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I don't ever post on this forum, and I don't think I will with my thoughts, but I'd like to go a bit further with this because this type of behavior does not deserve to go unnoticed.

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Each and every one of you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. I do not care about politics right now. I do not care about your opinions on the current situation. What I do care about is that THIS is targeted harassment of a user because of their ethnicity and identity on their wall. As a religious Jew myself, I think it's appalling to see people that I've teamed with, that I've had positive interactions with, and that I would call friends would sink to what I see as blatant anti Semitism, even if you don't see it that way. How would each of you feel if I went ahead and posted memes mocking your identity on your walls, whether sexual, religious, or national?

I'd like to tag the mods of this forum in dave and WaterBomb to facilitate all of this and the forum staff I currently see online in EviGaro, Estarossa, and ausma, sorry if these tags cause any unwanted headaches or if you guys aren't the right people to tag. On all my time on this site, which I knew wasn't exactly friendly towards Jews, I have never felt more alienated and disgusted than I do right now. Being told that we "100% deserve what's happening to you, you racist piece of shit" in the last post by Ren has pushed me towards feeling like a post like this needs to be made. For the comfort and safety of other Jewish users on this site, I'd like some action taken of any kind, thank you.

If any user called out has an issue with me doing so, please dm me respectfully instead of harassing me on my wall, I'd really appreciate it :)
I don't ever post on this forum, and I don't think I will with my thoughts, but I'd like to go a bit further with this because this type of behavior does not deserve to go unnoticed.

KM VictorySymbol LpZ Accel sensei axew Matheus_22k Tatsumaa Askov CDW Enrique Aliss Xrn zoe HANTSUKI Bouff Beraldo ishtar Kate Bakugames gum Sage Perry Hyogafodex Rewer avarice spellcaster Chloe hs

Each and every one of you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. I do not care about politics right now. I do not care about your opinions on the current situation. What I do care about is that THIS is targeted harassment of a user because of their ethnicity and identity on their wall. As a religious Jew myself, I think it's appalling to see people that I've teamed with, that I've had positive interactions with, and that I would call friends would sink to what I see as blatant anti Semitism, even if you don't see it that way. How would each of you feel if I went ahead and posted memes mocking your identity on your walls, whether sexual, religious, or national?

I'd like to tag the mods of this forum in dave and WaterBomb to facilitate all of this and the forum staff I currently see online in EviGaro, Estarossa, and ausma, sorry if these tags cause any unwanted headaches or if you guys aren't the right people to tag. On all my time on this site, which I knew wasn't exactly friendly towards Jews, I have never felt more alienated and disgusted than I do right now. Being told that we "100% deserve what's happening to you, you racist piece of shit" in the last post by Ren has pushed me towards feeling like a post like this needs to be made. For the comfort and safety of other Jewish users on this site, I'd like some action taken of any kind, thank you.

If any user called out has an issue with me doing so, please dm me respectfully instead of harassing me on my wall, I'd really appreciate it :)
Hello everybody. I would like to start by apologizing for the post.

I was extremely unhappy with this attitude, as I posted it without knowing the context and without worrying about it. I posted that just because a friend told me to do it.

This morning, I came across the situation in Israel being exposed in the morning newspaper and I understood the seriousness of this hitherto "meme".

It really was not my intention to harm anyone and I offer my sincerest apologies to those involved especially Morsel
 

Chou Toshio

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What is unjustifiable about a people who have been squeezed all their lives, who have raised children who have never been allowed outside the Gaza Strip, breaking free from their prison? How on earth is it fair to blame them for the potential rise in Fascism that might come from their attempts at liberation?
I don’t disagree— and I don’t disagree that efforts for peaceful reform have been largely stamped out.
 
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American Jew so I just wanna give my scattered thoughts on the matter.

I would hate to fabricate or exaggerate being a victim so I'll also try not to do that. The nagging thought in many Jewish minds is wondering where we can be safe. Life is mostly okay in places like the USA but we're still only ~2% of the population there and it's not exactly a country free of anti-semitism. The issue is, Israel is the only country in the world where Jews are a majority. Christians have 100+, Muslims have ~50, etc.

So, yes, Israel has flaws. But we worry about a world where Israel doesn't exist. When people (not necessarily the people in this thread) go from "free palestine" to "fuck israel" to "i hope israel gets eradicated", we worry about where it's all headed. We also worry that the smaller criticisms turn into the bigger ones and then it eventually turns into straight up anti-semitism.

