#essays and articles

[soracities]

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

#q #lit #quotes #typography #essays and articles #id included #ismatu gwendolyn #youve been traumatized into hating reading and it makes you easier to oppress #threadings #m #x

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

#original post #text post #500 #1k #2k #btw i know my definition of death of the author is loosey goosey here #it wasn't the main point so i went informal with it! as ppl in the tags have pointed out it isn't exact #and i do recommend reading the wikipedia article or similar (possibly even the essay itself if you're narsty) if you want to learn more! #wasn't expecting this to take off so my apologies to my barthes-heads out there #love you mwah #5k #10k #15k #20k

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

Earth’s hottest day ever recorded by human instruments

Better way to phrase this is : top 3 hottest daily average-global-temperatures ever recorded by human instruments were this week.

#climate change #news #breaking news #destiel news #global warming #just saw this on the news and now I have to go back to writing my essay as of earth isn’t in crisis #phrased this kind of poorly bc I was basing it on what the news anchor said and then found the article on the channels website

[nartothelar]

ugh

#finals and homework and essays and lab reports and articles and papers and quizzes an #projecting #submas #emmet #kudari #nobori #ingo #pokemon #pokemon fanart #fanart

[dejwrld]

the topic of colorism within the black community will never be understood until people understand that it's deeper than being bullied in high school and dating preferences.

#i wrote a ten page essay on colorism #nothing annoys me when a darker skinned woman bring up the colorism she experienced #and here come a light skinned woman saying 'i too got bullied in high school' #like shhhh #it's statistics and articles #proving that people of darker skin get denied services #get less pay than their lighter counterparts #get harsher prison sentences #hell some d9 orgs even did the paper brown bag test #i can go on about this topic

[luthienne]

Since the founding of the state of Israel, the Zionist movement has positioned the domination and oppression of Palestinians and the colonization of Palestinian land as the answer to the very real question of Jewish safety. They have taken the very real pain and trauma that we as Jews carry and sharpened it into a deadly weapon. We desperately must understand that what is happening is not a cycle of violence. It is a system of violence. Everyone is caught in its teeth. It is the system of settler colonial apartheid that the Israeli government has built and maintained over the past seventy-five years—with billions upon billions of dollars from the United States. Settler colonialism is a structure, a language, a culture, an ideology—an interlocking, totalizing, system of violence. It is a machine of war and dehumanization against Palestinians. It is this system that imperils the lives and safety of everyone. While the vast majority of the violence of the apartheid regime lands on Palestinians, there is no safety for Israelis in a system rooted in such dehumanization and oppression. In the words of Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer, “My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanize any other must first be dehumanized himself. The oppressors are no longer really human, whatever uniform they wear.” The Israeli government has lost any semblance of humanity as they wage a genocide against the people living in Gaza. It is not Palestinians who have chosen the language of violence for this land. It is the Israeli government and the United States government that have created a state of violence. Palestinians have remained steadfast in seeking freedom against immeasurable violence. Tens of thousands of Palestinians protested in weekly grassroots nonviolent protests at Israel’s militarized border wall around Gaza during the Great March of Return in 2019, and the Israeli government sent military snipers to murder and maim hundreds of children, women, medics, and journalists. Palestinians launch boycott campaigns to win their rights, and the Israeli government opens an entire new ministry to combat the nonviolent movement. Palestinians work at human rights organizations to document the crimes against them, and they are called and treated as terrorists. Palestinians speak the language of freedom, and the Israeli government responds—every single time—with the language of violence. The United States government has united to fully support the Israeli war machine. Already the United States sends more than $3 billion in aid to Israel every year. Now Senator Lindsey Graham said, “I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.” Make no mistake: Israel isn’t defending itself, it is committing mass murder. Biden says, “We’ll make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of itself.” Make no mistake: Israel is waging genocide. My dear ones in Palestine are saying that they have never experienced such destruction in seventy-five years of occupation. My dear ones are saying there is not a moment to wait. Do not sit back while Israel carries out a genocide fully enabled by the United States. Bring your full body, your spirit, your communities, your humanity, to meet this moment, to call your representatives, to the streets. “Never again” means standing up for Palestinian people. “Never again” means this very moment.

