#this is the justification that israel uses to imprison and kill palestinian children | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sweetestbaby · 2 months

Text

i am begging literally everyone with even a half piece of conscience to stop arguing abt Hamas. i am literally begging you. especially if when these attacks started on october you didnt even know what Hamas was exactly, if you only have a slight grasp on its history and its significance in the context of the genocide that is happening, if all youve ever heard before oct 7th was that Palestine is full of terrorists and muslim fundamentalists and anti-semites

i am BEGGING you do stop trying to act like this process of ethnic cleansing plus genocide plus colonization has anything to do with Hamas and oct 7th and hostages and dead ppl in a music festival. you already know this has all started before Hamas even existed, you already know this started before the 1948 nakba. that should be enough for you to focus. i am begging you to stop trying to become a mini fast expert in middle eastern politics and society and history just so you can argue that

THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THING ANY ORGANIZATION OR POLITICAL PARTY OR PEOPLE COULD'VE DONE TO JUSTIFY THE TARGETED PURPOSEFULLY KILLING, MAIMING, TORTURING, IMPRISONING AND DISPLACING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE FOR DECADES IN ORDER TO OCCUPY THEIR LAND AND STEAL THEIR RESOURCES AND ERASE THEIR CULTURE AND HISTORY

i am begging you to stop responding to united states propaganda. i am begging you to focus. you dont need to deeply know history to understand that this is wrong. this is not a rhetorical issue. there is NEVER going to be a justification for what is happening now the same way you dont need to know the deep intricacies and twists and turns of european history to know that what hitler did was wrong. most of us werent really even taught the extensive background that led to the holocaust before we could already have it hammered into our skulls as little children that hitler was evil and nazism was wrong and could never happen again, bc we didnt NEED to know it then. we could just look at the general idea of what the holocaust was and say, this is fucked up and evil and nobody could ever inflict this on anybody ever ever ever fuck the holocaust and fuck hitler forever!!! it was easy bc we all understand evil when we see it

THIS IS THE SAME. YOU CAN AND SHOULD JUST BE AGAINST THIS WITHOUT FEELING THE NEED TO WRITE ESSAYS OF HISTORICAL ARGUMENTS TO SUPPORT IT. LEAVE THAT TO POLITICAL SCIENTISTS AND HISTORIANS. YOU JUST NEED TO SAY THIS IS WRONG FOREVER NOTHING JUSTIFIES THIS AND THIS TO STOP IMMEDIATELY AND KEEP SAYING THIS AND KEEP SUPPORTING THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE UNTIL THEY ARE FREE

it is, actually, that simple, and i am begging you to stop validating supporters of genocide by acting like this is a nuanced and complex issue. yes, there is a complex and nuanced history here, a massive background of information that a lot of us have just begun to understand. inform yourself, learn all you want, of course, of course, of course this is also valid and important and all of us should be extremely more comprehensive of histories and cultures and societies that are not anglosaxon and white OF COURSE

but please i am begging you to stop giving zionists what they want by playing into their game of acting like there is even a shred of possibility that israel is doing this for justifiable reasons. please. please focus

#from the river to the sea palestine will be free #free gaza #free palestine #israel is committing genocide #israel is a war criminal #israel is an apartheid state #israel is a terrorist state #palestine

4 notes · View notes

bisluthq · 2 months

Note

Everything you’re saying about Hamas you could say about Israel lol. They just haven’t been arbitrarily been gifted statehood by Western powers which Israel has.

Terrorists, outside funding, outside arms. Israel has THOUSANDS of Palestinians including children imprisoned indefinitely without trial - Hamas had no bargaining chip whatsoever without taking the hostages they did.

