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#The Israeli government is terrorizing innocent civilians that just want the right to live
gxlden-angels · 7 months
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I cannot express the anger I experience being unable to do anything about anything while Christians salivate over the idea of the Israel-Hamas conflict being a sign of the Rapture
#anyways Free Palestine#Hamas attacked innocent people#The Israeli government is terrorizing innocent civilians that just want the right to live#Jewish people deserve to have land where they are safe to go to if there is another rise in antisemitic attacks in their current home#Palestinians deserve to have their homeland respected and safe for them to live on#All of these statements can be true at the same time#and I say all of this from the safe comfort of the US#I am not the one that you should listen to about the situation.#I am not the one who you should trust to give correct information about what is going on because I get the same information you do#We should be listening to Palestinians and the Israeli civilians affected#And unfortunately the news in the US is based on Christians who want nothing more than to escalate this#They do not want to recognize Palestinians unless it brings about a world war that triggers the Rapture#And I am enraged by it#I know people currently living in Israel#I know students from Palestine#And I am infuriated by christians treating them like pawns in their little Jesus War#These are people. These are fucking people#They are friends and family and lovers and so much more#I genuinely cannot express just how frustrated I am by my inability to do anything as I sit in safety#If you get nothing else from this post please listen to Palestinians and the war crimes they've experienced for decades now#If you get nothing else please listen to Israeli civilians begging for their government to stop escalating this conflict#Please listen to Jewish people and Muslims when they say shit like this increases violence against them around the world#Anyways I'm at the doctor and someone had CNN on and I'm tired#antisemitism tw#islamophobia tw#israel-hamas war tw#rapture tw
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mitchfynde · 22 days
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I'm begging the pro-Palestine movement to inject even the slightest bit of nuance into their rhetoric. I'm basically pro-Zionist at this point, but even I believe you SHOULD be pro-Palestine to an extent.
Here are some things to consider.
Israel has a right to exist. They didn't steal the land. You can say Britain did, but it doesn't matter. It's their land now and they have a right to live there, just as Canadians have a right to live in Canada despite the history of the indigenous people. Apply this to basically any other nation.
The October 7th attack happened. It was bad. It was an act of terrorism. They killed innocent civilians on purpose. The civilians didn't deserve to die for living in Israel. You condemn the attacks.
Hamas is a valid military target. They are a terrorist organization who are constantly attacking Israel. They're not freedom fighters. They may use the plight of Palestinians as an excuse, but they cannot be taken in good faith. You condemn Hamas.
Israelis are not Nazis. There are far right people in Israel as there are anywhere. Right now Israel's right wing is exaggerated due the attacks they've experienced. People's rhetoric can get extreme when such a thing happens. It's certainly something you should be concerned about, but comparing them to Nazis is not useful at all.
Generally speaking, Israel has a good track record of taking a lot of care to avoid civilian deaths. They have a strong history of calling areas by phone to warn civilians. They will then drop a knock bomb onto the roof to scare people out before dropping the actual bomb. They do not have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians.
The reason why Israel has the reputation they do for killing civilians is threefold. 1) Palestine is densely populated which creates huge complications in war. 2) Individual IDF soldiers or groups sometimes commit attrocities, on purpose or by accident. 3) Hamas has one of the most devious PR strategies the world has ever seen.
Hamas uses human shields. And I'm tempted to say they use them more effectively than anyone has in the history of the world. They operate in or under civilian infrastructure... seemingly exclusively. They make damn sure that, if you want to bomb them, you are taking civilians with them.
Combine that with the fact there's basically no way to identify a member of Hamas from a civilian and Hamas can generate an insane civilian death toll. Why? Because they can sell it to us. The western liberal is horrified by civilian deaths. Especially if the skin color of the victims is darker than the people doing the killing. It's the perfect plot for a terrorist group to pretend they have noble intentions of freedom fighting and whatnot.
So is being pro-Palestine just utterly foolish? Absolutely not. Palestinians are in an utterly horrible position in this world and you'd be absolutely insane not to care about that. They absolutely should have their own nation with their own government. They should have the opportunity to live in peace. They should have the opportunity to live in freedom. It's almost self-evident.
Of course Israel is too expansionist. The settlements are a disgrace. The IDF's reputation is not totally unearned and neither is their government's reputation. There is the stench of far right rot in both their military and their government. Netanyahu is absolutely a religious zealot.
All I'm saying is you can't look at this as a totally one-sided thing. Most of the people posting pro-Palestine stuff are being misleading at best and spreading flat out lies more often than not. This is not a valid strategy to enact change. And, frankly, you deserve better for yourself.
You do not need to lie about Israel to be pro-Palestine.
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prodigal-explorer · 2 months
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You say that both Palestine and Israel are in the right and wrong, which first of all is the most bullshit I've ever heard.
Stop saying that you're "staying neutral" when it's fucked up, sick headed people like you that the government leeches off of. Its your ignorance that they profit off of, your privilege to lay in bed, to watch a fun movie, to hang out with friends and eat your full plate. That is a privilege that Palestines dream of.
Little kids dreams of Palestine dream of watch TV. They dream of playing outside without the fear of their lives on the line. They dream of going to school, having families, growing old, yet Israel kills them for no reason. This is genocide of innocent civilians.
And don't say "BuT hAmAs!!" As if that's your supporting argument. Nothing, and I mean nothing in the world can justify the genocide happening in Palestine right now. The numbers don't lie, Annie. The 30,000+ people didn't deserve it.
I hope you enjoy riding Israel dick and I hope the true guilt you feel once you finally see past your comfort zone hurts you so bad.
