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Два изгоя: Путин вымаливает помощь у Ирана. "Сверхдержава" без дронов (Two outcasts: Putin is begging for help from Iran. "Superpower" without drones)
Newsader
P.S. The leader of the Kremlin’s gang of war criminals is trying to build a coalition of anti-democratic regimes to fight the West, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is just one important battle out of several that is taking place between the "Free world" and the dictatorships...
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zvaigzdelasas · 2 months
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South Africa’s genocide case has put the spotlight on a deeper fault line in global geopolitics. Beyond the courtroom drama, experts say divisions over the war in Gaza symbolize a widening gap between Israel and its traditional Western allies, notably the United States and Europe, and a group of nations known as the Global South — countries located primarily in the southern hemisphere, often characterized by lower income levels and developing economies.
Reactions from the Global North to the ICJ case have been mixed. While some nations have maintained a cautious diplomatic stance, others, particularly Israel’s staunchest allies in the West, have criticized South Africa’s move.
The US has stood by Israel through the war by continuing to ship arms to it, opposing a ceasefire, and vetoing many UN Security Council resolutions that aimed to bring a halt to the fighting. The Biden administration has rubbished the claim that Israel is committing genocide as “meritless,” while the UK has refused to back South Africa.[...]
As a nation whose history is rooted in overcoming apartheid, South Africa’s move carries symbolic weight that has resonated with other nations in the developing world, many of whom have faced the burden of oppression and colonialism from Western powers.
Nelson Mandela, the face of the anti-apartheid movement, was a staunch supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader Yasser Arafat, saying in 1990: “We align ourselves with the PLO because, akin to our struggle, they advocate for the right of self-determination.”
Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that while South Africa’s case is a continuation of its long-standing pro-Palestinian sympathies, the countries that have rallied behind it show deeper frustrations by the Global South.
There is “a clear geopolitical context in which many countries from the Global South have been increasingly critical over what they see as a lack of Western pressure on Israel to prevent such a large-scale loss of life in Gaza and its double standards when it comes to international law,” Lovatt told CNN.
Much of the non-Western world opposes the war in Gaza; China has joined the 22-member Arab League in calling for a ceasefire, while several Latin American nations have expelled Israeli diplomats in protest, and several Asian and African countries have joined Muslim and Arab nations in backing South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ.
For many in the developing world, the ICJ case has become a focal point for questioning the moral authority of the West and what is seen as the hypocrisy of the world’s most powerful nations and their unwillingness to hold Israel to account. [...]
Israel sided with the West against Soviet-backed Arab regimes during the Cold War, and Western countries largely view it “as a fellow member of the liberal democratic club,” he added.[...]
“But the strong support of Western governments is increasingly at odds with the attitudes of Western publics which continue to shift away from Israel,” Lovatt said.
Israel has framed the war in Gaza as a clash of civilizations where it is acting as the guardian of Western values that it says are facing an existential threat.
“This war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told MSNBC in December. “It’s a war that is intended – really, truly – to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization.”
So far, no Western countries have supported South Africa’s case against Israel.
Among Western states, Germany has been one of the most vocal supporters of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. The German government has said it “expressly rejects” allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that it plans to intervene as a third party on its behalf at the ICJ.
An opinion poll by German broadcaster ZDF this week however found that 61% of Germans do not consider Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip as justified in light of the civilian casualties. Only 25% voiced support for Israel’s offensive.
But it is in Germany’s former colonial territory, Namibia, that it has attracted the fiercest criticism.
The Namibian President Hage Geingob in a statement on Saturday chided Berlin’s decision to reject the ICJ case, accusing it of committing “the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions.” The statement added that the German government had not yet fully atoned for the killings.
Bangladesh, where up to three million people were killed during the country’s war of independence from Pakistan in the 1970s, has gone a step further to file a declaration of intervention in the ICJ case to back South Africa’s claims, according to the Dhaka Tribune.
A declaration of intervention allows a state that is not party to the proceedings to present its observations to the court.
“With Germany siding with Israel, and Bangladesh and Namibia backing South Africa at the ICJ, the geopolitical divide between the Global South and the West appears to be deepening,” Lovatt said.
Traditionally, the West has wielded significant influence in international affairs, but South Africa’s move signals a growing assertiveness among Global South nations that threatens the status quo, says Adekoya.
“One clear pattern emerging is that the old Western-dominated order is increasingly being challenged, a situation likely to only further intensify as the West loses its once unassailably dominant economic position,” Adekoya said.
19 Jan 24
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jewish-sideblog · 5 months
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Clearly, y'all don't care about Jews, and the fact that Hamas is violently antisemitic doesn't seem matter to any of you. So let me go with a new approach, of equal truth and value. Hamas is violently anti-Palestinian.
