Israel Does Not Have A Right to Defend Itself
When terrorism supporters come out and say it. As usual, power relations means never having to say you're sorry. The withdrawal from Gaza is never mentioned, because the inconvenient question would have to be answered: if the absence of "occupation" means you are continually attacked, doesn't the right to self-defense mean "occupation" is justified?
It's no surprise the author misunderstands international law on pre-emptive strikes (no surprise that he completely omits Iran's ongoing support for terrorist groups and destabilising of the region)
Meme - ""The Squad" every time the Iron Dome system works and saves lives *crying*
AOC 'cries' after Democrats thwart Squad attempt to defund Israel's Iron Dome"
When you're against a defensive tool, your true intentions show
Oilfield Rando on X - "I’m just sayin, sh*t in the middle East got a whole lot better while the most powerful dude on the planet was tweeting out all caps “F**K AROUND FIND OUT” all the time You may not like it, but is what it is"
Will the ‘cancel culture’ crowd speak up about the silencing of Asna Tabassum? Don’t hold your breath - "USC, I should note, didn’t specifically mention Palestine or Israel when they took the unprecedented decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech. Instead Andrew Guzman, provost and senior vice-president for academic affairs, cited safety concerns"
Weird. I thought "accountability culture" was a good thing, that people were not entitled to platforms and that minorities need to be kept "safe". It's not as if she got fired. Of course, all this applies only when the left approves - they don't claim safety concerns are invalid when it's left wing extremists shutting down events
Botted ShitLib Account on X - "Antizionism is the belief that a currently extant, internationally-recognized state should be forcibly liquidated so that its Jewish population can be returned to their previous condition as diasporic subjects of their erstwhile oppressors. This ideology posits that no other states on the planet necessarily worthy of this treatment, and it bases this position on convulted jargon and historical revisionism. This historical narrative is fundamentally fascistic:
1 - It is essentialistic, painting Zionists as fundamentally, ontologically evil, and the world as their victims.
2 - It is anti-intellectual: reasoned discourse is substituted with emotive and motivated thinking, and debate is substituted with the aggressive deplatforming, intimidation, and shouting down of opponents.
3 - It is authoritarian, insofar as it a) glorifies political violence, which is antithetical to democracy; and b) it seeks to deprive millions of people of their citizenship and the rights and security it provides.
4 - It is romantic: it proffers a mythical past, wherein all peoples lived as equal on the land until the corrupting force of the Zionists introduced social strife for the first time. This is how we can attribute virtually any event, even if unrelated to Israel, to Zionism's perniciousness.
5 - It is chauvinistic: it posits Arabs as having a monopoly on Levantine historical connection, treating them as rightful masters of the region, linked through blood-and-soil. Conversely, it constructs the Jew as fundamentally foreign - not merely to the Levantine, but to everywhere - and as having no culture. Rather, the Jew is a rootless cosmopolitan, a shape shifting deceiver whose lineage is fabricated.
6 - It is pseudo-eschatological and, related to its romanticism, dangerously past-oriented: "Liberation," by any means necessary, is imagined to result in a return to that idyllic image of the untainted, pure Palestine before Zionism.
7 - It is grievance-oriented, revanchist, and dogmatically rejectionistic: its proponents balk at the idea of giving the Israeli population any say over their future on the basis of their perceived unique and fundamental criminality. All questions of fairness, or human rights, or self-determination are discarded with, all by making reference to these unforgivable and singularly-evil trespasses.
I could go on, but this list will suffice for now. These ideological features are ubiquitous to fascistic movements throughout history. Every single antizionist isn't necessarily an antisemite, or even a (knowing) supporter of this type of fascism; most are motivated by earnest and rightful concern for the continued dispossesion and political alienation Palestinians and the Palestinian nation. However, the movement itself is inherently and inextricably fascistic in character - in its core ideology as laid out above, in its methods and practices, and in its relationship to and collaboration with reactionary far-right, far-left, and Islamist groups. A two-state process is the only just way forward, but antizionism seeks to destroy the Israeli state, rather than found an independent and free Palestine alongside it. I know big words scare and confuse you there champ, so I tried to lay this out concisely and in a manmer where I can reach less sophisticated readers such as yourself. If you have any questions, comments, or (substantive) rebuttals, feel free to leave them in the comments below. I doubt you (@ADeepSouthCrit ) will read this far, rather I imagine you will respond with something like "tl;dr" or "that's a lot of words for saying you like killing babies," evincing your internalizatoon of the 2nd feature of antizionism. But then again, this isn't really written for you, as you are likely a dyed-in-the-wool antisemite and overall political lunatic. This was written for those who are wolilling to reject this creeping fascism."