— Stefanie Fox, A Jewish Plea: Stand Up to Israel’s Act of Genocide, as featured in Boston Review

#stefanie fox #a jewish plea: stand up to israel's act of genocide #boston review #words #essays #articles #links #on zionism #palestine #free palestine

[finelythreadedsky]

JSTOR Wrapped: top ten JSTOR articles of 2023

Coo, Lyndsay. “A Tale of Two Sisters: Studies in Sophocles’ Tereus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 143, no. 2 (2013): 349–84.

Finglass, P. J. “A New Fragment of Sophocles’ ‘Tereus.’” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 200 (2016): 61–85.

Foxhall, Lin. “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 167–82. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Garrison, Elise P. “Eurydice’s Final Exit to Suicide in the ‘Antigone.’” The Classical World 82, no. 6 (1989): 431–35.

Grethlein, Jonas. “Eine Anthropologie Des Essens: Der Essensstreit in Der ‘Ilias’ Und Die Erntemetapher in Il. 19, 221-224.” Hermes 133, no. 3 (2005): 257–79.

McClure, Laura. “Tokens of Identity: Gender and Recognition in Greek Tragedy.” Illinois Classical Studies 40, no. 2 (2015): 219–36.

Purves, Alex C.  “Wind and Time in Homeric Epic.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 140, no. 2 (2010): 323–50.

Richlin, Amy. “Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 202–20. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Rood, Naomi. “Four Silences in Sophocles’ ‘Trachiniae.’” Arethusa 43, no. 3 (2010): 345–64.

Zeitlin, Froma I. “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia.” Arethusa 11, no. 1/2 (1978): 149–84.

#alphabetical order. im not ranking them #i still have two more froma zeitlin essays to read (one new and one a reread) in the next few days though #and its possible one of those might knock amy richlin off the rest (nothing personal; its a great piece just not my area) #but if im willing to have two things by the same scholar i would have to rethink including grethlein 'the poetics of the bath in the iliad' #some of my favorite articles/book chapters of the year are not on jstor though... #bill beck 'lost in the middle: story time and discourse time in the iliad'!!! #and lyndsay coo has a 2020 chapter updating and expanding this 2013 article that is 🔥🔥🔥 #and of course judith mossman 'women's voices in sophocles' which is what send me to garrison 1989 and rood 2010 but is not itself on jstor #i also reread some of melissa mueller's objects as actors book which is wonderful as always #and i would be incredibly tempted to put william m calder iii's tereus article on a top ten list for sheer entertainment value #jstor wrapped #mine

[butchhamlet]

i said i was going to arrange a list of my favorite articles/criticism about shakespeare, so here’s my first little roundup! obligatory disclaimer that i don’t necessarily agree with or endorse every single point of view in each word of these articles, but they scratch my brain. will add to this list as i continue reading, and feel free to add your own favorites in the reblogs! :]

essays

Is Shakespeare For Everyone? by Austin Tichenor (a basic examination of that question)

Interrogating the Shakespeare System by Madeline Sayet (counterpoint/parallel to the above; on Shakespeare’s place in, and status as, imperialism)

Shakespeare in the Bush by Laura Bohannan (also a good parallel to the above; on whether Shakespeare is really culturally “universal”)

The Unified Theory of Ophelia: On Women, Writing, and Mental Illness ("I was trying to make sense of the different ways men and women related to Ophelia. Women seemed to invoke her like a patron saint; men seemed mostly interested in fetishizing her flowery, waterlogged corpse.”)

Hamlet Is a Suicide Text—It’s Time to Teach It Like One (on teaching shakespeare plays about suicide to high schoolers)

Commuting With Shylock by Dara Horn (on listening to MoV with a ten-year-old son, as modern jewish people, to look at that eternal question of Is This Play Antisemitic?)

