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autismserenity · 2 months

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Someone on Reddit made the mistake of saying, "Teach me how this conflict came about" where I could see it.

Let me teach you too.

The common perception is that Jews came out of nowhere, stole Palestinian homes and kicked Palestinians out of them, and then bombed them for 75 years, until they finally rebelled in the form of Hamas invading Israel and massacring 22 towns in one day.

The historical reality is that Jews have lived there continuously for at least 3500 years.

There are areas, like Meggido iirc, with archeological evidence of continuous habitation for 7,000 years, but Jewish culture as we recognize it today didn't develop until probably halfway through that.

Ethnic Jews are the indigenous people of this area.

Indigeneity means a group was originally there, before any colonization happened, and that it has retained a cultural connection to the land. History plus culture.

That's what Jews have: even when the diaspora became larger than the number of Jews in Israel, the yearning to return to that homeland was a daily part of Jewish prayer and ritual.

The Jewish community in Israel was crushed pretty violently by the Roman Empire in 135 CE, but it was still substantial, sometimes even the majority population there, for almost a thousand years.

The 600s CE brought the advent of Islam and the Arab Empire, expanding out from Saudi Arabia into Israel and beyond. It was largely a region where Jews were second-class citizens. But it was still WAY better than the way Christian Europe treated Jews.

From the 700s-900s, the area saw repeated civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes.

Then the Crusades came, with waves of Christians making "pilgrimages to the Holy Land" and trying to conquer it from Muslims and Jews, who they slaughtered and enslaved.

Israel became pretty well depopulated after all that. It was a very rough time to live there. (And for the curious, I'm calling it Israel because that's what it had been for centuries, until the Romans erased the name and the country.)

By the 1800s, the TOTAL population of what's now Israel and Palestine had varied from 150,000 - 275,000 for centuries. It was very rural, very sparsely populated, on top of being mostly desert.

In the 1880s, Jews started buying land and moving back to their indigenous homeland. As tends to happen, immigration brought new projects and opportunities, which led to more immigration - not only from Jews, but from the Arab world as well.

Unfortunately, there was an antisemitic minority spearheaded by Amin al-Husseini. Who was very well-connected, rich, and from a politically powerful family.

Al-Husseini had enthusiastically participated in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Then the Empire fell in World War One, and the League of Nations had to figure out what to do with its land.

Mostly, if an area was essentially operating as a country (e.g. Turkey), the League of Nations let it be one. In areas that weren't ready for self-rule, it appointed France or Britain to help them get there.

In recognition of the increased Jewish population in their traditional, indigenous homeland, it declared that that homeland would again become Israel.

As in, the region was casually called Palestine because that was the lay term for "the Holy Land." It had not been a country since Israel was stamped out; only a region of a series of different empires. And the Mandate For Palestine said it was establishing "a national home of the Jewish people" there, in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

Britain was appointed to help the Arab and Jewish communities there develop systems of self-government, and then to work together to govern the region overall.

At least, that was the plan.

Al-Husseini, who was deeply antisemitic, did not like this plan.

And, extra-unfortunately, the British response to al-Husseini inciting violent anti-Jewish riots was to put him in a leadership role over Arab Palestine.

They thought it would calm him down and perhaps satisfy him.

They were very wrong.

He went on to become a huge Hitler fanboy, and then a Nazi war criminal. He co-created the Muslim Brotherhood - which Hamas is part of - with fellow fascist fanboy Hassan al-Banna.

He got Nazi Party funding for armed Muslim Brotherhood militias to attack Jews and the Brits in the late 30s, convincing Britain to agree to limit Jewish immigration at the time when it was most desperately needed.

He started using the militias again in 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the mandated land into a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian one.

Al-Husseini wouldn't stand for a two-state solution. He was determined to tolerate no more than the subdued, small Jewish minority of second-class citizens that he remembered from his childhood.

As armed militias increasingly ran riot, the Arab middle and upper classes increasingly left. About 100,000 left the country before May 1948, when Britain was to pull out, leaving Israel and Palestine to declare their independence.

The surrounding nations didn't want war. They largely accepted the two-state solution.

But al-Husseini lobbied HARD. And by mobilizing the Muslim Brotherhood to provide "destabilizing mass demonstrations and a murderous campaign of intimidation," he got the Arab League nations to agree to invade, en masse, as soon as Britain left.

About 600,000 Arabs fled to those countries during the ensuing war.

Jews couldn't seek refuge there; in fact, most of those countries either exiled their Jews directly, confiscating their property first, or else made Jewish life unlivable and exploited them for underpaid or slave labor for years first.

By the time the smoke cleared and a peace treaty was signed, most of the Arab Palestinian community had fled; there was no Arab Palestinian leadership; many of the refugees' homes and businesses had left had been destroyed in the war; and Israel had been flooded with nearly a million refugees from the Arab League countries and the Holocaust - even more people than had fled the war.

That was the Nakba. The one that gets portrayed as "750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled!" in the hope that you'll assume they were expelled en masse, their beautiful intact homes all stolen.

Egypt had taken what's now the Gaza Strip in that war, and Jordan took what's now the West Bank - expelling or killing all the Jews in it first.

(Ironically, Jordan was originally supposed to be part of Israel. Britain, inexplicably, cut off what would have been 75% of its land to create Jordan.

Even more inexplicably, nobody ever talks about it. I've never seen anyone complain that Jordan was stolen from Palestinians. Possibly because Jordan is also the only country that gave Palestinian refugees full citizenship, and it's about half Palestinian now.

Israel is nearly 25% Arab Palestinians with full citizenship and equal rights, so it's not all that different -- but the fundamental difference of living in a country where the majority is Jewish, not Muslim, probably runs pretty deep.)

Anyway: that's why Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank, rather than being some contiguous chunk of land. Or being the land set aside by the U.N. in 1947.

Because Arab countries took that land in 1948, and treated them as essentially separate for 20 years.

Israel got them back, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in the next war: 1967, when Egypt committed an act of war by taking control of the waterways and barring Israel from them. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

Israel tried to give back the Gaza Strip at the same time. Egypt refused.

Palestine finally declared independence in 1988.

But Hamas formed at about the same time. Probably in response, in fact. Hamas is fundamentally opposed to peace negotiations with Israel.

Again: Hamas is part of a group founded by Nazis.

Hamas has its own charter. It explains that Jews are "the enemy," because they control the drug trade, have been behind every major war, control the media, control the United Nations, etc. Basic Nazi rhetoric.

It has gotten adept at masking that rhetoric for the West. But to friendlier audiences, its leaders have consistently said things like, "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels."

(Palestinians were outraged by this speech. Palestinians, by and large, absolutely loathe Hamas.

It's just that it's not the same to say that to locals, as it is to say it where major global powers who oppose this crap can hear you.)

Hamas has stated from the beginning that its mission is to violently destroy Israel and take over the land.

It has received $100M in military funding annually, from Iran, for several years. Because Iran has been building a network of fascist, antisemitic groups across the Middle East, in a blatant attempt to control more and more of it: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen.

