i feel like anti-zionists are just opposed to the existence of synagogues and jewish community centers as a whole. they perceive a coherent, unified jewish identity as inherently threatening. it's why they keep trying to rewrite judaism and jewish culture and universalist and inclusive of everyone. i had a big lunch and am really sleepy so i lack the brainpower to elaborate on this, but even if every synagogue/JCC to ever exist in the diaspora had no ties whatsoever to the state of israel, they'd still justify anti-zionist terror attacks targeting synagogues and jewish community centers bc they serve as a kind of symbol for a unified jewish identity
fixed it. antizionism is antisemitism. the "antizionist" movement is genocidally aimed at destroying the jewish people. just like the antisemitism movement was. like all other genocidal anti-jewish movements though they come up with "justifications" to make themselves feel righteous. whether it's claiming that jews killed jesus or are corrupting purer races or some other nonsense it's all the same evil propaganda.
Divergent is a bad book, but its accidental brilliance is that it completely mauled the YA dystopian genre by stripping it down to its barest bones for maximum marketability, utterly destroying the chances of YA dystopian literature’s long-term survival
Sure. Imagine that you need to make a book, and this book needs to be successful. This book needs to be the perfect Marketable YA Dystopian.
So you build your protagonist. She has no personality traits beyond being decently strong-willed, so that her quirks and interesting traits absolutely can’t get in the way of the audience’s projection onto her. She is dainty, birdlike, beautiful despite her protestations that she is ugly–yet she can still hold her own against significantly taller and stronger combatants. She is the perfect mask for the bashful, insecure tweens you are marketing to to wear while they read.
You think, as you draft your novel, that you need to add something that appeals to the basest nature of teenagers, something this government does that will be perversely appealing to them. The Hunger Games’ titular games were the main draw of the books, despite the hatred its characters hold for the event. So the government forces everyone into Harry Potter houses.
So the government makes everyone choose their faction, their single personality trait. Teenagers and tweens are basic–they likely identify by one distinct personality trait or career aspiration, and they’ll thus be enchanted by this system. For years, Tumblr and Twitter bios will include Erudite or Dauntless alongside Aquarius and Ravenclaw and INTJ. Congratulations, you just made having more than one personality trait anathema to your worldbuilding.
Your readers and thus your protagonist are naturally drawn to the faction that you have made RIDICULOUSLY cooler and better than the others: Dauntless. The faction where they play dangerous games of Capture the Flag and don’t work and act remarkably like teenagers with a budget. You add an attractive, tall man to help and hinder the protagonist. He is brooding and handsome; he doesn’t need to be anything else.
The villains appear soon afterward. They are your tried and true dystopian government: polished, sleek, intelligent, headed by a woman for some reason. They fight the protagonists, they carry out their evil, Machiavellian, stupid plan. You finish the novel with duct tape and fanservice, action sequences and skin and just enough glue and spit to seal the terrible, hollow world you have made shut just long enough to put it on the shelf.
And you have just destroyed YA dystopian literature. Because you have boiled it down to its bare essentials. A sleek, futuristic government borrowing its aesthetic from modern minimalism and wealth forces the population to participate in a perversely cool-to-read-about system like the Hunger Games or the factions, and one brave, slender, pretty, hollow main character is the only one brave–no, special enough to stand against it.
And by making this bare-bones world, crafted for maximum marketability, you expose yourself and every other YA dystopian writer as a lazy worldbuilder driven too far by the “rule of cool” and the formulas of other, better dystopian books before yours. In the following five years, you watch in real time as the dystopian genre crumbles under your feet, as the movies made based on your successful (but later widely-panned and mocked) books slowly regress to video-only releases, as fewer and fewer releases try to do what you did. And maybe you realize what you’ve done.
one quibble: hunger games was intense and sincere and the writer had worked for tv and knew exactly what she was talking about when she wrote how media machines create golden idols out of abused kids and then leave the actual people inside their glamorous shells to rot. hunger games had a genuine core of righteous anger that resonated with a lot of people. the hunger games was genuinely angry about shit that is genuinely wrong.
but divergent was clumsy make-believe the whole way through. it aped the forms and functions of dystopian lit but the writer didn’t actually have any real, passionate, sincere anger to put on the page. she didn’t know what it was talking about, so she didn’t have anything worth listening to.
there’s a difference between anti-authoritarianism as a disaffected, cynical pose and anti-authoritarianism as a rallying cry by people who believe in a bitter world. and the former is something corporations and industries and publishing houses are so much more comfortable with. so divergent and the flood of books published and marketed alongide and after it showed how the dystopian genre was no longer truly revolutionary, no longer a sincere condemnation of corporate oligarchies. the mass-market dystopian genre was now nothing more than an insincere playspace for people who were writing dystopia as a safely distant, abstract make-believe stage for their pretty girl heroes, rather than a direct allegory for everything that needs to be torn down in this world today.
