Concise:
Zionism is the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
To oppose that you either have to (1) negate Jewish peoplehood or (2) believe that the Jewish people do not deserve the same rights as other people.
Either way, that's antisemitism.
Powerful statements like these, that juxtapose the condemnation of such a simple and pure thing as love with the honour and worship of violence and death, always hit me hard and stay with me for days
This is the tombstone of Technical Sergeant Leonard Philip Matlovich, the first gay service member to intentionally out himself in order to fight the ban on gay people in the military. He hadn’t only served for Vietnam, he was a career Air Force member in good standing who would have liked to continue his career even though he knew coming out would most likely make that impossible.
He’d also been an elder in the LDS church but was excommunicated
He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1975 which was the first time an openly gay person appeared on the cover of a U.S. magazine and had their name printed in that magazine
He was an advocate for AIDs/HIV patients from the start of the outbreak in the 70s. He contracted the virus in 1986 and died 2 years later
His name doesn’t appear on his tombstone because he wanted it to be a memorial for all gay veterans
here’s the King himself
and here’s his grave in its full glory, with the pink triangles and everything! the words over the dates of his birth and death are referencing the extermination of lgbt people during the holocaust and the HIV crisis, respectively.
I hope western leftists know that standing for a free Palestine is not the end of decolonization. I've seen far too many white leftists who proudly stand for freeing Palestine which is good but then get nervous and apprehensive at the idea of decolonizing the very land they are on. Norway will recognize Palestine but actively tear down Sámi liberation. Liberation for one people means it for us all. If you support Palestinian liberation but deny it for the Indigenous people of the land you're on then you didn't stand for Palestinians or any of us to begin with.
Okay but where the hell do 341,675,476 people go? I don’t know how many Israel people there are
This is a genuine question, because I am one of those 341,675,476 people
Hmm, I wonder where oh where in my post said we were gonna kick you out. I really can't see where I said that
#Landback means we want sovereignty in legal matters, mostly. Given total sovereignty, my tribe would do things like 'alter zoning laws to allow for mixed-use neighborhoods' and 'use tax money in infrastructure projects'
'kick non-indigenous people out' is not on the agenda.
Also that argument kind of reveals how little people have thought about what decolonization of the southern Levant would mean.
There are over 7 million Jews in the state of Israel. Many of them are themselves descended from people who were refugees from their home countries after the majority population tried to kill them all (and no I am not just talking about the Holocaust, this has happened multiple times in multiple countries), and many of them are descended from Jewish communities that have lived in the region for thousands of years.
Because although the idea of Israel as the "Jewish homeland" has been used to justify truly horrific political ends, it is literally true that there have been Jewish people and communities living alongside Palestinian people and communities since long before the British came in and fucked everything up for everyone (and then also fucked up their withdrawal in 1948 and in true British Empire fashion left everyone on the ground to deal with the political mess they'd created).
So when people who support decolonization in Israel respond to the Land Back movement with "Where are 300 million people supposed to go??" that tells me:
I'm a supporter of the Land Back movement, ideologically and financially, for the same reason I support a free Palestine. Because it's the right thing to do and because I have this crazy notion that people can in fact live together without one party being fucked over.
“Surge in antisemitism”
I have worn my magen david and not had a single comment, from anyone— not Muslims, Christians, people wearing kufiyahs. I’ve been to protests and demonstrations, and never been more welcomed or felt so safe. Palestinians have hugged me, have shared food with me. Leftists have constantly held space to listen and to learn, to make room for changes and growth.
But you know what I have experienced? Jewish Zionists screaming at me, calling me shameful, Jewish Zionists on the internet debating the legitimacy of my Jewishness. I’ve been called kapo, k*ke and told I’d be r*ped by Hamas. I’ve had the most vitriol from ZIONISTS. I’ve faced the most antisemitism from Zionist Jews, and that makes me so inconceivably sad. I’ve been looked down upon and cursed at.
Zionism is not Judaism. Never will be.
rising antisemitism has been a problem since 2016, but it has basically nothing to do with Palestinians and everything to do with christofascism, but all anybody wants to do is act like the problem is Palestinians
of course, because if everyone’s looking at Palestinians when they think of ‘antisemitism’, then they won’t see the Christofascists rising in power behind them.
EXACTLY THIS!
Knowing that the Red Crescent staff shared their coordinates with Israeli forces when they embarked on their rescue mission in January to save 6 year old Hind who was trapped in a car with dead family members, and knowing Israeli forces struck the ambulance when it was meters away from where Hind was, killing everyone.
We just cannot be totally shocked now to learn that the WCK also shared their coordinates with the Israeli forces and they too had not one, not two, but three of their marked vehicles targeted separately killing 7 of their staff.
It's all part of the same plan with the same agenda on a genocidal loop. It's systemic evil and literally predictable at this point.
It needs to be stopped and calls for ceasefire just won't cut it now. These calls need to be elevated to hold Israel accountable for the crimes it has been literally broadcasting.
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ALTOP isn't exaggerating. There are countless of videos of the IDF shooting at crowds of Palestinians trying to find food for themselves and their starving families. The UN World Food Programme even suspended delivering aid because the IDF won't stop shooting people.
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oh he 100% doesnt know what year it is
i am not happy with our choices this election. But you should know that the reason he's the first president to "refuse" a cognitive test is because one isn't included in the presidential physical exam in the first place.
There was a petition of doctors who wanted Trump's cognitive function tested during his physical exam, and everybody involved on the republican side said no, and then Trump himself actually insisted he did take one in a fit of ego. He was, as far as i can tell, the first president to ever take one while in office.
