#palestine and the anxiety of existence

[dihalect]

i need to post about palestine on facebook but i'm fucking terrified

#i went to a very jewish college and a very decent percentage of my fb 'friends' are jewish zionists. #i don't use fb often but when i've checked recently‚ i've found a handful of pro-israel posts‚ and they've been well-received. #i have seen one person put a palestine frame on their profile picture. they got a small‚ mostly positive but some negative‚ response. #that's all the reference i have here. #and very importantly: i feel like pretty much anything i say is going to be received as goysplaining. #i think my best bet is to stay away from historical arguments (like‚ yes palestine does actually exist‚ yes it was bad to force them off of #their land in the first place‚ etc) #and also avoid my personal feelings on this re: my relationship with judaism (which is integral to the message i want to send but w/e) #and focus on israel's very obvious current indefensible actions. #however. i feel like i'm doing the movement a disservice if i don't call for a free palestine and explain what that actually means. #but doing that would increase my risk of getting dogpiled from 'high' to 'inevitable'. #and i am not articulate!!! people might try to rebut me‚ and i am very bad at debate!!!!!!! i have multiple anxiety disorders!!!!!! #and people get fired over this kind of thing. i know the chance is small‚ but i don't know if i want to risk my career over this. #my gut is telling me to wait until i'm sure. but i don't know if or when that will happen. #i want to change *someone's* mind‚ but idk if i'll even be able to do that. maybe just my uninformed hometown gentile friends'. #i want to do this before it's 'too late'. but what does 'too late' mean here? my fb friends aren't launching the missiles. #i suppose my goal is to help turn the tide of public opinion‚ in the hopes that that'll affect the politicians/corps at play here. #but maybe i'm more likely to do that by marching. making posters. talking to acquaintances. who knows what else. #just because i don't *see* those minds change doesn't mean they're not changing. maybe those minds are actually more likely to change. #txt

[criptochecca]

Israelis don't deserve peace, don't deserve security and safety. They deserve to always be on edge, to live in fear and anxiety, that every day that the Zionist entity and the occupation exists it could be the day a barrage of rockets flies into their heads. They need to be in constant fear that every day a 7th October could be repeated, that the brave people of Gaza will break the walls of their cage and make them feel for one day what Gazawis have felt for decades. No peace for the Israelis until Palestine is free.

[phoenixyfriend]

Why I think it's important to understand the geopolitical anxieties of Israelis

Oftentimes, it feels like even recognizing that those anxieties exist is viewed as siding with Israel in the current conflict.

And I think that it's... weird, to do that. Dismissing the anxieties wholesale makes it harder to resolve the situation. Addressing them directly is possibly the only way to resolve the situation, because America.

Let me explain.

This will have three parts:

Why the propaganda works

How it affects current policy

How we can pressure the (mostly US) government about Israel using what we know about propaganda

Why the propaganda works

A lot of it is just propaganda, yes, but a lot of it is based in history, and a lot is also sort of self-fulfilling at this point. They have had reason to believe that some of their neighbors want all Jews dead or gone for a long time (see: Syria, Lebanon, Yemen), so it's not that it comes from nowhere. When over half the population is either Mizrahi Jews who fled from nearby countries that were happy to have a place to kick their Jewish populations out to, or their descendants, it's not hard to see that 'if someone else is in charge, we'll have to flee again.'

You could tell the French in Algeria to go back to France, but are you going to tell Mizrahi Jews to go back to the ME countries that they left? Sure, some left willingly, but that kind of wholesale eradication doesn't happen unless there's some degree of systemic discrimination or threat of violence. You cannot send Yemeni Jews back to Yemen.

The threat is real. It is not as large as the propaganda claims. It does not in any way justify nearly 30,000 deaths, half of them children. But the threat is not just imagined.

The fact of the matter is this: the propaganda is fueled by actual violence and legitimate fears.

And unless those fears are recognized and accounted for, Israel cannot be talked down.

Being told that a threat does not exist when recent history clearly shows otherwise is not going to convince anyone. I cannot emphasize this enough: even if the far-right government is replaced tomorrow, those fears will persist.

Israel's current government is violently and militarily opposed to restructuring itself in a way that allows for either a secular democratic single state, or a truly free and independent Palestine in a two-state solution. Due to mandatory army service and large scale propaganda, many have been taught since early childhood that the only way for Jews to be safe is for Israel to exist and to be so incredibly overpowered for their size that other nations won't invade them. The fact that both distant history and more recent, across the world, is filled with antisemitic discrimination, feeds this paranoia. A lot of people are out to get them, and have been since well before Israel was established. The destruction of Judea, the Edict of Expulsion, the expulsion of Jews from Spain, pogroms, the Holocaust, the near-total eradication in Yemen, Jordan, and Syria, and so on... this shit keeps happening. Some of it long ago, some if it very recent.

But it does keep happening, and that is why the propaganda works. That is why the fearmongering has teeth. It has happened before, over and over and over again, and it is being loudly threatened again. The propaganda works in Israel, and it also works in Jewish communities, and non-Jewish people who just happen to hear it, based elsewhere in the world. Like America. (This is important.)

Before moving forward, I need to make this clear: There are Jewish Israeli activists, both within Israel and without, that are vocally against Israel's actions against Palestine. Some are organized, and some are individuals. Some stories even go viral: Israeli-born Natalie Portman's been criticizing Netanyahu for years and politicians have called for her citizenship to be stripped for it. Tumblr loves the story of the Swiftie Twitter that went to jail for refusing to join the IDF, and that's very common; plenty of young people get months-long prison sentences, sometimes multiple times. Right-wing mobs go after Jewish Israelis who speak in support of Palestine in any way, and these things get violent.

(In that same article, it also talks about how Israeli Palestinians are suffering much, much worse under the government's crackdown on free speech.)