Swann Marcus on X - "People talk about how weird it is that leftists are so monomaniacally obsessed with Palestine that they're willing to sacrifice every other left-wing goal to it but this is how the modern activist left is with every issue they get temporarily obsessed with It's not just Palestine. In 2018, Me Too meant that if a white woman accused a black man of rape, you had to believe that she was telling the truth and then in 2020 post-Floyd America meant women should shut their whore mouths and quit being so hysterical because calling the cops on black men under any circumstances was unforgivable The activist left is a phony hashtag LARPer movement so they obsess over one issue that's currently trending on social media and jettison everything else that they were pretending to care about 6 months ago. This is also why they're completely incapable of governing or advancing any positive policy agenda - it's the first political movement in history that lacks object permanence"
Wahooney 🔸 🦣.🪡🐚 on X - "I've noticed that almost all LGBT advocacy fell off a cliff, you even have people like Emma Vigland saying she doesn't care if people are anti-LGBT if they're pro-Palestine."
Carsbigasbars on X - "Ireland kind of just shut up and said it was hateful to talk about an arab Muslim immigrant beheading multiple gay men because of Palestine being center focus One of the worst hate crimes ever done in a Western country brushed completely under the rug"
The story of Yousef Palani: A homophobic killer who sickened the nation
Richard Hanania on X - "Saudi high-ranking official to James R. Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense under Nixon and Ford: “Can’t you get your government never to ask us [for] permission in the kingdom? We are a little country, we are weak, we are dependent on you for our survival, the great power of the free world, and when you… ask us permission to do something that you can do… we get alarmed about our security.” Arab governments completely dependent on the US for survival are sometimes confused by the deference we give them. When the Trump administration had a plan for the region that sought mutual accommodation between the relevant powers, they were able to bring Israel and the Arab regimes together. The Biden administration went back to the failed strategies of the past, indulging the antisemitism of Arab mass opinion and the global left, with disastrous results. "
Brianna Wu on X - "I appreciate @jonstewart . But, my understanding of geopolitics is more sophisticated than it was during the Bush years. And I don't think this analysis is correct. I think it's deeply unhelpful to play into the hands of theocrats and primarily blame America for the instability in the Middle East. Most of these events were over 70 years ago. I'm sorry, at some point, they have assumed control of their own destiny. Ronald Reagan set America on a disastrous path in the 80s, but that doesn't mean I have no agency in determining where America goes today. It also assumes western political dynamics are the correct lens to understand the Middle East. We almost never talk about the honor/shame dynamics that motivate much of Middle Eastern politics. Let's get real, a lot of the animosity against Israel is people cannot get over the fact that Jews, a people they consider weak and subservient, have militarily dominated in conflict. To be clear, I don't think the United States has been a force for stability in the Middle East. In many way, Iraq War II directly set up Hamas. But, I think it's an overstatement to say we are the primary factor. Another thing I understand better since the Bush years is the value of assigning agency. For all of us to move forward, we have to understand the parts we play in the dysfunction. I recognize what America is doing wrong. From the protests in Israel, I think they understand where Netanyahu is going wrong. It's not unreasonable to say Iran is also playing a heavy role. https://youtu.be/NgeLRtpC2WI?si"
אבשלום הנתן -ביצקוב on X - "I really disliked the "no money for health care joke". beside reflecting all kind of anti israeli trophes, it's completly false, the US does not have universal because of a lot of issues,not beacause it's investment in weapons , countries far more poorer than the US have it."
Tom on X - "History is really easy for activists to obfuscate (especially with young audiences) because many people weren’t around/weren’t old enough to know what was happening at the time, and that makes it easy to craft a narrative that seems plausible and tells the audience what they want to believe."