All That Glisters is Not Gold (NPR episode, on whether it’s possible to perform othello, taming of the shrew, & merchant to do good instead of harm)

academic articles

the Norton Shakespeare’s intro to the Merchant of Venice (apologies about the highlights here; they are not mine; i scanned this from my rented copy)

the Norton Shakespeare’s intro to Henry the Fourth part 1 (and apologies for the angled page scans on this one; see above)

Richard II: A Modern Perspective by Harry Berger Jr (this is the article that made me understand richard ii)

Hamlet’s Older Brother (“Hamlet and Prince Hal are in the same situation, the distinction resting roughly on the difference between the problem of killing a king and the problem of becoming one. ... Hamlet is literature’s Mona Lisa, and Hal is the preliminary study for it.”)

Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony & Cleopatra Criticism (about more than just reviewers; my favorite deconstruction of shakespeare’s cleopatra in general)

Strange Flesh: Antony and Cleopatra and the Story of the Dissolving Warrior (“If Troilus and Cressida is [Shakespeare’s] vision of a world in which masculinity must be enacted in order to exist, Antony and Cleopatra is his vision of a world in which masculinity not only must be enacted, but simply cannot be enacted, his vision of a world in which this particular performance has broken down.”)

misc

Elegy of Fortinbras by Zbigniew Herbert (poem that makes me fucking insane)

Dirtbag Henry IV (what it sounds like.)

Cleopatra and Antony by Linda Bamber (what if a&c... was good.)

#essays/academic articles is sort of a false dichotomy but i wanted to separate these into More Casual versus More Academic. so. #misc category exists because. i like those two things so much. not at all for the same reasons #max.txt #misc #hamlet #merchant of venice #henry iv #richard ii #antony and cleopatra #there we are.

[fruitsofhell]

I used to be one of those guys when I first joined the Kirby fandom, but everytime I hear a discussion of the series writing that starts with "So the Lore is InSaNe-" and not like, "Kirby has a fun writing style that takes advantage of its cute exterior to tell cool stories that reward player's curiosity and leave lots of room for imagination-" I cringe so goddamn hard.

I kinda just hate that people approach things that encourage investment when they don't expect it as inherently absurd. Like it is fun to joke about how absurd Kirby lore can be, but it really often comes with an air of disrespect or exhaustion rather than like, appreciation that these games are made by people who want to tell interesting stories when they could easily make as much money just making polished enough fluffy kiddy platformers. And when it's not met with exhaustion, it's met with - like I said before - that tone that it's stupid for a series like this TO have devs who care about writing stuff for it. Which is a whole other thing about people not respecting things made to appeal to kiddie aesthetic or tone.

Maybe the state of low-stakes YouTube video essays just blows cause people play up ignorance and disbelief for engagement, but like I STG I hear people use this tone for like actual narrative based games sometimes. Some people don't like... appreciate when a game is made by people who care a shitton in ways that aren't direct gameplay feedback. And they especially don't appreciate it when it comes from something with any sense of tonal dissonance intentional or not.

Anyways, I love games made by insane people. I love games made by teams who feel like they wanna make something work or say something so bad. I love that energy, especially when invested into something that could easily rest on its laurels or which obviously won't be taken seriously. I love this in a lot of classic campy 2000s games, I love this in insanely niche yet passionate fanworks, and I love it in the Kirby series and its writing. Can we please stop talking about it like it's an annoyance or complete joke?

#shut the heck up #kirby #kirby lore #fandom #midnight rambles #im quite talkative today cause my rambling bestie is busy #im also bitter cause im too burnt out to make the things i want to properly express my adoration for this series #but i can waffle about it ig #ive been relying on prose and essay ro express myself a lot in leiu of my usual creative outlets... #i always wanted to make a video edsay series about kirby lore with this expressed ethos #maybe i should just start with essay-essays somewhere #still need to replay all the games for that first though #more streams coming up eventually i swear #tag talking #i read a cool analytical article today that had the same tone as a video essay and i was like 'ah thats the origin of the essay part' #so now i wanna explore that world more of article game and media journalism and such

[filmnoirsbian]

Things read in May

Essays & Articles:

Ursula K. Le Guin on Being A Man

Investigating parents of transgender youth has agency on ‘brink of collapse,’ staff warns