In summary, a lot of the criticisms in general and in this thread are fair. My main point is that people like myself worry about escalation of hate and what reality would look like for Jewish people without the insurance of Israel's existence. I am not trying to make any arguments or persuade anyone in whichever way. I am sharing my perspective that hopefully some of you can relate to or understand.

I appreciate the productive/peaceful discourse in this thread today so far, thanks to all those participating in such a way and hopefully it can remain <3
 

Chou Toshio

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American Jew so I just wanna give my scattered thoughts on the matter.

I would hate to fabricate or exaggerate being a victim so I'll also try not to do that. The nagging thought in many Jewish minds is wondering where we can be safe. Life is mostly okay in places like the USA but we're still only ~2% of the population there and it's not exactly a country free of anti-semitism. The issue is, Israel is the only country in the world where Jews are a majority. Christians have 100+, Muslims have ~50, etc.

So, yes, Israel has flaws. But we worry about a world where Israel doesn't exist. When people (not necessarily the people in this thread) go from "free palestine" to "fuck israel" to "i hope israel gets eradicated", we worry about where it's all headed. We also worry that the smaller criticisms turn into the bigger ones and then it eventually turns into straight up anti-semitism.

In summary, a lot of the criticisms in general and in this thread are fair. My main point is that people like myself worry about escalation of hate and what reality would look like for Jewish people without the insurance of Israel's existence. I am not trying to make any arguments or persuade anyone in whichever way. I am sharing my perspective that hopefully some of you can relate to or understand.

I appreciate the productive/peaceful discourse in this thread today so far, thanks to all those participating in such a way and hopefully it can remain <3
I can empathize with this sentiment. As an ultimate (utopian?) goal I value the liberal leftist ideal that prioritizes holistic humanity with de-prioritizing identity based governance (no ethno states).

That said, identity is still a major part of the world today— both in evils of fascism/imperialism of super powers, but also in constructing justice for minorities. I’d also be lying if I said that there isn’t a part of my brain that thinks “well if the US ever does fall to fascism I could always take my family back to Japan as a first escape.”


Anyway maybe I’m showing my ass/ignorance here but is a single Israeli+Palestinian democratic state really impossible? Of the arguments I’ve heard it still seems to make the most sense. 100% Palestinian suffrage, ending Apartheid— is it completely unworkable?
 
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Sabelette

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The rhetoric always comes back to rhetoric of the eradication of the zionist state and how scary it is to witness, while all around the world people call for bombing Gaza into the ground, deporting all Palestinians, locking them all up in prison, or just mask off "it's about time they wipe out these people." We've been painted as terrorists, as unworthy of life, because people dare to resist genocide. We will always come back to the worst abuses of Hamas as an excuse for why violent resistance to fucking settler-colonialism is somehow evil, while the zionist state continues to murder children, imprison dissidents, and call every last critic an anti-semite; even if we live halfway across the world we are bombarded with death threats, censorship, and organized harassment every time any criticism is given, let alone actual resistance.

You don't get to build your home on the bones of my people. I don't give a fuck about having a "majority country," you don't get to colonize people to build it. I'm culturally Druze, we don't have a majority, and you don't see us trying to massacre everyone to get one. The colonized people will never inflict back on the zionist state even 5% of what was done to them, and most don't want to anyway - they want the boots off their necks, by any means necessary.

Whenever things kick off like this it's always "look at the poor civilians" as if Palestinians aren't murdered every single day by the zionist regime. When they bombed the shit out of civilians in Lebanon in 2006, and I sat there at 10 years old hoping not to get murdered for the crime of visiting family, the media was not sympathetic. There were not days and days of news segments about how they were bombing schools, hospitals, towns with no military targets, random places that had nothing to do with the conflict. No. We were at fault as always, every target had a secret Hezbollah cell in it, those children were future terrorists anyway or acceptable losses and it's Hezbollah's fault anyway. It's all the same shit, but when it happens to the colonizers it's a tragedy.

Colonizers are not beaten with olive branches and political compromise. Violent resistance is a necessity. When Ukraine does it we praise them and send them billions in arms and volunteers from all over the world. But when Palestinians fight for freedom, we find the worst things to highlight, frame them as evil, religious extremists, force Palestinian activists to condemn them before being allowed to say anything else, give zionists a platform to spew more hate and applaud them for it. If you don't want to face the consequences of your colonization, get the fuck off the occupied land. Fuck "peaceful discourse" and the elevation of peace above all because we can't stand to see the colonizer harmed back after harming the colonized. Fuck a two state solution as if the colonized should cede anything to their oppressors.

