#but we cannot. treat it as if Hamas' strike began the violence. and ignore the 200+ Palestinians killed by the IDF this year beforehand

[thedreadvampy]

legitimately insane how to some people, "we should wipe out this ethnic group that we've violently constrained to a ghetto because they're just genetically more violent and dangerous" is a reasonable and justifiable statement but it's Nazi Rhetoric to say something like, "it's bad that Israeli civilians are being killed but acknowledging that as tragic includes acknowledging that the almost daily state-sanctioned murder of civilians by the Israeli government is also tragic and unacceptable"

btw guys speaking of Nazi shit - can we check in, alongside what's been done to Palestinians in the last 75 years, what's the Israeli government's take on the Azerbaijani government's newest round of ethnic cleansing of Armenians? oh are the Israeli government's actions maybe not determined by Jewish identity, but by a commitment to colonial supremacy which puts them on the same page as other violently genocidal states like Azerbaijan, the US, and the UK? god can you Even Imagine?

(framing speaking against Israeli war crimes as inherently antisemitic requires understanding the Israeli state as representing all Jewish people, when it doesn't even represent all Israelis.

framing Israeli war crimes as synonymous with Jewish identity is pretty fucked up if we're being honest. I don't think that controlling water and power and movement for a captive population and shooting children dead for throwing stones is an inherent value of Judaism, any more than I think the torture carried out at Guantanamo Bay is an inherent value of Christianity - in both cases they're atrocities carried out by a far right genocidal government using religious identity as a shield.

Calling statements like "Israel is committing genocide against the people it's displaced" inherently antisemitic is doing more to further the idea that all Jewish people are associated with Israel than saying "the Israeli government is doing war crimes," which is a statement of fact about a country that exists and does war crimes. Is criticism of Israel as a nation often used as cover for antisemitism? Absolutely. Does that mean the Israeli government isn't doing literal war crimes repeatedly, on record, while talking publicly about scrubbing an ethnic group off the map? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh well in the last 48 hours they've definitely cut off water and power to almost 600,000 civilians and allegedly used white phosphorus against civilians so in an extremely factual and unambiguous way yeah man those are Literal War Crimes whoever does them.)

#red said #sorry man saying 'it's bad to do genocide and war crimes' doesn't actually mean 'I'm happy when Jewish people die' #it means 'there is a context to Palestinian militants attacking Israelis which involves Palestinians being killed wounded or imprisoned #very nearly every day by the Israeli state and settlers. so no you can't treat a Palestinian attack on Israel as an unprecedented tragedy #without also recognising that Israeli forces have repeatedly visited attacks of similar magnitude on Palestine which is ALSO tragic #as well as the regular state-sanctioned murder of over 200 Palestinians in the 9 months BEFORE the Palestinian attack on Saturday #It means 'Palestinian lives don't matter less than Israeli lives' not 'Israeli lives don't matter' #this week is literally the FIRST TIME SINCE RECORDS BEGAN that more Israeli lives have been lost than Palestinian #bc for every year since 2000 orders of magnitude more palestinians than Israelis have been killed in this war #you don't get to say 'it's only bad when X ethnic group is killed it's GOOD to kill Y ethnic group' then accuse OTHERS of genocide apologis #it is legitimately a tragedy for Israeli civilians to be killed and wounded en masse. the people are not the nation. #but it's not less of a tragedy for Palestinians to have been killed and wounded en masse week after week for decades. #and when peaceful protest gets you shot and bombed and acting against the military gets you shot and bombed #and just existing doing nothing at all gets you shot and bombed. living near someone accused of terrorism. looking for your fucking cat. #when you're getting shot and bombed daily whatever you do. it's not surprising that sometimes people move to violence against civilians. #because as people from Gaza have said. better to die fighting for survival than die on your knees waiting. #which like. I'm not making a moral judgement one way or the other bc i am intrinsically disgusted by mass killing. as we all should be. #and this might be the movement which liberates Palestine and it might be the excuse which allows Israel to finish Palestine #and either way hundreds of people are dead on both sides and however you slice it that's a fucking tragedy #but we cannot. treat it as if Hamas' strike began the violence. and ignore the 200+ Palestinians killed by the IDF this year beforehand #Palestinian lives matter as much as Israeli lives. 700 Israeli citizens dead is a tragedy. 600 Palestinians dead is a tragedy. #and if you lay out the numbers from this weekend alone you can pretend that Israelis are getting decimated by Palestine. #but to do that you have to ignore the facts that for every 1 Israeli killed in the past decade 3 Palestinians die. #and that Israeli deaths happen in occasional outbursts of violence while Palestinian deaths happen every week #whether or not Hamas or any other Palestinian faction initiates violence