How it affects current policy

The thing is, there are only really four ways for this to resolve:

Israel wins. They succeed in pushing Palestinians out of Gaza by killing anyone who doesn't comply, and take it over for themselves. (This is bad.)

Israel is cut off from any and all support from abroad, both 'here, you can help yourself with these guns' and 'here, we will fight your enemies for you,' and is very suddenly at risk of invasion, mass murder, and removal from the Palestinian Mandate by those groups they fearmonger about, the ones that include slogans like "death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews." (This is also bad.)

Israel is convinced to stop attacking Gaza, possibly through the threat of no more support, and settles in to figure out a solution with Palestine, whether two-state or secular single state or whatever, and normalizes relations with neighbors enough that they can start cutting back on their military. (This is the best option.)

A foreign power or coalition of powers invades and forces Israel to stop, and oversees a transition from military state to peaceful state while protecting from outside attack, like was done to Japan and Germany following WWII. (This one is... interventionism is bad, but also almost 30k people have died with no end in sight, so it's starting to look like a real possibility.)

We can all agree, I hope, that the first option is not an option. That is Bad.

I also hope we can agree that the second option is not an option. A number of Israelis may be settlers in the traditional sense of the word, but a lot of them are refugees from neighboring countries, survivors of the Holocaust, or descendants of such. "Just go back where you came from" doesn't work when many of them came from places that were also saying 'go back where you came from' because Israel now existed to expel them to. It's also been around for 75 years now, and some three-quarters of the population were born in Israel. Expelling them all, even the ones that were there before the early statehood aliyah? It's... I don't know. I understand in theory why some activists push for it, but I do think it is fundamentally different from any comparative colonization or settlement.

(Note: I do not include Israeli colonies in the Palestinian West Bank. Those do need to be returned to their owners. Give people their houses and land back.)

The third option is the one that most people, I think, would like to see happen. However, the Israeli government is clinging to the propaganda that they will be eradicated as a Jewish people if they do not forcibly take power where they can, and they are spreading it out among Israelis. Dissent by Israeli Jews may not be criminalized, but the society around them sure isn't receptive to it. The recent invasion of Gaza has also inflamed tensions across the region, which means that even countries which were slowly normalizing relations, or at least.

Netanyahu has not been convinced, and by all appearances cannot be convinced. The only thing that may force his hand is the threat of no more military aid, so he suddenly has to start conserving what missiles he does have in order to fend off a possible attack instead of continuing to hammer on Gaza.

Sounds great, right? This is why we are all (I hope) calling our senators or representatives or whatever your country has to tell them to stop supporting Israel monetarily or with military aid. This is why I keep giving suggested topics for Americans to call their senators about, even if I'm just one voice, and there are much louder ones saying the same thing, but better.

And yet, the Senate passed the aid bill. They snuck it into a Veteran Affairs thing as a last-minute amendment, but they passed it, and any failure in the House will have little to do with sympathy for Palestine and a lot to do with domestic border policy.

So... Americans are also pretty convinced of the whole 'if we stop supporting Israel, they will be invaded and killed off by the Iran-backed militias' thing. Many do feel sympathy for Palestinians, hence the 'Israel, you need to knock that shit off' comments, but they also are genuinely of a belief that the Israeli propaganda of 'we will be overrun by antisemitic Muslim extremist militias and exterminated like in the Holocaust' is true.

Like. Either they fear for Israelis due to the antagonistic forces in the region, or they belong to Christofascist ideologies about how supporting Israel is the way to avoid suffering in Armageddon.

You can't get to the latter on ethics or morality or whatever. You can only rely on ulterior motives (the border things) or telling them 'your reelection is in jeopardy, change your mind or you're going to be voted out.'

The former, though... you can. They believe the things that Israel claims and has been claiming since 1948, with regards to threats.

And if you acknowledge why the propaganda works, you can address it.

How we can pressure the government about Israel using what we know about propaganda

If you say that there is no threat to Israel from Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or so on, you will be dismissed as an idealist who hasn't done any research. If you say that Israelis should be left to their own devices, you will be viewed as cruel, and if you say they should be removed and the land given back to Palestinians, you will be laughed away (silently, but it'll happen). You cannot convince the American government with these tactics.

What can you say?

Israel is making things worse for itself in regards to these exact threats. Pushing on Gaza is making neutral and nearly-normalized countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia less inclined to get in the way of the 'death to Israel' militias. The campaign is creating a whole new generation of extremists who will join the militias out of a desire to prevent more of these deaths by Israeli hands, and that will only increase the threat to Israel.

Destroying Hamas isn't going to do shit if Hezbollah, Iraq, Iran, the Houthis, and so on, invade. Especially if twenty years down the line, all those orphans that Israel just created these past few months start a new Hamas for revenge because, hi, look how many orphans you just created.

Netanyahu is working against the interests of the Israeli people. He is trying to remain in power, and the Gaza war is a distraction from the charges being levied against him.

Netanyahu has a vested interest in seeing that Donald Trump is elected, as they are much closer than the at best strained relationship with Biden. This is very complicated but if your senator or rep is a Democrat, it is relevant.

Israel's continued offensive is leading to the risk of millions of Palestinian refugees entering Egypt and destabilizing them, which, in an already unstable country in an already wobbling region, is going to risk another war across the Middle East. The US still has not pulled out all troops from the last one.

The US cannot afford, monetarily or in terms of foreign relations, to aid in causing a new regional war.

If Israel slows, halts, and withdraws peacefully from Gaza, tensions will settle enough to avoid possible invasion by those hostile forces they're so worried about. The UN can, if necessary, deploy forces to maintain relative stability until peace treaties are worked out. We'd like to avoid option 4 if possible.

