#it's really hard to watch so many 'activists' talk over Palestinians and speak for them without representing them #this is what elevating voices looks like
The screenshots above are his pinned tweet. Here's the link for anyone who needs alt text or wants to read more of what he has to say:
He left Gaza when he was 10, and has lived in the U.S. for more than a decade iirc. So his politics tend to be a little more conservative, in a way, than activists who have lived under Hamas's rule. Like Hamza Howidy, who just left Gaza last August and is an amazing superstar.
I'm so proud of him and his fellow activists for posting these pictures.
He's published essays about his experiences, but it's seemed like he was avoiding giving any names of other people involved - except for the one Hamas killed. And he's talked about still getting anonymous threats for speaking out against Hamas online, even months after he'd left the country.
(Before he left, it would only take 3-4 hours after a post for Hamas members to show up at his door.)
"That’s me in the green striped top, with the naughty smile, sitting next to my father and all my brothers. Those were happier, simpler times – both for me, a sweet, mischievous five-year-old without a care in the world, but also for Gaza.
"Though Israel was occupying the territory, with all the hardship and restrictions that entailed, Hamas had not yet come to power, which is when the real misery started – all the grief and agony and destruction they brought with them.
"Today, I’m 27. It’s my second birthday as an asylum seeker in Germany, my second birthday without my family and the friends I grew up with. I’m grateful for my new home and for all the new people I’ve met, but I long for my old home and my loved ones – especially on days like today.
"I recognize though that I’m one of the lucky ones. I have childhood friends who didn’t live to see their 27th birthday, whose lives were tragically cut short by this horrific war.
"I was never one of those kids who made a wish on their birthday. But today I’m going to change that. I wish that this war ends soon. That the hostages are freed. That Hamas’s brutal rule is ended. That the blockade is lifted. That Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank get their freedom; our own democratic state in which to determine the path of our lives.
"It’s a wish, but I don’t believe it’s wishful. It’s definitely not too much to ask."
Well, my birthday was the week before that, and I wish that people actually supported Palestinians enough to center and platform them.
For the Western "pro-Palestinian" movement to shape itself around boosting the work of peace and human rights activists in and from Palestine.
I wish that people cared as much about Palestinians killed by Hamas, and those who have risked their lives to fight Hamas, as about Palestinians killed by Israel.
I saw an otter briefly hop on top of a babirusa at the zoo and when the stranger standing next to me heard my camera shutter click he turned to me with this look of immense relief, put his hand to his chest, and said in a dead serious tone “oh thank christ someone caught that on film”
Every self-described "anarchist" I've ever encountered has been a young person with a deficit of education and a surplus need for attention.
But THIS asshole adds a new twist because they're also an antizionist dishonestly cosplaying as a Jew.
To those of us who grew up in some sort of yiddishkeit, the choice of words here is jarring and an obvious tell.
"Shmendrik" traditionally refers to a foolish, inept, weak, or insignificant person. A helpless "nincompoop" or "pipsqueak." It's historically a mild, almost comical insult, popularized by early Yiddish theater. More than once, I've heard a grandparent refer to a grandchild affectionately as a schmendrik.
So this gonif is engaged in a high-stakes, furious internet argument involving terms like "Zionazi" and "Nazi's wet dream," and drops "shmendrik" into that rage.
This is the linguistic equivalent of aggressively yelling 'you absolute poopy-pants!" or 'you utter silly-billy!' in the middle of a screaming match.
A putz like @anarchic-judaism doesn't realize how fucking weird it is because they've never, ever spent time around actual speakers of Yiddish and probably couldn't pronounce the word aloud to save their life.
If you're unfamiliar with the tactic or have never run into @stoptheantisemitism, please understand: This is a non-Jewish user or bot who created an account to launder their antizionist/antisemitic arguments by posing, badly, as a Jew.
They grab a few Yiddish words off Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary to build instant cred among sonei Yisroel, but because they lack cultural context, they drop words like shmendrik into inappropriate contexts where the tonal flop makes their already-ridiculous mask fall off entirely.
Jumblr friends: Please don't waste any time on this falsher yid. They're a cheap chazer mit a kosher pisk. A khokhem be-layla.