Iran has been run by a very far-right, deeply antisemitic dictatorship for decades now, which pretty openly wants to take down both Israel and the U.S.

Last year, Iran increased Hamas's funding to $350M.

The "proof of concept" invasion of Israel that Hamas pulled off on October 7th more than justifies a much bigger investment.

Hamas has publicly stated its intention to attack "again and again and again," until Israel has been violently destroyed.

That is how this conflict came about.

A Nazi group seized power in Gaza in 2007 by violently kicking the Palestinian government out, and began running it as a dictatorship, using it to build money and power in preparations for exactly this.

And people find it shockingly easy to believe its own hype about being "the Palestinian resistance."

As well as its propaganda that Israel is not actually targeting Hamas: it's just using a literal Nazi invasion and massacre as an excuse to randomly commit genocide of the fraction of Palestine it physically left 20 years ago.

Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have been protesting HAMAS throughout the war.

#free palestine #free gaza from hamas #free everyone from hamas it's awful #we want to live movement #free gazans group #center the people directly affected #Ironically it's almost exclusively zionists who know about and support the actual activists in Palestine #because Zionism is a real Jewish term for self-determination not something you can redefine to demonize us #and the pro-hamas movement is inherently both antisemitic and anti-Palestinian #wall of words #jumblr #jewish history #palestinian history

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moorishflower · 2 months

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Hey I wanna be really clear about something because I do occasionally reblog stuff wrt Palestine and its current occupation, so if you don't have any interest in politics (because this IS politics, this whole situation is very much NOT about religion) feel free to skip over

But I want to make it absolutely clear that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing, and when I reblog things in support of Palestine I am not doing so because I think that Jews are evil. I'm studying Judaism. I'm trying to convert. I hope I'll be ready for that someday. So it is not Jews who've stolen land and killed locals and started a genocide. It is not even, to a certain extent, Israelis who've done this. The country of Israel, our modern understanding of it, was flawed from the beginning, built on colonized land that had been already occupied by the British Empire. It has since been taken over by a far-right extremist government who views the native tribes and people of Palestine as little more than animals, or worse than animals. And what's tragic is that this government is using Jews as their footsoldiers and their scapegoats and their pawns. Promising them a return to a homeland that has been gone for thousands of years. Promising peace and safety to a people who have been hurt and oppressed and murdered and driven out again and again. But you can't buy peace with blood. What Hamas did was horrific and is NOT to be celebrated. But what Israel is doing in response is worse.

Halacha tells us that we have the right to rodef, the right of the pursuer. The actual line is "You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor." In the Talmud, it's decided that "if someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill them first." It's the right to self-defense. What Israel is claiming is that Hamas is SUCH a threat that the deaths of more than 30,000 people, most of which are civilians, most of which are women and children, is justified under Talmudic law.

Right now, the estimate for Israeli casualties (including those killed at the Sukkot gathering) is around 1,139.

The estimate for Palestinian casualties is at least 30,000. Quite possibly more, as some 10,000 are missing. Professor Yagil Levy of the Tel Aviv University estimates that about 61% of that 30,000 is women, children, and the elderly (he places all men over the age of 18 in the "combatant" category and thus are not considered civilians, which is problematic in and of itself).

So where is the line drawn? The Talmud doesn't tell us. But I don't think that the tragic deaths of 1,139 people justifies the wanton and senseless murder of 18,000 women, children, and elderly.

What Israel is doing is horrifying, and it isn't to secure a Jewish homeland, and it isn't in the name of G-d, and it isn't for the continued existence of Jews. It is, plain and simple, an attempt to consolidate power. Netanyahu was (and still is) an extremely disliked Prime Minister. He has put himself into bed with whoever he thinks is most powerful and most likely to keep him in power, which is unfortunately a gaggle of right-wing extremists who are no different, fundamentally, from any other extremist, and who are using Judaism and Jews as a vehicle towards their own enrichment.

I guess what I'm saying here is that in a way, I feel sorry for the Israeli Jews who were told that Israel was the home they had always been promised, but were never told about the strings attached to it. And I wanted to make it absolutely clear that I will not hold with anyone who says that Jews, specifically, are to blame for Gaza, or any other antisemitic statements, because it is not a religious contention.

Oseh shalom bimromav hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu v'al kol yoshvei tevel. Palestine will be free and Jews will know peace again.

#palestine #israel #current events

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mochinomnoms · 16 days

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Your talk about museums and ancient artifacts being sold and bought by rich people as trophies made remember why I hate the Spanish conquerors with a fervent passion.

Motherfuckers they didn’t only stole from the Incas, but also tried so FUCKING HARD to extinguish their medicinal knowledge, cuisine, beliefs, break and destroy a lot of ancient infrastructure, be called “the discoverers of rich lands” or some shit like that.

Only to be looked back as the BIGGEST idiots in all history, in my opinion.

You know how much medicinal knowledge could’ve been useful around those times?! I’m so salty about it, yeah some of the medicines were passed down thankfully, like a type of penicillin made by a specific fermented potato (fermented in a VERY SPECIFIC WAY) that is consumed (which smells like shit btw ever smelled a rotten potato?!) as a purée for stomach ulcers and infections.

I can’t imagine all the advancements that would’ve been made if instead of conquering they preserved it. Some things maybe would’ve been faster.

And the recent diasomnia chapters just made me want blood again.

But the, idk if called it happy, thing is that they never reached Machu Picchu. The secret was kept through generations until they couldn’t anymore in the beginning of the last century.

Machu Picchu is still in danger due to sightseers. Unfortunately, tourists like to mess with the site, which erodes it due to the large amount of visitors on a daily basis. it's not officially in danger until the UNESCO says so though, but it's a reoccurring issue that tourists disrespect historical sites, especially now. Many of them are influencers or aspiring influencers trying to get that "unique" shot for their socials, but either don't realize or care about the disrespect that are giving to the historical site. This isn't even unique to ancient American sites, but also European, Asian, and Middle Eastern sites.

That's not even speaking about ancient Judaic (i think that's the word) religious sites being bombed in Palestine rn. The number of important historical sites being destroyed because of wars is innumerable and devastating.

But you're correct that there are a good deal of ancient knowledge that were lost due to colonization. Pre-Colombian Mesoamericans were incredibly advanced for their time and could compare with early 1900s society, maybe. They had advanced irrigation systems for agriculture, as well as aqueducts for their version of plumbing. They also had a fairly advanced mathematical system and astronomy knowledge. There's also some evidence that suggests some of the pre-Colombian peoples traveled the Atlantic and made contact with I believe Egypt specifically, though from what I'm aware it's all theoretical and not completely confirmed quite yet.