Genuinely, for all of us. Delete your pathetic excuse of an account and never post a thing ever again.
hey!
first of all, i never said that i’m staying neutral. wanting peace isn’t the same as staying neutral. i’m not encouraging the genocide just because i’m holding empathy for both sides and wanting both sides to have peace.
your cruel words are just a further example of all the hate that social media is spreading that isn’t helping anyone. i’m spreading information about charities to SUPPORT PALESTINE. i’m spreading information to uplift the voices of israeli and palestinian people who have LOST FAMILY MEMBERS due to this conflict, and trying to uplift the things THEY are saying. if i deleted my account, all of that stuff would be gone. the stuff that’s helping palestine. so you want palestine to have less help? that’s so woke of you. /s
i never said that israel should be bombing innocent people. i’m not supporting that and i never ever did. i never justified the genocide one single time and the fact that you think i did only goes to show that you didn’t read my posts. you just wanted to get angry and righteous and you chose me to attack, but it’s not going to work. i will apologize for saying that both sides are in the wrong because that is a bit of a bold statement which could easily be taken as excusing the actions of the israeli government, which was not my intention. palestine didn’t do anything to deserve this attack. the actions of hamas do not represent palestine as a whole.
for the record, if i had to choose a side, i would choose palestine. the way that the israeli government is using the money america is feeding them is horrible and disgusting. too many people have died in this conflict. but it is unfair to paint israel as a whole in a light that suggests that they are trying to wipe out the palestinian race because that’s not what’s happening. did you know that in israel, citizens are required BY LAW to serve in the military? they’re sacrificing their lives and being forced to do things they don’t agree with because the government is forcing them. israeli people don’t enjoy doing this. if you’re going to point fingers at someone, point at the 0.01% of israeli government officials who are making these decisions. not at an entire race, an entire population of people who are just doing what they are forced to do. it’s hypocritical to get mad at people for addressing hamas while also accusing all of israel of terrorism when the only real decision makers are the government. it’s the same thing, blaming an entire population for something that only a small group of people are responsible for. neither should be encouraged.
i don’t agree with what the israeli government is doing whatsoever. but that is not an excuse to wish death upon the people who didn’t even make any of these choices. these people were born in israel and they have to follow the laws. you can’t stand here while you’re privileged and on your phone typing angry little paragraphs that you wouldn’t do the same to keep yourself and your family safe.
so many people are using this issue as an excuse to be antisemitic. that is what i’m addressing in these posts. people like you are so fucking performative that you can’t see what the real issue is.
i know both israeli and palestinian people whose families have died. who’s YOUNG family members have died due to this conflict. and you know what they are telling me?
they aren’t telling me to go on social media and attack random people. they aren’t telling me to post about how all israelis/palestinians are awful people who deserve to die. they are telling me that the only way to stop all these innocent children and people as a whole from dying is to promote PEACE. and guess what. it isn’t just palestinian people saying this to me. ITS ISRAELI PEOPLE TOO.
THATS WHAT IM ADDRESSING IN MY POSTS. promoting PEACE is how we can do more for these poor children than just getting angry on social media. when we pick sides and polarize, we create more of a divide between two beautiful nations who deserve to live in peace and harmony. we further remove the chances of there being a reconciliation.
what do you suggest we do? kill all the israeli children? what will that accomplish??? this is so much more complicated than petty revenge. what feeds a war is the possibility of winning. and creating sides and pretending that the other side are full of evil heartless monsters who are doing this for no reason is only making the war WORSE because it fabricated the possibility of one side winning MORE.
so if you think you’re helping anybody with this bullshit, you’re not. your mindset is a prime example of the horrible performative activism that america is doing in order to pretend to be helpful while thousands of innocent children are dying.
maybe put some of this righteous energy into donating, or listening to israeli and palestinian voices instead of talking over them and speaking for them. that’s what would really be helpful in a time like this.
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eretzyisrael · 4 months
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by Michael Rubin
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), New York's millennial congresswoman, believes herself the barometer of progressive morality. But by reframing Jesus as akin to Palestinian terrorists fighting Israel, she instead cloaks herself in a mantle of ignorance and moral confusion.
Conflating political and religious fervor, AOC took to Instagram on Christmas Eve to opine, "In the story of Christmas, Christ was born in modern-day Palestine under the threat of a government engaged in the mass genocide of innocents. He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader's power," she wrote. "Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today's Palestinians, so much so that the Christian community in Bethlehem has canceled this year's Christmas Eve celebrations."
"The entire story of Christmas and Christ himself is about standing with the poor and powerless, the marginalized and maligned, the refugees and immigrants, the outcast and misunderstood, without exception," she added.
Where to begin?
Christians have little say about whether Bethlehem holds Christmas celebrations. In 1950, Christians made up approximately 86% of the population of Bethlehem and its surrounding villages. That share of the population stayed relatively steady until Israel handed the Palestinian Authority control over Bethlehem, and then the proportion of Christians plummeted. Today, barely 13% of Bethlehem's residents are Christian. At issue was the Palestinian Authority's deep discrimination against Christians. When Muslim families moved to Bethlehem and forcibly took over Christian property, for example, the Palestinian Authority did nothing to evict the Islamist squatters, even when judges sided with the Christians.
Palestinian terrorists in Bethlehem developed the tactics that Hamas later applied in Gaza. In 2002, for example, Palestinian terrorists seized the Church of the Nativity, barricading themselves in the holy site and stealing the priests' and nuns' food and water. They essentially sought to use the sensitive, civilian site as a shield to wage war. The Palestinian gunmen desecrated the church during the six-week siege. An Israeli sniper killed one, a most-wanted terrorist, after he began firing an automatic weapon from within the church. Terrorists then set fire to a neighboring building. The siege ended after six weeks with the evacuation of some terrorists to Gaza and the remainders to Europe.
Christians in Gaza fared even worse under Hamas. Just like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Hamas imposed its extremist interpretations on Christians. It forced women to veil, banned alcohol, and sought forcibly to convert children. While Islamist propagandists note that Islam, unlike Judaism, considers Jesus a prophet, they punish Christians who suggest Jesus to be the son of God who died for mankind's sins. In 2006, 5,000 Christians lived in Gaza. Within a decade, that number declined by 80%.