Everything Hamas has ever done, Israel has done a thousand times over and they’re also the oppressor

like… why must it be one or the other, I’m once again asking you to genuinely think about it. Let’s use a more historical example: Saddam Hussein was a genocidal fucked up dictator. The US was completely wrong for invading Iraq (which they did under false pretenses even and “at least” Israel has some legitimate justification because they do indeed have their hostages and they are indeed firing rockets and shit like-) but saying “it was fucked up for the US to invade Iraq” shouldn’t = “Saddam Hussein nicest dude ever”. Same thing for example with Vietnam. We can say “fucked up of the US to invade” but that doesn’t mean Ho Chi Minh didn’t kill a bunch of civilians btw and was like the best dude ever. Being anti a war shouldn’t = glorifying fucked up individuals or trying to claim Hamas isn’t an extremist terrorist organization lol which like… they are???

1 note · View note

politicaltheatre · 3 years

Text

Empathy, pt.3

Let’s start with this: Jamal Kashshoggi was a man.

Do you remember him? He was a man, a human being, and like any of us he had hopes and dreams and memories.

He was also a journalist. After years of supporting the Saudi royal family and their authoritarian regime, he was murdered in 2018 for writing and speaking out against their abuses and, eventually, their war in Yemen. That was the version of him who fled Saudi Arabia, and the one who was marked for death by the Saudi crown prince he had once called a friend.

Last fall, the Saudi regime commuted the death sentences of the men it offered up as his murderers. Three months ago, an investigation confirmed that it was the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who had ordered his death.

We’re forgetting him. Even now, reading this, we are already forgetting. We can’t help it. At least, we tell ourselves we can’t.

In many ways, Kashshoggi was a lot like Alexei Novalny. Novalny hasn’t left the news quite yet. Like Kashshoggi, he supported the corrupt, authoritarian regime in his country, Russia, before turning against it. The attempt on his life, by poison, failed. Barely. He’s still alive, locked up in a Russian prison, a cautionary tale for those daring to oppose Vladimir Putin.

How long before we’ve forgotten him, too?

It’s a lot to ask of ourselves, remembering everyone around us. Sure, in some abstract way most of us try, “Good will towards men,” and all that, but we have the luxury of looking away and of not having to commit ourselves to thinking of others the way those two men did.

For each of them, it was an inescapable empathy for the suffering of they saw around them that compelled them to risk their lives to draw attention to it. They did so knowing the cost.

That cost - personal loss, imprisonment, death - is enough to keep most of us looking away. So much of what we do is to enable us to look away, to keep unpleasant reality at a distance. When others are already physically far away, it only makes it that much harder for us to do the right thing.

Looking out past our borders, the world today is filled with men, women, and children suffering, more than a few at the hands of authoritarian regimes, and of them far too many paying that cost for standing up against abuse.

The most present case this past week, because videos on social media have made it impossible to ignore in ways that it has been, has been that of the Palestinians.

The facts of this latest series of abuses against them should not be in doubt. During the last days of Ramadan, Israelis began forcing Palestinians out of their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah district in East Jerusalem. This was followed in quick succession by Israeli troops occupying the Al-Aqsa mosque following a confrontation between Palestinians at the mosque for Friday prayers and Israelis celebrating the capture of the mosque in 1967.

This was all a deliberate provocation, beyond the aggressive offense of what the Israelis were doing. The timing of it, during the Muslim holy month while right wing Benjamin Netanyahu struggles to cling to power, was intended to add insult to injury.

It worked. Clearly.

Hamas, ever eager for an excuse to be violent and to be seen to be violent, gave an ultimatum that would make Netanyahu’s regime look weak if accepted, Netanyahu gratefully rejected it, and Hamas began firing rockets, knowing that Israel would escalate and retaliate with a kind of brutality that can only be described as criminal.

The unpleasant reality is that both political powers rely on perpetuating the conflict between them, doing so at the expense of the people they claim to want to serve and protect. And those people pay the cost of it.

Note, please, how I have avoided referring to those instigating these atrocities as Muslims or Jews. That they use their religions and their histories as justification for violence and abuse should not be taken as representative of either religion. If anything, it should be taken as a kind of cruel irony, or perhaps an insight into how the abused, as individuals or groups, can become abusers themselves.

