#and if criticism of israel openly committing war crimes and genocide feels to you like antisemitism

[bogunicorn]

i'm not a world politics expert by any means but it kinda feels like if you know that hamas' violence against civilians is unacceptable and horrific and needs to be stopped, it should be a quick mental jump from that to admitting that israel "fighting back" by doing worse to palestinian civilians is also unacceptable and horrific and needs to be stopped.

genocide is always wrong, violence against civilians is always wrong. but doing this "israel is fighting back against hamas, that's why it's okay that they're cracking down on gaza" song and dance is a disgusting reaction. if you can understand that american imperialism is wrong and often nurtures the very terrorists the US was supposedly there to stop by visiting horrors upon the civilians of the countries it invades and radicalizing them, then you also fundamentally understand why israel is responsible for hamas.

no reblogs and shit on this one, i'm not opening the floor for debate on whether or not it's proportional "retribution" to commit genocide, you can just block me. i have no delusions that this will meaningfully help anyone or anything, i just won't be considered a "safe" person for zionists.

#bog post #i don't really ~do~ international politics on my social media #not bc i don't have strong feelings about it #but because i'm not sufficiently educated and don't have a relevant perspective on a lot of it #not to the extent that i think my contributions to the conversation online are useful #but it feels important at this point to invite zionists and israel sympathizers to please fuck off #and if criticism of israel openly committing war crimes and genocide feels to you like antisemitism #1) no it's not; 2) ask yourself if justifying genocide is something you really want to be doing in any circumstance #'but bog what about the related rise of antisemitism in other countries in direct response to this situation?' good question! #that's also fucked up and wrong #but just like how you can be anti-gov't in the US and be hypercritical of far right christianity's impact on bigotry and violence in americ #you can also be hypercritical of israel without being antisemitic #hope that helps

[kieransometimesthinks]

Fuck it, I’m feeling spicy enough to stop vague posting and actually complain about something.

Legal disclaimer before I continue because I know some of y’all won’t listen to a single word I say before hearing this:

Genocide is bad. We’re on the same page here. I also don’t think Israel should be doing what it’s currently doing and I am also mad about it.

But whenever I complain about virtue signaling reactionaries forgetting that nuance exists, I am specifically talking about shit like everyone calling the Green brothers Zionists.

Unless I’m missing something, the entire argument for them being Zionists is that they A) made a factually dubious video attempting to explain the Gaza situation 15 years ago and B) haven’t really made videos about it since.

And from the bottom of my heart, y’all need to touch grass if that’s the entirety of the “evidence” for them supporting genocide. Because the context really fucking matters here.

They’ve publicly said that they don’t want to make vlogbrothers videos attempting to explain global conflicts. They’ve also publicly expressed that they don’t think they ever should have ever even attempted to do that in the first place. Because they’ve also publicly said that they aren’t experts and really shouldn’t be platformed as if they are experts whenever it comes to very heated global conflicts. And this exact situation is why they made the decision about a decade ago to bow out and leave things to people better equipped to not turn this into an even bigger shit show.

They’ve made so many videos talking about how influencers both knowingly and unknowingly contribute to misinformation and majorly affect the world around them for better or worse. They’ve made so many videos talking about how influence and power create ripples in ways that are difficult to predict and how that often creates problems. Is it really so hard to understand why they might not want to make an updated video on Gaza?

They drew their line in the sand a decade ago, why are you so surprised that they won’t cross it? They have a guiding principle of staying in their lane and they’ve decided that this is pretty solidly out of it.

And it’s not like I’m just putting words into their mouths. John has actually put out an official statement on his thoughts:

You’re allowed to disagree with their decision. You’re allowed to disagree with how they use their platform. But for fucks sake, actually criticize their goddamn ideas instead of choosing the most brain dead option of “they made a video 15 years ago and won’t do the virtue signal I’ve been harassing them to do!”

If you’ve ever been more than a casual viewer of vlogbrothers then you should know that they absolutely do not support genocide. I don’t think it’s asking too much for you to assume good intentions from people who have been pretty openly delivering on all their claims for decades now.

Harassing postpartum mothers of chronically ill babies off TikTok because they don’t talk about Palestine enough or don’t talk about it in the way you want them to doesn’t actually do anything to make the world a better place. (This isn’t a hypothetical example by the way, it’s something that literally happened.) Changing your profile picture to “raise awareness” won’t actually accomplish anything either. Your senator is old and doesn’t know how to use the internet. But you want to know what does make the world a better place?

Treating other human beings with actual empathy and understanding that only children view the world in black and white.

Prior to reading John Green’s statement on Palestine for the first time today, I had no clue that Hamas had committed the single largest Jewish extermination event since the holocaust. And while I still don’t think it warrants committing genocide and literal war crimes in response, it did make me realize just how much more complicated and messy the world is.

So maybe instead of being a dick online to prove to our friends how woke we are, we should try to remember that the people actually living through the consequences of this conflict (both Israeli and Palestinian) are terrified, in pain, and utterly powerless to stop the war machine grinding them into paste every day. And maybe we don’t have to comment on things we don’t fully understand.