Put aside her whitewashing of terror. AOC and her fellow travelers lack basic understanding of history. Jews were the indigenous population of the territory Romans renamed Palestine. Jesus was born a Jew, his last supper was a Passover Seder, and he died a Jew. Therefore, when progressive pundit Cenk Uygur posts, "If Jesus returned to the place of his birth, could he survive the night? Or would he be just another Palestinian casualty?" he is half right. Should Jesus reappear today in Bethlehem, he likely would not survive the night because, as a Jew, he would be subject to Palestinian lynching.
If AOC truly understood Christianity, she would realize that Jesus would not stand for the rape of girls and women, or the beheading and burning of children. Jesus preached love and compassion, not hostage-taking and terror. She would pray for the release of hostages and the end to terror, not peace under Hamas's yoke. If AOC understood history, she would realize Israel is the nation of migrants and refugees. While Jews are indigenous and always lived in the territory, it was the slaughter of Jews in Europe and the mass expulsion of Jews in Arab lands that led to a population influx, and that many Palestinians migrated from Syria as Jews transformed the land.
Politics should never trump principle. Unfortunately, for AOC they do. Embrace of Hamas principles condemns Jews, Christians, and moderate Muslims to pay the price.
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captainimprobable · 6 months
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its like. on one side i had to listen to someone say "good riddance" when the news said gaza was being wiped out and i had to just sit there bc nobody will fucking listen to me and then on the other side i have famous people and FRIENDS telling me i deserve to die bc Im jewish and all jews are colonizers no matter where i look there is nobody advocating for gazans and jews. i feel like im going fucking insane. why can i not care about both??????? why is that such an insane thing to say????? I know ive been saying this for weeks but i literally genuinely feel like im going crazy bc everywhere i look i see humanity being chipped away. If I say "hey i think palestinians deserve the right to live and to live happily and peacefully" why is that such a dramatic statement? if i say "hey hamas literally had it in its charter that they want jews dead and they dont give a fuck about palestinians" why does that make me a bad person? I'm unlearning a lot. I grew up being told Israel was perfect and can do no wrong, and it took a long time for me to learn that that wasn't true. but i stand with innocent israeli civilians. I stand with the jews who are being murdered and kidnapped, NOT bc of a revolution, but bc hamas wants us dead. I stand with the three members of my family who have been in terror attacks and have lost friends. And yes! I stand with my friends and family in israel! That doesn't mean I support what Israel is doing, or that I support the Israeli government. that means im fucking human.
I just want this nightmare to end. I'm scared all the time, and I know this isn't about me but it's hard to distance myself from it when antisemitism has risen by such a huge percentage over the past 3 weeks. I don't think it makes me selfish to be scared. and im so fucking scared for my friends and family and i am so fucking scared for the palestinians who are in the dark with no communication bc can you fucking IMAGINE? I don't know what the answer is here. I just want it to stop.
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mariacallous · 3 months
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Down the road from where I live a friend came across a man tearing down pictures of Israeli hostages. You’ve probably seen the portraits by bus stops and railway stations. Activists print them off from sites highlighting the hostages’ plight and fly-post pictures of the men, women and children Hamas kidnapped.
As the hostages are civilians, my friend asked why would anyone want to destroy their pictures.
He was beaten up for his pains. Defending innocent Jewish civilians makes you an accomplice of Benjamin Netanyahu in London today.
And not just in London. Anti-Jewish hatred in the UK has exploded since Hamas attacked Israel – recorded incidents have doubled.  The violence my friend experienced is still rare, thankfully. But the fear of Islamist terrorism or just everyday thugs running riot is everywhere in the Jewish community, and to a lesser extent in wider society as well.
A drumbeat of stories builds the tension.
Belatedly and reluctantly, the Labour party disowned its Muslim candidate in the forthcoming Rochdale by-election. He had all the usual prejudices, and a few I had not heard about before.
He imagined that “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” were targeting pro-Palestinian politicians, and that the Israeli state had allowed Hamas to rape, shoot and burn alive 1200 of its people because it wanted a pretext to invade Gaza.
As I am writing this piece, there’s news of a (white) comedian, who describes himself as an “experimental fusionist” and an “absurdist laughter chef,” and is just as stupid as his description implies. In a scene redolent of medieval prejudice, he encouraged the audience at the Soho Theatre in central London to chant “get the fuck out” and “free Palestine” at a Jewish member of the audience.
Incidentally the Soho Theatre is on the site of the old West End Great Synagogue, built at a time when Jews were welcome in London
Before that Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, the Jewish chaplain of Leeds University, his wife and two kids were moved to a safe house on  police advice after receiving hundreds of death threats.
Online “activists” pointed out the rabbi had served in the Israeli Defence Force, and so presumably any number of violent threats were justified.
The justification, such as it is, would have carried more plausibility if incidents of hatred had not exploded as soon as the news of the Hamas massacres broke in October.  They were celebrations of anti-Jewish violence not a reaction to the violence of the Israeli armed forces.
If you doubt that there are reasons to be frightened, go to your nearest synagogue and see the guards. Or talk to the parents of Jewish children and hear them describe how Jewish schools tell pupils to discard uniforms that allow potential attackers to mark them out as targets.
All of this and much more is causing deep alarm in the Jewish community, and a dangerous reaction among right-wing Jewish pressure groups, who are getting the response to racism about as wrong as they possibly can.
Here’s how.
The Jewish right is caught up in the same paranoid ideology of the rest of the modern British right, and indeed of the Trumpian right in the United States. It sees the woke mind virus everywhere. It assumes that progressives have marched through the institutions and made them borderline antisemitic, if not all-out racist.
In the case of violence against Jews, the supposed triumph of wokedom means that ideologically compromised police officers will not protect Jews by standing up to far leftists and Islamists.
 The Campaign Against Antisemitism, has encouraged its allies in the Conservative government to introduce ever-greater restrictions on rights to protest. This week it was welcoming new punishments for demonstrators who desecrate war memorials (who could already be prosecuted under existing law) and who wear face coverings to conceal their identity.
I do not want to condemn the campaign out of hand. There’s no doubt the pro-Palestinian marches in London frighten Jewish people. Some  90% of British Jews say that they would avoid travelling to a city centre if a major anti-Israel demonstration was underway.