Zionism is not Judaism. It never was and never will be. It grew out of two things: the technology-driven late 19th century belief by Europeans, and their North American “cousins”, in their right to colonial domination of non-Europeans; and the centuries-old, routine and systematic attacks on Jews - pogroms - especially in Central and Eastern Europe that led millions of Jews to flee for their lives, many of them to the United States.

The establishment of Israel in 1948 followed the same pattern: that same, late 19th century belief in the right to claim or assign ownership of others’ land - no matter that it had once belonged to your ancestors; and the routine and systematic attempted genocide of all Jews in Europe - the Holocaust - by Europeans who chose to believe Jews not to be Europeans but some other, lesser race from West Asia.

That, of course, has been the assigned role for Jews the world over: they are accepted as insiders when times are good and scapegoated as outsiders when times are bad. To be Jewish - I am - is to understand that this never quite goes away. There’s always somebody having a bad day, always a big lie ready for justification.

Technically, it is true that Jews are Asian, in the way that Palestinians are also Asian, and that Egyptians are, too, but also African because different people have had different maps which they used for different purposes at different times.

Also true is that these things are only true due to the arbitrary drawing of continental lines on maps made by Europeans, from the ancient Greeks to those carving up the “New World” in the century after Columbus to the 1885 conference in Berlin carving up Africa for colonial exploitation.

This is not, strictly speaking, a European thing. Every culture has a tendency to see themselves as the center of the world. Just ask those living in China, or as they call it, Zhongguo, the “Middle Kingdom”.

The difference here is that modern day Israel was carved out of Palestine, a colonial “protectorate” which was itself carved out of the Ottoman Empire and awarded to the British following World War I. As a spoil of war, formerly-Ottoman Iraq, with its vast oil reserves, had greater value to the British. Palestine had ports on the Mediterranean - “the center of the world” - but was otherwise an afterthought.

Not, however, to the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. We must remember that the rest of the world didn’t want them. Jews attempting to flee the atrocity they and everyone else couldn’t help but see coming were turned away by everyone else, including the United States.

This in no way justifies what was done in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s, it’s just to place it in context. By turning Jews away, by attempting to forget them and their suffering, the world gave weight and power to right wing groups within the refugees.

Starting in the 1930s, those groups began to engage in terrorism against Arabs to force their position into Palestine and against the British to force them out. Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) and later the Stern Gang carried out assassinations and killed hundreds of Arabs and British with bombs.

After what the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe, memorialized in newsreels for all the world to see, who would take the Arabs’ side? Who could? The British were in no position to hold onto their colonial possessions anywhere, so they gave up and pulled out and in 1948 the state of Israel was born. Palestinian Arabs were forced from their homes and stripped of rights they had held under the Ottomans and even the British.

Again, this was not Judaism. As the name “Irgun” suggests, those terrorists were a right wing, nationalist militia doing what right wing, nationalist militias have done before and since, using an ethnic or religious identity to justify committing atrocities to take land and property.

After standing by and allowing the Nazis to do what they did, the world vowed never to forget; part of the price they were willing to pay - that they were willing to allow the Palestinian Arabs to pay - was to forget what Irgun and the Stern Gang had done, and to turn a blind eye to anything the Israelis did going forward.

There was a racist element to it, to be sure. This is part of the pattern of colonial withdrawal, negotiating a partition of land and possessions among the colonized groups, pitting them against each other, and then letting them fend for themselves. Nothing like creating a power vacuum to draw out the worst of us.

The British did the same thing in South Asia in 1947, pitting Muslim and Hindu groups against each other, erupting in spasms of violence before settling into a Cold War, complete with nuclear weapons. Even in their most secular eras, religious nationalism has defined the politics and leadership of each nation.

The result of this, naturally, has been an increasingly corrupt leadership exploiting religious hatred and mistrust to gain more power and wealth for themselves. It should be noted, yet again, that the political entities of Pakistan and India, though led by religious nationalists, do not represent Islam or Hinduism.

Their actions and failures do not represent those religions in any way. They are the actions and failures of men and women seeking power, seeking to acquire it and seeking to hold onto it. They are no different than the Netanyahu regime or Hamas, or our own right wing leaders in the United States.