I don't hate Jewish people. I do hate the zionist state and I hope it is completely, irrevocably abolished. I dream of a world where all settler-colonial states are torn down, but I want to see the one oppressing my people fall first. From the river, to the sea.
 
American Jew so I just wanna give my scattered thoughts on the matter.

I would hate to fabricate or exaggerate being a victim so I'll also try not to do that. The nagging thought in many Jewish minds is wondering where we can be safe. Life is mostly okay in places like the USA but we're still only ~2% of the population there and it's not exactly a country free of anti-semitism. The issue is, Israel is the only country in the world where Jews are a majority. Christians have 100+, Muslims have ~50, etc.

So, yes, Israel has flaws. But we worry about a world where Israel doesn't exist. When people (not necessarily the people in this thread) go from "free palestine" to "fuck israel" to "i hope israel gets eradicated", we worry about where it's all headed. We also worry that the smaller criticisms turn into the bigger ones and then it eventually turns into straight up anti-semitism.

In summary, a lot of the criticisms in general and in this thread are fair. My main point is that people like myself worry about escalation of hate and what reality would look like for Jewish people without the insurance of Israel's existence. I am not trying to make any arguments or persuade anyone in whichever way. I am sharing my perspective that hopefully some of you can relate to or understand.

I appreciate the productive/peaceful discourse in this thread today so far, thanks to all those participating in such a way and hopefully it can remain <3
so Israel is important to you because it is the only place where Jews are a majority, largely because it restricts the practices of other religions, but that's another topic. my question for you ultimately boils down to where do you put the Palestinians? do you send them off to a majority Muslim country? do you welcome them back onto their land which would inherently begin to shrink the Jewish settlers and displace them, also resulting in a smaller population of Jews?

it just feels like you're missing the elephant in the room as to why Israel is only majority country for Jews... and why that's even something that should matter.
 

Eve

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I am aware the thread is locked, but I'm hopeful that posts like this can give the thread a more productive nature than arguments about a very literal life-or-death situation.

Hopefully we all agree that innocent civilians don't deserve to lose their lives in this conflict. With that in mind, I'd like to share this article, which links to several organizations that are calling for ceasefire and are providing urgent care and resources to those in the warzone, especially Gaza. I am making £20 donations to Doctors Without Borders and World Food Programme, and encourage others to make donations if they are able.

I'd also like to implore that people (yes, that includes you) think more carefully about the gravity of the situation. These aren't football teams, these are real people with their real lives and real homes at stake. Have some compassion.

(I've been informed that the above article strongly misuses active/passive language so I cannot in good faith call it unbiased, but the organizations it links to are still important.)
 
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Ren

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I am aware the thread is locked, but I'm hopeful that posts like this can give the thread a more productive nature than arguments about a very literal life-or-death situation.

Hopefully we all agree that innocent civilians don't deserve to lose their lives in this conflict. With that in mind, I'd like to share this article, which links to several organizations that are calling for ceasefire and are providing urgent care and resources to those in the warzone, especially Gaza. I am making £20 donations to Doctors Without Borders and World Food Programme, and encourage others to make donations if they are able.

I'd also like to implore that people (yes, that includes you) think more carefully about the gravity of the situation. These aren't football teams, these are real people with their real lives and real homes at stake. Have some compassion.

(I've been informed that the above article strongly misuses active/passive language so I cannot in good faith call it unbiased, but the organizations it links to are still important.)
The thread has been locked for a while and the person who instigated THAT situation has been dealt with, but a lot has happened since then and I wanted to piggyback off of this real quickly and remind all my pro-Palestine friends that you should still be checking in on your Jewish friends during this time as well as your Islamic and Palestinian friends. We're criticizing a flawed government here, but ultimately a lot of people still do have innocent family and friends in both Israel and Palestine and they're afraid for their lives everyday. Someone can have family in Israel, criticize the government but still be afraid for their family and shooting them a message of support can mean a ton.

With the rise in overt Islamophobia and antisemitism, I worry about my Jewish and Muslim friends everyday, especially my hijabi friends. I'm sure anyone who's been following the news has heard of the 6-year-old that was murdered in Chicago. People are being targeted simply because of what they follow and where they were born. A government committing genocide in something which isn't inherently a religious conflict has fueled antisemitism and Islamophobia across the planet. Keep each other safe, show some compassion and do your best to treat every reported death as more lives lost rather than a statistic. Feeling the grief and anger that comes from the immense amount of war crimes that the government is committing is difficult, but losing our humanity is worse.