They also had a very complicated and fascinating religious systems in place for the various tribes, which is super cool to me. Personally think one of the coolest finds are the Incan terraces and irrigation for agriculture. And the other, which is a personal interest, is the fact that the Tenochtitlan (now modern day Mexico City) was nearly built on a lake! Its main city was built on a lake in Lake Texcoco, but they used chinampas, which are man-made islands, for mainly agriculture, but evidence shows that they may have built bigger ones for homes and shops! They were connected through four main bridges, which allowed for travel but also built around with the aqueducts in mind as well. Mexico City was built right on top of it, but lately it's been sinking further into the lake, most likely due to the weight of two cities and the growing population causing it to fall under pressure. Anyways I'll shut up now but super cool.

#mochi asks #professor mochi

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bonmonjour · 8 months

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Some Thoughts

“A few years ago, I was in DC in the summer. The week of July 4th, to be specific. On America’s Independence Day, I was on the wharf, a few miles south of the Mall. This was during Trump’s presidency, and this year, he had decided he wanted his own military parade. There, on the wharf, the most I saw of that was the planes. I saw Air Force One fly by, though I didn’t get a picture. At one point, a few fighter jets flew over and it was at that moment that my outlook changed completely. “The wharf on that day was not a war zone but hearing those jets and feeling how they hurt my ears, I pictured what hell those in the Middle East must live through. Imagine those planes and the bombers flying over your land, over your house, day after day for years. Imagine a star of metal, falling from the sky and lighting your neighborhood ablaze. Imagine the sound and sight of those buildings collapsing, the rubble falling. The things that are usually relegated to the newspaper once before moving on with their lives suddenly became real for a second. “That is the reality for the millions living in occupied zones all around the world. In Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and (most relevant to the past week) Palestine.”

I wrote that more than two years ago at this point (writing October 9th, 2023) and unfortunately it still holds true. It was the week that the IDF shot worshippers in Al Aqsa during Ramadan, and civilians chanted “may their names be erased.” I think the reason I never finished what I started writing last time is because I bit off more than I could chew. I was all over the place, frankly. With this, I hope to talk about what Palestine is like, what this conflict is about as far as I understand it, (de)colonization, settlers and violence, and perhaps end with some thoughts on propaganda and the international “community.”

This week, Gaza broke down its prison walls. War has broken out, Netanyahu has promised genocide on the captive population of Gaza, and the international press stands against Palestine. All too predictably. Many, incredibly many, official statements include the word “unprovoked” in their descriptions of Palestine’s rebellion. For some reason, perhaps even intentionally, no one’s memory can be bothered to be longer than that of a goldfish. The very state of Gaza’s existence today is horrid proof of Israel’s wrath–the open satisfaction of its anger and hatred against the people it dispossessed.

I don’t even have to go back to 1948 to find examples of cruelty, nor to 2014. Nor really to 2021, but I wrote this then and I’m re-using it. The second week of May 2021 began with the seizure of Sheikh Jarrah by Israeli settlers. Imagine if, one moment, you’re sitting in your house, and the next, your door’s been broken, and an Israeli family starts moving in. You try to argue, they harass you. Attack you. Force you to the streets. They break the shop windows and burn the buildings. These aren’t terrorists working for some shadowy organization, these are average everyday Israeli men and women who participate in this theft. On top of the seizures, Israel controls Palestine’s food, their mud that passes for water, their electricity, and their movement. ("I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly." —Yaov Gallant) They could be bombed at any hour of night or day without warning. Residents are frequently subject to the whim of Israeli military and police; they are always at risk of physical violence, lethal and sexual. The whole of Gaza has been blockaded since 2005. 44% of its population is under 15 years of age, with a further 21% being 15-24 years old. Half of Gaza’s population has lived their entire life–their entire development–inside this open-air slaughterhouse, never having been allowed to venture out.

What’s perhaps even worse is that the children trapped there are used to it. Two years ago, there was a video going around of a little girl jumping on her trampoline while in the left of the video, a building goes up in flames with thunder ascending from the earth. She kept on jumping. This literal hell, this world of fire in the sky and brimstone on earth, is the only one they’ve ever known. What happens to the ears when all one hears are bombs exploding, guns firing, jackboots marching, and children crying? What happens to the eyes when all one sees is stars of fire and brimstone on earth; structures falling and your impending death a furlong in front of you? What happens to the mouth and stomach when the food is dung and the water is mud? And to call that just another Thursday takes an inhuman, immorally inflicted amount of desensitization. Each day, nay, each hour, you hear of how so and so many kids were killed in such and such a bombing. Those kids had families, mother and father, brothers and sisters, they had dreams and hopes. They wanted to live, and they were snuffed out, and relegated to being a statistic in the morning paper that peoples’ eyes skip over. Even right now, Israel orders houses, apartments, schools, and hospitals be bombarded. White phosphorus has gotten involved.

These hellish conditions are part of the reason for why Palestinians even fight: freedom from that. This conflict that has raged for over 70 years now has never been about religion, as some might be inclined to believe. It is not a simple story of Jews contesting the Holy Land with Muslims. Yes, no one should ever forget the atrocities of the Holocaust committed against Jews, but Jews are not immune from fascism–no group of people is. From its very inception, Zionism was meant to be a colonialist project intended to drive out the mostly non-Jewish Palestinians, settle the land, and create a Jewish nation-state. When you have a nation (ein Volk) and a state (ein Reich), it shouldn’t come as a surprise when eventually someone decides to complete the quote. On the other hand, Palestine is not all Muslims. There are plenty of Palestinians of other religions, most notable for European Christendom, Christians. If this were strictly a religious war, a crusade for the Holy Land, why would European Christians, many of whom are anti-semites (let’s face it), side against Christians in the Holy Land? Just as Spanish colonialism was never about which god the Aztecs should worship, the conflict in Palestine was never about which of Abraham’s children should get exclusive right to live there. I have not seen many liberals come at it from the religion angle, but for the few that do, they always side with Israel because to them Islam is a barbaric backward religion that murders queer people and rapes women, and so why should they support that. Almost always, they end up being ridiculously racist, and the one I had the misfortune of seeing was arguing with a Muslim woman.

Israel is a settler-colonialist state founded on the dispossession of Indigenous people. As such, the only way forward for Palestine is decolonization. Eve Tuck and K.W. Yang’s 2012 paper, “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” gives the definition of settler-colonialism, what it entails in terms of relations, and its incommensurability with other social justice movements.

Settler colonialism operates through internal/external colonial modes simultaneously because there is no spatial separation between the metropole and the colony. For example, in the United States, many Indigenous peoples have been forcibly removed from their homelands onto reservations [mirroring the removal of Palestinians from their homes into Gaza or the West Bank], indentured, and abducted into state custody, signaling the form of colonization as simultaneously internal… and external… with a frontier… The horizons of the settler colonial nation-state are total and require a mode of total appropriation of Indigenous life and land, rather than the selective expropriation of profit-producing fragments (5). Land is what is most valuable, contested, required. This is both because the settlers make Indigenous land their new home and source of capital, and also because the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence. This violence is not temporally contained in the arrival of the settler but is reasserted each day of occupation. This is why Patrick Wolfe (1999) emphasizes that settler colonialism is a structure and not an event (5). In order for the settlers to make a place their home, they must destroy and disappear the Indigenous peoples that live there… For the settlers, Indigenous peoples are in the way and, in the destruction of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous communities, and over time and through law and policy, Indigenous peoples’ claims to land under settler regimes, land is recast as property and as a resource. Indigenous peoples must be erased, must be made into ghosts (6).