Five Indigenous Speculative Fiction Authors You Should Be Reading

DECOLONIZING SCIENCE FICTION AND IMAGINING FUTURES: AN INDIGENOUS FUTURISMS ROUNDTABLE

Using Dogs As A Tool of Racial Oppression

Rings of Power: The new hobbits are filthy, hungry simpletons with stage-Irish accents. That’s $1bn well spent

First case of HIV cure in a woman after stem cell transplantation reported at CROI-2022

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths

NOPE’S SCIENCE CONSULTANT REVEALS THE NAME AND INSPIRATION FOR THE MOVIE’S ALIEN

Reflections on the Poetry of Eavan Boland

The dire state of trans healthcare in Ireland

How Letterkenny Got Indigenous Representation So Right

Einstein's Parable of Quantum Insanity

Surgical amputation of a limb 31,000 years ago in Borneo

Most Transgender Children Stick With Gender Identity 5 Years Later: Study

Were you a ‘parentified child’? What happens when children have to behave like adults

Fear of a Black Hobbit

It’s a ‘Full-Contact’ Haunted House. What Could Go Wrong?

The Craft: How a Teenage Weirdo Based on a Real Person Became an Icon

Remember When Multiplayer Gaming Needed Envelopes and Stamps?

‘We’ll Never Make That Kind of Movie Again’ An oral history of The Emperor’s New Groove, a raucous Disney animated film that almost never happened.

5 Incredible Sagas of Fandom Scams and Deception

I Used to Love British Period Dramas. Now I See Them as Colonial Propaganda

Why gender essentialism is a white supremacist ideology

Liberating Our Homes From the Real Estate–Industrial Complex

You Don’t Have To Be Pretty – On YA Fiction And Beauty As A Priority

Ten Years Later, There’s Still Nothing Like Tarsem Singh’s The Fall

Tolerance is not a moral precept

Scottish Poet and Publisher Derick Thomson 'Transformed' Gaelic Poetry

Poetry:

The Universe, as in One Last Song for the Lonely Hearts by Michelle Hulan

An Ordinary Evening in New Haven by Wallace Stevens

Heaven by George Herbert

Return from Death by Derick Thomson

Coffins by Derick Thomson

Chemin De Fer by Elizabeth Bishop

Yes, It Was The Mountain Echo by William Wordsworth

The Man and the Echo by William Butler Yeats

The Most of It by Robert Frost

Eros Turannos by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Books:

The Dark Yule by R. M. Callahan

The Invasion by K. A. Applegate

The Whisper by Aaron Starmer

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

#tcp #this is late bc i just kept forgetting to post it all lol #an open window #articles #essays #poetry

[soracities]

Audre Lorde, from "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism" (1981)

#q #quotes #essays and articles #audre lorde #the uses of anger #id included #echoes of the other #on culture #typography #m #x

[awkwardenby]

went from “I wanna run away to the forest forever” to “I wanna make cool patches and crafts for queer and punk people”

#it’s honestly giving me hope #send me links to punk articles/video essays #your fav punk bands #cool people you follow #small businesses to support #all that good shit #punk diy #punk #queercore #baby punk #god the cool music I’ve been discovering #and just the strong beliefs that punks as a whole hold #I’ve been interested in the culture for so long #but I’m just really getting into it now

[phoenixyfriend]

I try not to make a lot of original posts on topics I don't actually have any expertise on, but I haven't seen a whole lot of posts going around that actually... explain what happened and why? Like, the actual order of events, the history, and so on. I want to reblog reference posts and explanations by people who actually know what they're talking about, but I haven't seen anything that hits the buttons I need to actually get a political situation... but I have seen some stuff on other platforms.