Free Palestine.
 
The war has rejuvenated an international far-right that almost collapsed because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The amount of times I've seen people with neo-Nazi scandals (or are neo-Nazis themselves) being cited by largely Westerners of either side online is alarming and imo is exactly why I have so much disdain for especially bloodthirsty people in North America and Europe treating this like a spectator sport and pretending that random mass attacks on civilians are either "anticolonial resistance" or "self-defense against terrorism." It's so dangerous that countries' discourses are overwhelmingly in agreement that civilian deaths are desirable outcomes, even if there's a lack of agreement on who can/should be killed.

Another thing is that I've noticed is that there is an effort for western actors to co-opt messaging to further their own eliminationist agendas. In pro-Palestine camps in my country there are a lot of elderly communists who ended up advocating for a lot of far-right governments and organisations after the collapse of the USSR and have been basically doing that ever since. Aside from them being responsible for helping create a world in which Israeli war crimes are fine, those types have a lot of difficulty condemning bombing Palestinians unless it's Israel doing the bombing. On the other hand, the racist right is seizing on the conflict to give certain notorious antisemites and violent Islamophobes a PR makeover, and taking advantage of sentiments to radicalise others towards taking up violence themselves, often with stated desires to wipe out Palestinians or Muslims entirely.
 

Myzozoa

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Personally I would be worried if someone checked in with me about this "as a Jewish person". First because they obviously don't know me, but second because of the assumption. I have nothing to do w Israel "as a Jewish person". None of my family lives there, they live in Southern California, even the most republican ass Trump voting one of them wouldn't go near Israel with a 10ft poll and they're all Jewish, I would reiterate.

I'll never forget when I interviewed for nursing school admission, I sat in this group interview being first on the list to answer every question in this room full of ppl I'm competing with to get into school, and I basically talked about how Israel is a settler-colonial project using those exact terms "settler colonialism" and explained the significance of the Nakba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba and my experience working in advocacy for Palestinian refugees. To watch overly online brainwormed people equivocate about whether it's appropriate to frame whats happening to Palestine as 'settler colonialism' while 500k Palestinians are displaced atm https://www.reuters.com/world/middl...le-displaced-gaza-appeals-300-mln-2023-10-13/ is just wild to me.

And, when I got accepted to nursing school the other jews and I met a few times during the term to gather for Shabbat, and we hardly even discussed Israel it was so irrelevant to our lives as Jewish nursing students in America.

Some readings I suggest for anyone who actually cares about what has been happening in this region, because if there is settler-colonialism there are settlers, and the settlers do settler things like terrorism against the indigenous population. Some people may have learned buzzwords like 'Hamas' this week and grasp onto the rush of feeling like they know who is right and who is wrong, or that 'both sides are bad' :philosopher pose: but there is a lot of context they miss as they are easily duped by reductive frameworks.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/...horities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

again even the 'apartheid' framing is too kind. while i do actually believe it is an important frame, settler colonialism is the dynamic most at hand.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-p...-violence-un-108e11712310b5ea099dbded7be8effb

https://www.reuters.com/world/middl...t-bank-town-palestinian-officials-2023-10-06/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023...raeli-settlers-wreak-havoc-on-occupied-nablus

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/n...m-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/ note this is actually not even an apartheid situation, thats just what ppl say when they want to be as nice as possible, this is an ethnic cleansing project

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/02/israel-collective-punishment-against-palestinians

finally i would not usually not share anything even close to real materials but I will just paraphrase as briefly as possible, just because some of yall need to see a Jewish person assent to this or you won't be able to believe it:

"

1. "Israelis" are only victim to their own supremacist free-will and bad choices: All "Israelis" are settlers and as settlers they partake in the risks associated to stealing land and resources. There is no such thing as an innocent settler. Zionists often have dual citizenship and easily enjoy access to the United States and Europe, while people in Gaza and the West Bank are trapped behind partition walls, military watchtowers, and surveillance mechanisms. All Zionists, with very few exceptions, must serve.