This is the second branch of this post I’ve reblogged and like the fourth I’ve seen and I’m just thinking about how the Uglies series, a pre-Hunger Games forerunner of the YA Dystopia boom, had significantly less staying power than it could have specifically because…with the toxic beauty standards forced on teenagers being a Big Theme, studios couldn’t figure out how to make a profitable movie out of it. The book got optioned multiple times, but a film version made in Hollywood was destined to fall apart at casting & makeup - their marketing methods relied on exactly what the series was criticizing, which is…part of what made it so popular with teenage girls to begin with.
You contrast that with how the marketing for the Hunger Games films directly contradicts the messaging of the text, and how Divergent seems ready-made for the big screen, and it becomes really apparent why the genre folded in on itself. Capitalism tried to recuperate dystopian fiction criticizing capitalism, and in doing so, butchered the genre.
There’s also something rattling around my brain about a correlation between how made-for-screen a dystopian book is and how much it Doesn’t Understand Dystopia, with the culmination being Ready Player One, a piece set in a dystopia that somehow still actively glorifies capitalism & that was literally optioned for film before the book was published, but I don’t…know how to expand on that point.
Hi, not sure if I can ask this properly but you seem sensible in such matters so here goes: any thoughts on this article (contains graphic images) that claims the IDF deliberately targetted kids? https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2025/gunshot-palestine-children-israel-war~v1819649/
I've addressed this libel previously
Go read that, then come back here.
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Caught up? Good. Let's continue:
Volkskrant, in a total absence of any verifiable evidence, relies entirely on the allegations of "doctors in Gaza."
I've worked in healthcare for 25 years. If I have a bias, I'm biased to believe and support healthcare professionals
But here are some of those same doctors in Gaza:
source
source
Doctors in Gaza have repeatedly been proven to be Hamas officers who ran command centers out of Gaza hospitals in violation of international humanitarian law.
There's been literally no confirmed evidence of systematic targeting of children by Israelis - but there's been copious evidence of Hamas and PIJ targeting children. All they have are allegations. They know that if the allegations are repeated often enough, they'll be regarded as true.
They learned this tactic from masters of deception
Repetition makes things seem true. That's how and why social media has been weaponized so effectively.
Every unsupported allegation is a confession.
They are what they accuse Israelis of being and all it takes is a cursory review of the evidence to see that - but most people don't bother looking at evidence. It's much more satisfying to embrace the repeated, socially-rewarded, emotionally satisfying lie than to do the work required to seek the truth.
Also worth noting: doctors who are not Hamas have stated that sometimes their choices were between "toe the party line" and "stop being a doctor or indeed perhaps living." They'd turn a blind eye to things like hospitals being used as weapons bases because all of their options were bad, and they had to make a judgment call, sometimes in a matter of seconds.
I don't think we should hold that decision against them. If there was a gun in your face and a woman bleeding behind a curtain who needed your help, what would you do? Can you say? Can you even guess? I can tell you what I'd do. I might be able to save the woman if I say "sure, I didn't see anything." If I speak up, we both die, and the weapons get installed anyway. I'd play along. It's a horrible thing, to say that; but let's be real. "No! I'll never allow you to bring instruments of death into my house of healing!" is a Hollywood move. These doctors acted under duress and did what they judged to be best for their patients.
But. We do know, because they have told us, that they lied. On video, in press statements, they lied to protect their patients and families. And that means that unless we can be 100% sure a doctor is able to speak freely and without coercion, we can't fully trust any doctor's statements from Gaza. Not until Hamas is gone.
To which I will add- the costs of violence and destruction usually fall heaviest on the poor and marginalized, not the rich and powerful.
The rich can relocate when the bullets start flying. The rich can rebuild if their house gets bombed. The rich can get top-notch health care if they're injured in an attack. The rich can buy their way out of being conscripted to fight. The rich will be the first to get aid if food or power or water or medicine runs short.
The poor can't, and won't.
A revolution must eat a lot of poor people for every rich person it consumes.
This does not mean "just accept the status quo." But it does mean that you need to think real hard about whether the actions you support are actually helping to create a more equitable society, or are just about you venting your anger and frustration and feeling like you're Doing Something.
Also, peaceful and just societies don't tend to rise from horrific violence and brutality. "Burn it all down and Utopia will rise from the ashes" is just the wishful thinking of an apocalypse cult, and should have no place in serious discourse.
yeah gotta be honest every time i think about how the dome of the rock was literally built on top of the holiest site to judaism and that jews are actually literally banned from going there i wonder how the jewish people haven’t set the world on fire with justifiable rage
and not only that but the people whose religious structure now sits on top of the temple mount have historically fear mongered about jews supposedly plotting to take over the site and used these misinformation campaigns to justify violence against jews — the hebron massacre for example — and yet the jewish community is expected to not be pissed about any of this
also i should be used to this by now but i think it’s wild how every fucking time i make a post like this validating jewish pain i IMMEDIATELY lose followers. some of y’all just plain disgust me.
Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.
Also, what prompted the Second Intifada (on paper), was that a Jewish politician went to visit the Temple Mount after the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf illegally excavated and dumped over 10 dump-trucks' worth of priceless artifacts within the Temple Mount.
And they slaughtered thousands of our civilians for it.
“A new sense may actually be dawning that only a mass movement against Israeli apartheid (similar to South Africa’s) will work.”