For all of them, it is in their interest to cling to memory of conflict as a means of manipulation; in Israel and Palestine, nationalist leaders preach as if 1948 or 1967 are now; in India and Pakistan, it’s still 1947; and for America’s white nationalists, it’s either 1865 or 1965, take your pick. For the Serbs slaughtering thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica twenty-six years ago, it was 1389, the year the Ottomans conquered the Balkans.

The wars, cold or hot, can never end because time is never allowed to change. This, again, is a function of proximity. By freezing themselves in the increasingly distant past, the leaders and those choosing to follow them do not have to accept the changes facing them in the present. Their fantasy is to return to that idyllic, earlier time, when they possessed everything and did not have to be accountable to anyone.

And they will all fail for the same reason: in the present or near future, we will have reached a point at which we can no longer allow ourselves to ignore those suffering and in doing so forget them.

That is what we have done to the Palestinians. What has been done and what is being done now is in no small part because we forget them, routinely and systematically and purposefully.

The videos sent from Gaza of children being pulled from rubble should help us remember. They should. Ideally, they will have the same effect as those of last year’s Black Live Matter protests, but the people of Gaza remain far away. For many of us, it will be enough that the missiles and rockets have stopped.

Videos sent from India’s emergency rooms and crematoria should help us remember, but they, too, remain far away. Already, we’re starting to put India’s crisis behind us.

Will we remember either of them a month from now? Two? Or will they fade into the background, as the imprisoned Hong Kong democracy protesters have, or those dying of Covid-19 in Brazil, or those shot down in the streets fighting police brutality in Columbia, or those caught between warring factions in Ethiopia’s Tigray region? Or, for that matter, those half a century ago in Argentina who were simply “disappeared”?

What about the coup in Myanmar? Remember that? How about the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya people, supported by the now-deposed and jailed regime of fallen-hero Aung San Suu Kyi? What was done to them was no different than what was done to the Armenians in what is now eastern Turkey by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. That genocide was recently recognized by President Biden, an act of official, international recognition that took over a century and which itself is already being forgotten. The Rohingya may have to wait as long to be remembered themselves, or longer.

The point of all this isn’t that we forget, try as we might, but that despite it we find ways to remember. That Biden recognized the Armenians came because they did not forget and did not allow that crime to be forgotten.

If this sounds like what nationalists all claim to do themselves - always demanding that everyone remember this date or that insult - remember that actual justice never seems to be their goal.

Justice requires memory, full memory. For us to remember anything fully, we must take the good with the bad. We must recognize the good and bad in each of us and in each group and in each series of actions. We must understand that for the worst act done by anyone in the name of any group or religion, there remain those within those groups and religions who stand against it.

So, let’s end with this: George Floyd

George Floyd was a man, a human being, and like any of us he had hopes and dreams and memories. He died one year ago today in no small part because we forgot him.

We remember now, today especially, because of what was done to him on this date, but we should recognize the role that forgetting him and people like him played in the events that led to his murder. We as a society have looked away from the suffering of minorities in this country, and from the violence done to certain groups within our society.

The easiest thing to say, certainly as we watched that video and the countless videos of police brutalizing non-violent protesters all last summer, was that “all cops are bad”. They aren’t. Hard as it may be to hear, they aren’t.

They are, however, led by men and women who push an adversarial culture, who encourage violence and racism, who are corrupt, and who thrive on the failure of reform. And most of them, far, far too many, stand by in silence as men and women are murdered in that culture’s name. In that silence, they have failed us all.

If we want to change that culture, we need those who would stand for justice to stand up and speak. They are there, just as they are in Israel and Palestine, and in Pakistan and India and elsewhere: intimidated, ostracized, and struggling to be heard.

Of course, May 25th, 2020 wasn’t just any other day in America. It was Memorial Day. That is a cruel irony. Another is how little we do to honor that day. It was created to honor those who died for this country, to remember not only them but what they did and what they supposedly did it for. Instead, we grill meats and drink beer and forget our troubles for just one day.