There is no doubt, too, that fear of violence is not just confined to Jews. It is everywhere, although we don’t like to talk about it.
People disappear in ​the UK for offending Islamists, and respectable society looks the other way. Before the rabbi at Leeds University, there was a religious studies teacher at a Yorkshire school. Three-years ago he showed his students a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. He still remains in hiding and is unlikely ever to return home.
The UK is nowhere near being the free country it pretends to be. I understand why so many are frightened. That said, you can still look at right-wing politicians and organisations and wonder where they are heading.
While praising Conservative ministers’ trifling changes to the law, which are little better than PR stunts, the Campaign Against Antisemitism denounces the police.
“For months now, we have been asking for tougher restrictions to be placed on these protests, which have made our urban centres no-go zones for Jews. While the police have failed the Jewish community and law-abiding Londoners, the Government, to its credit, is listening. These new laws will help address the mob mentality that we have observed in these protests. There is no justification for such scenes, and now, there will be no legal defence.”
Jewish leaders who work to protect the community told me on condition of anonymity that the attacks on the police make no sense. They consult with officers regularly, they say. The idea that the police are part of some woke conspiracy to ignore radical Islam and turn a blind eye to potential terrorism is ridiculous.
So it is, and it conceals a dangerous desire.
For if you think that conservatives are yearning to ban peaceful demonstrations, you are not wrong. Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman, his radical right home secretary last year, tried to force the police to do just that.
Braverman fell into anti-woke conspiracy theory and accused the police of taking a tougher approach to right-wing groups than to “pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour”.
The Met to its credit refused to buckle under the pressure. Officers told the politicians they could interfere with freedom of assembly only if there was a threat of serious disorder, and that the "very high threshold" has not been reached.
The right has not given up. Here is the Campaign Against Antisemitism again.
“The people of this country expect the lawlessness on our streets to be brought firmly under control, and with these changes there are now even fewer excuses for police inaction.”
The attack follows the Campaign’s previous denunciations of London’s liberal Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan (which I covered here). Khan has gone out of his way to defend London’s Jews, but is the centre of a far-right and at times a fascistic hate campaign from Donald Trump and others, simply because he is a Muslim.
Yearning for bans is hopeless from both a moral and practical point of view. Tactically, it is all wrong. I can think of nothing more likely to fuel conspiracy theories about Jewish power than the banning of demonstrations.
If they were turning into riots, it would be another matter, and they should be banned regardless of the conspiracy theories.
But they are not degenerating into riots, and in a free country, people should be free to protest. We do not want to be governed by the Western equivalent of Hamas, after all.
Equally if protestors are not engaged in violence or the incitement to violence, it is a waste of police time suppressing them: police time which – and forgive me if I am labouring the obvious – could be better spent countering authentic threats to Jews and everyone else.
For who on earth do right-wing Jewish groups think stand between them and Islamist terrorism? The Tory party? The comment desk of the Daily Telegraph? A professional loudmouth on GB News?
Or the police service they waste so much time and energy denigrating?
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perfectlyvalid49 · 7 months
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Sometimes I feel like this blog is more Judaism focused than I really want it to be. Like, I am Jewish, but that’s only one aspect of my personality. I’m also interested in politics and linguistics and nerdy pop culture stuff and a whole bunch of other things. And I want this blog to have space for all of that.
So when I spent a ton of time late last week fighting with an antisemite, I told myself that when I was done with him (or as it turns out, when he was done with me), I’d take a break from posting about Jewish issues for a bit. Just like, a week where I’m just reblogging stuff that makes me laugh or an interesting language fact or something like that. Y’know, happy stuff.
He blocked me Friday, and on Saturday, Hamas attacked. And I’ve got a big mouth, so I can’t not say anything. Maybe when this is all resolved I can post happy stuff, but for right now, I need a place to talk, even though I’m struggling with what to say.
I guess the first thing I should say is that I feel terrible about what’s happening. Because what’s happened so far is bad, and what will happen next is even worse. Israel will take its vengeance; innocent Palestinians will die. The friends and families of the victims on both sides will be radicalized and the violence will continue. I hate it and it’s stupid and I wish there was an easy way to stop it and I know that there isn’t.
And I want to say that I support the Palestinian people. The way that Israel treats the Palestinians in Gaza is inhumane – it shouldn’t be allowed! But Israel treats them that way because before they did, you couldn’t get on a bus in Israel without worrying about being blown up. That shouldn’t be allowed either! Everything is complicated. Both sides are full of people who just want to live in peace who are being screwed over by a minority who won’t be happy until the other side is gone. Both sides have valid points, both sides have done terrible things. Anyone who is telling you that it isn’t complicated is either woefully uneducated about the history of the conflict, thinks one side does not deserve fundamental human rights, or both.
And after saying all that, I guess that I should make it clear that I’m still a Zionist – I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a self-determined state, and I think that Israel is probably the best place for it (I did not say a good place, I just don’t think there’s a better one. The best of a bunch of bad options is still the best). Having said that I’m a Zionist, I still hate what Israel’s government is doing and has been doing. Netanyahu is a monster. You can disagree with a country’s government and still think it has a right to exisit.
If you think that all Zionists are evil (and you’re still reading this), then tell me a better solution. Where should Jews go to be safe from governmental persecution? Or should they be denied that? If so, why?
And that’s the other thing I want to talk about. Every Jew I know is watching this with feelings of grief and horror, and the response from the left seems to be some variation on, “Israeli civilians deserved this,” “go back to where you came from,” or “terrorism is OK, actually, as long as it’s against a colonizer state (but not the one I live in).” And it’s soul-crushing. It is possible to be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic, but it seems like right now people aren’t even trying. The only good Jew is a dead Jew, and now that there are a bunch of dead Jews, everyone is celebrating.