The only way I can see to convince the US government to stop supplying weapons to Israel is to push on the fact that continuing to do so will, due to Netanyahu and his party's actions, put Israel in more danger rather than less.

There are other things to say to your senators, and I'll be making a post about that soon (not today, but probably this weekend; stuff like Michigan, UNRWA, international reputation), but in regards to just the geopolitics surrounding the propaganda, this is it. This is why we have to understand it. Because the way we get the United States government to stop giving aid to Israel to defend itself is by telling them 'this is putting them in more danger due to their head of state's aggression.'

This was very long, but I've seen a lot of misinformation and a lot of generalization, and a lot of it is... not great. Well-meant, sometimes, but not great. I felt it necessary to be very clear and very specific. I'm anticipating a lot of comments to the effect of "you forgot about this" and "but that doesn't excuse their actions" and "well, not all activists believe--" and I know.

I know.

But I've had people say "Nobody is advocating for the removal of all Jewish Israelis" to my ask box hours after I was talking about Yemen, a country that enacted a removal of all Jews and largely under the control of a group that has a slogan about doing just that to the Jewish Israelis.

So let me be very clear that I have seen a lot on tumblr recently, a lot of it extremist, and I'm not pulling any of this out of my ass or making up a guy to be mad at. I may not know everything on this topic--I may not even know much at all, given that it covers centuries of conflict due to the Ottomans--but I've been listening to hours upon hours of news from a variety of sources (Al Jazeera, BBC, NPR, and more) every day just to make sure I understand.

Please trust that, even if I get some things wrong, even if I don't cite every detail or generalize just a bit here and there, that I mean well. Please trust that I am making this in good faith and am trusting you to respond to it in kind.

Call your reps. Write them an email. Donate to a Palestinian charity.

It's a slog, but we can make a difference.

#current events #palestine #israel #gaza #death tw #activism #united states #free palestine #politics #benjamin netanyahu #pro palestine #israeli propaganda #propaganda #phoenix politics #Not gonna include my ko-fi this time seems in bad taste

[mauesartetc]

FREE PALESTINE MASTERPOST

Trying to keep this blog more art- and creativity-focused in general, so I'll be removing the Gaza-related reblogs that are about a month old. But I'll use this post as a permanent archive that will update periodically (some of this information will grow dated as the situation develops, but I think it's important to keep a record of just how fiercely opposed people were to Israel's actions from this moment forward). We should all continue to raise our voices about this, and refuse to support politicians who enable genocide. Remember, they work for us, not the other way around. Keep going.

October 2023

-Donation links

-Social media links

-US congress ceasefire script

-Decolonizepalestine.com (information, mythbusting)

-More donation links

-Ways to pressure politicians for a ceasefire

-HUGE resource list

-"Is there anything I can do to help Palestinians besides call my representatives and beg them to stop killing people?"

-"We are isolated now"

-Palestine and landback

-210 PAGES of dead people's names.

-Bail money for Palestine Action

-Article list

-US action items

-Boycott info

-Grand Central Station shut down by protestors

-Message to white American citizens

-UK ceasefire petition

-How YOU can help Palestine (regularly updated!)

-"Please try amidst all this fury and grief to still have faith in the common people." (+donation links)

-Reminder about protest etiquette and privacy

-Prints for Palestine

-"We have no communication with the outside world. They are using their military might to harm us. We have no power but the power of God, no one but God. Please, pray for us." (spoken over mosque speakers)

-DAILY donate button + more donation links

-"Doesn't Israel have a right to exist too?"

-Script for US Congress calls

-Queerness under apartheid

-Sudan is also at war

-Hundreds of thousands of protestors in London

-Half a million.

-Tips for folks with phone anxiety

-This comic got real

-European and Canadian ceasefire scripts

-"The people of Gaza see the protests. That is reason enough to come even if nothing else." WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU. WE ARE HERE.

November 2023

-More genocides than just Palestine

-How to buy e-sims to circumvent Gaza's internet blackout

-"Occupying territories is illegal. Resistance to occupying forces is legal."

-MASSIVE resource list

-"For decades now the media has told us Muslim men are savages, terrorists, wife beaters and everything in between. I want you to challenge this trope the next time you see it in the media. Let these photos serve as a reminder."

-"Don't stop talking about the Palestinian genocide. IT'S WORKING."

-UN resignation letter

-Israel won't allow Irish or Brazilian citizens to leave Gaza

-"Palestine must never be forgotten. Promise me that." (from the documentary "Children of Shatila")

-Gifs of pro-Palestine rallies around the world

-Support Palestine's last kufiya factory

-Protestors flood the streets in Washington DC

-Explanation of why calling representatives is a numbers game

-FREE ebooks on the history of this conflict

-Petition to screen films by Palestinian directors

-Call to boycott Gal Godot's work

-Indigenous activists block weapons shipment to Israel

-If you're attending a protest, DON'T TELL YOUR GOVERNMENT SHIT. Y'know, friendly advice.

-Links to support Palestine Action and Palestine Legal. Get in the way.

-Parallels between Israel and the surveillance tactics used by NYC mayor Eric Adams

-Don't spiral into doomerism. Persevere.

-Want a different strategy to contact your representatives? Try faxing them!

-Florida rep Michelle Salzman calls for the death of all Palestinians

-"The phone doesn't stop" :)

-Indian trade unions call on the government to scrap deals with Israel

-An overview of Israel's human rights violations, and two major political groups that have exacerbated Zionism in the US

-Israeli man explains why he's protesting

-"Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us."

-US House of Representatives votes to send billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel

-Canadian email campaign and petitions

-"Canada's First Nation standing with Palestine"

-"Freedom is infectious as it is just and no one is free until they ALL are."