No Jew who knows anything at all about their own history would say this:
They're a cosplayer. They're trying to ragebait you.
Please stop giving this mamzer the attention they're looking for.
@indecisiveavocado I feel like this was a slight subject change so I wanted to address it in its own reblog chain.
Mormons practice a universal form of baptism for the dead. It is one of the rituals performed in the Temples. By "universal" I mean that any names of any dead people they receive are submitted to the ritual.
They get proxies (Mormons who are worthy/able to enter the Temple) to enter a baptismal font and they do the exact same prayer for baptism of a living person, except for the part where they say "I baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ on behalf of [name], who is dead". I did this ritual once when I was a young teenager. You get dunked a bunch of times; I didn't count but it felt like about twenty. After that, they give you a blessing that's supposed to seal you into membership--again, giving it a bunch of times and each time substituting the name of a dead person.
Theologically, this practice does not make the dead person Mormon. The church teaches that people go to a "spirit prison" which is basically purgatory if they were not baptized. Once they are baptized by proxy, the dead person is given the option of accepting or rejecting the baptism. Rejection would mean being sent to "the outer darkness" entirely out of G-d's reach and if you persisted there, cessation of existence; acceptance sends you to one of several afterlives of varying positivity. When I was attending, hell wasn't really a thing and the ability of the dead person to consent was emphasized. That those dead folks were being coerced by cessation of existence was, naturally, not emphasized.
Jews were not specifically targeted for this practice; they do it for everybody. This is why Mormons are obsessed with genealogy. Trying to baptize all their dead family members who were not Mormon. However, once they run out of relatives, members frequently turn to public records to add individuals to the list of folks to be baptized, and that is where the problem arises. Not only are the dead incapable of consent, but their living relatives frequently also object, since the ritual is more or less necromancy with a lot of biblical language papered over it.
A lot of it is laziness on the part of the church leaders. People submit names and no one checks on them beforehand. They only started removing the names of Jews when they were caught doing it, which started happening in the 1990s IIRC. Jews who were listed in the records as having been baptized include Maimonides and Einstein. Anne Frank has been posthumously baptized NINE TIMES, most recently in 2012.
The church insists that baptizing dead Jews has ended but also insists it's impossible to stop people from submitting "inappropriate" names, which I think we all know is bogus. In the 2010s Jewish groups announced that they would stop trying to negotiate with the church since they broke every promise they made about it, and instead said they'd appeal to the court of public opinion.
There is a not-unfounded fear that at some point Jews who died in the Shoah will be declared to be Mormon victims of the Nazi regime in the future thanks to their baptism.
However, Mormons differ from Jehova's Witnesses in that, while some of their teachings regarding Israel and Zion were forbidden, the Mormons got along with the Nazis pretty well. Mormonism teaches its people to be subject to the government and they leaned WAY into that during the Third Reich. The Nazis also liked genealogy and gave records to the church so they could build family trees validating racial purity on the Nazis' behalf.
It wasn't all easy for them, but it was a far cry from other tiny religious groups' treatment in Germany, much less the Jews. Any Mormons who died by Nazi hands did so because they broke with the church's policy and objected to the treatment of Jews.
For whatever it's worth, the church does teach this part of its own history accurately. I heard it from the pulpit as a child as a shameful part of church history. Current educational materials on the church website confirm they still teach it. This is a rare moment where the Mormon church did not invent a story of persecution to excuse itself from incredibly shitty behavior. To claim Jews as Mormon victims of the Nazis would require them to first invent a story where Mormons were victims of the Nazis, which is possible, but not currently being done.
I still say the fear that the church will do so in the future is not unfounded because, well, given their track record, why would anybody trust them?
Reblogging because no many how many hateful people who attach being Jewish as their identity or excuse to support terrible acts, does not make the Jewish identity that.
I love any and all Jewish people proud of that heritage, for who they are, if they are not engaging in hate. Not all Muslim are terrorist and not all Jews are Zionist. Happy pride, my life-loving people.