Fuck this article, but the headline spot on.
A Jewish man merely visiting the holiest place in the entire Jewish religion, that Jews aren't allowed to go near to "respect" the religion that built over it, and that alone prompted slaughtering thousands of our civilians.
20 years after the fact, what attacks did Israel face?
And people try to, "Well... both sides" it.
"Wellllll, a Jewish politician visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque made Muslims scared that they'd make changes to it, so you can understand why--"
a) Like when they "made changes" to our holiest site in the world by destroying and dumping tens of tonnes of our holiest artifacts??
b) A Jew visiting a Mosque shouldn't prompt slaughtering thousands of Jews.
I shouldn't have to say that.
And don't, "Well, apartheid--" me:
This was just after the Camp David Summit.
Just after the Israeli government agreed to all of Yassir Araf's demands for Palestinian statehood and then some: All of Gaza, 96% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem as the capitol, plus full monetary reparations for those displaced in 1948 War that they started.
And Arafat responded by not just rejecting statehood, but his Waqf by vandalizing and destroying ten dump-trucks worth of the holiest Jewish artifacts from the holiest Jewish place in the world.
And Jews were (and are) expected to be completely fine with it.
"They destroyed literally tonnes of our holiest artifacts, but we visited their mosque, so it's really all the same."
"They stabbed, shot, and blew up thousands of our civilians across a bloody summer, but one of our guys visited their mosque, so tit-for-tat."
Fuck that.
-
If you disagree with me about any of this, that's fine.
I don't care.
I just wanted to draw attention to that one extra detail.
It's also important to point out that this act of vandalism destroyed historical evidence of our history in Israel.
See, the Waqf's illegal excavation of the Temple Mount has a part two: The Temple Mount Sifting Project. We know where all the rubble was dumped, and this organization, with the help of hundreds of thousands of volunteers, has spent decades sifting through it for all the priceless archeological treasures.
But one of the most important elements of an archeological find, perhaps the most important element, is the context. Not only where it was found, but how deep. What was above it? What was it above?
And all of that context was permanently, irrevocably destroyed. If a 3000 year old shard is found, we have to ask: has it been there for three thousand years? Or could it have spent two thousand years elsewhere before being moved?
If the Temple Mount hadn't been desecrated, we'd find that shard in a layer of debris that would prove how long it had been there. But as is, we can't be totally certain. We can't prove it.
I've volunteered with the sifting project twice. The first time, I found a piece of Herodian tile--that is, the specific type of tile that he used in all his major building projects, which we also see at Masada.
I held in my hands corroboration of the contemporary account of Herod renovating the Temple and adding the retaining walls and plaza that are still standing today, the structure the Dome of the Rock was built on.
But that evidence, and every other piece of evidence the project finds, has, and always will have, an asterisk.
A bit of room for doubt that will always be there, because the religious authority descended from the conquerors of the land deliberately destroyed the evidence of the cultural history that predated their presence.
And yet, somehow, we are the real imperialist colonizers, and our presence is the real desecration.
The biggest “your experiences are not universal” thing I feel is whenever anyone talks about the universality of girls planning their weddings since childhood because. Well. Not me. God bless
Being a member of the LGBT+ community, I’ve had to come out many times to many people. When coming out to someone you don’t know well you end up trying to gauge “Is this person safe?”. Maybe you ask leading questions or dance around it a bit. Poke one foot out of the closet, far enough to see a reaction but still able to duck back inside if things go south. Sometimes people will just come out and ask you, and you need to make a split second judgment of their character, because stalling is also an answer.
Then there’s the Jewish closet. And it’s exactly the same.
Story time. I live in a place with almost no Jews. And I don’t mean no visible Jews I mean, according to census data, single digits. And ironically because of this, we feel safe having our mezuzah outside. No one knows what it is. In fact we only know of one time it’s been recognized, and we know because we could hear slurs being spoken outside our door.
Anyway, I was bringing in a grocery delivery, and as I was unloading the food the delivery driver looks at the mezuzah and asks:
“What’s that thing there?”
“Oh uh… it’s a mezuzah”
“What’s that?”
“Oh um… it’s a like, a charm?”
“What kind of charm?”
“It’s a prayer scroll”
“Oh, like a religious thing? What religion is from?”
I had been trying to be vague but he kept asking questions. And now I was faced with coming out of the Jewish closet to a man I'd known for two minutes who knew where I lived.
“Yeah… it’s a Jewish thing”
[Pause]
“Huh. Well that’s different.”
And then I finished unloading my groceries feeling like I’d just failed a quick time event. But in the end “Well that’s different”, while a bit weird, wasn’t aggressive or angry, and so I was probably safe.
Some people don’t have the luxury of the closet though, they can’t pass as straight or cis or gentile. If you can’t pass, you’re always out in the open. And if you can:
You don’t look gay.
You don’t look trans.
You don’t look Jewish
And now the LGBT+ community is pushing us away too and forcing us back into the closet. And I personally feel a lot safer as a queer Jew in non-queer Jewish spaces than in non-religious queer ones.
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