At his request for the cognitive testing, Trump's doctor administered the Montreal Cognitive Assessment which is like 5 questions and has not been proven to be an accurate test of much at all. It's a lot like when you hit your head and they ask you the date and your name and stuff -- answering correctly in no way means you don't have a head injury or concussion or whatever, it's just a couple of first step questions. Then Trump said a lot of lies and bullshit about his "cognitive test"
Now republicans and right leaning publications are spreading shit like this. Biden didn't "refuse" a cognitive test, his aides confirmed that, as usual, a cognitive test is not included during the president's doctor visit.
again, i think our choices are shit this election, i don't like how old Biden is, and i think the way our first-past-the-poll voting system automatically results in an extremist two party system fronting candidates that the majority of the country doesn't like is some fucked up bullshit
but our house is on fire and one candidate is a bucket of water that won't help much and the other is a bucket of gasoline, and, y'know, angry as i am about it all i am still going to vote for the bucket of water while we look for other solutions
Don't let them trick you into letting gasoline get thrown on this fire please
At this point I’m not even posting this for politics reasons, I’m posting it because my GOD you gullible bitches need to learn how extremely basic propaganda works. Jesus christ.
reblog to cast level 5 spell: everyone who reads this gets a full night sleep
Benjamin Netanyahu's office (January 9, 2024):
It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah.
On the contrary, it is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat.
Therefore, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF and the security establishment to submit to the Cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions.
So just to recap, the area in question, Rafah, was meant to be the absolute last safe zone for Palestinians in Gaza where now over half of Gaza's population has been forcibly displaced to.
We have been screaming that this is genocide and ethnic cleansing. At this point there doesn't need to be any further evidence of it being both of these things.
There is literally nowhere else for these people to go to. They will either be pushed into the sea or be killed in the process.
What's more is that not only does everyone know this, but Israel is aware that they know this. So what this announcement amounts to is their attempt to see if anyone cares enough to stop or at least challenge them.
The most idiotic thing about this whole genocide is the idea that once Hamas is gone there won't be anymore resistance attacks against the settler state. You've murdered 25000+ innocent Palestinian lives and left thousands of children as orphans. Do you think the Palestinians will move on after all of this, knowing that you've traumatized them far beyond our comprehension?
That one post that was like "if they got rid of Hamas but killed my entire family in the process my first order of business would be to make Hamas 2"
"This inability to understand the adversary and thus to anticipate its reactions is typical of the colonial relation. It has been repeated in all colonial adventures in modern history. The colonized group—in the
case concerning us here, a group toward which the colonizer has a feeling of cultural superiority, as its constituents belong to a civilization whose characteristics and motivations have been determined in advance—no longer needs to be studied. The colonized group is what the colonizer says it is, unchanging and
predetermined by the traits that are part of the very nature of its status.
... On the opposite side, the colonized group, owing to its very weakness with respect to the colonizer, has had to make the effort to know its enemy in order to survive. In general, it manages to do so.
One need only see how Palestinians have learned to know the Israelis, their mentality, the contradictions within Israeli society. ... For their very survival, the colonized become wiser while the colonial
forces, sure of their superiority, let matters go. As a result, they are 'taken by surprise' and run more and more risks of failing in their undertaking.
Another error typical of colonial rule, repeated in Lebanon: Just rely on the big stick—in the case we are looking at here, thousands of bombs—and the adversary will learn to behave properly and accept
whatever we want them to do or refrain from doing. According to colonialist reasoning, the Lebanese people, subjected to a hail of bombs, could not help but rise up against Hezbollah, supposedly to blame for everything that happened to them. A grave error: the Lebanese people united against those who were destroying their country."
Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski, The 33-Day War: Israel's War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Consequences (2007)
Yeah like even if you did kill every single member of Hamas you're just creating more traumatized kids that will one day try to fight against the regime oppressing them because that's the only possibility of hope they can see in a situation where they aren't allowed to advocate for themselves.
this is one of the things that's super horrifying about Netanyahu's government. Netanyahu suppressed/refused to recognize any other Palestinian authority and secretly built Hamas up  to be the worst possible enemy bc this is the situation he wanted: extreme violence and terror for the Israeli people, on and on, so that they would think 'oh, only Netanyahu with his strong policies can save us'
The way Israel is currently fighting this war (and before oct 7, the way Israel oppressed Palestinians) does not keep the people of Israel or Jews worldwide safe. because the people in charge don't want that, they want endless war for their own power.  they aren't making a mistake, they are lying about their motives and getting exactly what they want. 
As a Jewish person who has never been to Israel, and therefore can't actually affect Israeli politics in any meaningful way, I really hope the israeli populace votes out Netanyahu's coalition ASAP.
ALTdoes anyone else feel completely fucking insane thinking about the sheer volume of claims that have been proven baseless but are still repeated as fact by people in power. like i know "gaslighting" isnt a useful word when it comes to public officials but i dont know how else to describe the feeling of constantly being told that reality isnt what it is
ALTBy Rachel Schragis
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ALTAll of these things are true. Denying the truth of any of them will not help anyone.
in light of a four day ceasefire in Gaza being agreed upon, i am once again asking you all not to lose sight of the big picture. Biden and the Israeli Government are trying to frame this as a major democratic victory and as a favor respectively. they have no intention of a total ceasefire. they have no intention of stopping their genocide. remember - a ceasefire is the very first step. it’s not even the bare minimum.
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.
a temporary ceasefire is something, but it’s not even close to the end goal. we cannot let up pressure when things seem to be looking up. keep protesting, boycotting, spreading awareness, contacting politicians, etcetera. keep your eyes on Gaza. free Palestine.