It's so funny to me that Mary Shelley, her husband, John Polidori, and Lord Byron had a competition to see who could write the best horror story and she wrote fucking Frankenstein. Imagine losing a competition that badly. Imagine just doing a silly little competition with your friend and she basically invents a new genre and creates one of the most famous characters in fiction. Imagine being proud of your little story and then she shares one that people will still read every day in 200 years. Imagine doing a writing competition with your wife and she becomes so recognizable that you'll always be known as Mary Shelley's husband
in order to truly get rid of misogyny in fandoms we need to treat girl characters the same way we treat guy characters. Say you’d hit her with your car. Say you want to see her crying and trying and failing to keep her emotions hidden. Say you want her to get worse. Say you want to chew on her like a squeaky toy. For feminism
Twenty-one tons of potatoes are up for grabs at Potato Palooza on Monday.
The nonprofit’s set to receive a donation of 21 tons of tubers this weekend from suppliers in the Midwest. Hoping to get the starchy vegetables to people in need, the nonprofit will host a “Potato Palooza” event on Monday in Park Hill.
“Anyone is welcome to come. They can bring tote bags, wagons, you could back up your pickup truck if you wanted to,” Hissong said. The event is 9 a.m. to noon at the Park Hill Food Recovery Hub, 6090 East 39th Avenue, on July 27.
Washington should abandon trying to force regime change by military action. The current war has proved to be counterproductive, as it has set back the organic revolutionary Iran ascendant before the war. The U.S. should avoid targeting drinking water, sanitation, health, and civilian energy systems. It should also ensure that sanctions and military operations do not obstruct emergency repairs or the delivery of medicines, water-treatment chemicals, spare parts, generators, and other supplies needed to keep essential civilian services operating.
Otherwise, attacks on water and power will become a normal form of retaliation across a region that cannot survive them. The danger is even greater when confronting a regime that has repeatedly shown itself willing to pursue a scorched-earth strategy, sacrificing the country’s infrastructure and its people to preserve its own power. Weakening a government and breaking a country are not the same thing.
Regimes can fall, and armies can withdraw, but poisoned aquifers, collapsed power grids, and destroyed water systems can condemn civilians to displacement, disease, and poverty for generations. A war presented as an attempt to change who governs Iran must not destroy the systems that make the country governable. If the stated goal is to give Iranians a better future, that future cannot be built on the ruins of the systems they need for survival.
Trump’s Destruction of Iranian Life Is Strengthening the Regime
Targeting civilian infrastructure is a foolish and cruel error.
you would think the paganism subreddit would be more respectful of other religions considering virtually nobody but other pagans respect paganism. but i just politely informed them that “yahweh” isn’t the jewish name for god and they didn’t do the normal thing — go “alright thanks for correcting my misconception” — but instead decided that the jews are wrong.
Unfortunately not that surprising. In my experience many if not most pagans, regardless of specific religion, still have a christian worldview with all the supercessionist baggage that entails and they think having renounced jesus specifically means christianity no longer has any influence over them.
The friend I lost last year, who said stuff like "voodoo and hoodoo are not for white people" and "I don't think you should study Appalachian folk magic if you're not from Appalachia" told me Lilith was a Christian creation to uphold the patriarchy and that her being "the personification of child death" was a Christian lie.
He was extremely upset when I told him Lilith was a Jewish demon and was ancient before Christianity was even thought of.
I just find it so fascinating that people just can't seem to grasp the idea of "hey this very very old culture came up with a mythological explanation for why sometimes children die suddenly seem for seemingly no reason." Seems like the kind of things a lot of cultures might come up with!
So many cultures when you go back have various just-so stories that explain "yes this happens because of X."
Also, don't forget how Anything* A Jew Creates Automatically Belongs To Real People.
*The thing in question can be culture, wealth, inventions, history, technology, infrastructure, prosperity, religious texts, identity... it's never something that Belongs To The Jews.
there seems to be a fundamental disagreement between microwave oven manufacturers and the producers of microwave meals over whether the customer should know the wattage of their microwave or if such details should be abstracted away from them
the microwave rice demands 800 watts of power for 2 minutes, but all the microwave can offer me three settings: one low, one high, and one somewhere in the middle. I turn it to the one in the middle as I happen to know 800W is the average power of most microwaves. the light comes on and the bag of rice starts slowly turning, but rather than hearing the usual rumble of the microwave, I instead start hearing short snippets of conversation - words snatched from the ether. the lights flicker and a chill runs up my spine. the voices remind me of those "spirit boxes" ghost hunters use. I double check the setting on the microwave. "ah," I say, remembering that I had set it to medium,
Targeting civilian infrastructure is a foolish and cruel error.