I keep thinking about this video that I watched at school when I was a kid about the conflict. It was probably the mid 90s and the video showed Arab and Israeli kids playing together with a voice over from an interview with one of their moms. And I remember her saying that the kids playing together was good because then they would be friends, and when they got older they wouldn’t want to fight each other because they would remember that they were friends. I know now that it was probably a propaganda video, but that’s still what I want. I want leadership for Gaza that isn’t a terrorist organization, I want leadership for Israel that isn’t a far right authoritarian nightmare, I want Palestinians to not be locked behind a wall, I want Israelis who don’t have drills for when the rockets come. I want everyone – EVERYONE – to be able to live a life in peace and I want two little boys with different backgrounds and religions that both include a history in Israel to be able to play in a field by a river and be friends.
And if you don’t want that? Fuck you.
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hadeantaiga · 2 months
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There is no justifying the continued slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
None of this is "self-defense".
The modern state of Israel was formed by forcing Palestinians out of their homes through force and death; the stolen land has been occupied ever since. Are Jews native to the area? Yes. That doesn't make the Nakba ethical. No indigenous population has a right to steal land from another indigenous population, that's not how this works. Immigration to the region? Fine. Using the military force of Europe to evict and kill thousands of Palestinians and steal their homes and land? That's wrong. And that wrong has NEVER been corrected; it has in fact been made worse as the government of Israel continues to steal more land.
It's not self-defense to retroactively re-label civilians as "combatants" after fights break out to claim the ratio of civilian deaths to combatant deaths actually isn't that bad. Combatants by international law have to distinguish themselves from civilians; you can't say "well they attacked us so now they're combatants". It's human nature to fight back when you're being carted around like cattle, when you've got a gun in your face, when you're starving and food is just a few feet away.
It's not self-defense to control all traffic in and out of Gaza, to control people's ability to even leave for medical treatment, to control what they can import and export, to restrict their access to safe water, and more.
It's not self-defense to "warn" you're going to bomb a neighborhood that last week you claimed would be safe, to constantly move the goal posts, to corral people into a smaller and smaller area through terror. It's not self-defense to bomb the city you promised would be spared.
It's not self-defense to claim it's ok to bomb ambulances and hospitals because Hamas "uses human shields" - you're not supposed to kill the human shields! They're still innocent people!
There are Jewish people living on stolen land, land they may not have personally stolen, land they consider home, in a region that historically was home. I don't know how to fix this in a way that doesn't cause a mirror of trauma to Jewish people now living there. Evicting everyone a second time is obviously not the right action.
But shooting at desperate, starving civilians is ALSO not the right action. The government of Israel is wrong.
(Setting this so no one can reblog it because I don't want antisemites on this post, this is not for you)
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Antisemitism is bad
Islamophobia is bad
Zionism is bad
Killing innocent people and taking hostages is bad
Blowing up civilian occupied places is bad
Genocide is bad
Hamas is bad
Israeli government is bad
Freeing hostages is good
Supporting Palestinian is good
Freeing Palestine is good
Hamas is NOT Palestine
Supporting Palestinians does not mean I support Hamas.
Wanting to free the hostages does not mean I support Israel.
For the love of god why do people not understand this? Why do people keep using gatchas and acting like you can only care about one thing?
Why does our government send billions to Israel but not to their own citizens?
Homelessness here is rampant. Towns are destroyed in fires. Indigenous people are freezing to death. POC communities are terrorized daily. Lgbtq people are losing rights. Women are losing rights. Working class people can barely afford to live by themselves.
But sure, send that much needed money to a country that is playing this war so carelessly.
Ukraine is still being invaded. There’s a genocide going on in Congo.
The only side that needs support are the civilians. They’re the ones suffering in this situation. Not just Palestinians and the Israeli hostages, but the working class people who live in countries that don’t support them.
People are fucking dying and all these governments see is statistics.
It is so frustrating how people in power lack basic empathy.
Every day I open social media or turn on the news I see suffering. I see videos of kids being injured, trapped, and grieving.
But Israel and the western world don’t see that. To them those people are just consequences of war. You’d think that after seeing their people slaughtered and kidnap they would want to prevent others from experiencing the same thing, right? Well they don’t care. They don’t give a fuck.
That’s the problem: politicians don’t give a fuck.
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cock-holliday · 7 months
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“Westerners’ opinions on this don’t matter, you are not part of this, you cannot fathom what living under bombing is like,” says fellow westerner who has been incessantly giving their opinion, who lives in a luxury apartment built on the remains of the MOVE bombing in a state that manufactures the weapons Israel uses to commit their atrocities, with a state and reps and universities and businesses who fund the atrocities, who is neighboring states where the police force is trained by the IDF in a partnership camp paid for by US tax dollars and then tries out these techniques on Americans, and whose facebook profile picture is from a gay Israeli cruise trip.
I’m not sure if you’re aware but Westerners’ interest in the conflict is how we are where we are now. The West’s relationship with Israel is symbiotic and they learn from one another’s brutality. Struggles for liberation are interconnected. Boycott-Divest-Sanctions didn’t spring up out of nowhere, it came from The US being responsible. From Americans funding genocide through our active fundraisers and through inaction. Palestinian Liberation movements and Black Liberation movements found deep solidarity decades and decades ago through similar government repression, through the ADL calling both groups terrorists and supporting apartheid twice, through the violent and horrific police and military tactics placed upon both.
“You don’t need to be involved” gets reserved for pro-Palestinian support as if apathy and “staying out of it” is not Israeli support. Inaction allows this. Apathy allows for a quiet genocide. Every conflict is “complicated” in that none exist in a vacuum and are always the culmination of hundreds and thousands of years if you want to go back that far. Every country is formed on stolen land. That didn’t make Ukraine assault “complicated” to people because the issue is happening right now, the specific injustice is happening now. If the Nakba is ancient history to the cause of conflict then sorry but so is the Shoah.
You cannot claim to support liberation movements in the US and then think support for them abroad is all for brownie points. You do not support land back and self-determination in the states if you then reject them abroad. You cannot believe in the right of Ukrainians to fight back and then see all Palestinian struggle as terrorism.