-Israeli forces invade al-Shia hospital

-Leaked list of weapons the US has sent to Israel

-Only 32% of Americans believe the US should support Israel

-Cop City action demonstrates how to protest effectively

-Refugee grandmother "doesn't have to imagine a multicultural and integrated Palestine- she remembers it".

-Protestors block the Bay Bridge in San Francisco (plus bail fund)

-Israeli forces attack schools in northern Gaza. SCHOOLS.

-Journalist shares an update from an Indonesian hospital and pleads for others to spread it around as it "may be the last video we are able to send"

-Scottish Parliament votes overwhelmingly to demand a ceasefire

-Sobering texts from a friend providing humanitarian aid in Gaza. "They have been distributing guns to the civilian settlers and allowing them into the West Bank to terrorize people" "We have been given option to leave. None took it"

-"the absolute bare minimum in this situation is 1) a complete ceasefire and immediate humanitarian aid in Gaza, 2) complete halt of all military foreign aid to the Israeli government, 3) the Israeli government being prosecuted for its war crimes in the International Criminal Court, and 4) land back and reparations for the Palestinian people. free Palestine means free Palestine, not just temporarily stop carpet bombing Palestine."

-"It's important that you keep posting and speaking about the ongoing genocide. This 5 day agreement isn't the end of things."

-Boosting the incredible, FREE daily donate button again

-Protests at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

-"REMINDER THAT ANTISEMITES AREN'T WELCOME HERE AND WON'T BE TOLERATED"

#free palestine #masterpost #master list #long post

[daphneblakess]

it's telling, how hard zionists are clinging to the "israelis are the real victims" narrative. the endgame of zionism is the conflation of it with judaism. i vividly understand the jewish anxiety of having to exist in an antisemitic world. but what kind of blinders do you need to have on, to see the statistics and human carnage streaming out of palestine and think it is in any way proportionate to what was, ultimately, one day of israel experiencing what they've done to palestine for upwards of seven decades? because if you admit that it's not, that we are not righteous for leaving what palestinians survive with that same lifelong and generational fear, then it all falls apart. but all the jews across the world who have very vocally put ourselves on the line to say 'not in our names', we don't fit into your narrative so we don't count, do we? there are videos of jews in israel who dissent to state-sponsored terrorism being beaten in the street by police officers. i get the feeling they're not the victims who zionists are wringing their hands over.

it breaks my heart to see thousands of years of jewish tradition reduced to self-victimization in the name of perpetuating the same atrocities done to us, all with the backing of colonialist propaganda and war machines that won't hesitate to throw jews under the bus as soon as the notion crosses their minds to. they already are! every dollar that pours into aiding israel's genocide of palestine is one that could fund actual combat of antisemitism, which is spiking, if anything, because of gentiles who've bought into the false mentality that every one of us condones israel's monstrosity. zionism hinges on every single jew falling in line to act out of perpetual fear and retaliatory existential terror, and the moment that some of us say no to that, it undercuts the very foundations zionists stand on. and they have a collective meltdown.

[creekfiend]

Hey, do you have family in Israel? Do you know whether they are alright?

sure, I do. in my experience most American Jews have family in Israel. When my family left their village in what is now Belarus, half of those leaving came to the US and half went to Palestine. (and those who remained were killed and that village does not exist anymore) I am not in close contact with the Israeli side but I expect I would have heard something if any of them had been hurt. Josh has much closer Israeli family as his brother Yoav and nieces/nephews all live there but they are also fine to my knowledge.

I appreciate the check in, but I will be perfectly honest with you that while it hurts my heart immensely that so many Israeli civilians have been killed, right now I am primarily concerned about the millions of people in Gaza without electricity or running water who have been ordered to evacuate or get exploded but who have nowhere to go. I am very, VERY concerned about the statements being made by the garbage fascists in control of the Israeli government right now openly stating their genocidal intentions on a scale that we haven't previously seen.

we are all triggered and traumatized as hell about everything, and by we I mean Jews, and I think it's understandable for us to feel that way. but I also am struggling a lot with the degree to which many of my fellow American Jews are making this ABOUT our big feelings of fear and anxiety. I understand that anticipating things becoming More Dangerous is something all Jews have had to do constantly forever. I understand that "position of relative privilege" is something that's extremely conditional for Jews and something that can be taken away at the drop of a hat. but... I don't know. I've been trying to think of anything coherent or helpful in any way to say for the past several days and coming up short. it's a nightmare. But it would be disingenuous to deny that it's a nightmare for me in ways that are removed pretty significantly from the ways in which it is a nightmare for other people.

my family is fine. I understand and empathize with the sentiments of "but what if my family becomes NOT fine?" especially when this is the largest mass killing of Jewish civilians since... well. and I am also enraged and terrified by the comfort with which many leftist gentiles seem to be practically celebrating those deaths. but I'm really preoccupied by the fact that millions of people and their families in Gaza are Not Fine in a huge and terrible way right now as we speak. this is not to say that it is a contest, but if I am doing triage, it is very clear to me whose leg is more broken right now. While acknowledging, again, that we are in a scary place globally regarding antisemitism.

Angry Jew on fb has been posting a lot of stuff that really speaks to how I am feeling right now. devastated by the horrible ways some of my people have been killed, and devastated also that inexcusable violence is being done, essentially, in my name. I hate to talk about this publicly because I also fucking wish American gentiles would kind of shut up about it a lot of the time, to be honest. and I hate feeling like I am giving anyone ammunition in their weird ideological internet fights about having The More Correct Opinion in the hypothetical trolley problem-ass situation that so many of them act like this is. the refusal to learn about any specifics of the situation in favor of just deciding it must be exactly like some other unrelated geopolitical issue that they feel they have a better handle on, and then just... overwriting the reality of the situation so that it matches up with what they are comfortable imagining in their heads. I have had to unfollow and block a lot of people lately.

I mostly talk to my safe Jewish and Muslim friends about this. and select few safe non-muslim gentiles.