So here are some videos I've personally found useful in understanding Israel-Palestine, because that's the format I've found most useful in processing information of this nature:

Why Israel was Originally Attacked from RealLifeLore (explains the decades of political dynamics, internal demographic tensions, and power shifts leading up to the current conflict; notably the best I've seen at actually explaining what 'Israeli Occupation' actually means)

Israel-Hamas War: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (commentary on the actual current situation in terms of who's getting attacked, why, and what the international ramifications so far are)

What's Happening in Israel and Why with Nathan Thrall from Adam Conover, series Factually (a discussion with an on-the-ground journalist about what life was like on the ground for Palestinian people in the areas under Israeli control during the last few years, just up to the attacks themselves)

I'm not going to claim these are comprehensive or completely unbiased (there are a few moments where I'm not entirely sure of the bias levels myself), but for people like myself who came into all this unsure of what the actual situation even is, I think these are a solid set to build up an basic understanding from which to put together opinions on future information.

I can't tell anyone what to think about how or why any of this is happening. I can only really tell you that what's going on right now is a crime on the level of attempted genocide, and that the years leading up to that have been an absolute mess on almost all fronts.

Again, I have no expertise on this subject. I just know what kind of video essay, political commentary, and interview style makes things understandable to me, personally, and might work for others. Please be courteous and kind in the comments and tags, as I am only sharing this because I haven't seen such a resource making the rounds yet, not actually trying to sway anyone in a particular direction beyond "the mass death needs to stop."

If you know of similar, relatively unbiased* resources, feel free to share.

* By 'relatively unbaised,' I don't mean taking or not taking a side; I just mean that it doesn't try to hide some information or other in favor of pushing a narrative, doesn't try to generalize a population, or doesn't seem to be trying to use emotional gut reactions to get readers or viewers to jump past reason or compassion.

#israel #palestine #israel palestine conflict #palestine israel conflict #not fandom #politics #current events #resources #information #video essays #interviews #political commentary #I'm not even sure how to tag this #I'm not even sure I should be making this post because it's not really my place. But. IDK it feels like 'hour long video essay' etc #is a much better resource to explain things than the usual 2 minute videos I see circulating #and the 2minute videos have a purpose! But. they're not really explaining everything #I didn't know that Israeli Occupation applied to regions outside the original Sykes Picot agreement until I read an article a few weeks ago #and I didn't UNDERSTAND it until the RealLifeLore video

[mellohd]

I have been given a great power by gaining acces to his model

I SPENT ALL DAY all day SLAVING WORKING LIKE A DOG TRYING TO GET THIS TO WORK AND I FINALLY finally DID

I’ve been scrounging through YouTube tutorials, game files, unity scenes like a starving Victorian child begging for food and the fruits of my labor have finally payed off. From the MOMENT I woke up to this very second I have done nothing but work on this vile video AND I FEEL NOTHING BUT JOY

IT TOOK ME SO LONG CAUSE I LITERALLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BLENDER OR RIPPING ASSETS

If you download this video and upload PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TAG MEEEEE PLEASEE

#overtime game #josiah overtime #overtime josiah #overtime #josiah nguyen #nguyen josiah #damian overtime #emmery #gavin #game #indie horror game #indie #indie horror #shit post #I kid you not #I actually spent all my time on this #wiki article next #or video essay #tee hee

[skitskatdacat63]

"The Boy With The Thorn in His Side"(x) - The Smiths × 2023 Strollonso moments + pundits' reactions

#baby's first web weave please be kind #frankly i could make a giant masterpost on my opinions on which Smiths songs fit which drivers/ships #i like their music a very healthy amount and I don't spend countless hours daydreaming to it...no.... #but this particular song has been haunting me bcs i think it fits them super well!! #with their relationship dynamics and then the way everyone doubts their relationship #though its been hilarious watching the f1tv commentators kind of resign themselves to 'ah well ig this is what AMR/Fernando is like now' #went from being confused and shocked at their on track comradery to just accepting it for what it is #now theyre like 'ah yes lance dutifully lets fernando pass' compared to the previous ouright disbelief and denial #yeah thats right...theyre in love...what are you gonna do about it... #i think one day itd be fun to make a vid comp of all the times the commentators were ?????? at strollonso's lovey doveyness it is fun TO ME #it was really funny to look through shitty articles for negative comments #but the funniest part is that istg all of the articles just quote this one singular man who is hellbent on being a hater #i am in your walls peter windsor. #i think its silly when they bring in 'f1 experts' for their opinions ona drivers motivations and mindset #they act like such armchair psychologists like bruh your degree is probably engineering or journalism calm down!! #hehehe anyways happy with this!! i wrote it out on paper like a whole ass essay draft to brainstorm what to put #and then i scrolled thru the draft while listening to the song and im just EEEEEEE IT FITSSSSSSS #f1 #formula 1 #formula one #we do a little bit of f1 #lance stroll #fernando alonso #fa14 #ls18 #1418 #1814 #strollonso #alonstroll #normal posts that catie normally makes in a normal fashion