This past week, Hamas attacked evacuation routes and prevented Gazan citizens from fleeing an active warzone. [1]
They did that because they routinely use Gazan civilians as human shields. Hamas intentionally builds military targets close to schools, hospitals, and mosques, putting soft targets in the way of both incoming and outgoing fire. Hamas encourages Gazan civilians and children to stand on the roofs of buildings they know the IDF is targeting. [2]
Hamas has refused to allow elections in Gaza since 2006. Not just Palestinian National Authority elections, mind you. No open elections for any office have been held in seventeen years. Palestinian rights to free elections and self-determination have been denied by Hamas. [3] (And good luck to anyone who tries to blame that on Israel, because elections were held by the PNA in the West Bank in 2012, 2017, 2021 and 2022. It's Hamas's intention alone to purge democracy.)
Hamas's track record on human rights is appalling. Palestinian prisoners in Gaza face unfair trials and death sentences after being tortured by police. Palestinian women are prevented from accessing the legal systems to escape domestic abuse situations. Political dissidents in Hamas, even ones who merely support the other half of the Palestinian government, have been summarily executed. [4] [5]
Peaceful organizers in Palestine protested Hamas's massive tax hikes in 2019. Hamas security forces responded by assaulting demonstrators, tracking them down, raiding their homes, and detaining them. And, as previously mentioned, prisoners in Gaza are not treated well by Hamas. [6]
Edit Nov.5, 10:30 PM: I forgot to add arguably the most important thing-- Hamas manipulates the humanitarian aid they receive away from helping Gazans and toward killing Jews. 5% of Hamas's budget actually gets used for humanitarian aid, while 55% goes to military use. Construction equipment intended to rebuild Gaza's crumbling infrastructure is used to build a complex series of underground tunnels. Those tunnels in turn are used to smuggle Iranian military equipment into the country. They were also used for human trafficking in the October 7th attacks. [7]
If you actually want Palestinians to be free, you can't just replace Israel with Hamas. But it's not like they're the only option for supporting Palestinian liberation. While Fatah doesn't have an immaculate historical track record, it now operates as a leftist, democratic socialist, secular Palestinian government that fights for a two-state solution. Similarly, Arab-Israeli political parties like the Hadash-Ta'al coalition support leftist, anti-Zionist, and two-state solutions from within the Israeli parliament.
You can and should support Palestinian liberation movements that abuse neither Jewish nor Arab human rights and dignities. Plenty of them exist out there. But if y'all continue to throw your weight behind an antisemitic and anti-democratic terrorist regime, Palestinians and Jews will both take note of exactly where you stand.
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tikkunolamresistance · 2 months
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Zionism has taught Jews that we are ontologically different from the rest of humanity and collective community. Instilled within us that our only claim to safety, the only true way we can be undoubtedly safe, was through the existence of a quasi-Religious, ethno-nationalist state strictly dictated by the Zionist project. That the self-determination of Jews can only, exclusively, be achieved through the establishment of this colony of forced-assimilation. The equation of Zionism equals Judaism, no matter the disastrous consequences of which, has raised millions of Jewish people around the world.
And trust, it has not only been by the hands of Jewish Zionism. For Christian Zionism plays a major, glaring role in this indoctrination. With there being more Christian Zionists than there are Jews in the world (with much of the Republican and Democratic parties being Christian Zionists) the ideology of The Rapture, second coming of Jesus, with establishment of Jerusalem as the World’s new Capital following; Jews and Palestinians are just canon-fodder; pawns to summon Jesus. We implore that you do further reading on this matter and it’s instrumental role in Zionist ideology.
And one can only wonder, one can only assume, that has this not since opened an irrefutable Pandora’s Box of a new kind of capitalist nationalism onto the global Jewish community? To appoint a group as above another is a complexity of supremacy that we’ve seen through history. If we look at Imperialist history, we see what ideology has forced its way through epochs to excuse brutal expansionist policy.
What’s worst, and what’s most enraging, is that Shoah has been weaponised not only from the Holocaust industry— the billions made from displaying Jewish generational trauma and the cinematic brutalisation of our people— to ensure the West can constantly remind us that their role in the war was for Jewish liberation, and certainly not due to fearing Nazi imperial domination as a threat to Western imperial interests… but to merit the Israeli States’ “right to self determination” and “self-defence” against inevitable Native Palestinian uprising.
Zionism is a right-wing, ethnonationalist idology that has been used to control and influence Jewish communities for decades, to justify imperialist expansion. It’s an insult, a disgrace, to Jewish history, identity and peoplehood.
Anti-Zionism is the radical rejection and desire to dismantle the very systems that harm not only us, Jews, but our brothers and sisters in this fight against capitalist regime. We seek unity, liberation, equity, justice. We seek love where there has been unprecedented hatred. We seek grace where there has been insolence. Anti-Zionism is integral in the fight for true global liberation.
There is pain upon the Holy Land, Palestine, and we must admit that we can do something about it.
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incessantscreech2000 · 5 months
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Image transcriptions below:
Legendary South African Jewish Freedom Fighters
And Their Condemnation of Israel
Many people don't know that several of Nelson Mandela's closest and earliest comrades and co-conspirators were South African Jews.
