends and helped in the jewelry business. Eventually, he saved enough money to open a woman’s clothing store called High Image. It initially had just five to six items in the whole store. He grew this business to two different locations — in Brooklyn and Long Island that existed until right before Covid.

“He never really had a childhood,” Ariel shares. “He had to grow up really fast and always had to work hard. He never really had anybody to lean on. That’s the trauma of war, it’s really hard.”

Morris’s family in Iran owned many dry cleaning locations which were all pretty much taken away from them. The rest of his family stayed there until 2001 when they moved to Israel. It wasn’t until that year that Morris saw the rest of his family again — more than 20 years.

Ariel’s mother got to leave with her family, but didn’t know she was leaving for good until they never looked back.

They went to Israel from Iran to visit a sick relative but were planning to come back. Then, they didn’t. The revolution in Iran was getting so bad and being Jewish was such a fear, they decided to stay. They went back one time two years later to gather some of their personal belongings, but weren’t able to take all of it because so much had been seized by the government.

That was in 1978, when his mother was ten-years-old. She also demonstrated immense resilience amid the struggle to start over. In Israel, she was bullied because she couldn’t speak the language. When she was 12, in 1980, her family moved to America and she had to learn yet another new way to speak.

While the mountain felt almost too high to climb, she did it gracefully. She learned English, went to high school and college in America, grew to the top of her class and became a CPA.

His parents met each other when they were 26 at a wedding in New York.

Ariel’s parents made sure to keep their heritage alive in the next generation. Ariel and his two younger siblings speak Farsi. “They made sure I didn’t lose the Persian language,” he says. He grew up in Roslyn and didn’t learn English until he went to Kindergarten.

Now, his parents are having flashbacks to having to uproot their entire lives. With the rising antisemitism in the U.S., they’re scared. “They always say how much they sacrificed to get here,” he says. “It was always a land of refuge. It’s very traumatic for them with the rise of antisemitism.”

Read article in full

[jasongracedefenseattorney]

okay so i have been letting my thoughts simmer for days on the israel-palestine conflict because frankly i wanted to make sure i wasn’t being biased and because i wanted to find the most eloquent way to get my thoughts across. for reference i was on a team researching israel (i focused specifically on their food security and reproductive healthcare) for the united nations late last year. so while i am not a global expert, i am not just getting my understanding of this from instagram infographics.

i’ll start with saying civilian casualties, especially children, are incredibly tragic. but it’s important to acknowledge that while, yes, many israelis have now been murdered at the hands of hamas, being able to talk about the horrible colonization BY israel is important without having to give this prerequisite statement condemning hamas. obviously no one supports civilian casualties so demanding everyone treat you like a child who can’t understand complex arguments is just ridiculous.

second, i live in the united states so i will use that as an example. imagine that westward expansion and manifest destiny are recent enough that there are people alive today who experienced it. if, while settling and colonizing, my family kicked several indigenous people from their homes and then built a house on their property. if they didn’t let them access religious sites and in fact burned down and destroyed their religious sites. if my family did those things (as colonizers did to the natives and are doing in israel currently), people would treat me like a crazy person if i posted tiktoks acting like i’m some poor helpless victim of these terrible violent natives. because the act of being there and taking that space away from who it belonged to was inherently violent and so to expect an entire populace to just lie down and take DECADES of brutalization is ludicrous.

third, i feel like people are making false equivalences between hamas and palestine and muslims and between israel and jews. opposing the colonization of an occupied land does not make you antisemitic. there were and are people of christian and jewish faith living in palestine. israel was established as an ETHNOSTATE. meaning it was created to be for jewish people at the exclusion of people of other faiths, despite part of the land they occupy being one of the most holy cities in the world for three of the most prominent religions in the world. israel does not represent global jews. just like not all muslims are palestinians and not all palestinians are hamas. people aren’t allowing palestinians to grieve for the massive losses they are facing at the hands of the IDF without using their last breath to condemn hamas.

fourth, palestine is not currently considered a sovereign nation. right now, palestinians are considered citizens of israel. so this isn’t israel starting a war with a hostile nation. palestine has no military. this is israel decimating 2 million of their own people. except for the obviously small number that hamas makes up, every single casualty is civilian in an area made up of nearly half children. and despite being citizens of israel, palestinians are treated like second class citizens in their own country. palestinians aren’t able to get passports, build airports, move freely in and out of gaza, or build facilities to manage their own resources. and people are acting like we need to be coddling israel right now when that is simply not the case. they are engaged in WAR CRIMES by using collective punishment and white phosphorus. no equal war has one side able to restrict the food, water, medical aid, internet, and movement of the other side at any given moment.

fifth, and this almost goes without saying, but the united states government as well as the israeli government are working incredibly hard to do PR work and they’re hoping that the same tactics they used to paint opposition as crazy bleeding heart liberals during vietnam and iraq can be used now. prove them wrong. check the things you’re seeing. fact check. verify your sources. don’t let them trick you into seeing two million people as automatically worthy of death.

finally, i’ll just say this: if you are an israeli citizen who was born in israel and feels the world turning against you, i understand the way you feel defensive right now. after all, you didn’t choose to live there! but think for one moment about the safety you have in your home at the moment. and think about the people in gaza who are currently without resources, fleeing their homes, and being killed en masse. before you get on twitter and tumblr to tell us how you are the TRUE victim in all of this, please try to see some perspective.