the problem with israel is that they had so much goodwill following oct 7 because it was really such a horrific attack. all they had to do was respond more or less in kind and then sit back down and everything would be great. but no, they just couldn't stop killing and invading all their neighbours, and then that wasn't enough and they are just pissing off half the world for no good reason. like idk i think it's so easy not to accept stolen ukrainian grain from russia. the first time they were like oh you were too late to tell us this grain was stolen (ukraine was not too late). but now it's the second time already, and they started with "you did not tell us" (did too, and also this is literally the second time), then moved on to "you told us but there's no proof it's true" (there is lmao), and finally just ended up with "fuck you, don't tell us we can't buy stolen grain from russia and therefore finance their war against you". like literally i just think it is so easy not to do these things. and yet
...These are a lot of words for "I hate Israel but not the Joos I'm not a Nazi!"
Also "killing and invading their neighbors?" Did you not know Hezbollah and Hamas were the ones to attack Israel in the first place, after Israel had given them time and time again, the chance to not be psychotic Jew haters? Hamas were given resources and cash and what did they do with it? Initiate the worst attack on the Jewish people since the holocaust.
Hezbollah made the north's life a living hell for decades and you expect Israel to show them any goodwill?
I will ask you this- will I see you condemn Iran or North Korea for doing far worse? For executing innocent civilians or legalizing rape?
the problem with israel is that they had so much goodwill following oct 7 because it was really such a horrific attack. all they had to do was respond more or less in kind and then sit back down and everything would be great
ALLL THEY HAD TO DO was murder and rape and behead and dismember and kidnap children just like my little blorbos!!!!!!! THEN no one would hate them [for waging a war they did not start, endangering their own soldiers in attempts to minimize civilian casualties, using taxpayer funds to provide aid they KNOW will be used to hurt them, spending millions providing healthcare to those who orchestrate the murder of jews (and their allies)]
Good will?????? WHERE?! There were anti Israel protests onmy campus calling it a genocide on OCTOBER 10th!!!! Israeli retaliation didn’t even BEGIN until October 12th. What planet are you on????
I saw people on this very site cheering in the comments of a video of an Israeli child hostage being abused by Hamas militants on the day of the attacks. What "good will"?
This is just a random observation but smth I noticed:
Most of the pro-Israel crowd on Tumblr are mainly Jews, and a few goys. But mainly Jews, and plenty of people residing or living in Israel
But those advocating for Palestine? We have a Russian pysop who ran a popular Tumblr blog and disappeared after Trump got reelected. A Shia living in Sweden, allegedly, and celebrating Hamas and Hezbollah. And then a racefaker from Turkey. And their posts get reblogged by tons of self-proclaimed leftists and marxists residing in the US, Canada, South America and Europe and them cheering for the "resistance"
But the main question is, where are the Palestinians on this site? There are def plenty few here, but none has reached that prominence
Basically, a Tumblr community of Palestinians is quite absent
I know one might say it's because of Internet censorship (tho that doesn't stop people doubting the Gaza scams and reblogging them), but even we have plenty of Iranians here who are outspoken against the Islamic regime
And it's not like a Palestinian diaspora is absent. We have plenty descended who were expelled/voluntarily left during the 1948 War and 67 War and having prominent profiles overseas, whether as lecturers or journalists (and also spewing hate against Israel). In fact, plenty of them are active on Twitter, while ofc there's plenty of Palestinians who also advocate for peace and deradicalisation
It's just odd, I find, of the general lack of actual Palestinian voices on this site. Ofc there are people who do repost stuff by Palestinians from other social media platforms like tiktok. But interestingly, the pro-Palestine side also tends to laud token Jews villanising Israel
Similarly, I also note seldom do posts really talk about Palestinian culture. Yes, they do whine about Israel destroying cultural sites in the Gaza War (like mosques and some churches). And I've seen a few posts on Palestinian dance and cuisine
But very overwhelmingly, the posts are more or less denunication of Jewish culture in Israel or claiming Israeli culture has been "appropriated" by Palestinians. And ofc there's the promotion of Palestinian Arabic, but more to supersede the use of Hebrew
Palestinian history and culture only seems to be wielded to villify and undermine Israeli and Jewish history and culture. It ends up giving off the impression that Palestinian culture doesn’t exist outside of hating Israel and Jews.