All Israeli deaths are being framed as civilian deaths whether they are soldiers or not. When your civilian population is mandatorily a solider, it’s easy to conflate the two. The targeting of military bases and killing of military leaders is “civilian deaths”, then the bombing of residential neighborhoods is a “strike on Hamas.” All Palestinian deaths are being framed as terrorist deaths if we even bother to count them. “40 beheaded babies” vs silence on 300 children. A bombed children’s hospital. Children burned to death by white phosphorus. A newspaper headline read “mutilated Israeli children” and showed a photo of injured Palestinian children.
It’s not about loss of life to people, it’s not ‘complexities’ in a struggle for freedom, it is the expectation to die in silence lest you make us feel bad for our complicity.
President Isaac Herzog’s words are atrocious, but unfortunately he is not alone in his sentiment that, “[Palestinians] could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d'etat.”
Fighting Israel is justification for your death, not fighting Hamas is justification for your death. There are no innocent Palestinians and there are no guilty Israelis. Vigils for just Israelis is “caring about human life” but any vigils or supprt for Palestinians whether it is coupled with support for Israelis or not is labeled as antisemitic and terroristic. If you oppose the atrocity you are a terrorist, if you take action to try to stop it you’re a terrorist, if you sit on your hands and pass judgement from “the other side” then you are simply a reasonable and wise voice in a tricky situation with no remedy but to suggest both uneven sides kiss and make up.
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daniel-nerd · 5 months
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this is Yuval Doron Kestelman.
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he was in a terror attack, where 2 palestinian terrorists(associated with hamas) drove into jerusalem and started shooting civilians. he shot the terrorists and saved the lives of innocent civilians. after he shot the terrorists, 2 IDF soldiers murdered him in cold blood. when they arrived to the scene he was on the ground, without his jacket to show he doesn’t have any explosives, without his gun to show he wasn’t armed, with his ID on the ground to show he was an israeli civilian, and with his arms in the air screaming in hebrew “don’t shoot”. the 2 IDF soldiers murdered him. after the first shot he was lying on the ground begging for his life, they shot him again. the right wing politicians and news outlets called them heroes. and in an interview with one of them you could see that all they wanted to do was to “mark an x”, they came with intent to murder. later when a video came out showing everything that happened the politicians deleted their tweets about the murder. and the right wing media outlet just talked about how IDF soldiers should kill terrorists on the spot.
this story gathered a lot of attention, especially from left wingers. but what if I tell you this tragic story about a brutal murder isn’t unique. in the west bank IDF soldiers and even occupying civilians are walking around armed to the teeth, and murdering palestinians for “terrorism” is a normal event. any palestinian at any age could be marked as a terrorist for any reason, and in the west bank this is a death sentence. the palestinian would forever remembered as a “terrorist” and the murder would be “justified”, even endorsed by the idf and the government. and if the palestinian civilians won’t be murdered on the spot, they would be arrested, and the police could hold them for indefinite amount of time under “secret evidence”. they would go to a military trial, under military law. and will receive a much greater sentence than an israeli that actually committed the crime they were arrested for.
the “prisoners” and “terrorists” being released for the hostages in gaza are mostly civilians who committed minor offenses. they’re not less of a hostage than the israeli hostages in gaza. and according to some sources they’re even in worse conditions than the israeli hostages.
free palestine isn’t just gaza. we need to free palestine in the west bank too.
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yasyassie · 6 months
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so this is a pretty serious topic but i have to say this with everything that's happening right now
if you support israel's government/ israel's ethnic cleansing of palestinians, please unfollow me right now
reminder that:
-you can be against hammas and their terrorism and still don't support israel. i am firmly against hammas and i grieve for the loss of the innocent israeli civilians. but hammas are terrorists and they do not represent palestinian people.
-israel has existed longer than hammas and has been comitting attrocities for decades and no one in the western world has ever lifted a finger or complained about it
-being against israel is not antisemitism (many jews are against it because israel doesn't represent judaism)
-irael's an occupied land that has been killing innocent palestinians for 75 years, this is not an equal playground nor is it a war, it's a genocide
-the western media desperately wants to be in "neutral" territory or just straight up support israel by justifying its war crimes. by being neutral, we are also part of the problem (just like it is wrong to be silent when you see someone bullying another person)
-some countries who are supposedly developped are straight up banning people from protesting against israel's apartheid/in support of palestinians, such as france and germany
-if you stood up for ukraine and welcomed ukrainian refugees, and you don't do the same for palestinians... i'm sorry to break it to you, but you're racist. ukrainian lives matter as much as palestinian ones
-so many people are dying and suffering: this is not a matter of ideology or economy, this whole conflict is a question of human rights
so please, if you can donate to the victims, please do so. our palestinian brothers and sisters need as much help as they can get.
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jayjuno · 7 months
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Hamas is a violent terrorist group; Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip- both are true
No decent person would support terrorism. Hamas is an evil terrorist group, and what they've done to Israeli civilians is pure evil.
However, it's also evil of the far-right Israeli government to take advantage of the situation to exact genocide against the Palestinian people, most of whom had nothing to do with the Hamas attacks. Why is the Israeli government purposely shooting at buildings housing civilian men, women, and children instead of ensuring their targets only include terrorists?
Look, I support Jewish people and Israeli people, but I do NOT support this shitty far-right government that's taken over Israel. I don't believe the Israeli government speaks for common Jewish people at all- they only care about rich Jewish people. Hamas doesn't speak for the Palestinian people either. Hamas also doesn't care about common or poor Palestinians.
Sad to say, but the Israeli government has treated the Palestinian people like garbage for decades- that's the truth. Since the 1990s, the Israeli government and soldiers have forced Palestinians to live in conditions that are equivalent to the Krakow ghetto and concentration camps of the holocaust from World War II.
Many Israeli soldiers who enforce check points and ID checks in the Gaza Strip and West bank essentially act like Nazi officers towards the Palestinians. They harass and intimidate Palestinians- they throw rocks at Palestine children, spit on them, curse them, and treat Palestinian neighborhoods like open garbage dumps, dumping their garbage onto the Palestinian people below, with no regard for whether their garbage hits a child. Which is very ironic indeed, when you consider that the ancestors of these Israeli soldiers were the ones being beaten by Nazi officers for not having ID cards.... oh nevermind...