These Jewish comrades and their work was pivotal to the defeat of South African apartheid, giving them a unique perspective on the state of Israel.
Joe Slovo (1926-1995) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. In 1942, at age 16, Slovo volunteered to travel to Europe to fight the Nazis. Upon return, he studied alongside Nelson Mandela. He eventually was a founding member of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary arm of the African National Congress.
Slovo was exiled to Mozambique by the apartheid government. Whilst there, his wife, legendary Jewish anti-apartheid activist Ruth First, was assassinated by a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid regime.
Working from abroad for the fall of apartheid, he eventually returned and became a Minister in Mandela's government. Throughout his life he remained a staunch critic of Israel.
"Ironically enough, the horrors of the Holocaust became the rationalization for the preparation by Zionists of acts of genocide against the indigenous people of Palestine. Those of us who, in the years that were to follow, raised our voices against the violent apartheid of the Israeli state were vilified by the Zionist press."
- Joe Slovo
—-
Denis Goldberg (1933-2020) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. He spent 22 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, for his political activity alongside Mandela.
He was finally freed when his daughter, who lived in Israel, lobbied the Israeli government, which was closely allied to the apartheid regime, to release him. Due to his staunch opposition to Zionism, he refused to join her in Israel.
"The violence of the [South African] apartheid regime was nothing in comparison with the utter brutality of Israel's occupation of Palestine."
- Denis Goldberg
Beata Lipman (1928-2016) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. She drafted the original Freedom Charter in her own handwriting in 1952, which became the basis for the constitution of free South Africa after the fall of apartheid.
Lipman was a proud Jewish critic of Israel, penning many letters condeming Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.
"We who have fought against Apartheid and vowed not to allow it to happen again can not allow Israel to continue perpetrating apartheid, colonialism and occupation against the indigenous people of Palestine. We dare not allow Israel to continue violating international law with impunity. Apartheid was a gross violation of human rights. It was so in South Africa and it is so with regard to Israel's persecution of the Palestinians!"
- Beata Lipman in joint letter
Ronnie Kasrils is a Jewish South African who was also a founding member and Chief of Intelligence for uMkhonto we Sizwe.
In 1992, Kasrils led an unarmed protest when the apartheid government opened fire, killing 28 of his comrades and injuring over 200 others. He went on to serve in various Ministerial roles after the defeat of apartheid.
In 2001, Kasrils was co-author of the
*Declaration of Conscience by South Africans of Jewish Descent, which calls Israel a colonial apartheid-state. He has drawn criticism for stating that Israel has behaved like the Nazis.
"We recognise the operation today by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza as a legitimate expression of their right to resist. We support all efforts of oppressed people to liberate themselves from their oppressors in the same way we did in our liberation struggle.
We are saddened by all violence but Israeli Jews will not realise peace until they accept a future where they will live with Palestinians as citizens in a single, democratic Palestinian state, with Palestinians being compensated for seven decades of colonisation, occupation and apartheid."
- Ronnie Kasrils, 7th October 2023
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matan4il · 26 days
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I have a query and I'm sorry that this question is going to upset you in advance. I see a post circling on here about Holocaust survivors apparently saying that Palestinians are exactly like them during attacks on Gaza. I just scroll past it because I have poor attention span that cannot stay focused more than one sentence but I wanted to know your opinion on this post or if you have seen it. Again, deep apologies that this ask is upsetting. Thank you for still being here and sharing with us.
Hi Nonnie!
Thank you for the kind way you approached this.
I have seen a post that might be the one you're referring to... It's a screenshot of a tweet:
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The original tweet shows an interview with one Holocaust survivor. The response falsely expands this to survivors, in the plural, as if this one tweet shows a whole movement of Holocaust survivors, that people simply refuse to listen to.
The original tweet comes from an account that calls itself a "media company," but has no website (something I would expect from an actual media company), and is at least 80% tweets that are anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. I'll give you an example. We all know Elon Musk has allowed antisemitism to thrive on Twitter, all kinds of it, including the white supremacist type, and others that have nothing to do with Israel. In an attempt to educate him, he was invited to a tour of Auschwitz. But apparently, according to this "media company," that was just meant to stop anti-genocide speech on his social media platform:
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Of the up to 20% of tweets this "media company" posts or shares, many are anti-democratic or in support of dictatorial regimes.
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This account also amplified the words of Julius Malema, leader of the South African EFF party, as he justified the Oct 7 massacre, and demanded support for the (genocidal) Hamas and its "resistance."
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Malema himself has repeatedly sang, "Kill the Boer," a song which many understand as a genocidal chant against the Boers, the South Africans of Dutch descent. This guy is a controversial figure at best, doesn't seem to have an issue with an actual genocide, and this "media company" upholds his words as if he is a role model.
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But if this account tweets Israel hate, then I guess the Tumblr user who passed the tweet along has no issue with how questionable of a source this is.