2. Framing this as Hamas-"Israel" is intentional to lend towards Islamophobic campaigns, which currently have resorted to calling Palestinians "barbaric" and "terrorists," terms that have been used against Palestinians and Arabs throughout their resistance journey. The revival of these terms is indicative of colonial insecurity to frame the native Palestinian as a caricature. The resistance is shoulder to shoulder, from Marxist to Islamist factions, responding to the call of Al-Qassam Brigades' commander-in-chief Mohammed Deif.

3. Refuse "both sides" framing, because this is a severe power and resource imbalance. Zionists have nuclear capabilities and space weaponry and have been gladly selling and sharing this with other repressive movements around the world. Framing the victim must center settler colonialism: Cries of victimhood from zionists and their apologetic allies often arise from their own internal contradictions (see how protests against Israel's actions in the west are being aggressively policed, while palestinians are being murdered in hate crimes in Chicago, but Zionist Jews are acting like they are most at an increased danger this week even at home in America and Europe).
"


"There's always going to be crackpots who are anti-semitic who condemn Israel that's not what drives the movement it's particularly the United States we work around most people who are concerned with this issue it's actually populated with a lot of Jewish people. The real question we have to ask is: why is it that AIPAC is hosting a information minister of Slobodan Milosevic? Why is it that there's relationships between the Israeli government and far-right parties in Europe? Why is it that Benjamin Netanyahu's son is posting borderline alt right memes? Why is it that Israel is an alt-right state even though it is from the descendants of one of the greatest crimes in history? That's a serious question and that's inseparable from the racism of the project which goes back to the first part."

Everything that happens really happens. Everything that happened really happened. History is real, everything you do matters. The stupid shit you type in here about what you think is happening without having a clue really affects people. Even if all the people who know it are dead, it still happened. The words you use for it don't change reality, even if you believe your own lies and you allow your self to be seduced by buzzwords like terrorism, 'Hamas', reductive framings about Muslims and Jews (i cry every time if i see another one of these it is so wildly ignorant and speaks to a level of media brainwashing that is just shocking) . There are no sides, there are only people and facts. This is not a Marvel movie, you have no excuse as an adult to just act like there was no reason for "Hamas" to attack Israel this week.
 
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I'm actually curious what the end goal of an anti zionism position is and how it would never be antisemitic?

I fully get that proeminent Jewish scholars and others viewed Zionism as an antisemitic project in the early days. But, well, things happened, and here we are. It just seems tricky that now that we are after the fact and Israel exists, the idea that millions of Jewish people do identify with that community and what they share does remove a lot of the early misgivings. I am absolutely not talking about the growing settlements, displacement of locals and the destruction of their basic rights in face of a more and more brutal form of colonialism, but purely about the place of the current Jewish community living there, and what an anti-zionism position would entail for them.
i want to emphasize first that i dont think "well what if xyz hypothetical decolonization context and how exactly will x people be protected then" is an appropriate thing to bring up in response to an 75-year ongoing genocide since the nak'ba, or an escalation of that genocide including the zionist-State's explicit current campaign to annihilate Gaza and the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there. a friend suggested describing this sort of 'what if' line of questioning as a 'what-aboutism of palestinian genocide', in counterpoint to your claim that artificialdeath's grouping the palestinian genocide together with other genocides such as amerikkkan settler colonial genocide and mentioning similarities in their propaganda apparatuses is supposedly sho'ah what-aboutism, and i agree with their characterization (regardless of anyone's intentions ofc). the only function of bringing up a hypothetical future threat to (jewish people? some section of jewish people? it wasnt really stated so idk) in response to current genocide, and to imply that to oppose the palestinian genocide somehow would create this hypothetical future threat, is to minimize the value of the victims/survivors of the actually occurring genocide and to portray these theoretical future victims as of "greater value" in some way.

however, since the moderators have made pretty clear where they stand in attacking anti-zionists for being "heated" promoting the white supremacist 'civilized' ideal of emotionally-neutral debate, whitewashing a literal call for genocide against muslims as a "display of ignorance"; repressing artificialdeath's post while preserving the apparently acceptable portion of the post calling for muslim genocide, etc -- tldr clearly the moderators do not have any intent to take any action regarding evigaro's posts and even if moderators were to do so in the future theyve been sitting here for a week+ so i think it is important to respond to these posts. particularly since they are pretty boilerplate zionist-State propaganda so we are all likely to encounter these claims many times in the future and it would be dangerous to allow them to remain here uncontested.