Basically, what these passages illustrate is that due to Israel’s very nature as settler-colonialist, apartheid ends up being the only situation. Israel lays claim over the whole land, but as long as a pocket of Palestine exists, it exists as a colony within Israel’s contiguous claim. Thus, Palestinians are turned into colonial subjects, subject to different law than that of the metropole. To make this relatable to Americans, many of the indictments against George III are the unfair application of the legal system between Britain itself and the colonies across the Atlantic. In the region, if an Israeli and an Arab commit the same crime, they are subject to different laws in different legal systems: the Israeli to civil court, and the Arab to military court.

Furthermore, it’s not just the internal colonialism of Arabs that Israel is interested in, such as “segregation, divestment, surveillance, and criminalization.” No, Israel needs Palestinian land as well, for lebensraum and for capital. The violence of this (recent, remember Sheikh Jarrah) settlement is reasserted every day that the settlers remain settled, and the Indigenous people remain dispossessed. The need for land as lebensraum also necessitates the total elimination of Indigenous peoples from the land “because the presence of Indigenous peoples–who make a priori claims to land and ways of being–is a constant reminder that the settler colonialist project is incomplete” (Tuck and Yang 9). That is, the very existence of Palestinians is a daily reminder to the Zionists that Zionism is incomplete. Thus, the only way to complete Zionism, to complete the project of a “Jewish homeland,” is for Palestinians to be made into ghosts.

They go on to say the following about decolonization:

In this set of settler colonial relations, colonial subjects who are displaced by external colonialism, as well as racialized and minoritized by internal colonialism, still occupy and settle stolen Indigenous land. Settlers are diverse, not just of white European descent [or European Jewish, in this case], and include people of color, even from other colonial contexts. This tightly wound set of conditions and racialized, globalized relations exponentially complicates what is meant by decolonization, and by solidarity, against settler colonial forces… Decolonization in a settler context is fraught because empire, settlement, and internal colony have no spatial separation (7). Though the details are not fixed or agreed upon, in our view, decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of land simultaneous to the recognition of how land and relations to land have always already been differently understood and enacted; that is, all of the land, and not just symbolically. This is precisely why decolonization is necessarily unsettling, especially across lines of solidarity. “Decolonization never takes place unnoticed” (Fanon, 1963, p. 36). Settler colonialism and its decolonization implicates and unsettles everyone (7).

What they mean here is that real geopolitics is complicated. There is no one demographic that is completely the victim or completely the perpetrator. In the US, there have been many, many people who came here fleeing from hard times in their own countries or were brought over to face a hard time in this country. It doesn’t matter what non-Indigenous group it is (the Africans who were stolen to be slaves, and their descendants; the Irish, Italians, Swedes, Germans, Poles; immigrants from China, Japan, India; refugees from Central America and the Middle East), they are still settled on stolen Indigenous land. They are still settlers. And so, it doesn’t really matter who lives in Israel, how they got there, or why they came, because ultimately, they settled there on stolen Palestinian land and thereby continue the everyday settler-colonialist violence against Palestinians.

Tuck and Yang further bring up the complication of immigration. Basically, immigrants must abide by pre-existing laws; settlers upend pre-existing laws. As an immigrant in Canada, I do not establish my own laws, I have to abide by Canadian law. The settlers who came here hundreds of years ago did not abide by pre-existing laws of the Indigenous peoples. And even in me having to abide by Canadian law, I am upending the pre-existing Indigenous laws. Israeli settlers in Palestine do not follow the pre-existing laws of the Palestinians, they bring their own law with them. Immigrants who come to live in Israel have to follow the Israeli settlers’ laws (and be complicit in the upending of laws and ways of being that went before.)

I think this is one of the reasons why decolonization is such a fraught issue, incommensurable with many other social justice movements. To me, decolonization is a non-negotiable that every colonized people deserve. My own great-grandfather, who I knew for about 6 years, was probably one of the worst people I’ve known: he yelled at me, he was mean to my grandma, he was apparently a physically abusive father. Despite all his flaws that I would never defend, he was born and grew up under British colonialism. Even he deserved to have Britain’s knee off his neck. I’ve seen quite a few posts I can bring up here.

Many people, usually liberals, are offended at the mere suggestion of supporting Palestine because apparently Palestinians (just in general, I guess. Twitter: where nuance goes to die) are racist, they’re misogynists, they have a barbaric religion, they hate queer people, and on and on and on. I frankly don’t give a single shit. I don’t care if they were even the rudest, meanest, ugliest people on the planet interpersonally. For the sake of argument, even if every Palestinian was a barbaric racist, sexist, and queerphobe, they would still not “deserve” Israeli colonialism. Being colonized is not some punishment doled out by the colonizers for some flaw of character. J.K. Rowling is a horrible, wretched woman responsible not only for crimes against humanity (the Harry Potter books /j), but also for spreading her vile transphobia all across Britain and the rest of the world. Even on her, I would not wish rape. Because it’s not some punishment for flaw of character. It is easy enough to fight for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to fight for the miserable and corrupt.

On the other hand, I’ve also seen some people defending Israelis (is that the right phrase?) by pointing to anecdotes about how nice the Israelis they know are. I’m sure they’re sweet, kind people who say nice things to you, and bring you gifts and knick-knacks and so forth. They’re still settlers on Palestinian land. Not to compare everything to the Nazis, but I’m sure many, many German citizens who moved to SS-occupied Poland as part of the Race and Resettlement Bureau’s initiative were good and fine citizens if you knew them. They probably greeted you friendly, threw parties, gave gifts, and so forth. And yet, they were complicit in the actions of the Reich. My own grandma is one of the nicest people I know. Frankly, she spoils me whenever I visit. She’s nice to all her grandchildren, she gives us all gifts and money, she’s well respected in her community. She still thinks “Hitler wasn’t that bad” (real quote) and supports Modi’s BJP. Even the nicest people can be complicit in horrible violence, and even the most wretched can be victims of that violence. Personality and attitude mean absolutely nothing.

One thing that all this discourse around settlers seems to take for granted is that the situation in Anglo countries today is at all anything like Israel/Palestine today. The people who throw out strawmen about “if the Native Americans started decolonizing, should they gun you down too?” and the people who say “Yes” both seem to hold to that. The reality is that in the Anglo countries, most of the settlement was done hundreds of years ago. All the Native land has already been divided up and settled by the White men, the freed slaves, the European migrants looking to get their free acres. The Homestead Act and Dominion Lands Act were passed more than 150 years ago. For settlers and recent immigrants who buy land today, they buy it from another settler/immigrant, and so on. No, the situation in Israel/Palestine is much more akin to the first European settlers that came to the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries. There is a reason Opechancanough and his men killed 347 people in Jamestown. Maybe it wasn’t justified, but they did have reasons. Maybe another example is the German settlers in SS-occupied Poland. Their very presence, very settlement, in Germany’s eastern occupations was predicated on the resettlement of the Poles that were there before elsewhere.