For real - all of this, and the so called "Pro Palestine" left also speak over, dismiss and accuse of being "traitors" those Palestinian voices who don't say what they want to hear, who criticise Hamas and want peace. These "activists" do far more harm than good to the cause they supposedly care so very much about, and that's because it's never actually been about Palestinian welfare, but as you point out, an excuse to hate Jews and feel righteous about it.
There have been two prominent Palestinian voices here, 90-ghost and....fuck. I forget the other guy's name.
Anyway they were both in cahoots with a scamming ring.
So that's your Palestinians "speaking for Palestine." They were funneling thousands of dollars to scammers instead of helping to organize real aid.
There also was another Palestinian blogger here named jujusjunk who was really cool. She got run off the site by people sexually harassing her and abusing her for saying she believed Israelis had the right to live. Not even that she supports Israel, mind you. She fuckin' hates Israel. But she was deradicalizing from Hamas support and so "pro-Palestinians" drove her away.
That's what's happening to your Palestinian voices on this site. Either they're scammers or Westerners scream at them for not being perfect leftist toys until they leave.
The punk movement is actually made up of bootlickers for following Fauci's orders instead of coughing on each other and getting COVID to stick it to the man
revelation i had as told to me by a classmate: people know the gaza war isn’t a genocide. they know that’s not what the word means, they know legally it has no legs to stand on.
they just don’t care.
they just want to say something that sounds shocking and powerful and what it actually means, the reason for its creation, is secondary to its usage. the goal is to see israel punished and they’ll go to any lengths to make that happen, crossing any moral, ethical, and legal bounds in their way.
Not only did capitalism not exist a thousand years ago, the Windsors did not exist a thousand years ago, nor did the Sachsen-Coburg und Gothas (19th century), the Hanovers (17th century), the Stuarts (14th century), the Tudors (15th century, 13th if we’re being very Welsh), or the Plantagenets (12th century), but Britain was not a thing until the Acts of Union in 1707.
I still think it’s hilarious that the reason nobody ever figures out Superman’s secret identity or where he lives or what he does when he’s not saving the planet, is because he already told them all the Kryptonian stuff that can’t be tied to any of his human friends or family. I guarantee you the in-universe wikipedia article on Superman lists his name as Kal-El and the “personal life” section says that he lives full-time at his private fortress of solitude at the north pole. Nobody in the world looks at Clark Kent and thinks “oh my god, maybe he’s superman!” for the same reason nobody ever starts to suspect that their coworker who looks KINDA like Barack Obama is actually secretly Barack Obama – They know who Barack Obama is and know what he does and they know their coworker Greg is Greg and not Barack Obama. They have no reason to assume Barack Obama secretly moonlights as Greg The IT Guy at their workplace even though they’ve never seen Greg and Obama in the same place. At best, “Greg is secretly Obama” would be a running joke at the office, and the same is true at the Daily Planet. “Kal-El of Krypton, who lives in a CRYSTAL PALACE at the NORTH POLE and whose dayjob is SUPERMAN, sometimes puts on a suit and pretends to be a clumsy reporter and lives in a one-bedroom walkup in Metropolis” is a ridiculous concept to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s true
The funniest part is when Clark does this in front of Jimmy Olsen, who is just staring in disbelief as Clark talks about using his superpowers to help Ma Kent on the farm in a sarcastic tone of voice, when Jimmy knows for a fact it’s 100% true, that is what Clark did last weekend.
Intern: “Ahahahah Superman in Kansas tilling the fields at superspeed, that’s a good one. What, if the tractor breaks down, do you just pick it up and take it back to the barn?”
Clark: “Nah, between my ex-ray vision and my heat vision I can generally find whatever the problem is and do a spotweld if necessary so long as I know where to get the parts - once had to nip over to South Korea because I didn’t want to wait 6 weeks for the ship to get there.”
Intern: “Bahahaha classic, Clark you are so funny! Superman fixing tractors with his heat vision, oh that’s a good one.”
I... I don't even have words for the nonsense I've just witnessed, really. Recently, Israel was added a UN sexual violence in war zones blacklist. And just, look at this. Listen to this video.
.... WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T NEED TO DO ANY VERIFICATION???? EXCUSE ME???
there will never be anything as funny as the mutual disbelief between long form and short form fic writers about each other's style.
short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.
meanwhile long form writers look at people writing 1000 word one shots like god I would cut off my left nipple to be able to say anything concisely. i would love to play with multiple ideas. free me from the shackles of this child I have birthed. i love them but I now must take them to t-ball and doctor's appointments and they're going to destroy everything I own.
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!
For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.
So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?
Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.
Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm
The people who say they can’t utter the charge are saying it from the biggest stages on earth. The people who actually can’t speak don’t get
I have written that the Israeli government is failing us and that the settlement project is a moral and strategic disaster. I have said harder things than that in public, under my own name, more than once.
Nobody called me an antisemite for it.
I bring this up because the claim of the season is that you cannot criticize Israel. It is a serious claim, and I am a useful test of it, because criticizing Israel is a big part of what I do in public. If the accusation were really triggered by criticism, I would be its most obvious target. I am not. So something else is going on.
Let me concede the real part first. Sometimes claims of antisemitism are thrown in bad faith. People have been smeared over ordinary political speech, and Jews who oppose the occupation or the war have been called nasty names by other Jews. That is wrong every time it happens. Anyone who reaches for this word to win an argument cheapens it for the day a real antisemite walks into the room.
Then there is the part almost nobody wants to look at.
This week, Britain barred streamer Hasan Piker and his uncle, commentator Cenk Uygur, from entering the country. The Home Office said that their presence would not be “conducive to the public good.” Both men went straight to audiences of millions and said the same thing: they were being silenced for criticizing Israel. Piker said it was done at Israel’s command.
But when you look at the facts, you get a different story. Besides saying that America deserved 9/11, Piker has also said he prefers Hamas to Israel, that he loves Hezbollah’s flag, and has no issue with them. Both are banned terror organizations under British law. He has compared Zionists to Nazis, said Israelis are Nazis, and called Orthodox Jews inbred. That is not criticism of a government, if you couldn’t tell. It is contempt for a people and admiration for the men who murder them. And the UK Home Secretary who signed off, Shabana Mahmood, is a British Muslim who has publicly criticized Israeli conduct in Gaza. Calling her a servant of Netanyahu is ridiculous.
Susan Sarandon tells a version of the same story. She says Hollywood blacklisted her for calling for a ceasefire. What actually happened is that she stood at a rally and said American Jews were getting a taste of what Muslims endure. She apologized for the line herself and called it a terrible mistake. Her agency dropped her over what she said at that rally. In the telling she gives now, the offense was the ceasefire comment. The blacklist did not keep her off the stage at Coachella two months ago, where Sabrina Carpenter cast her in what became the most talked-about moment of the festival's opening night.
The pattern holds every time you check it. The criticism of Israel is the alibi. The bad conduct is the actual offense. Everyone involved knows the difference and agrees to pretend they don’t.
Take the bad conduct away, and you are left with Ms. Rachel.
She is the biggest children’s entertainer in the world. Eighteen million YouTube subscribers and a Netflix show, and the Washington Post calls her the Mister Rogers of our era. For two years, she has used that platform to talk about Gaza without pause, in front of the most brand-skittish audience there is, the parents of toddlers. She is still doing it now. She has said she would risk her whole career to keep going. The career keeps growing. Netflix signed her up in the middle of it.
Which brings me to the strangest venue for a silencing campaign in history.
At Cannes last month, a member of the jury used the opening press conference to announce that Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, and Mark Ruffalo had been blacklisted by Hollywood. Hannah Einbinder, fresh off a standing ovation for her new film, told a packed panel she was not afraid of being blacklisted because the cost of staying quiet was higher. Months earlier, she had closed her Emmy speech with “Free Palestine,” on live television, to applause.
I want to be fair to her. She may actually believe that she is taking a risk. But a blacklist you can describe from a stage at Cannes, to a room of journalists who will quote you admiringly, is not a blacklist. The Hollywood Ten could not publish essays about being blacklisted. That was the entire point of the thing. The test of silence is whether you can still be heard, and every name on this list is heard constantly, by millions, with a publicist setting it up.