I recognized the face of the survivor. This is what it looks like in the cut off screenshot in the Tumblr post I saw:
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So how did I recognize him? Because the number of anti-Zionist Holocaust survivors is SO small (around 5), and I have seen every single one of them repeatedly tokenized by antisemites so much, that I'm familiar with the name and face of each. The man in this vid is Hajo Meyer, who died in 2014. He couldn't possibly make any comments about Hamas' massacre on Oct 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza since, unless this "media company" has managed to somehow contact the afterlife. Here's a screenshot from Google, showing a recent re-upload of this vid to IG:
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And here's a very brief bio, mentioning his date of death:
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I'm guessing that "media company" didn't name him, or specify the date out of the vid, because it didn't want people to know the guy was dead, and the views he expressed were pre-Hamas' massacre.
Hajo Meyer was, without a doubt, an anti-Zionist. But would he still be using this rhetoric after Oct 7, after the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, after better understanding the kind of threat that Israel and Jews worldwide (since Hamas has tried to target Jews in European countries as well, including in the Netherlands, where Meyer lived) are facing from this genocidal terrorist organization ruling Gaza? IDK. I'd like to think he would be better than to continue distorting the Holocaust through this false comparison, but I can't say for sure, and I'm not about to claim that I do, putting words in his mouth just to exploit a dead Holocaust survivor. The fact that the anti-Israel crowd would continue to tokenize (meaning, exploit) a dead survivor like that, as if anyone could know for sure that Meyer would continue to toe the same line, just shows there really is no moral low they can't stoop to.
And here I wanna emphasize how wrong this antisemitic practice is, tokenizing Jews. Because no marginalized group is immune to the hatred spread against it, there will ALWAYS be some of its members, who will internalize and embrace poison aimed at it. There were gay Nazis (the notorious Ernest Roehm was the highest ranking one) and we also have contemporary gay neo-Nazis. So, should we use them in order to pretend that Nazi ideology is not homophobic? That it didn't harm hundreds of thousands of gay people? No, we know that the overwhelming majority of gay people suffered due to it, and would insist that Nazism IS homophobic. So, using those few exceptions to ignore (and embolden) the homophbia of this ideology, ends up being homophobic in itself. Embracing the unrepresentative few over the representative, mainstream majority of a marginalized group in "exonerating" what the group says is hateful and harmful towards it, ends up being hateful and harmful in itself.
And that's what people who only listen to the few anti-Zionist Holocaust survivors are doing. They're basically saying, "Listen to Holocaust survivors!" but they mean only the few who say what the anti-Israel movement does. All the other survivors they ignore, dismiss, silence or even erase.
They're ignoring the voices of the overwhelming majority of Holocaust survivors who WERE (and are) Zionist. Who do not agree with this distorted narrative. Yad Vashem estimates that two thirds of Holocaust survivors came to Israel at the end of WWII, and many more supported Israel even when they chose to settle elsewhere. Just recently, we had a group of 870 American survivors (along with their descendants, altogether 2,500 Jews) thank Biden for standing with Israel after the Hamas massacre. These anti-Israel haters are also erasing the survivors who were themselves targeted on Oct 7, whether threatened, kidnapped, injured or murdered (I've talked about several in my posts on this blog). This anti-Israel mob is exploiting Hajo Meyer even in ignoring that if he had been alive and present in Israel, even just to visit a friend or family member, he would have been targeted, too. These haters are ignoring survivors who said that what Hamas has done is similar to what the Nazis did (I've talked about several of them in my posts on this blog, too. All can be found in my Israel tag).
It is unconscionable, to treat most Holocaust survivors like they don't count, and only see a (literal) handful of anti-Zionist ones as if they do. And it certainly does NOT show the respect the anti-Israel haters imply survivors are owed, through the demand that we all defer to the opinion of the survivors, but ONLY the few anti-Zionist ones.
All that said, off the top of my head, here's a small number of HUGE differences between the Holocaust, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, and anyone ignoring them IS guilty of distorting the Holocaust.
-> The Holocaust did NOT start due to Jews repeatedly murdering Germans on German soil, in an attempt to keep Germans down and prevent them from establishing self rule in the German ancestral land. The Holocaust was completely unprovoked, unjustified and one-sided. Every oppressive measure taken by the Nazis against the Jews, was motivated by antisemitism, and was NOT a reaction to Jewish anti-German terrorism, that the Nazis had to protect their German citizens from. Speaking of unprovoked, unjustified and for a very long time one-sided, that describes the Arab anti-Jewish violence that preceded the establishment of the State of Israel by almost 100 years. But Jewish self-defense in this conflict, which only started about 50 years after said violence began, was provoked, was justified, was a response to what was done to the Jews first.
-> The Holocaust did NOT consist of Jews on German soil collaborating militarily with several Jewish countries surrounding Germany, with the goal of these combined Jewish armies invading and wiping it off the map, in order to prevent German self rule. Guess what the Arabs did to the Jews...
-> The Holocaust did NOT entail repeated German efforts to find a solution for how Jews and Germans could live together on the same land. In pre-state Israel, Jews did try repeatedly to reach an understanding that would allow Jews and Arabs to peacefully share (and co-exist in) the Jewish ancestral land.