And any billionaire who refuses to hire me for making these statements? That billionaire can take their slavery-derived money and shove it up their classist rich ass. I would be PROUD to be blacklisted by any shitty billionaire. Of course billionaires abuse their economic power to force everyone to agree with them about how the Israeli government is completely innocent in everything regarding Palestine. What's the point of being a billionaire if you can't publicly support freedom of speech while also trying to censor and punish freedom of speech?
Fuck billionaires and fuck their money! As if I want to be apart of their shitty rigged capitalist system anyway? Good riddance!
It was definitely wrong of the Hamas terrorists to attack Israel in a way that murdered civilian men, women, and children. The hostage situation is evil.
It's also evil that the Israeli government, the same government that has treated Palestinians horribly for decades, is using this situation as an excuse to exact genocide on the Palestinian people. What's being done by the Israeli government against the Gaza strip right now is just pure genocide. It's genocide.
You can't just blindly support ONLY Israel or ONLY Palestine- the truth is that both the Hamas controlled Palestinian government and the far-right controlled Israeli government are both complete shit, and they don't give two fucks about their own citizens right now.
Fuck the governments and fuck the rich billionaires who profit from war. Fuck their greedy capitalist war machine that's making money off this war this very moment.
No, my heart is with the innocent civilians caught in-between- the people of Palestine AND Israel.
Terrorists, billionaires, and corrupt governments can just fuck off.
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redshift-13 · 7 months
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Abed Salama with a photograph of his son Milad, al-Bireh, West Bank, March 2021
Heading Toward a Second Nakba
nybooks.com/articles/2023/10/19/heading-toward-a-second-nakba-a-day-in-the-life-of-abed-salama/
David Shulman
Nathan Thrall argues that the accident in which Abed Salama’s son died was a predictable, even inevitable, outcome of the Israeli occupation in its quotidian forms. On a stormy winter day in February 2012, a Palestinian bus carrying schoolchildren on an outing collided with an Israeli trailer truck on the notoriously dangerous Jaba‘ Road near the West Bank village of A-Ram, not far from Ramallah. The bus burst into flames; six young children and one teacher were killed and others were seriously injured. Among the dead was Milad, the five-year-old son of Abed Salama, from the town of Anata. Nathan Thrall has made the story of that accident and that family the thread that binds together A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, a penetrating, wide-ranging, heart-wrenching exploration of life in Palestine under Israeli occupation. I know of no other writing on Israel and Palestine that reaches this depth of perception and understanding.
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Critical moments were wasted at Israeli checkpoints, preventing emergency services from arriving at the scene.
No one wanted to kill those children along with one of their teachers. Israeli rescuers and soldiers who finally reached the accident site did their best to save the injured. But the central point of Thrall’s narrative is that this disaster, like today’s ongoing violence in the Palestinian territories in general, was a predictable, even inevitable, outcome of the occupation system in its quotidian forms. It is a regime of state terror whose raison d’être is the theft of Palestinian land and, whenever possible, the expulsion of its Palestinian owners. I have seen this system in operation over the course of the past twenty-odd years.
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One of the mysteries attendant on Israel’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian West Bank (and indirectly of Gaza) is that relatively few people know that reality for what it is. Mainstream Israelis by and large don’t want to know, though the West Bank is only a few miles from the big Israeli cities. Outside of Israel, an efficient smokescreen created by the Israeli government has largely hidden that reality from the world. Those who do know it well, from the inside, are Palestinians living under the occupation and human rights and peace activists, both Israeli and Palestinian, who are regularly present there.
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Brutal military occupation generates such casualties, just as it generates resistance on the part of the occupied. But the most telling change in the West Bank is the rapid proliferation of new settler “outposts” (ma’ahazim), as they are called, usually inhabited by young men and women imbued with a messianic ideology, burning racist hatred of Palestinians, and a proclivity for extreme violence. We activists encounter these settlers every week (some of us almost every day) in the territories. The outposts, theoretically illegal under Israeli law, have proved to be an effective mechanism for taking over large stretches of Palestinian land; the settlers and their representatives in the government have made no attempt to conceal this explicit goal. The army and the police invariably side with the settlers, sometimes by passive acquiescence in their attacks, sometimes by actively taking part in them. [emphasis mine]
Lately, settler violence has taken the form of large-scale predatory attacks on Palestinian villages—what I, in the light of my own family history, can only call pogroms. (My granduncle was murdered by Cossacks in Ukraine before World War I.) On the night of February 26 in the northern West Bank, hundreds of armed settlers descended on the village of Hawara after two settlers were shot dead that day by a Palestinian. Palestinian houses were burned to the ground, vehicles were torched, innocent civilians were attacked, and one Palestinian man—a gentle peace worker, as it happened—was shot to death. A similar outrage was perpetrated by Jewish settlers in the village of Turmus‘ayya on June 21. Such attacks, usually accompanied by machine-gun fire, are now common, though they may vary somewhat in scale. Palestinian villagers in Area C of the West Bank, where all the Jewish settlements and outposts are located, live in constant fear.
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The aim—openly espoused by government officials such as the minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich—is to pave the way for a second Nakba, or catastrophe, as the exodus of Palestinians from their lands in the course of the 1948 war is referred to in Arabic. If life for Palestinians in the territories becomes unbearable, they will, the settlers think, just go away—maybe to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or some other Arab country. This sick fantasy turns up regularly on the settler websites.
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More at the link.
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eretzyisrael · 10 months
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Rabbi Leo Dee: Ordinary Palestinians silently thank Allah for the Jenin operation
When Lucy, Maia and Rina were suddenly and brutally taken from this world during Pesach, I cried in pain. Not against every Arab, not against every Muslim, but against every terrorist.
I have Palestinian friends and acquaintances. That is the norm when you live in Efrat. Indeed it is the norm when you live in any location in Judea and Samaria (unaffectionately known as the “West Bank”).