the fundamental premise of these posts is that the zionist-State provides protection for Jewish people around the world, which is just not true.
~ in the short term, the zionist-State does not care about Jewish people one way or another except insofar as "we" relate to its political, economic, etc interests. Some Jewish people may be seen as beneficial to the zionist-State's interests, maybe for ideological reasons due to their promoting zionist propaganda, or for material reasons such as being targets for the zionist-State's continuous recruitment of new settlers; Jewish people within these groups may receive some sort of "benefit" from apparatuses of the zionist-State, such as zionist organizations being given $$$ or prospective settlers being invited to all-expenses-paid Birthright trips, though i would emphasize that this benefit is very manipulative and impermanent, its sort of like saying that someone "benefits" from being recruited by the US imperialist army by receiving say a college scholarship but we know that once one has finished with their service they will be discarded etc. On the other hand some Jewish people may be seen as antagonistic to the zionist-States interests, maybe for ideological reasons eg those of us who are outspoken anti-zionists might be targeted by its repressive State apparatuses (eg i have been previously doxxed by "Canary Mission", one of the zionist-State's many apparatuses for targeting people they perceive as pro-palestinian activists), or perhaps for material reasons eg South-american Jews who suffered from the zionist-State mass supplying of weapons to the Pinochet miltary dictatorship in Chile and the resulting terrorism of Operation Condor throughout the continent, African Jewish migrants whose Jewish ancestry is not recognized by the zionist-State who continually face the threat of deportation/expulsion, Black Jewish people living in the so-called US who are targeted by one of the many Amerikkkan settler-colonial police departments trained by zionist-State security forces are harmed by the zionist-State similarly to their non-Jewish counterparts, etc. Also some Jewish people may fall under multiple of these categories simultaneously, eg i have been targeted by the zionist-State's repressive apparatuses for ideological reasons but at the same time as a white person living within the so-called US i inherently benefit from the spoils of both US imperialism and US settler-colonialism, and therefore from the zionist-State's constant complicity in those forms of violence.
but in the abstraction of "me as a jewish person living in the diaspora in a vacuum", the zionist-State is essentially indifferent to me. barring the occasional spectacle-event like an airlift rescue, there is nothing the zionist State does that somehow makes it safer for jewish people in the diaspora, nor does it intend to do any such thing. if anything, the opposite is true because:
~ in the long term, the zionist State is dependent on anti-semitism, both to maintain itself and to reproduce the conditions for its existence. ideologically, the zionist State obviously justifies its existence on the false premise that it exists to protect Jewish people from anti-semitic violence, and for this premise to have any plausible relevance there needs to be the perception that anti-semitic violence is a significant threat; & while there is no shortage of examples of zionist-State apparatuses propogating false instances of anti-semitism (typically characterizing criticism of the zionist-State as anti-semitic, such as in the IHRA definition of antisemitism which has been adopted so widely due to zionist-State propoganda), this whole propoganda system is more effective if there is at least some real anti-semitism included within these statistics and catalogues of anti-semitic or allegedly anti-semitic violence. and materially, heightening fear of anti-semitic violence is an important tactic in the zionist-State's (manipulative) recruitment efforts.
Historically, [European] zionists often viewed anti-semitic movements as their allies due to a 'shared interest' in incentivizing Jewish people to leave their home countries and become settlers in the zionist-State, and leading members of the zionist fascist-terror organization Irgun such as Yair Stern and the future PM Yitzhak Shamir tried to collaborate with Hitler and Mussolini's regimes. These tendencies have continued to this day with the majority of the Likud party promoting collaboration with fascist and openly-antisemitic governments in Hungary, Poland and Italy, and they are often very direct and open about their position: why should [the zionist State] avoid alliances with such countries that are in its national interests, on the basis of "domestic politics" (ie these regime's violence against Jewish people living within their respective countries)? https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/1...tanyahu-orban-fidesz-fpo-le-pen-antisemitism/ i see myzozoa's post a few minutes ago also briefly touched on this aspect.
(there is also a conversation to be had here about the ways judaism itself has changed at the level of religious and cultural practices, how in many ways zionism intends to actually replace judaism not just co-opt it. for example, the zionist shift in the concept of exile (galut) from being marked by the destruction of the second temple, which has always been the central event around which so many jewish traditions revolve, to exile being based on the start of Muslim rule over historic-Palestine a few centuries later. i doubt such a conversation is of any interest to non-jewish readers and im not the most knowledgeable person about this aspect anyway but see eg, https://levantine-journal.org/produ...-on-the-zionist-notion-of-history-and-return/)
and 'on the flip side' there is the hopefully obvious aspect that, every time the apparatuses of the zionist-State equate anti-zionism with anti-semitism, also every time a diaspora Jewish institution is deceived into adopting an alliance (material and/or ideological) with the zionist-State, reproduces the conditions necessary for rising anti-semitism. every time that the 'overrepresentation' (to use the language of Sylvia Wynter) of Zionism = Judaism is propogated, every time that the Jewish star is used to represent the Zionist-state instead of being a symbol of Judaism, every time that a diaspora synagogue puts up a zionist-State flag or sings the Hatikvah or celebrates Yom Ha'Atzmaut (erasing the nak'ba) -- all of these actions communicate to the world that if they want to care about the conditions of Jewish people they must support the zionist-State, which for many colonized populations would mean directly supporting the conditions of their own oppression. thus, pushing colonized people to react negatively to the Jewish star or other symbols coopted by the zionist State, which in turn obv creates optimal conditions for the propogation of anti-semitic ideologies.