-> When Jews finally started rebelling against the Nazis, they did NOT try to get as many Jewish civilians as possible killed. On the contrary, the outbreak of the most famous Jewish revolt, the one in the Warsaw Ghetto, was postponed until the Nazis entered, and the Jewish fighters believed this to be the final 'liquidation' of the ghetto (meaning, the deportation and extermination of the roughly 60,000 Jews still alive there). Only then did they fight back, because (in their own words), they did not want their decision to rebel to cost another Jew "even one hour of life." Compare that to how Hamas has been using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Or even to the Arab leadership back in 1948, which did not hesitate in risking or displacing the entire Arab population in the Land of Israel, in favor of fighting what they called "an extermination war" against the Jews.
-> The Holocaust did NOT see a single day where Germans worked en masse to try and alleviate the suffering of Jews, whether by providing them with humanitarian aid, or by moving them to areas where they would be safe from death. That's in direct contrast to Israel's efforts to make Palestinians' lives better, whether through humanitarian aid, work permits in Israel that guarantee a higher salary and better social rights, medical treatments, warnings when a terrorist target is about to be struck, etc.
-> The Holocaust was NOT supposed to end with even one Jew alive at the end of it. The Germans were going for total extermination of the Jewish people. All Jews who had German citizens were stripped of it in 1935, even before the most murderous parts of this genocide commenced. In contrast, Israel did NOT seek to kill all Arabs, there were many calls for Arabs not to flee Israel and the war which the Arab leadership had started, at the end of the war Israel gave citizenship to 150,000 Arabs who did not leave and did not take arms against Jews, and there was even an offer for tens of thousands of Arabs to return (Weitzmann presented it to the UN), if they do so peacefully. Just a few thousands accepted that offer, but those who did, got citizenship and land.
-> The Nazis were so eager to kill every Jew, that they came to the conclusion they HAD to industrialize their genocide of the Jewish people. That's why they built extermination camps with gas chambers at their core. Auschwitz alone could, on certain days, kill about 20,000 people. No Jew was meant to leave those camps alive. The crematoria were mass murder factories. ANY crime that you want to compare to the Holocaust specifically, you have to show that it includes this industrialization element. Currently, NO GENOCIDE, no matter how horrific, has. And God help us all, I hope it stays that way (this is one of the reasons why the Holocaust mustn't be distorted or minimized. We can't prevent something from happening, if we don't understand what HAS happened, and that we're trying to stop from being repeated). There is not a SINGLE thing in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict that comes CLOSE to being an industrialized form of massacre. Even the brutality of Hamas on Oct 7, the single bloodiest day in the history of this conflict for either side, doesn't come close.
-> While there are still Jews around, meaning the Holocaust as conceptualized by the Nazis failed, it was so deadly, that it DID lead to the murder of around 70-80% of the Jews living under the Nazi occupation over a short number of years. Even more than 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, Jews have not recovered demographically. Meanwhile, the Palestinian population has increased by about 10 times since Israel's Independence War. But let's say people wanna claim that just this current war is comparable to the Holocaust. There are presently around 7 million Arabs in the territories of the Jewish ancestral land, of which about 2 million are Israeli citizens. I'm gonna go with the anti-Israel narrative for a second, which claims ALL of them are occupied and oppressed by Israel (even though they're not). In order for the ruin of Palestinians to be indeed on the same level, that would mean 70-80% of them would have to be murdered by Israel during the war. Let's go with the lower percent, so it's easier for the anti-Israel crowd to reach the number of deaths that would support their claim. To have killed 70% of 7 million, that would mean Israel would have to kill 4.9 million Arabs in this so-called "genocide." Even if we exclude Israeli Arabs, and only focus on the 5 million Palestinians living in areas where the Israeli army currently operates (imagine the German Nazis allowing Jews safety inside Germany, and only killing them outside it *eyeroll*), that would mean at least 3.5 million Palestinians killed. But after almost 5 months of this war, the number of Palestinian fatalities, as claimed by Hamas, is around 30,000 people (I'm putting aside the fact that at least 12,000 are Hamas terrorists). The gap between what is happening, and what people who make this false comparison are implying is happening, is incomprehensible.
Sorry for the length, but I hope this is helpful!
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
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deadpresidents · 4 months
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Today is a good day to remember Salvador Allende, the democratically-elected President of Chile, who died in September 1973. Allende most likely shot himself in the La Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago when he could no longer fight off the forces of General Augusto Pinochet as they executed a violent coup heavily supported by the United States and Henry Kissinger. Pinochet then ruled Chile as an American-supported "anti-communist" military dictator for nearly two decades in which tens of thousands of Chileans were killed, jailed, or simply disappeared.
Allende, a socialist, was popularly elected as Chile's President with promises to strengthen democracy in Latin America and institute significant economic, education, and health reforms in order to dramatically improve the social welfare of the Chilean people. Some American leaders, like Henry Kissinger, saw him as a potential threat -- a South American version of Fidel Castro -- and the CIA begin laying the groundwork for eventual regime change.