There is an actual, organized refusal-to-work list in film right now. It is called Film Workers for Palestine, and more than five thousand people have signed it, pledging not to work with Israeli film institutions they accuse of complicity in Gaza. Javier Bardem signed it. The man named at Cannes as a victim of blacklisting helped build one. The targets are Israelis and Zionist Jews.
The people who took a real risk in that room were the ones who refused. Debra Messing and Mayim Bialik put their names to a letter calling the boycott what it is, and got called McCarthyists for objecting to McCarthyism. They are not on Hollywood’s magazine covers for it.
And then there is the kind of silence that does not come with a profile.
On a Sunday last June, a group of mostly older people walked through Boulder, Colorado, the way they did every week, carrying signs for the hostages still held in Gaza. A man threw firebombs into them while shouting, “Free Palestine!” He told police he wanted to kill every Zionist there. A dozen people were injured, the oldest in their eighties. One woman later died of her burns.
A few weeks before Boulder, two young Israeli embassy staffers were shot dead as they left a museum in Washington. The man who did it chanted the same words.
Those people were criticizing nothing. They stood in public as Jews who would not disown Israel, and that was enough. None of them will be asked by a magazine how it feels to be silenced. They already have been, in the older sense of the word.
So here is where I land. I criticize Israel constantly, and the sky stays up. The settlements and the men running the war are fair game, and saying so has never once cost me the thing these people insist it costs. Being argued with is not being silenced.
There is a harder question under all of this, and I think we keep avoiding it because the answer stings. You would believe every word of this if it were any other group. If a minority said its elderly were being burned at a weekly vigil and its kids shot leaving a museum, the response would be grief and alarm. When Jews say it, the response is a request to see our work. We are asked to prove that we are not exaggerating and that the dead were killed for the reason we name. I just spent this whole essay doing that. For any other group, the dead would have been enough.
The ones who say they cannot criticize Israel are speaking from the loudest rooms we have. The ones who truly cannot speak are the people who were set on fire for showing up. One of those groups is on a stage at Cannes. The other is in the ground.
I find it so interesting how some people accept and reaffirm the fact Israel has religious importance in both Islam and Christianity, and say that Jerusalem should “be for everyone”. Then they shit their pants when Jews say it’s also important for them.
So Muslims and Christians have a right to certain sites in Israel because they have deep religious significance, but Jews don’t? They have no right to their own damn indigenous land? To the birthplace of their entire culture, religion, language, and identity? The amount of mental gymnastics and Jew hatred required to make these statements is mind numbing.
And for anyone that’s curious, Muslims and Christians already can and have been to Jerusalem for decades. The whole “Jerusalem is for everyone” is so fucking stupid because literally anyone can visit already. And this argument is even more rich when considering the Temple Mount, the literal holiest site in Judaism, has highly restricted access to non-Muslims. Jews cannot visit their own holiest site without massive restrictions and they are not allowed to pray there. Only as recent as this year have SOME Jews been allowed to pray there (discreetly and out of sight). They’re facing these restrictions in their own indigenous land, no less! You would think since Israel is a “Jewish supremacist” country they’d get rid of these restrictions in their own fucking capital city.
Mind you Muslims and Christians are free to visit the western wall and pray there to their heart’s content. Though most Muslims wouldn’t since they can just go up to Temple Mount. The reason the western wall is holy to Jews is because it’s the closest they can get to the Temple Mount without facing restrictions. All of this to say Jews have no problem sharing their land making Jerusalem “for everyone”.
easy to miss that one of the reasons maternal mortality is diminished so extremely by modern medicine is that modern medicine makes it so much more possible to identify the pregnancies that will die and take you with them, or are otherwise unacceptably high risk. and then discontinue those ones safely, before it's too late.
thought about this because it's so frustrating when people argue that 'dying in childbirth' is a historical sort of event that doesn't happen nowadays (false) and therefore is irrelevant to the legal status of abortion, since it's not a real danger.
except it super is, and i think a lot of people haven't noticed that this argument in addition to simply being incorrect is basically the same as when people say we don't need vaccines for deadly diseases because no one gets those now anyway.
like yeah one reason for that is we vaccinate everybody ffs.