Few deaths may have the lasting impact on this country that George Floyd’s has had and will have, and he died in no small part because he, too, had been forgotten. This coming Memorial Day, let us take a moment to remember him and all of the others everywhere in this world who have died and deserve to be remembered.

- Daniel Ward

3 notes · View notes

politicalfilth-blog · 7 years

Text

9/11 Mastermind Dispels ‘They Hate Us For Our Freedom’ Myth In Letter To Obama

We Are Change

9/11 Mastermind’s Letter to Obama: Here’s Why We Attacked America

Article via The Anti-Media:

When Barack Obama was still in office, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks, penned a letter to him. Though a judge recently ruled that letter could be sent to the White House before the outgoing president left office, the contents were to be withheld from the public until a month later — until after President Trump had assumed power.

This week, the Miami Herald obtained and published the contents of the 18-page letter, originally written in 2015 and titled “LETTER FROM THE CAPTIVE MUJAHID KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMAD TO THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE, BARACK OBAMA, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE COUNTRY OF OPPRESSION AND TYRANNY.” It contains the Kuwait-born Pakistani terrorist’s insights into why 9/11 occurred, as well as surprisingly accurate assessments of American politics.

One of the main reasons for 9/11, according to Mohammed, is one terrorists have referenced before: American foreign policy. His explanation is rooted both in history and in current affairs.

“The American people were misled by the Johnson administration and the Pentagon into waging a war in Vietnam that cost 58,000 U.S. lives and millions of Vietnamese lives and ultimately led to a humiliating defeat,” he writes, correctly referencing Johnson’s false flag attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, which the Democratic president used to push the U.S. into a prolonged, messy, and ultimately failed war.

Mohammed also focused on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the Muslim world specifically, providing a long list of reasons why the “U.S. reaped what it sowed on 9/11.” One of those grievances was the U.S. government and CIA’s scheme to back and support “the Indonesian dictator Suharto when his army-led massacres slaughtered hundreds of thousands of landless farmers,” though his examples span the globe.

He cites America’s notorious desire for oil, referencing when the U.S. built “military bases in the Arabian Peninsula in Tabuk, Dhahran, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and U.A.E – which is prohibited by Sharia laws – to secure a non-stop flood of oil to [their] country at the cheapest price.” He argues this was “to support the dictatorial rule of monarchial families and oppressive, corrupt, dynastic regimes and looting the wealth of the Muslim Ummah population; and to accomplish [U.S.] military objectives there.”

He references the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran — conducted in conjunction with their British intelligence counterparts — to overthrow the country’s democratically elected leader and empower the “Shah of Iran and Safak, the brutal Iranian intelligence agency, for 40 years.”

Discussing Iraq in the 1990s, he references “when Anglo-Saxon crusaders imposed sanctions against the Iraqi people in a manner of collective punishment that resulted in the death of half a million civilians.” He later addresses former U.N. ambassador Madeleine Albright’s claim that the deaths of half a million children were “worth it.”

Mohammed also points out hypocrisies in American foreign policy, such as the American officials’ ties to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before they wanted to oust him. He also points out that before invading Iraq, the U.S. “supported Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, even when he was using poison mustard gas against the Kurds…”

Mohammed discusses at length the centuries of Western attacks on Muslims and their countries, also noting the way Western countries broke up formerly Ottoman nations in the early 20th century, dividing them up and claiming control in the region.

He circles back to indict the whole of American foreign policy, noting the U.S. has escaped prosecution for their “brutal and savage massacres against the American Indian and [their] crimes in Vietnam, Korea, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, and Latin America; and for [their] support for the Chinese Dictator, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Mexico’s dictator, Santa Ana.”

“You can keep your military bases in Japan, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere,” he writes, “but Muslim land will never accept infidels army bases in their land.” He credits Allah with helping them fight back against Western aggression, frequently weaving in religious sentiments as justification for further violence.