Right now I am grieving for many reasons. Since you asked me about my personal connection I will tell you the main things I remember learning and feeling about this growing up. I've never been to Israel. Not close enough to my family there to visit, although my dad did, & never comfortable with programs like Birthright. I remember in the 90s my dad, who was an administrator at the school of Public Health at the local university, was helping put together programs that would bring Israeli and Palestinian universities and public health groups together to work on universal public health issues like helping ppl stop smoking, vaccination, etc. it was going really well at the time. he was going over there a few times a year to coordinate with the people running the programs there. he was really optimistic about it, & several other similar programs. this was back when Yasser Arafat and Yitzak Rabin/Shimon Peres were having a lot of talks that were seemingly productive and hopeful. like obviously it was hardly a golden age but it seemed like maybe Israel was moving away from violence. and then 9/11 happened and everything exploded and all the little programs simply disappeared and my dad never went back to work with anyone. and then fucjing... Netanyahu. and it seems like since then everything only gets worse and worse and further and further from anything other than horrible violence, and that devastates me

In high school I took a Mideast Civ class and one of my fellow students was a kid whose parents had been expelled from Palestine during the war and fled to America. what I remember being struck by when he talked about this was how his family's story was so similar to my family's story and a deep sense of shame and anger that people who had undergone what my family had could then make his family undergo the same thing. That's still a pretty big part of how I feel. I don't accept that that kid's experience was necessary to keep me or my family safe.

I'm just a guy. I try my best to learn as much as I can and listen to a large variety of people connected to this so I can have a more holistic view of things. I'm not making this post rebloggable for obvious reasons but since it's here on my blog, for anyone reading who is also feeling despair, here's some organizations that are good to follow & support if you are able (non-exhaustive obviously)

synagoguesrising.org Synagogues Rising is a coalition of leftist synagogues in the US who advocate for Palestinian liberation and who are currently begging the US government to work to deescalate military violence and provide humanitarian aid to people in Gaza

refuser.org Refusers Solidarity Network is a group advocating for Israelis who refuse to serve in the military as conscientious objectors

map.org.uk Medical Aid for Palestinians living under occupation & as refugees

Genuinely, thanks for asking about my family. if you also have family in the area, I hope they are also alright.

I want everyone to be alright. I know this is a lot of big baby feelings and no particular political ideologies or solutions and that's because I'm just one fucking Jew and I'm not an activist or a revolutionary and I kind of feel a bit like other online people could stand to admit more often that they're also just some guy and also not activists or revolutionaries. I sure have beliefs and I sure feel strongly about them, but man, right now I just want to express grief & anger & worry about how awful this government is and how many people they're going to kill and how much I wish it was not happening

my family is Ok.

eta: I'm reading this back and realizing that as a response to this ask it makes it sound like I'm saying that inquiring about the well-being of someone's Israeli relatives is like, inherently devaluing the well-being of other ppl and I very much am not saying that and do not believe that. I'm just enormously emotionally dysregulated and this got me kind of stream of consciousness about all of the things I have been chasing around in my brain about this.

#jewish #long post #israel palestine tag

[lily-orchard]

Look, maybe I'm just triggered and oversensitive, and I am not accusing you of antisemitism, but can I ask you to criticize Israel in literally any other way other than its right to just exist? I don't support what Nethanyahu is doing and I wish for his beheading, and Israel, as many other countries, has a cancerous far right problem, I know that, but I've got family in Israel, I fear for their safety, and as a Jew there's antisemitism in any country and I still feel kinda safe knowing there's at least one tiny place on Earth where I can just go wearing a Kippah without fearing for my life. Maybe I've been conditioned but I don't feel too safe where I am now. Idk it's kinda like saying Contrapoints is a terrible person but without misgendering her? I'm sorry I'm probably saying stupid things, and I'm probably overreacting with anxiety, it's just I heard that meme too many times over the years and it's become a trigger considering many people using it with me turned out to be actual antisemites. Idk if I'm making sense, I hope I'm not saying something offensive.

but can I ask you to criticize Israel in literally any other way other than its right to just exist?

But it's on stolen land that it used systematic genocide to steal in the first place.

It doesn't have a right to exist.

but I've got family in Israel

You have family in Palestine.

I still feel kinda safe knowing there's at least one tiny place on Earth where I can just go wearing a Kippah without fearing for my life.

I'm sure the Palestinian people would love to be able to go get food in the morning without fearing for their lives. Unfortunately your "safe place" where you don't even live exists on a river of blood.

[bunabi]

Israel will be erased from the map. That is what Soviet Union was doing, that is what Russia-Iran-China are doing. Arafat was KGB. Of course Hezbollah with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, Islamic Jihad will erase Israel from the map, because they will never ever stop until all Palestinians are liberated and will have a teocratic Islamic state. One Palestine. Never two-state solution. Not as long as Iran exists. 

A single state in which everyone has equal rights is the only path forward lmao. Apartheid and segregation should be challenged anywhere and everywhere. Separate-but-equal policies in ethnostates do not work.

Unity is nothing to fear whatsoever. Human beings are communal and adaptive. Either embrace your nature and coexist with other people or get left behind on the wrong side of history (again).

The scary brown people living in your mind rent free are eating well on your lifespan. This much anxiety is not good for you. If I were you I'd be more worried about my deteriorating mental health than Hamas fr.

#get help 🩷 a better life is possible #replies

[drdemonprince]

Loved the mini post about ABA!

Do you have any advice for what I could do to help Palestinians, practically speaking? Beyond a social media post.

My opinion is that while it's understandable for us to be asking that question, it's the wrong question. There is nothing than an individual person sitting halfway across the world with no immediate contact to the genocide can do.