ofc and to be clear, for Jewish people who live within the zionist-State [or at least European Jews, im not really the best person to speak to this aspect] the State 'cares about them' and 'protects' them, prob largely similar to how any settler State may orient toward its (settler) 'citizens'. but for diaspora Jews, ie most Jews, the zionist State basically does not care about us, and its existence is and will always be tied to protecting and enabling anti-semitism worldwide. while ABR (above) may claim to represent the entire Jewish population living within the US and insist that "we" fear "what may happen to the Jewish people without the insurance of Israel's existence", in fact it is Israel's existence that ensures the continued existence of anti-semitism and the threat it poses to Jewish people. while Evigaro's comment that millions of Jewish people "identify with" the zionist-State may be accurate, the existence of diaspora Jews who believe in the mythology that their/our safety is tied to the continued existence of the zionist-State, or believe that the zionist State has our interests in mind, etc - i do not think ABR or Evigaro are being insincere, rather these comments indicate just how much influence zionist-State propaganda has and how dominant the overrepresentation of zionism is.
"Zionists invoke white Jewish fear of anti-zionism as proof that anti-zionism is antisemitism. The JewishOnCampus stories and the ADL incidents are rendered coherent through this rationale. According to their logic, because Jewish students are scared of anti-zionism, it is antisemitism. However, this backwards premise must be rejected.
"For decades, Jewish institutions and leaders have raised young Jews to hear calls for freedom and liberation as calls for mass Jewish death. They have used the painful history of antisemitism to justify colonization and make Jewish children terrified. As young Jews grow up and are faced with those righteous calls for freedom, they cower and adopt racist reactionary zionist positions. The right response is not to dismiss their fear, but to point out that their fear response to anti-zionism, and broader anti-colonialism, is built on a lie.
"In upholding the colonial world, the zionist unreality both fosters real antisemitism and makes fighting it impossible. It is the same colonial systems that produce fascism, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, and xenophobia that also produce antisemitism. Consequently, there is no way to uphold colonialism without producing antisemitism.
"The zionist unreality harms the struggle against antisemitism because it abandons the Jews who are victimized by the white euro-american colonial project and strengthens the systems that produce antisemitism."
https://emcohen.medium.com/jewish-fear-in-a-zionist-unreality-16ff43d8543d

~ ~ ~

once again, i do not think fears about future xyz if palestine is free, and especially not white jewish fears (idk any of these users so no idea if they fall under that, i just mean in general), are really appropriate to a discussion about the palestinian genocide in the first place. so if people do wish to discuss these questions of the relationship between the zionist-State and anti-semitism further, i would encourage such discussion to be moved elsewhere whether that is private messages or a separate thread in cong forums or wherever else im not the most knowledgeable on how smogon forums are organized.
as for the original topic of discussion before the redirection to "what if"s, i fully support the above statements from eg sabelette, sage, myzozoa in support of palestinian liberation (from the river to the sea), and as a general principle the right to resist by whatever means necessary. i dont have anything particularly to add to their comments. and it seems with the three comments above this that ppl are moving the convo back on topic although tbh i dont really have any idea what the second-most recent post is talking about (an international collapse of the far-right???).
one point from it that i do agree with (i think, but i could be misreading since idk what half of it is talking about) is that for those of us who are white euro-amerikans, our 'personal stances' or whatever dont rly matter here, we are not the ones impacted and the white humanist values such as "human rights" have 0 moral authority, as sage discussed in their post earlier. beyond opposing all US/NATO aid to the zionist-State and tactics such as BDS that aim to ease the conditions under which palestinians struggle for self determination (since these are aspect we actually have at least some level of influence over), our "opinions" etc rly dont matter.
~ in particular, i think the course of action that it seems smogon moderators/staff have taken so far of believing that they have the perfect set of [white humanist] values and principles, and that they should exercise their power as mods to #civilize the discourse in their forums/servers, including to come after indigenous people speaking to their own oppressive conditions and desire for liberation whose comments do not 100% align with the mods' supposedly perfect white-humanist values, is extremely dangerous. tbc im not advocating for an idpol position of whatever any palestinian person says is automatically correct, but smogon mods actually repressing the speech of palestinians about the material conditions relating to their own genocide, bc of "not agreeing" [on the basis of white humanism and its monopoly of ethics] with xyz that they said, is an unambiguous act of colonial violence.