The biggest problem with Allende, in Kissinger's mind, was the very fact that he was freely and democratically elected. In a memo to President Nixon that is still somewhat shocking to read, Kissinger wrote that "Allende was elected legally...He has legitimacy in the eyes of Chileans and most of the world; there is nothing we can do to deny him that legitimacy or claim he does not have it." Kissinger then reminds Nixon that "We are strongly on record in support of self-determination and respect for free election; you are firmly on record for non-intervention in the internal affairs of this hemisphere and of accepting nations 'as they are.'" Then he spends several pages outlining ways in which to undermine, delegitimize, and potentially eliminate "the Problem." After all, as Kissinger wrote shortly before Allende was elected, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
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transmascpetewentz · 1 month
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While Russophobic allegations of someone being a "Russian psyop" are a thing, one thing that those outside of the Russian political sphere need to understand is that the Putin government DOES use bots and paid shills on websites such as Tumblr, masquerading as marginalized minorities in order to sway elections. While this shouldn't cause you to mistrust accounts of minorities, you DO need to be aware of a few different kinds of rhetoric that are attempts to make you into a useful idiot to Putin's authoritarian regime:
ANYTHING telling you not to vote in elections, or anything saying that democrats and republicans are the same/republicans are better than dems for minorities just bc dems have issues
anti-Ukraine sentiment, claiming that what Russia is doing to the people of Ukraine is not a genocide (and yes, I am Russian, I don't hate all Russians, shut up)
"Nazis in Ukraine" or defending Russian settler colonialism in eastern Ukraine by ignoring the fact that Russian settlers swayed elections in the area
anti-west sentiment in general. "the west is so weak and degenerate unlike the glorious east." This talking point is used by tankies as well as Putin-affiliated users, but shouldn't be confused with the general critique of European white supremacy.
antisemitism of any kind, but especially rootless cosmopolitan rhetoric and holodomor denial.
This rhetoric is used and spread around by a lot of people, and doesn't 100% guarantee that whoever posts this is a bot, but these are just some of the ideas to avoid if you don't want to fall for the paid shills that are objectively on these sites.
Remember, people can go on the internet and just lie. People can claim to be from anywhere. We've caught a lot of people pretending to be Jewish online in the past few months to validate their opinions on Israel. Stay vigilant, don't play into the hands of a genocidal monster destroying a smaller nation.
Check For Comprehension
How is OP more qualified than the average person to speak on this subject?
Is OP advocating for uncritical support of the US/western governments? Might there be a middle ground between uncritical support and uncritical condemnation?
Did the statement about antisemitism make you uncomfortable or angry at OP? If you answered yes, why might that be, and how should you change that?
Can people lie about personal characteristics such as identity and background on the internet? If so, what might be some evidence that someone is a paid shill or just lying?
Did this post ask you to mistrust leftism or minorities?
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riddledore · 29 days
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The continuity between fascist fascism and Christian Democratic fascism is complete and absolute. [...] The democracy that the Christian Democratic anti-fascists opposed to the fascist dictatorship was shamelessly formal. It was based on an absolute majority obtained through the votes of enormous layers of the middle class and the peasant masses, controlled by the Vatican. Such control was only possible if based on a totally repressive regime. In that universe the "values" that mattered were the same as for fascism: Church, Homeland, family, obedience, discipline, order, economy, morality. These "values" (just like, after all, during fascism) were "also real": that is, they belonged to the specific and concrete cultures that constituted the archaically agricultural and paleo-industrial Italy. But the moment they were assumed to be national "values" they could only lose all reality, and become atrocious, stupid, repressive State conformism: the conformism of fascist and Christian Democratic power. Provinciality, rudeness and ignorance of both the "elites" and, on a different level, of the masses, were the same during fascism and during the first phase of the Christian Democratic regime. The paradigms of this ignorance were Vatican pragmatism and formalism.
"Il vuoto del potere" ovvero "l'articolo delle lucciole", Pasolini (1/2/1975)
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Claiming The Nazis Were Leftwing Is Holocaust Revisionism.
In addition to being straightforwardly false, this claim obscures a key component of Nazi brutality: the mass murder of trade unionists, socialists and communists and the total subjugation of the working class.
Dachau concentration camp was opened in March 1933, mere weeks into the Nazi regime. Its original purpose was the internment of "political opponents", i.e. communists, socialists and social democrats. It was later expanded to imprison Jews, Roma and other victims.
The Nazi death machine, stretching from Normandy to the Volga, Tripoli to Trondheim, linking camps, death squads, gas chambers, population registers, secret police and collaborators annihilated millions of human beings.
You erase an enormous number of victims when you deny the anti-communist basis of the Nazi regime.
They were communists, socialists and trade unionists murdered by Fascists.
We will not let their martyrdom be sullied by rightwing freaks playing silly games.
