#we can't call ourselves “the homeland of human rights” and do that

[thelastofthebookworms]

Looking at the elections' results and feeling sick. How can all those people vote for the triumph of fascism is beyond me

[jewishvitya]

After writing this post about why I'm an antizionist, I got an ask arguing that we're more indigenous than Palestinians. That they were forcibly brought here from Europe. I blocked that person because they're known to harass Jews on tumblr and I just don't take anything they say as a good faith argument. I'm sure I'll have to block them again, they always make new accounts.

Anyway. I'm not a fan of the Khazar myth when it targets Jews, and I'm not going to replicate it onto Palestinians. And I could go and write about how they're genetically related to the area so obviously they're from here, because that's true, but I'll be honest. I don't particularly care. There's a reason I called the whole thing a distraction.

Why are these sorts of technicalities even worth bringing up? Do they suddenly cancel out the deaths? I described how I watched a building of 80 apartments in Gaza collapse from Israeli bombs, and you go "actually these people have European ancestry" as if that lie would make the blood we spilled mean less to me?

I'm not trying to say that it doesn't matter if they're indigenous. It does. It matters that the homes and lands they've had for generations were taken from them. It's important because our connection to this land can't cancel out theirs.

I still call the whole argument a distraction, because of the way I see it used. We have no right to uproot, displace and kill them to create ourselves a shelter. We want safety, but it shouldn't be at their expense. They deserve to be safe too. And saying "this is our ancestral homeland" can't change that.

What I'm trying to express is that every time someone argues with me in favor of Israel and zionism, it boils down to "here's why you shouldn't care so much about Palestinian lives and human rights." That's been my experience from the moment I started talking about this.

If this is your bottom line when you try to argue with me, you're not going to change my mind. I can't stop caring. Lives are lives. They're human beings that exist here, under a regime that harms them regularly and controls so many aspects of their lives, suffering ethnic cleansing for the sake of an ethnostate.

Palestinians deserve to be free from our oppression because they're people. It's that simple to me.