I think it's because of our deeply individualistic, capitalistic, colonialist conditioning that we even believe that we could do something like that. I see so many people casting about for a way to resolve their feelings of anxiety and grief and to feel impactful in the face of such a cataclysmic event, and there is nothing at all wrong with the desire to make a difference, but I think that because we have been trained to see such matters in such personal terms that our way of responding to it ends up in practice being an elaborate blend of self-martyrdom and hubris that doesn't help anybody. speaking from my own tendencies that ive had to learn to root out here.

Part of the horror of this event that we have to grapple with is the incredible, uncontested power of nation-states, and how little impact any individual person has within the existing political system, and how much of that is by design. We are even barred for the most part from sending money directly to Palestinians because of the power that both nation states and credit card processors wield in our lives, and how consistently they oppose Palestinian liberation.

The things to do that I think matter are small, and will mostly enrich you and the people around you and help slowly build the social conditions that will make it possible for humans to break free of this state of being. Things like reading about the history of Palestine. Speaking with people around you about Palestine. Really deeply learning about nationalism, leftism, anarchism, critiques of nation states, communism, and the like. Nothing that can be incapsulated in a post. Nothing that will be finished in a day, a week, or even a year. Nothing that will make the horror of the present moment go away.

I think we need to actively push against the instinct in ourselves that this is a problem we can address in a post or a single donation or a call to a senator (who, let's be real, is deeply in the pocket of the Israel lobby and is also invested in America's military strategy that involves having a robust base in Israel and therefore will not listen). We can throw some money toward the humanitarian organizations that seem the least corrupt and the most likely to actually get some of that money in the hands of Palestinians, if we want, and offline we can take steps that cannot be posted about on here to slowly dismantle the authority of the state we are living under. But we are not going to fix this.

There is nothing that any one of us can personally do. We have to grieve. We have to accept how powerless we are so that we can envision and then work together to demand something better. Liberalism wants us constantly staying busy with small meaningless little attempts at feeling productive and virtuous.

But there is revolutionary power in just admitting to ourselves that we feel really fucking bad and that genocide is happening and that an entire history and culture is being erased. And we can do everything in our power to preserve that history. By reading, talking with others, sharing the stories of Palestinians, amplifying their calls, and following their lead.

I hope I dont sound too harsh here, I dont know you and I don't know your positionality related to all of this. so I am responding more to the general trend I have seen in how people handle this stuff and how brainwashed we have been to approach these massive death events as if they could be solved by us sharing the right infographics and calling the right people. We can't. And the only way we can move forward is by admitting to ourselves how unconscionable the entire political world is that facilitates things like this happening. There is no answer that will resolve the terrible feelings. There is nearly nothing we can do in the short term.

In the long term, we can be the kinds of people who understand why things like this happen, who know who our real enemies are, and who our comrades are, and we can work together to build the kind of massive fight necessary to topple something like this. If protests sound appealing to you, great. If starting a book club with your friends is feasible, that's wonderful. If all you can do is just self educate for an hour or two a week and then decompress, that's useful too. The most that you can do might be very little relatively speaking, and that's okay, none of us are the main character in this, and it's actually good for us to realize it. You will have to determine for yourself what you can to do bring yourself forward and better understand the present moment and the movement that we need. But you do have the ability to discern that. Just keep learning, keep building community, keep refining your vision of the desired future, and create room to grieve.

[hussyknee]

Thread from May 2021

There has been two states since 1948, when the state of Israel was created through colonization, ethnic cleansing, and the displacement and expulsion of native population (the Nakba). The current Gazan genocide is the culmination of 70 years of the "two state solution" that began with the repeated killing of peaceful protestors. An ethnostate cannot exist without ethnofascism, and a colonial state will never be without the colonial anxiety of being overthrown.

Netanyahu is not the issue, he is the natural conclusion of Israel's political trajectory since its inception, because a country whose power and protection depends on its military strength and conscription is one that feeds fascism and imperialism. Wars have no "good guys". There are only the ones with the power to de-escalate and cease the violence and the ones who do not. Advocating for a two state "solution" is advocating for Zionism, where an ethnostate is bought at the expense of the continued apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. If you hear the call for the freedom and restitution of Palestine lands to its people and respond wirh "then what happens to Israel?" then you're the one asserting that Jews cannot live there without visiting untold suffering and violence on millions of people. I can't think of anything more antisemitic than that.

#y'all better be unfollowing and blocking all those two state solution white American Jewish blogs #charlesoberron and vaspider etc. #i see what y'all are reblogging and from whom #free palestine #israel is a terrorist state #anti zionism #save gaza #palestinian genocide #white liberals #american imperialism #colonization #settler colonialism #knee of huss

[snowball-maltese]

Guys I’m literally sitting here sobbing about Palestine

Those poor people are just dying! They did nothing wrong. Kids and innocent people are just dying because they exist.

I’m like borderline having an anxiety attack/episode whatever you wanna call it like this has to stop! They don’t deserve this! I feel sick to my stomach about it. (And I’ve never had any anxiety issues before)

It’s not fair

It’s disgusting

We should be better than this

#free palestine #free gaza #palestine #gaza #stop the genocide #I’m literally lying in bed sobbing over this #it’s so unfair #those people are suffering and I’m just sitting here watching arashi and I hate it

[koheletgirl]

israel as a state has no reason to exist and there is no resolution except one where settlers return every single iota of land and power to the people they stole it from.

this being said, the idea that mass Israeli death will happen if the above comes to pass is literally just pathetic settler anxiety and projection.

israel as a state has no right to exist – i agree. i wish it had never been founded.