And let’s be honest, it’s not like the average Israeli citizen is the paragon of morality. Israeli civilians chanted from the Book of Judges “may their names be erased” when Al Aqsa mosque was thought to be on fire during Ramadan. Civilian children signed missiles meant for Lebanon. Ordinary civilians are largely the ones seizing Palestinians’ homes. It was civilians treating the massacre of Gaza as “the best reality show in town.” It’s Israeli civilian settlers calling for lynchings in occupied Jerusalem. I could sit here, safe in Canada, saying Palestine should’ve done this or that, but I am not the victim of Israel’s daily violence. I will not make grand-standing moral judgments on how the victims of colonialist abuse should respond to their abusers. I could debate whether an Algerian child wanting to cut a Frenchman into pieces was morally right, but I can’t deny that there were very real and valid psychological conditions for the child wanting that.

Someone also brought up the notion of “sins of the father” and I think that’s very interesting to think about. In general, I say it’s not very leftist to blame children for their parents. Children are not their parents’ property, nor are they responsible for something done before they were even born. But as I’ve mentioned, settler colonialism is a structure. It doesn’t matter whether you personally went out and killed a Native and stole his land, you live on stolen Native land nevertheless. You materially benefit from your ancestors’ settlement and perpetuate settler-colonialist violence. Without any notion of “sins of the father,” projects like reparations or LANDBACK do not make any sense. After all, who am I to give this land back to the Musqueam, I didn’t take it. I think perhaps a comparison to other structures like patriarchy or white-ness might be apt here. Even though any given man might never have committed violence against a woman to explicitly maintain patriarchy, nevertheless he benefits from the structure of patriarchy. I did not come up with laws or social norms treating women as lesser, but still I inherit them and am responsible (at least in part) for what happens to them: whether they are perpetuated or abolished. A white person living today never invented the concept of race, played no part in coming up with concepts of racial supremacy or polygenism, but still they materially and psychologically benefit from being white in a world where white people are still at the top at the expense of others. However, despite the complicated web of relations involved in settler-colonialism, the fact of the matter is that no one chooses to be born a white man, but many a white men have chosen to be settlers. Or in this case, nobody chooses to be born Jewish, but many Jews have chosen to settle.

I keep coming back to this quote from Gerrard Winstanley, a proto-communist writing during the time of land enclosures in England:

The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land. (A Declaration, p. 2)

Notice that he does not say, “till you, bloody thief, be rooted out of the land.” No, he says, “the power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword” and “that sins of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children… till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.” The power of settler-colonialism is what needs to be rooted out, not necessarily the people.

Palestine’s only main way out is violent rebellion because no peaceful supplication will ever be satisfying to Israel or its friends. Israel doesn’t want a subjugated Palestine; it wants an extinct Palestine. And also, a note on terminology, under Israeli law, every resident of Palestine is a combatant. Every bit of violence in the name of resistance Palestinians do can be labeled as the action of combatants. Palestinians are often called “terrorists,” and Palestinian resistance “terrorism.” The word itself means nothing. Groups like ISIS, the Taliban, Hezbollah, etc. can all be called terrorists. As can the US government. And so can the protestors fighting against Cop City or against pipelines. Thus, the usage of “terrorism” gives a very easy way for anti-Palestinian people to portray their resistance-violence as akin to ISIS-violence. These takes often come from those who think Hamas is Palestine or statements like “What did you think decolonization was going to look like?” are blanket excuses for war crimes.

All that said, rape and the indiscriminate killing of children is morally reprehensible and should be condemned equally. I say “equally” because Israel massacres Palestinian children everyday, and commits sexual violence against Palestinian men and women, boys and girls. And yet, there is never any international outrage at these daily occurrences. After all, Palestinians are not human, right, why should we care? I don’t know if the video of the woman in the back of the truck is real. If it is, then obviously Hamas’ actions should be condemned. Hamas is not a paragon of virtue either: they’re a right-wing anti-communist Islamic fundamentalist organization that openly wants to kill Jews. They should not be praised for who they are. But still, they are the enemy Israel created for itself. Even today, they threatened to air the killing of civilian hostages.

However, funnily enough, that woman is the only incident I’ve heard brought up against Palestinian rebellion. Every day Israeli men rape Palestinian women, and I don’t see the outrage online. But when those ‘barbaric’ Palestinians might have done it, suddenly the whole timeline is equating “support for Palestine” as “support for rape and beheading and etc.” This, even though many Palestinians say the evidence is lacking. I do think a part of this selective outrage is the racism involved. Palestinians fighting against their oppressors are “terrorists;” Ukrainians fighting against theirs are brave warriors. Israeli war crimes are downplayed; Palestinian groups’ war crimes are blown up to “those brown savages are coming for our women”-levels of racist. The number of posts I've seen along the lines of “Palestinians are sand-dwelling rape monkeys” is so incredibly disheartening. In short: war crimes are bad; Hamas and Israel both doing war crimes is bad; resorting to racist caricature to criticize Palestinian groups is also bad. The unfortunate reality is that pretty much every armed force has partaken in sexual violence against women and children. This does not change the validity of the cause they fight for. Sexual violence is not legitimized by anti-colonialist causes, nor does it delegitimize the causes.

I’ll end this by just mentioning how none of the violence that Israel does ever matters to those outside. Israel can commit flagrant war crimes–collective punishment, executions, rape, white phosphorus–and receive no backlash from the leadership or media in its ally countries. Israel knows that it can do this with total impunity. It can steal homes and massacre children on camera, have that video footage published by major outlets and still expect no punishment. Not even a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to. It’s that same gall, that same flagrant arrogance that allowed them to literally bomb and collapse a building that housed the offices for the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, and others back in 2021. It truly speaks to the effectiveness of their propaganda and the sickness of their ideology that other press outlets will voluntarily cuck themselves by defending Israel in attacking their fellow journalists. The amount of brain worms it takes to look at reality, refuse to accept it because it doesn’t fit your preconceptions, invent a fictional narrative, and then accuse the victims of being the real aggressors is truly staggering. Israel will constantly play up their “right to self-defense” so that people will sympathize with them, and they will accuse anyone critical of them of antisemitism. No matter what Israel does, the reaction will always be “Israel has a right to defend itself – full stop,” without an ounce of support for Palestine’s right to not be wiped off the face of the earth.