Though Mohammed focuses largely on U.S. imperialism, one of his main grievances is the U.S. government’s support for Israel throughout the decades. He argues America reaped what it sowed on 9/11 in part because of America’s backing of Israel “in the political arena, when you blocked resolutions in the United Nations Security Council more than 45 times to protect repeated Israeli crimes.” Mohammed cites the U.S.’ support for Israel’s invasions of Lebanon throughout the years, ultimately arguing that jihadists fight for all oppressed Muslims. He claims they represent Palestinians and others who have been crushed by Western influence and invasion (of course, it is impossible to prove all victimized Muslims support terrorism as recourse, making this claim rather grandiose).

He discusses Obama’s ongoing efforts to continue providing weaponry to Israel even as the former president openly questioned Israeli settlements. “While your children may play safely in the White House backyard, the entire world is watching your weapons kill Palestinian children at play on the Gaza beach during Holy Month of Ramadan or studying in their classrooms.”

Mohammed criticizes American politicians’ repeated claims that Israel “has a right to defend itself.”

“Why can’t you or any American president before you say that the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves against Israeli crimes?” he wonders. “The answer is very clear but you can’t say it because your lords will be very angry.” Indeed, Israel wields significant influence over American policy.

The notion that American politicians are beholden to higher powers is echoed throughout the letter, but not just with regard to Israel’s influence through lobbying organization AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). With surprising accuracy, Mohammed details corporate influence throughout government. Early in the letter, he points out that politicians must serve their donors, whether they are in the healthcare industry, the prison industry, or “Blackwater, Halliburton, or any other arms industry of weapons firm.” He says the latter industry requires politicians “to push the DoD and U.S. soldiers into more wars…”

He condemns American capitalism and the farce of democracy throughout the letter, referring to politicians as mercenaries working for their financiers. He asserts that “[i]n the end, this will lead the rich to grow richer and the poor to grow poorer. The country will sink into debt and finally the nation will die.”

Mohammed also singles out Obama, citing his drone strikes, which killed countless innocent civilians and children. He condemns Obama’s assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without trial — followed by the killing of his 16-year-old son — as well as the president’s establishment of indefinite detention and his failure to close Guantanamo, where Mohammed has been imprisoned for years.

He calls out Western media, as well. “Don’t let Fox, CNN, BBC, or American and pro-Israeli channels cover your eyes because they never show the truth, their main task is brainwashing,” he argues. “They are experts at lying and distorting the facts to achieve their masters’ ends.”

(Instead, he praises Al-Jazeera, which is, in fact, a news agency originally funded by the oil-rich Qatari government, an ally of the United States.)

Since 9/11, the political establishment’s narrative has asserted Islamic terrorists target the United States because they hate us for our freedom, because their religion is violent, and because they are hellbent on destroying anyone who disagrees with their ideology. While it’s indisputable that anyone who would seek to kill 3,000 civilians is a cold-blooded murderer, his explanation has been echoed by terrorists before; the Charlie Hebdo shooters, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the Orlando night club shooter all referenced violent, imperialistic American policy as reasons for their attacks.

Mohammed concludes:

“If your government and public won’t tolerate 9/11, then how can you ask Muslims to tolerate your 60 years of crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, the Arabian Peninsula and the whole Muslim World?”

As former congressman and longtime non-interventionist Dr. Ron Paul warned in 1998 — long before 9/11:

“Far too often, the bombing of declared (or concocted) enemies, whether it’s the North Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Libyans, the Sudanese, the Albanians, or the Afghans, produces precisely the opposite effect to what is sought. It kills innocent people, creates more hatred toward America, unifies and stimulates the growth of the extremist Islamic movement and makes them more determined than ever to strike back with their weapon of choice – terror.”

This article (9/11 Mastermind’s Letter to Obama: Here’s Why We Attacked America) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under aCreative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org.Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to [email protected].

The post 9/11 Mastermind Dispels ‘They Hate Us For Our Freedom’ Myth In Letter To Obama appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change http://wearechange.org/911-mastermind-dispels-hate-us-freedom-myth-letter-obama/

#We are Change #We Are Change

0 notes