you need to define what you're talking about when you say "settlers". if you mean settlers from the west bank, those who are stealing palestinian land right now as we're speaking, those who are currently represented in the knesset by smotrich and ben gvir and their friends – you're absolutely right. this is a black and white situation, there is no nuance here. they need to be stopped and they need to get the fuck out of palestine and those among them who came from the us for the sole purpose of stealing palestinian land need to get the fuck back to the us (this is a phenomenon that does very much exist. it doesn't mean every settler is american).

if you're referring to every single jew in what's currently known as israel as a settler, it's more complicated than that and i encourage you to read about it. it doesn't mean we're not still on stolen palestinian land, that is absolutely the case. but a lot of jews came to israel as refugees, because they didn't feel like they had another choice (and sometimes they really didn't). no, me or my family can't go back to iraq. i dont think that's what you were suggesting, but a lot of other people seem to think that's the case.

again, this doesn't mean we're not living on stolen land. the right of return to palestinians is a necessity. reparations are a necessity. the land should be given back. you're absolutely right. i don't know what that would look like in practicality, i don't think you do either. but we agree on this.

i agree with everything you said. i am not going to ask you where you think all israelis should go in that case, because that would be a bad faith question. i dont know if you meant to argue with me, but there's not much for us to argue about.

israel shouldn't exist. the fact is, though, that it does. the right of return is a necessity, and there has to be a solution here that doesn't include the notion of israeli jews going "back to where they came from". when people say "from the river to the sea", that is what i choose to hear. i choose to believe no one wants me to disappear. this is what i believe, this is what i actively work for. the situation is what it is. the only way forward is to live together.

i do know, however, that on tumblr.com this isn't always true. people on here do want me to disappear. they do want me to die. and those people aren't palestinians, they're usually americans with a fandomized perception of justice. and i'm allowed to call it out. i'm allowed to say that i don't feel safe on this website as a jew. and this is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it's still happening. and i will not talk about the rise in antisemitism in the diaspora because i'm not there. but when i ask you, the people of tumblr.com, to look at yourselves in the mirror, i fucking mean it with my whole heart. i don't need to hear "there are no civilians" and "they all have dual citizenship" and "they're all from new jersey". and i absolutely don't need to hear it from people who actually are from new jersey.

hope i managed to make myself clear.

#ask #anon #politics cw

[power-chords]

As soon as the discourse of the campus becomes a libidinally fraught fantasy about children to whom something might happen, we find ourselves on the theoretical terrain mapped by the Lacanian theorist Lee Edelman two decades ago in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004). As I have previously argued in this magazine, in the discourse of the campus the student turns out to be a type of the Child—the organizing trope of the heterosexist ideology Edelman calls “reproductive futurism.” Reproductive futurism is, among other things, an ideology of security: the sacrosanct Child, “the telos of social order, …the one for whom that order is held in perpetual trust,” must be protected at any cost; the naturalness of heterosexuality and the gender binary must never be questioned. Katehi’s narration of the primal fantasy of the campus exhibits reproductive futurism at its most histrionic. In the imagined body of the “very young girl,” collective anxieties about the Child and about social reproduction—always raced; note, again, the specter of miscegenation hanging over the narrative—are given pornographic form.

And then thought stops abruptly: whenever there is a risk that something might happen to the Child, the time for thinking is over. It is time for action, reaction. Time to call the police. That actual UC Davis students, engaged in an act of passive resistance, were hurt as a result of this frenzy to protect the “very young girls” of UC Davis belies the phantasmatic status of the latter.

Viewed through the lens of Edelman’s argument in No Future, the fantasy of the campus appears as an allegory of the nation-state. The future of the nation itself is taken to be at stake in what happens “on campus.” Both nation and campus are supposed to be securely bounded, to keep safe the Child; in both cases, this safety proves impossible to guarantee, and this ineluctable exposure—to violence, to liability, to non-affiliates—spikes the panic. When there is “campus unrest,” panic flares because the campus is supposed to be where unrest does not happen, where the Child is safe from reality. Panic nudges both campus and nation toward ever more extreme, ever more militarized practices, aesthetics finally subordinated to terror. Borders, checkpoints. An especially shrill Columbia Business School professor has taken to demanding, on any media platform he can access, that students who chant “Free Palestine!” should be expelled and banned from the Columbia campus.

The Child must be defended. So, enemies must be banished. So, a camera must be installed. So, a wall must be built. But let it be covered in ivy!

—Samuel P. Catlin, "The Campus Does Not Exist: How campus war is made," Parapraxis Magazine. Emphasis mine.

#samuel catlin is BRILLIANT and I love him #samuel p. catlin #lee edelman

[hyperlexichypatia]

How To Write Any Upmarket Thinkpiece

Take an identity, lifestyle choice, or political opinion that exists all across the socioeconomic spectrum, maybe even one more prevalent in the lower classes.

When you write about this, only write about the rich people who do it -- after all, rich people are the only important people, right? Theirs are the only identities, lifestyle choices, and political opinions worth writing about.

Bonus points if you can zoom in on "elite college campuses" as the site of these "trends" (which may actually be, not trends at all, but phenomena that have existed for centuries). This taps into people's anxieties about not only money, but also Young People These Days, confusing and probably subversive academic concepts, secretive institutions, and parental anxiety about Our Children forming their own identities and probably having sex (every Moral Panic Trendpiece about College Campuses is about sex at some level, even when it's about Americans supporting a ceasefire in Palestine).

Now you can freely mock this identity/lifestyle choice/political opinion, and encourage your readers to do the same, because now you're punching up at The Rich Elites!

Polyamory? Celibacy? Queerness? Transgenderness? Paganism? Atheism? Socialism? Decolonialism? It doesn't matter how many poor and working-class people believe or practice these things; you've decided it's only believed/practiced by Ivory Tower Rich Elites (Who Are Probably Having Sex With Your Children).

Your "concerns" about gender-neutral pronouns, or people (Your Children?!) choosing not to get married, or Americans thinking that maybe mass slaughter of Palestinian children may not be justified, now aren't oppressive and reactionary and pro-war; they're populist pushback against the wealthy elite!