#own post #palestine

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qqweebird · 7 months

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something about rightwingers and lots of centrists always makes them choose the weirdest fucking ideologies to side with in “conflicts” like this. they never care abt the preservation of human life or ending suffering, only about supporting whichever “side” that is already convenient for them.

they all immediately took advantage of the ukraine situation to let their beef w russians jump out. very few actually cared about ukrainians. hatred for russian civilians, immigrants in other countries, and boycotts of russian-owned businesses; which, yes, exports from russia obv benefit the government, but its… not a SUPPORT of the Russian State to buy fucking vodka. more reasonable people (like, my fairly centrist mother) were able to identify that the government & military were the problem and not the people, but it was still pretty rampant to be incredibly hateful of russia as a whole.

with palestine it was an immediate hostility towards middle eastern people, and anyone that is pinned as “arab” or “muslim,” and fervent support for the US satellite state. NOW i see 100s of people saying shit like “hate the governments, not the people 🥺” “who made the first attack… we can never know… history is just so complicated” “israel has a right to exist too!!”. very few people care to boycott companies that are SPECIFICALLY funding israel. US politicians (and im sure other countries are dealing w this too) are ACTIVELY calling for the extermination of palestinians.

and i saw a lot of people pointing this out while ukraine was the hot topic too!! that countries like the US only care about slaughtered innocents when its advantageous to them! that if ukrainians were brown and it wasn’t russia or china attacking them or if there was some oil field we would gain access to under their graves, the US wouldn’t give a shit about them.

like, obviously not all israelis hate palestinians and those who don’t are only in an unfortunate situation, but that doesnt change the fact that their “country” has specifically displaced the native people from their land and is performing a genocide. and it doesnt change the fact that many israelis DO believe themselves to be the rightful inhabitants of that land! like im sorry but if you are willingly partaking in colonization you are part of the violence and you deserve to be criticized and pushed back as much as ur government does.

you shouldnt hate israelis as a whole but way way more of them are an accessory to this violence just by virtue of BEING THERE willingly than russians are complicit in the ukraine war by just living in russia yk? and yet right wingers decided that russian civilians were villains, and that israeli colonizers are victims ??

#im not a perfect speaker on this of course this is just. my observations and thoughts.#& afaik hamas isnt even a federal militia so u cant even say ‘both governments are at fault’ if you DO think hamas is a problem #meanwhile iirc the ukraine gov’t is not as perfect of a victim as some would have u believe #but i cant remember where i saw that claim so i cant fully back that up #and to clarify i dont think that would make russia invading ukraine any less of a problem #or that the human rights violations were any less atrocious #just that its you know. a different fucking dynamic. like i said #ANYWAY. i dont think this will spread to those kinds of circles but dont use this post as an opportunity to be antisemitic you will be shot #birdsong #palestine

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forever-nainai · 4 months

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Why is Russia trying to usurp Ukraine wrong but China wanting Taiwan returned okay and how does this relate to the Israel/Pakistan war:

A country whether recognized by the UN or not is still a country, and that country’s sovereignty should be respected. This respect is what allows us to stay civilized. If one country breaches another country’s borders with the intent to usurp, this is not okay. For thousands of years, rulers have continually breached this civility seeking to expand their territories.

Once countries were able to travel the seas, this disrespect traversed the globe, with the worst offender being Britain. By the late 1800s people were starting to recognize that colonialism is bad and colonized countries started slowly being returned to the indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, there are still too many that are under the colonists rule.

Indigenous Ukrainians once held their own society, but through a few centuries, Russia became just the last of a line of several colonizers to usurp the lands. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukrainians for the first time in centuries, were finally able to establish their own sovereign country. They were never Russian, they should have always been autonomous. Therefore, what Russia is trying to do in usurping Ukraine again is a breach of the border sovereignty and ergo a true war between nations. Russia has no legitimate claim and should be stopped.

Taiwan on the other hand is a different case from Ukraine. The indigenous peoples were colonized by the Chinese Qing kingdom with Dutch assistance centuries back. The Qing were then overthrown by a new ruler and became the Republic of China. There was a brief period when the ROC ceded Taiwan to Japan during the time Japan had started trying to conquer other areas in Asia, but with Japans loss after WWII, Taiwan became part of China again. Then the Chinese civil war happened with the Chinese Communist party (Mao who later renamed them the People’s Republic of China) wining against the ROC. The leaders of the ROC fled south to Taiwan and with the help of the United States was able to keep the POC from taking back control of the area. The US did this because the ROC wanted to become a democracy. The United States had been keeping China from reclaiming their land and this is why it’s not okay. The UN still considers Taiwan as part of China, but the U.S. has blocked any attempt to reunite the two.

In the Russia/Ukraine case you have one country trying to usurp sovereignty from another. In the China/Taiwan case you have one country trying reclaim their rightful land, but being blocked by a third party. The whole Taiwan issue is the result of a western third party sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong.

The Israel/Palestine war has elements of both the above situations.

Israel is like Russia and Palestine is like Ukraine. You have two sovereign nations at war because Israel has for all intents and purposes declared war on the Palestinian people. The Palestinians are the indigenous peoples of the area and their land was taken by the allies after WWII to create and cede that land to Israel. It’s in this sense that the situation also has elements of the China/Taiwan situation. You have a third party colonizer sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong and usurping the sovereignty of Palestine. Unlike in the China/Taiwan situation where the UN still recognizes China’s sovereignty, they don’t recognize Palestine’s sovereignty as a country— only Israel, the colonizer. Because this is between two nations, it is a war, and because other countries (US & others) are militarily helping Israel, it’s technically a world war. The Russia/Ukraine is also a world war because Russia has involved surrounding countries like Belarus.

The U.S. needs to stop acting like some ruler of the world thinking the rules don’t apply to them.

So many current events beginnings can be traced back decades, even centuries which makes it easy to forget so we only focus on the current situation. But these pieces of the puzzle are important to remember to make better decisions.

#russia #ukraine #china #taiwan #united states #international politics #sovereignty #state sovereignty #war crimes #wars

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awed-frog · 3 years

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What I find scary as fuck is how unwaveringly anti two state solution the loudest pro Palestine voices on the internet are. What do they think is going to happen to Israeli Jews under Palestinian rule? Do they think it's going to be any different than the rampant antisemitism faced by Jews in any other Middle Eastern country (which led to such a great influx of Middle Eastern Jewish refugees to Israel in the 1950s in the first place)? Or do they (rightfully) consider Israel an apartheid state but not Islamic states’ treatment of dhimmi under Sharia law?

I have much empathy for the Palestinian plight and I used to think antisemitism was only ever brought up as an excuse to deflect any criticism of Israel. But the more things escalate in Palestine, the more comfortable people become in being openly antisemitic and the more it dawns on me what Israelis mean when they say it's essential for a Jewish state to exist. Yes, Israel should absolutely be held accountable for its war crimes against Palestinians. But seeing liberals talk about Holocaust victims fleeing Europe, people who were open to negotiations with Arabs and a two state solution so they could make a home in the land of their ancestors as “colonizers” is just heartless

I have a lot of issues with current (American) left-wing activism, but its enthusiastic adoption of Noble Savage tropes and unquestioning parroting of radical Islamist points are probably at the top of my list. And while many people are just young, a lot of others should really know better.