[luthienne]

"On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped up to the lectern at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. [...] Many of King’s strongest allies urged him to remain silent about the war or at least to soft-pedal any criticism. They knew that if he told the whole truth about the unjust and disastrous war he would be falsely labeled a Communist, suffer retaliation and severe backlash, alienate supporters and threaten the fragile progress of the civil rights movement.

King rejected all the well-meaning advice and said, 'I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. […] A time comes when silence is betrayal' and added, 'that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.'

It was a lonely, moral stance. And it cost him. But it set an example of what is required of us if we are to honor our deepest values in times of crisis, even when silence would better serve our personal interests or the communities and causes we hold most dear. It’s what I think about when I go over the excuses and rationalizations that have kept me largely silent on one of the great moral challenges of our time: the crisis in Israel-Palestine.

I have not been alone. Until very recently, the entire Congress has remained mostly silent on the human rights nightmare that has unfolded in the occupied territories. Our elected representatives, who operate in a political environment where Israel's political lobby holds well-documented power, have consistently minimized and deflected criticism of the State of Israel, even as it has grown more emboldened in its occupation of Palestinian territory and adopted some practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States. [...]

Reading King’s speech at Riverside more than 50 years later, I am left with little doubt that his teachings and message require us to speak out passionately against the human rights crisis in Israel-Palestine, despite the risks and despite the complexity of the issues. King argued, when speaking of Vietnam, that even 'when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict,' we must not be mesmerized by uncertainty. 'We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.'

And so, if we are to honor King’s message and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel’s actions: unrelenting violations of international law, continued occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, home demolitions and land confiscations. We must cry out at the treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, the routine searches of their homes and restrictions on their movements, and the severely limited access to decent housing, schools, food, hospitals and water that many of them face.

We must not tolerate Israel’s refusal even to discuss the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as prescribed by United Nations resolutions, and we ought to question the U.S. government funds that have supported multiple hostilities and thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza, as well as the $38 billion the U.S. government has pledged in military support to Israel.

And finally, we must, with as much courage and conviction as we can muster, speak out against the system of legal discrimination that exists inside Israel, a system complete with, according to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, more than 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinians — such as the new nation-state law that says explicitly that only Jewish Israelis have the right of self-determination in Israel, ignoring the rights of the Arab minority that makes up 21 percent of the population. [...]

Indeed, King’s views may have evolved alongside many other spiritually grounded thinkers, like Rabbi Brian Walt, who has spoken publicly about the reasons that he abandoned his faith in what he viewed as political Zionism. To him, he recently explained to me, liberal Zionism meant that he believed in the creation of a Jewish state that would be a desperately needed safe haven and cultural center for Jewish people around the world, "a state that would reflect as well as honor the highest ideals of the Jewish tradition.” He said he grew up in South Africa in a family that shared those views and identified as a liberal Zionist, until his experiences in the occupied territories forever changed him.

During more than 20 visits to the West Bank and Gaza, he saw horrific human rights abuses, including Palestinian homes being bulldozed while people cried — children's toys strewn over one demolished site — and saw Palestinian lands being confiscated to make way for new illegal settlements subsidized by the Israeli government. He was forced to reckon with the reality that these demolitions, settlements and acts of violent dispossession were not rogue moves, but fully supported and enabled by the Israeli military. For him, the turning point was witnessing legalized discrimination against Palestinians — including streets for Jews only — which, he said, was worse in some ways than what he had witnessed as a boy in South Africa."

— Michelle Alexander, from her essay Time to Break the Silence on Palestine, as featured in the New York Times in 2019

#michelle alexander #words #articles #essays #free palestine