Of course, this faux-populism is all a ruse, because your upmarket publication doesn't actually cater to working-class people. You are a graduate of an Elite College Campus. You are paying tuition and moral panic for your children at an Elite College Campus. Even within the bad-faith premise that this cross-economic phenomenon belongs to "the rich elite," you are, and are writing for, the rich elite.

But none of that matters. You've successfully changed the conversation. Now we're not talking about hate crimes against queer people, we're talking about whether Gender Studies is a useless degree. We're not talking about people either being forced to or barred from getting married due to economic necessity, we're talking about unfulfilled one-percenters taking lovers out of boredom. We're not talking about Palestinian refugees being slaughtered en masse, we're talking about how American college students should be allowed to talk about Palestinian refugees being slaughtered en masse.

#journalism #the new yorker #the atlantic #new york times #college students #palestine #free palestine

[houseofpurplestars]

⚫️ Highlights of Saraya Al-Quds military spokesperson Abu Hamza's speech today, March 2nd, 2024:

—

There is no excuse for anyone to neglect the battle that we are waging on behalf of the Islamic nation, especially those who own armies, planes and artillery. Isn’t it time for you to mobilize your artillery like the free people in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq? Is it not time for you to take off the garment of slavery and humiliation to America, the Great Satan, and follow the example of the honorable?

We say to our people that the resistance shares with you all the circumstances you are experiencing, and we will later reveal the scenes of this battle and the protection of the fighters in the alleys of danger and the fields of martyrdom.

We say to the Arabs and Muslims, just as you turn to Allah with obligatory prayers and fasting, turn to Palestine with weapons and the obligation of jihad.

We say to our people, you are the symbol of dignity, pride, and the crowns of our heads, and we will not relinquish your rights, no matter how much we share the pain and wounds with you.

We are able to continue the battle, no matter how long it lasts.

We declare the continuation of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle on the basis of Unity of the Fields in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

Let the enemy know that we are with Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, one front in peace and war, partners in destiny and decision-making.

Our message to the enemy and the leader of the herd, Netanyahu, is that the issue of the next day in Gaza is determined by none other than the Palestinian resistance.

Let Ramadan be a month of horror and anxiety for the occupation, and we call for the first day of Ramadan to be a day of global mobilization in all fields. Attack the checkpoints, confront the enemy, and intensify the strikes.

I say to our people in the West Bank and Al-Quds, go out, light or heavy, to attack the enemy.

We are certain that the united body of the nation will do the impossible, and will make Ramadan historic days to wash away shame and threaten the existence of the enemy entity and global arrogance.

t.me/PalestineResist

#free palestine #free gaza #i stand with palestine #palestine #resistance #gaza #pij #abu hamza #free west bank

[pangolin-404]

Im honestly really worried for ranboo. Most people that get this big on the internet either get desensitized to stuff and become a bit of an asshole (or a full asshole) or get destroyed because of how much they care. Ranboo seems to be heading towards the second category and I wish for them to be okay

[post]

I really have no idea where I see Ranboo going from here. There are plenty of big creators who do good (Jacksepticeye's Thankmas, MCC charity events) and to me, the Particles for Palestine event was like that. A big creator utilizing their platform to raise awareness and charity. I... genuinely I don't see how people are so upset with Ranboo over . what? Not doing more? Not coming out with in-depth, nuanced reactions to global events? When they probably knew as much as you or I did.

Yes he broke promises, he is not a guiltless victim; he kept playing TLOU2 even after told of its inspiration, he didn't do as much charity as he said he would, and it's good he's acknowledging that, but this visceral reaction to him runs deeper than that, it looks like? I feel like he should stop raising peoples' expectations and over-promising; he's one guy, he's young.

I know it's probably mostly in Twitter--in the Tumblr tags, the worst I saw was a couple people calling them spineless (sorry Ranboo, but good lird, he is a little bit spineless for not telling people to stop idolizing him). But I can't wrap my head around the logic behind people going after his ankles.

Now, I personally can't think of anyone fitting the "get destroyed" option you claim has happened, Anon. So I'll be honest I think it's a little bit overdramatic, but I agree with you in that I'm also worried for Ranboo.

I worry that a whole nonprofit will be too much for them. That is a whole organization, and even if they have others working with them, that is a lifelong commitment. This is something he cannot back out of (or he will be making another empty promise) or give to someone else to handle (he said he would be active in it).

Ranboo has Generation Loss/Chronicle 0, White Noise, The Sorry Boys (if that still exists. please it's been months,), his usual streams and YouTube videos, and his own personal life and self to tend to. Genuinely, I worry a whole entire nonprofit organization that intends to address very heavy topics will break the camel's back. I don't know what that will look like, but I doubt it'd be great for his mental health and anxiety (and I worry talking too much about that, lest I get parasocial, if I haven't already!).

(I'll be honest, I don't expect the organization to go anywhere past its first few months of existence; if it does, it will be without their major role in it, or they'd be stretched too thin. I feel bad for saying that.)

All due respect to him, of course, but he is a variety gamer on twitch dot teevee, and I do not understand why people demand more and more charity and apology from him when his job is to play video games and make people laugh.

I get why people want him to state his stances, to be assured he supports Palestine. To be vocal about a tragedy happening. I get why people expect a charity stream during pride month, or an eventual donation to somewhere to help during a disaster. What I do not understand is how this isn't enough for some people.

to quote something I said when talking to a friend about this: I think he should tweet "yall need to respect me as a regular everyday person and stop seeing me as a paragon" and delete twitter and turn off the internet in his house

#thoughts #asks #ranboo #discourse #anonymous #also: again like the post this ask is from; I want to hear others' perspectives on this act