As for the current situation, look - personally I don’t see the whole ‘colonizer’ mindset as useful at all. I think that, realistically, every nation state in the world got where it is by appropriating someone else’s land and massacring or assimilating minority communities. That’s how things work. And before nation states there were kingdoms, and before that villages and tribes and groups of wandering half-apes, and this is a thing that always happens: sooner or later, you’re going to want or need more land. Maybe yours got barren, or submerged by a flood, or invaded by someone else. Maybe your community grew too big. Or maybe you have a visionary or an asshole chief who’s all like, ‘If we had more pastures then we’d have a godzillion horses and no one would ever go hungry again’ - in a way, the why doesn’t even matter. The realpolitik here is that these things happen and have happened a lot over the last three centuries or so, which means the number one item on our list as democratic governments (term used loosely and optimistically) is always the same: making sure people are fed and making sure they know their voice counts so they don’t start to question why the country exists at all.

(It may sound cynical, but we often lose sight of the fact there’s a difference between ‘moral discussion about moral implications of moral choices’ and ‘practical decision we can bring to a negotiation table with enemies and opponents’. Sometimes you’re right but you need to compromise anyway, and that’s something else that’s never going to change.)

In the end, this is what 99.9% of people care about: if your kids are happy, if you have a house and a job, and if you feel yourself represented and part of the country you live in (and know you can peacefully demand meaningful change if you need to), you don’t give that many fucks about everything else. That’s why, on the whole, most separatist movements go nowhere: because while many people agree on a very basic human principle (“Things would be much better if everyone was like me and thought like me”), they’re not that keen to trade their stability and security for economic chaos or even civil war...for what? All nation states, in the end, are fictional creations, and deep down everyone understands it: when you’re leading a decently happy life, the colour of your passport doesn’t really matter all that much.

So the issue here is not even who’s right and who’s wrong. Of course it’s important to recognize even old crimes and tragedies: it’s definitely one of the steps towards healing and peace and (let’s be optimistic again) the reason why international courts exist, but the immediate priority is always keeping people safe. I mean if you had to make right all the border insanity that went down even in the 20th century, you wouldn’t have the time or resources to do anything else, and, more importantly, you would only create more hostility and conflict in the process. The issue is, a) let’s try not to make more mess in the future and mostly b) let’s make sure everyone is happy and feels heard where he is. If Israel had a system like, idk, Switzerland, with tons of shared wealth and a Parliament full of different voices and minority people getting federal subsidies to preserve their unique cultures and traditions, there would be zero violence. Like of course some people would still resent Israel is there in the first place, and others would resent Israel existing not as a Jewish state but as a nation with sizable Muslim and Christian minorities or whatever else, but it wouldn’t come to civil war because everyone would have too much to lose.

Unfortunately, in many cases it’s just too late to undo the initial damage. The best we can work towards is ensuring people are safe, can build good lives and are politically represented. The main problem we have now in many regions around the world - like the Middle East - is that lots of powerful people have zero interest not only in righting historical wrongs but also in ensuring literal human beings are not killed in the streets. And as long as their power is made stronger by chaos, hatred and violence, we’re not going to get anywhere.

#ask #news #potentially unpopular opinion

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randomlut · 3 years

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I agree with you on palestine! The reason I don't do much on social media about it is because of similar reasons as you talked and also I don't think instagram and twittee have any space for nuance! I support palestine should not become "Israel should not exist it wasn't there before 1940s" because Israel was made as reparations for centuries of mistreatment and killing and discrimination of jews, also there are many many countries that formed recently. The leadership of Israel is crazy and violent and shouldn't be in power, but that does not mean we should say Israel is not a country".

But unfortunately many pro palestine people are just talking like Israel should not exist seriously. And they are not looking for reasonable discussion so I feel for me it us better to donate privately to help Palestinians than fight online.

Also a lot of people seem to take criticism of hamas as anti palestine stance as if you cannot be pro palestine and at the same timw recognize that some of the powerful people there are also bad. That still means Palestinians deserve better than having a neighbor who keeps killing them and a powerful organization for leadership that has its own fucked up agenda.

From what i see, this issue is complicated mostly for westerner, because of the shared history of colonialism. The reason why Israel exist in the first place is, as you said, caused as retribution and it feels like the world have to pay them. I can understand this point of view. (due to my limitation of writing essay in english, it will sound (or read) as very simplified)

But you also have to consider another point of view, from the others who have history of being colonized and enslaved also for centuries in their own land, they just can’t relate with that reason. it’s not complicated for them. Why should Palestine be the one who pay the price? Especially when west countries are who mostly at fault. This way of thinking is not perfect, but i hope you consider this pov.

If we’re talking about how Jerusalem is the holy land for Jews, well it also a holy land for Muslim and Christian. beside Islam is the 2nd largest religion in Israel, and Palestinian jew exist. if we’re talking about mistreatment, Islam also have history of mistreatment so i refuse to discuss this under religion persective. it’s all about faith and who am i to argue about that?

However, we can argue about history until the end of time and it will lead to nowhere. like, no matter how hard we try, racism will always happen from both side, the opressed can always be the opressor under difference circumtances but what happen right now is already totally out of line. I don’t need to mention the casualities in this answer because i bet you already know

This is not me saying country like Israel shouldn’t exist. As you said, the concept of Israel itself is valid, but right now, it’s chaos. The opressed are totally becoming the oppresor. I don’t know what concrete solution that can bring total satisfaction for both sides but right now, Palestine people are literally dying with Israel goverment keep destroying bulding like hospital, media office, covid lab ect. It’s no longer self defence and if you’re still pro israel goverment somehow, well, f*ck you then (sorry).

I feel that social media is really important right now because now the world can really see what happened in Palestine and voice support. Western media is no longer becoming the centre of information, and finally support for Palestine can be something major thus giving more power for country like mine, to force negotiation. I said, keep posting on social media, but only when you feel like you can make difference, no matter how small it is. Even when you can inform 1 person who personally have no idea. If your country already support palestine, then you're good.

I really believe you can voice support for Palestine without being anti semite, this is why i prefer Tumblr. Because of more diverse opinion, i can take some step back and revaluate my opinion. I don’t have to agree, i already Pro Palestine since 2014, but i can start trying to understand.

#pro palestine #anti israel goverment #due to my limitation in english and language in general this may looks off #very simplified with very messy grammar #sorry about that but i just need to write whatever it is on my chest #editing come later i guess

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loudlytransparenttrash · 7 years

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This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 5

A University of Chicago student organization was pressured into changing the topic for an upcoming debate because some considered it to be “colonialism apologia.” The debate, hosted by the elite school’s “Political Union,” was initially set to ask if “the British Empire was a force for good,” but student outcry merely over the title of the debate eventually resulted in the name-change. “What is wrong with you people?” one student wrote on the group’s Facebook page, with another questioning why “you motherfuckers needed plenty of critical messages to see that ‘was the British Empire a force for good’ is deeply problematic? How many white people are in this RSO?” The organization changed the question of the debate to whether Britain should be forced to “pay reparations to its former colonies,” and apologizing for the way it had initially framed the conversation.