Our local Rami Levi (read “Tesco”) is located in Area C and I select my tomatoes and cucumbers standing next to Palestinian men and women who live in Bethlehem and Hebron. Unsurprisingly, most of these people are just like you and me. Many of them work in construction in Jerusalem or Beit Shemesh and earn more than twice what a Palestinian Authority employee (even a doctor) would earn in their own territory. This is the majority.
And then there are terrorists. They are not like you and me. They were mostly brought up in UNRWA run “refugee” towns and trained in terrorist skills during summer camps and fed hatred through Palestinian Authority textbooks that glorify past murderers of innocent civilians. That UNRWA even considers them refugees after 75 years is a direct result of United Nations antisemitism. Nobody, today, considers the millions of descendants of those 700,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries in the 1940’s and 1950’s as refugees.
What most people are unaware of is how the “good” Palestinians hate the terrorists. They despise them. However, they live in fear, in a terror state, the Palestinian Authority (PA). And the PA is funded by world governments to rule over the ten cities in the region and much of the land in between. The citizens of those 10 cities would prefer to run themselves under the protection of the IDF, but the presence of the PLO (the heavily armed PA army) is ubiquitous and feared. They unanimously describe the murderers of my family as “inhuman” and “not believing in Allah” when they see me. But only in private. A public statement would likely lead to them, and their families, being shot at in the street. And such shootings occur every day. These “good” Palestinians are the silent victims of PA terror.
Jenin has become a centre for such terror and the IDF is wise and brave to enter and eliminate it. The “good” Palestinians silently thank Allah for the operation, but they have little hope as the international funding of this terror state, which has no human rights (according to Freedom House 2023 data) and grants no freedom of speech, religion or right to vote, goes on and on.
When will the world wake up and realise that funding failed terror states is a crime against humanity? It is a crime against the Israeli victims and survivors, such as my family, and so many more, and against my two million Palestinian neighbours who just want to buy their tomatoes and cucumbers and live with us in Shalom.
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ki-flor · 7 months
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Hi I just wanted to say I have no connection to either side of this war and it’s awful what is happening to both sides and judging by your posts you do have a personal connection to this (? Correct me if I’m wrong pls!) I’ll be honest and say I’ve filtered tags and phrases to do with everything bc quite honestly I don’t understand all the fine, complicated details and also I come to tumblr to chill and not constantly see all this pain but I understand how that isn’t as easy to do for others who are more connected with this. I’m absolutely all for free Palestine what they’ve endured is awful and of course anyone with one brain cell can understand there’s a difference between the innocent civilians and the actual terrorists/government making this worse. Same for Israel. There’s tons of innocent civilians who have done nothing wrong but be part of a generation born in Israel and again the Israeli government is not its innocent people. To me personally, I read Noah’s post as one of frustration that what is being lost here is the innocent lives being taken. He has family and friends there and it’s people of his faith who are being murdered - ofc he’s going to be upset and worried. I also personally didn’t read it as him calling all Palestinians terrorists.. he differentiates between the innocent and the not. To me he wants peace on both sides and probably would express that more clearly if given another opportunity. I do agree what he said could have been more clear and I hope he does express himself clearer in future. Like I said to me it sounded like he was mad that ppl were being so cruel over an innocent woman who lost her life (who he possibly knew). I do feel like perhaps he should’ve stayed more silent or just thought about things more before just posting stories constantly but in that respect I can’t say I blame him for being upset that his people are being killed. Some of what he’s said to me does come across a little… brainwashy(?) though.. like he’s young and impressionable and maybe his trip to israel to learn about his culture (which he’s allowed to do!) right before this all happened hasn’t helped just how pro-israel no matter what he comes across.
It’s actually so interesting to see both sides being discussed on here bc I have mutuals who are against Noah and those who are for him bc they themselves are Jewish and seeing all the anti-Semitic things that are being said to him… it just goes to show (to me anyway) how complicated and tricky this is. And as someone who isn’t connected to this personally at all will never truly understand.
Anyway if you read this far thank you for reading my ramblings! This was never intended to be a dig at you and if it’s come across that way I truly apologise, I thought you just seemed like someone who would be mature enough to express this thought to!
I honestly don't believe he has bad intentions but it is the impact that matters most. A couple of contradicting statements in what he said. I do think it was worded poorly. You cannot truly support Palestinians if you stand with their terrorists(Israel). The very statement of him saying "stand with Israel or stand with terrorism" is offensively stupid. Perhaps he doesn't believe that all Palestinians are terrorists but you know who might? The Israeli government. That retorhic has been used in American history before such as the aftermath of pearl harbor and post 9/11. What do those things have common? They both led to people being racist to Japanese people and Muslims. To the point where Japanese people were put into internment camps and all Muslims were viewed as terrorists. You think Israel is going to clear up that when they say terrorists they mean hamas or Palestinians in general? When they don't even allow them to return to the land that belongs to them. They don't see Palestinians as human. So yeah people will interpret it as him saying "all Palestinians are terrorists"
I can try and sympathize with his stance on Israel as it's such a close subject to him but there's a lack of care and urgency that he and many celebrities who have spoken in support of Israel show to Palestinians. I do think it's brainwash because there's propaganda coming from Israel that gets played all over news/media. You got people claiming anyone who supports free Palestine is Anti-Semitic which is not the case. You have people believing all Palestinians are in support of hamas. Everyone gets to say their versions of events but Palestinians are struggling to even get their stories out with the cut off of their electricity. They are the ones who have been suffering for years under oppression but you didn't see celebrities chiming in by the masses like now. It's scary how easy they will turn a blind eye to the crimes and treatment Palestinians have faced. It's scary because they support the oppressor since they see stories of innocent people dying but where is that same empathy for all the thousands of Palestinians who die? It's all very selective.
People want to play like there's a way to end this peacefully when the reality is Palestinians have tried doing that to no avail. It's dangerous to take the side of pascifism when you look at the power imbalance between Israel and Hamas. At the end of the day Palestinians with no help from anyone will still be under the occupation of Israeli forces and they will continue to be dehumanized and killed. This to me isn't tricky even without a personal connection. No one should be complicit of this treatment of any human and that's something to be concise about.
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