as a bit of a side note and/or reminder, this is obv not a secure server, and dozens of palestinian organizations including several that i saw mentioned above are designated terrorist organizations by the US government (i dont rly about know the laws elsewhere), which means that action construed as material support is criminalized, so u know keep that in mind if it applies to where you live. and perhaps suggest to the forum moderators to delete or infract posts such as mr.hands' post on the prior page, regardless of their intentions, due to being written in a way that any direct response could potentially put someone in such locations at risk of State violence, as well as the manipulative aspect of a post that threatens potential State violence against someone who wants to voice disagreement. [probably was not just that one post its j the one i remember rn]
 
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Celever

i am town
is a Community Contributor
Dear all informed people, who's at the right in this war? I want to know
Well, calling it a war in the first place is rather short-sighted, it’s a colonial genocide. As for who’s in the “right”, assuming this means “who shouldn’t be dying en masse”, everyone in Palestine, Israeli civilians, and Israeli soldiers who are dying because of Israel’s mandatory conscription and who just happened to be born in the wrong year so the Government is using them as human fodder.

We are witnessing an ethnic cleansing that most young Israelis oppose vehemently, but it is a far right reasonably authoritarian government which means the opposition to the war falls on deaf ears. Israel have subjugated the Palestinian population ruthlessly for decades, have blockaded all diplomatic attempts at ending this ethnic cleansing aside from the first Oslo Accord which it would be kind to say Israel followed for 5 minutes, and who are now using “self-defence” as an excuse to commit almost every war crime in the book, with the intent of reducing the Palestinian population to as close to 0 as they can without world peacekeepers finally drawing a line that should have been drawn decades ago.

Over 50% of the population in the Gaza Strip are children, due to the ethnic cleansing of the last several decades involving Israel killing most people who dare to reach adulthood, and it’s one of the most overpopulated regions the planet has ever had because people feel that most children they will have will have will not reach adulthood, which makes birth rates soar (and always has done everywhere in the world). Every bomb destroys several lives that have just begun, and even considering that, Israel are bombing the places they told Palestinians to take refuge in to escape the bombs, including universities and hospitals. They could be committing genocide while focusing just on military targets like they keep saying they are, but their actions are not even making a half-hearted effort to do so. Not to mention the illegal collective punishment they are imposing with a full blockade, which will result in an innumerable number of deaths just from people dying of thirst. Also not to mention the use of white phosphorus which Israel has used on Palestinians for decades. Committing war crimes isn’t even new for the Israeli government.

A war has 2 sides fighting each other. To call Palestine a “side” is a complete overreach. Every Palestinian soldier has been raised in an open air prison without basic human rights, because of the actions of Israel, and their military is incredibly weak as a result of being trapped by Israel on all sides. The blockade of Palestine by land isn’t even new, the escalation is Israel also now blocking Palestine by sea. On the other hand, Israel has space age weaponry because it has been building up its arms in order to genocide the Palestinians for decades. It has one of the highest military budgets per GDP in the world. This has been planned for a long time, and it isn’t a game where there is wrong or right. Every death (aside from, perhaps, Israel Defence Force members who are there by choice rather than being mandatorily conscripted therefore having an active interest in the ethnic cleansing that the IDF has committed for decades) is a tragedy caused by successive Israeli Governments. The Palestinians are “in the right” in the sense that they shouldn’t be being genocided, but using that kind of terminology in war usually belies a view that anyone born in Israel is free hunting, and that is not the case either. Most Israelis, particularly younger Israelis who are being forced into the military, are also “in the right”. But who’s in the wrong? The Israeli governments of the past several decades.
 
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