A black University of Pennsylvania student recently declared that his semester at the Ivy League institution was “traumatic” because he had three white professors who refused to acknowledge their white privilege. “Last semester was honestly the worst semester I’ve had at Penn so far. And all because of one thing: the white professors I’ve had at Penn. It appears that the term ‘privilege’ does not apply to them. Nor do they care to learn what it is.” Student James Fisher wrote. "My professor wanted to protect the voices of the white students who benefit from black oppression, the oppression unfortunately continued. It even led to me mentally breaking down in the classroom. With different emotions going through my head from not only this class but from the Trump election, I did not want to step foot into another white space until I made sure that my mental health was restored. The truth is, you as a single person cannot make up for the horrific things that white people have done to us throughout human history. But that does not mean that you do not have the power to stop yourself from oppressing the students that you teach every day.

American University is blocking whites from a cafe designated as a ‘sanctuary’ for nonwhites. As reported in my earlier posts, after black student activists issued a demand list to American University, the administration caved in and agreed to obey. One of the demands was a ban on white students using a new student lounge for the rest of the spring semester. The activists said they would take over the space as their own “sanctuary” and also demanded that all nonwhite students received extensions. They also asked incoming President Sylvia Burwell, to show how she will enforce “no tolerance for anyone creating a hostile environment for students of color” and punish such people.

A shocking new video shows a Western Washington University student screaming for at least two-minutes straight after seeing a Donald Trump sign on campus. The unknown student reacted to a street preacher’s pro-Trump sign by spiraling into a bizarre frenzy, at some points even splattering paint on the ground. Whether it was an attempt at an artistic protest or not, the fact remains: the bitch is bonkers.

The University of California, Irvine’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter once again disrupted and shut down a pro-Israel event, shouting “fuck you” at attendees. The SJP overtook a Students Supporting Israel event featuring Israeli veterans who are touring college campuses to share their firsthand experiences from on the ground. “You people are colonizers or occupiers and you should not be allowed on this fucking campus” they screamed and called Israelis “genocidal.” This is the same group that shut down a film-screening hosted by a Jewish student group on campus last year and as reported earlier, they have also been drinking cups of saltwater to show their solidarity with Palestine terrorists currently being detained in Israel. Nobody ever dares to question the vicious antisemitism inflicted by these students on campuses across the U.S and no one bats an eye when they refuse to condemn Hamas, because they are being funded by this terrorist organization who are hellbent on wiping out every last Jew. No one cares because they’re Muslim and saying anything would be Islamophobia.

A University of Hawaii professor recently claimed that universities should “stop hiring white cis men” until “the problem goes away.” Mathematics professor Piper Harron never gets around to specifying which "problem" would be solved by culling cis white males from academia, but insists that "real solutions require women of color and trans women." Piper Harron suggests, members of the “white cis” demographic should, “as a first step,” resign from their “hiring committee, their curriculum committee, and make sure they’re replaced by a woman of color or trans person.” “Having white cis women run the world is no kind of solution either,” she declares, pointing to the fact 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump. “Stop hiring white cis men (except as needed to get/retain people who are not white cis men) until the problem goes away,” she instructs university officials, adding accusatorially that “if you think this is a bad or un-serious idea, your sexism/racism/transphobia is showing.”

Black professors congratulate graduates who heckled Ed. Secretary Betsy DeVos at commencement. Over 200 black professors have signed a “love letter” to the Bethune-Cookman University graduates who booed DeVos during her commencement speech at the school last week. As mentioned in the last post, one professor alleged DeVos is representative of “white power.” The letter reads: “The world watched you protest the speaker you never should have had. We cheered as we saw so many of you refuse to acquiesce in the face of threats. Your actions fit within a long tradition of Black people fighting back against those who attack our very lives with their anti-Black policies and anglo-normative practices.”

At least DeVos got to talk even though she was still booed and heckled. Texas Southern University withdrew an invitation to Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas to address its graduating students. The university disinvited Cornyn because it wanted students to remember their commencement “positively for years to come,” and that couldn’t happen if a white conservative politician was their speaker. The petition to have Cornyn banned from talking cites his vote in favor of requiring photo ID in federal elections and against continuing federal funding for sanctuary cities who refuse to carry out the law against illegal immigrants. Oddly, it also cites Cornyn’s 2006 vote for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, at a time when same-sex marriage was far more popular with whites than blacks. Then-Sen. Barack Obama opposed same-sex marriage in 2006 as well, and didn’t officially change his position for another six years but hey, only white people can do bad things.

Minority students at the University of Michigan have expressed feeling intimidated by the interior wood paneling found throughout the historic Michigan Union building. Anna Wibbelman, former president of an organization that voices student concerns about university development, stated that “minority students felt marginalized by quiet, imposing masculine paneling” found throughout the 100-year-old building that is set to undergo a massive, $85.2 million renovation project.

A student group at the University of Washington held a teach-in Tuesday to promulgate the notion that America’s “food system is built on racism.” “It is a fact that today inmates, predominantly black Americans, harvest a lot of the food that we eat for less than $.50/hr,” the group explains. Let me get this straight, they want their rapists, pedophiles, wife beaters and murderers inside of prison, but once they’re there, they also want them to be paid and treated under the same conditions as law abiding citizens and if we don’t, it’s racism?

A Bethel University student issued an apology for wearing a Chicago Blackhawks sweatshirt to class after he was told the clothing was “offensive and hurtful.” The controversy unfolded during a class called “Social Perspectives, Human Worth and Social Action,” which delves into themes of culture, power and oppression in America, according to its online description. Student Cody Albrecht, who is from Chicago, came to the class wearing his home team’s apparel, then offered to turn it inside out “after becoming aware of the unease in his classroom because of his sweatshirt.” A week after he wore the sports apparel and after a “reconciliation” with the head of the Social Work department, his teacher and the whole class, Albrecht issued a formal apology.

Black students at the University of California, Los Angeles are demanding $40 million and their own “safe spaces” on campus as compensation for racially insensitive incidents. “Black students at UCLA are consistently made the targets of racist attacks by fellow students, faculty, and administration,” the Afrikan Student Union (ASU) begins. The first item on the list calls for “a physical location on campus to house the Afrikan Student Union Projects,” which would include “meeting/gathering/safe spaces” and be staffed by a director and an office manager who would be responsible for distributing funds allocated to the ASU. In addition, the ASU ultimatum demands a $40 million “endowment” to fund “a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African-American students, faculty, and staff at our university,” adding that the endowment should also provide financial aid to “dismissed black students.” The list goes on to ask that UCLA “deliver an anti-discrimination policy that assuages discriminatory and offensive behavior,” specifically “culturally insensitive” behavior, in conjunction with implementing mandatory “Cultural Awareness training” for all incoming students, faculty and staff members, and campus police officers. Finally, the ASU is insisting that UCLA provide “guaranteed housing for black students for 4 years, including on- and off-campus housing,” arguing that securing housing is especially difficult for black students due to factors such as “low socio-economic status and difficulties remaining financially stable amidst the rising living costs in Westwood.”

#college

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