The U.S. and Israeli war against Iran has intensified again. It continues to undermine long-term U.S. national interests by wreaking havoc on Iran’s critical civilian infrastructure and putting the entire Persian Gulf region’s economy and environment in grave danger.
U.S. President Donald Trump promised to support Iranian protesters, but he has dealt a blow to the Iranian people’s ability to overthrow the regime by conducting the war as if it is a war against the entire nation of Iran rather than the current regime in power. Targeting critical infrastructure will mean devastation for tens of millions of Iranians living in a country already on the brink of environmental collapse.
Millions of Iranians despise the Islamic Republic. Only six months ago, they rose up against it, and thousands of them were massacred by the regime. Some Iranians supported the war initially in the hope that the United States and even Israel would help them finish what their uprising had started. But a war that has been devastating to the civilian population has helped the regime to portray itself as Iran’s national defender rather than its occupier.
The Islamic Republic has managed not only to survive the war but to inflict significant damage to the U.S. military and rattle the global economy. The Tehran regime has also sent a clear and dangerous message by its attacks on U.S. and allied bases across the Persian Gulf: It will destroy energy and water infrastructure necessary to the survival of tens of millions of people in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states if Iran’s critical infrastructure is targeted.
Ironically, Trump promised that “help [was] on its way” when thousands of unarmed protesters were massacred in January. His war against Iran, however, has only created more hardship for ordinary people, especially in the southern region abutting the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. and Israeli military assaults have been particularly devastating for smaller communities across Iran, many of which are ardently opposed to the regime but are bearing the brunt of the current conflict.
The United States claims it is targeting military sites, but the roads, bridges, and railways in southern Iran it is hitting are not only used by the Iranian military but also the civilian population. The attacks may be intended to disrupt the movement of Iranian troops and weapons near the Strait of Hormuz, but the same roads and bridges carry food, fuel, medicine, and other necessities for ordinary people.
Other targets are even worse. A mid-July U.S. airstrike damaged the desalination facility in Bonji in western Jask county, part of a wider assault on infrastructure along Iran’s southern coast. The damage to the facility resulted in about 10,000 people losing access to drinking water.
The consequences were immediate. Groundwater is scarce along this arid stretch of coastline, and many communities depend heavily on desalinated seawater. Twenty villages lost their water supply for a few days, in the height of the summer, while provincial authorities began delivering water by tanker and drawing from alternative sources.
Tankers can provide temporary relief, but they cannot fully replace a municipal system serving scattered villages. During extreme heat, demand rises just as the transportation and storage of water become more difficult.
Bonji shows why attacking infrastructure is so dangerous. Such strikes can impose immediate suffering on civilians while leaving hardened and bunkered military forces capable of continuing the war. Water, electricity, transportation, food, and health systems are closely connected. Damage to one can quickly spread to the others.
Alarmingly, the attack on Iran’s infrastructure has been met by retaliatory attacks against neighboring GCC states that host U.S. bases. For example, the Iranian regime attacked Kuwait’s power and water infrastructure, shutting down several generating units and starting a fire at a desalination facility.
The damage in Kuwait may not produce widespread water cuts yet, but the danger is clear. In one of the hottest and driest regions on Earth, a desalination plant is a lifeline. Iran has also struck water and power facilities in Bahrain and earlier in the war Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure. The GCC states rely heavily on desalination plants for their water needs, and the Islamic Republic has demonstrated the capability to damage or destroy much of the GCC’s desalination and water infrastructure.
This cycle of violence is undermining civilians on both sides of the Persian Gulf rather than leading to the overthrow of the regime. The regime has spent decades moving its most sensitive nuclear and military assets underground, relatively safe from U.S. bombs. The Fordow enrichment complex, for example, was built beneath a mountain, and newer underground facilities like Pickaxe Mountain have been excavated around Natanz.