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papasmoke · 4 months
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What do you think is the best direct action to take instead of voting? Like what can we do that will change the structure, since other way, the structure of how the country works says Someone's Gotta Get Elected?
Directly interfere with the non-democratic mechanisms and institutions through which the US provides aid and maintains its partnership with Israel's Apartheid regime. Shut down weapons plants, last week some very brave young people in St. Charles did just that and halted work at the massive Boeing plant there.
Participate in BDS. Relentlessly. Uncompromisingly. Those anti-BDS laws most states have in place can suck my nuts and if you put any value in America as an institution you should appreciate that they're blatantly unconstitutional.
Participate in the protest wave happening right now. Show up outside your representative's (who is probably voicing their full support for Israel's terrorist bombing campaign right now) home with a big crowd and keep them up all night. Do everything you can to make the life of every public official rubberstamping this genocide a living hell. Harass them, don't let them spend a day, an hour, a second without being reminded of their unforgivable complicity in war crimes.
The US maintains its relationship with Israel because it is in our geostrategic and financial interest to do so. As Biden once said, if an Israel did not exist the US would have to invent an equivalent. It relies on Israel as a military hard point for the US empire. But exerting pressure on the framework that allows this relationship to be profitable and beneficial for the US can force our government's hand. The US is already isolating itself from the rest of the world by enabling Israel's barbaric violence, and the tipping point at which the US will be forced to abandon its unwavering support for the genocide, displacement, and subjugation of the Palestinian people can be reached quicker if widespread internal pressure is also applied by the American public.
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secular-jew · 2 months
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There's a long list genocidal situations ongoing throughout the world, so why are accusations leveled only against Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day?
Assad's Syrian Army bombed a city full of civilians because they don't recognize the regime as legitimate but no condemnation came out of the UN.
Why isn't the UN condemning true genocides taking place, largely (but not exclusively) at the hands of jihadi armies?
The "Early Warning Project" identified 10 ongoing episodes of nonstate led mass killing as of the end of 2020. The affected countries, with the perpetrator group and date of onset in parentheses, are the following:
Afghanistan (Taliban, Haqqani network, and associated armed groups, 2001)
Central African Republic (various armed groups, including anti-Balaka, 2013)
Democratic Republic of the Congo (various militias in the northeast, 1998)
India (Maoist rebels, 2004)
Iraq (ISIS, Islamic State, 2003)
Nigeria (Boko Haram, 2010, Fulani Muslim Militias 2023, 2024)
Pakistan (Taliban Movement of Pakistan and associated militias, 2001)
Somalia (Al Shabaab and associated militias, 2007)
South Sudan (Machar supporters, SPLM in Opposition, Nuerthnic militias, and others, 2013)
Syria (Islamic State and associated militias, 2012)
Ref: Holocaust remembrance website
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zvaigzdelasas · 2 months
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[The Economist is Private UK Media]
Making someone do porridge (or “eat rice and beans”, to use the Korean expression) for expressing their political views is [...] not generally associated with [South Korea]. Yet Lee Yoon-seop, a South Korean poet, is currently languishing in prison for just this. The 68-year-old was sentenced to 14 months in November for threatening South Korea’s “existence and security”. His crime? Writing a poem in praise of the North.
The law used to prosecute Mr Lee, the National Security Act (nsa), is designed to protect South Korea from spies and traitors. But it also bans South Koreans from visiting or making contact with the North, reading or watching North Korean media or saying anything good about Kim Jong Un’s [...] regime. Though South Korea replaced its former military dictatorship with a democracy in 1987, such restrictions on free speech show that some of the generals’ autocratic tendencies endure.[...]
The NSA was modelled on a law designed to quash pro-independence activities during Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Since 2003 there have on average been more than 60 NSA prosecutions a year, often for pretty clear espionage cases. A businessman and an army officer were arrested for allegedly selling military secrets to North Korea. Soldiers in the South have been prosecuted under the act for endangering morale by distributing pro-North propaganda.
But the NSA is too often used to prosecute satirists and raid the homes and offices of leftists. Some cases have been ridiculous. Kim Myeong-soo, a PhD student, received six months in prison and a two-year suspended sentence for selling books on North Korea that were widely available in public libraries. A South Korean woman was given a two-year sentence, suspended for four years, for owning recordings of 14 North Korean songs.
This is not Mr Lee’s first offence. But the claim that the sexagenarian posed a threat to South Korea is absurd. His ode was published on a North Korean website. Access to such sites is banned by the NSA and forbidden from a South Korean IP address. [...] It consists of a list of South Korean problems that Mr Kim, in the poet’s view, would instantly solve given the chance.
Mr Lee’s real offence appears to have been believing his own nonsense. By contrast, police decided not to investigate a man under the draconian law for selling shirts with a smiling Mr Kim and the slogan “Walk a flowery path, comrade”. That was OK, officials said, because he was selling them to make a buck.
Worse, the issue points to a broader authoritarian tendency in the South. Its president, Yoon Suk-yeol, often demonises his political opponents by calling them “anti-state forces”, a phrase lifted directly from the NSA. Unfavourable press coverage is routinely labelled “fake news” and the offices of offending outlets have been raided. The administration and its allies have sued more press outfits for defamation—which in South Korea can be a crime even when the offending words are manifestly true—in Mr Yoon’s first 18 months in office than any of its three predecessors did in total.
Yet even a more liberal government would be unlikely to remove the NSA’s illiberal clauses. No administration has made a serious attempt to address it in 20 years. There is no significant political support for scrapping the law [...]. The current administration at least flirted with allowing South Koreans access to North Korean media, but recently abandoned the idea. [...]
Mr Yoon talks often about South Korea’s democratic values. They are at the heart of his pitch for the country to be a strategic link between East and West, developed and developing countries. For that reason alone he should take them more seriously. South Korea is undoubtedly a democracy, but not a terribly liberal one so long as it locks up old men for their dotty opinions. Reforming the NSA would be a better rebuttal to the sentiment Mr Lee expressed than banning it.
22 Jan 24
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On this day, 10 March 1952, Fulgencio Batista led a coup in Cuba and appointed himself President. Backed by the US, business and the wealthy elite, his government killed thousands in anti-communist purges. Senator John F. Kennedy later described his rule: "Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in 7 years — a greater proportion of the Cuban population than the proportion of Americans who died in both World Wars, and he turned democratic Cuba into a complete police state — destroying every individual liberty. Yet, our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista — hailed him as a stanch ally and a good friend — at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections." Batista was eventually overthrown by the revolution in 1959. More information and sources: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8220/fulgencio-batista-coup Pictured: a Batista firing squad https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2227374204114384/?type=3
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anarchotahdigism · 23 days
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Reminder that Genocide Joe ended all of Trump's paltry COVID mitigation efforts and subsidies, then buried pandemic data and had regime officials declare to press pools that the deaths of the disabled were encouraging Then when COVID finally surged enough again to affect the comfortable, gave out expired but still usable tests and after a handful of months, ended that again. Keep in mind these tests have never been sufficiently accurate and that everyone should be testing twice every single day. COVID is infectious 5-10 days before it might show up on a test and you remain infectious until a few days after your last negative. COVID is infectious days before you show symptoms; many people don't experience what they think of as typical COVID symptoms for their first 1-3 infections. COVID symptoms include (but aren't limited to): GI distress (upset stomach, diarrhea), runny nose, reduction/loss in taste and smell, headaches, fatigue, fever, joint and muscle aches, loss of appetite, insomnia, cognitive difficulties and it may present in any combination of these symptoms or even none. If you think it's "bad allergies," it could easily be COVID. If you think it's "just a cold" or "a mild or severe flu" it could easily be COVID. COVID doesn't stay positive on tests; that is, you may test positive a day or two prior and then test negative for days before testing positive again. To know for sure, you have to be testing frequently and swabbing the back of your throat, cheeks, and nasal passages. Biden's normalized the mass murder of thousands of disabled people of color a week but blue maga only cares what red maga might be up to one day instead of the very real suffering and deaths Democrats are causing now. Wear a mask the entire time you're out in public every time. Give up COVID-spreading activities. If possible, help others upgrade their masks and resume masking. Anything less is killing people. Show real solidarity and commitment to anti-eugenics. Wear a mask.
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eretzyisrael · 3 months
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by Robert Williams
In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, made 13 demands of Qatar: "to cut off relations with Iran, shutter Al Jazeera, and stop granting Qatari citizenship to other countries' exiled oppositionists." They subsequently cut ties with Qatar over its failure to agree to any of the demands, including ending its support for terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Jazeera.
The Saudi state-run news agency SPA said at the time:
"[Qatar] embraces multiple terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS [Islamic State] and al-Qaeda, and promotes the message and schemes of these groups through their media constantly,"
This is the kind of influence that US universities and colleges are more than happy to see on their campuses in exchange for billions of dollars in Qatari donations. According to ISGAP:
"[F]oreign donations from Qatar, especially, have had a substantial impact on fomenting growing levels of antisemitic discourse and campus politics at US universities, as well as growing support for anti-democratic values within these institutions of higher education."
In November 2023 ISGAP published a report, "The Corruption of the American Mind: How concealed foreign funding of higher education in the United States predicts the erosion of democratic values and antisemitic sentiment on campus." It found that there is a direct correlation between antisemitism and censored speech on campus and undocumented contributions from foreign governments, notably Qatar. According to the report:
"At least 100 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undocumented contributions from foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian. "In institutions receiving such undocumented money: "Speech intolerance—manifesting as campaigns to investigate, censor, demote, suspend, or terminate speakers and scholars—was higher at institutions that received undocumented money from foreign regimes."
Qatar makes it possible for Ivy League universities to claim that they receive no funds from the Qatari state, because the donations are funneled through the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a not-for-profit organization established in 1995 by the Emir of Qatar. This ensures that the foundation can identify itself as a private organization, which enables Qatar to conceal its state funding as private donations.
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