Underground bases are not limited to Iran’s military and nuclear facilities. In a recent interview, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi implied that the tunnels and underground facilities were regularly used by the regime’s high-level decision-makers.
Iran’s underground military infrastructure further complicates any effort to distinguish strategic targets from civilian systems surrounding them.
The regime developed much of its tunneling capacity through ostensibly civilian work. Over several decades, the country acquired tunnel-boring machines and built up excavation expertise through metro systems, mines, dams, and inter-basin water-transfer projects. Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ engineering arm, and companies owned or controlled by it have played major roles in Iran’s dam, water-transfer, tunneling, pipeline, transportation, and other infrastructure projects.
The machinery and expertise used to excavate a water-transfer tunnel or metro line can also be used to build an underground missile or nuclear facility. The same ambiguity applies to the infrastructure serving those sites. Roads, electrical lines, pipelines, and water systems may support a strategic facility while also serving nearby communities. Destroying them can cut essential services for civilians without destroying what lies beneath the mountain.
This is why U.S. attacks intended to weaken the regime can instead destroy essential civilian systems without eliminating the deeply buried facilities they are meant to target.
Several independent Iranian water-management engineers familiar with major excavation projects have told us they suspect that equipment and tunnels officially associated with mining, water-transfer, and metro projects may also have been used to build military and nuclear facilities.
Last year, sources told us about links between water projects and nuclear facilities such as Fordow. Khatam al-Anbiya and its subsidiaries have operated across the civilian, nuclear, and military sectors, allowing expertise and equipment to move between them. That institutional overlap would have made it possible for engineering expertise and equipment developed for civilian projects to be used in sensitive military or nuclear construction.
Iran’s nuclear facilities do not exist in isolation. They depend on water, electricity, roads, communications, and specialized supply chains that may also serve nearby cities, farms, and industries. In 2006, the Isfahan governor’s office reported that 6.5 million cubic meters of water had been transferred to a nuclear facility.
Attacking nuclear-related infrastructure directly creates huge risks of its own. The consequences depend heavily on the facility and the materials stored there, but damage to an operating reactor, chemical-processing plant, cooling system, or nuclear-material storage site could release radioactive or toxic substances. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that attacks on nuclear facilities undermine nuclear safety and could have consequences beyond Iran’s borders.
Even when there is no release of radioactive material, war can interrupt inspections, destroy monitoring equipment, scatter records, and make it harder to account for nuclear material. Bombing may delay parts of the program without eliminating the expertise or political incentive behind it. It may instead persuade Iranian leaders that future facilities must be built deeper underground, spread across more locations, and hidden more carefully from inspectors.
Technical knowledge survives bombing. Power grids, hospitals, bridges, water-treatment plants, and public trust are much harder to rebuild.
Destroying civilian infrastructure also weakens the ability of Iranians to organize, rebuild, and pursue fundamental political change. People consumed by the search for water, food, medicine, fuel, and shelter have little time or strength left for democratic mobilization. Authoritarian governments understand how to use scarcity, fear, and dependence to tighten their grip.
Washington should abandon trying to force regime change by military action. The current war has proved to be counterproductive, as it has set back the organic revolutionary Iran ascendant before the war. The U.S. should avoid targeting drinking water, sanitation, health, and civilian energy systems. It should also ensure that sanctions and military operations do not obstruct emergency repairs or the delivery of medicines, water-treatment chemicals, spare parts, generators, and other supplies needed to keep essential civilian services operating.
Otherwise, attacks on water and power will become a normal form of retaliation across a region that cannot survive them. The danger is even greater when confronting a regime that has repeatedly shown itself willing to pursue a scorched-earth strategy, sacrificing the country’s infrastructure and its people to preserve its own power. Weakening a government and breaking a country are not the same thing.
Regimes can fall, and armies can withdraw, but poisoned aquifers, collapsed power grids, and destroyed water systems can condemn civilians to displacement, disease, and poverty for generations. A war presented as an attempt to change who governs Iran must not destroy the systems that make the country governable. If the stated goal is to give Iranians a better future, that future cannot be built on the ruins of the systems they need for survival.