Dani on X - "Originally, I was pro-Palestine. Most of my friends in the punk community were. They probably still are. I absorbed all of the agitprop about how Israel was allegedly built on stolen land, how Jews are nothing more than a religious faith, how Palestinians are the real Israelites, and how Jews would have been better off immigrating to the United States and serving as goody two shoes "white" allies to "real minorities". I wasn't equipped to challenge any of it at the time, so I didn't. But after a while, I began to have misgivings. The way people spoke about Israel and obsessed over it was unlike anything I had witnessed before, or since. This zealotry oftentimes bled into hostility against Jews qua Jews, all while they furiously denied any antisemitism on their part. It was disquieting. In 2011, I met Israelis online who challenged my views. They were very patient with me, although I didn't deserve it. They would have been well within their rights to tell me to go fuck myself with a cordless drill, but they didn't. They were extremely knowledgeable. They had etiquette, erudition, and a wealth of sources to back up everything they said. All I had were rehearsed lines. I didn't immediately have the courage to call out my friends, but I kept everything in my back pocket. Until one night, I gently pushed back against the settler colonialism charges being bandied about. I said something to the effect of "but don't Jews come from that land too?". The room fell silent. Some of them looked at me as though I had just swallowed a kitten whole, others began chuckling and saying "ooooooook?". I left the room without saying anything else. When I got home, I began posting about Jewish indigeneity on Facebook. This was long before most Zionists were talking about it, so I was nervous. But I did it because, on some level, I felt like I had to. I lost more than 100 friends within 3 hours. The comments ranged from "fuck off you Zionist pig" to "are the ZOG paying you" to "I hope Iran builds nukes and evens the score with the Zionist regime" (this was said by a self-professed anti-war activist). One quoted the Protocols and "TrueTorahJews" at me. I was confused and, increasingly, isolated. I was no longer welcome in my old spaces. I got into a lot of fights, some of which became physical. On a few occasions, I was stalked by people who chucked garbage at me. I became reclusive from that point on, and largely have been ever since. 13 years later, I still have no community. Out of the large scene I was once part of, I only have contact with 2 people. But, I have no regrets either way. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I didn't speak out."
ثنا ابراهیمی | Sana Ebrahimi on X - "I am an Iranian woman. A few years back, I was a pro-Palestine supporter, but I no longer hold that stance. I believed their fight was over achieving peace and freedom. However, my perspective changed drastically when I realized their motives were different. I am totally against them now. Their concern was not for justice but rather about selecting the targets for violence. Whether it involved the suffering of Iranian men and women or the torture, rape, and murder of Israeli civilians, they showed unwavering support toward the most notorious terrorists. They endorse extremist actions, even when they eventually lead to harm to Palestinian, Iranian, and Israeli children. To me, their cause has become synonymous with perpetuating death and destruction."
Of course, people in the comments were saying she never was a real Palestine supporter. There're interesting parallels with criticisms of people who leave religions/cults
Meme - Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט @naftalibennett: "Many people have been chanting: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”. I’m sure it makes them feel pretty good about themselves. I’ve added this map for their convenience. Between the River and the Sea…is Israel. So what you’re actually chanting is “kick-out or kill all the Jews”."
Richard Hanania on X - "Massacres of Christians
Aleppo: 1860
Nablus: 1856
Damascus and Lebanon: 1860
The idea that Israel brought religious conflict to the region is more than a lie, it's an inversion of the truth. Israel is a flicker of light in a region with a dark and brutal history."
Richard Hanania on X - ""Israel is the source of problems in the Middle East." Wikipedia lists 16 coups and civil wars in *Yemen alone* since 1948, none of which involved Israel. I'm sure they'll say somehow the psychological damage of knowing Jews were in the region forced them to do this."
Richard Hanania on X - "If you want one historical event to demonstrate that the Arab case against Israel is based on nothing but antisemitic hate and has no moral legitimacy, you can't do much better than the North Yemen Civil War (1962-1970) This conflict killed 100,000 to 200,000 people. It was basically a proxy war between Egypt, representing the "radical" Middle East regimes, and Saudi Arabia, representing the conservative monarchies. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of Egypt at the time, sent over 100,000 soldiers to Yemen. He used poison gas against Saudi bases and Yemeni villages, killing perhaps 1,500 people in this way. In the run-up to the war in 1967, one reason Israel ended up preemptively striking was that they assumed that Nasser would not hesitate to gas Jews, just as he did Arabs. Just two decades after the Holocaust, it was ironically Germany that sent 20,000 gas masks to Israel in order to help them deal with the expected fallout. The mass slaughter in Yemen, including the use of poison gas, was well known at the time, and remains well known today.
How did the Arab world perceive Nasser? If you think there was outrage over him killing and gassing fellow Arabs, you don't know much about Arab culture. He's always been seen as the great hero of Arab nationalism. Kill, torture, and slaughter as many Arabs or Muslims as you want. The "Arab cause" judges you by how hostile you are to Jews. The same story was repeated with Saddam Hussein decades later, right down to the use of poison gas against fellow Muslims. The point here is that we need to stop treating the Arab cause as morally legitimate in terms that make sense to us Westerners. We're in different moral universes. To take claims to Palestinian rights seriously means forgoing what we consider common decency and accommodating racial hatred as the basis of policy and societal organization.
The majority of Jews in Israel have deep roots in the region. They have shown a willingness to live side by side with the Palestinians time and time again. In 1948, in 1967, near the end of the Clinton administration, and when Sharon left Gaza in 2005. The Arabs have been consistently starting wars and losing, and then demanding that the international community make them whole, without any attempts to assuage Israeli security concerns, because they are driven by hate, not a desire for peace. Arab states of the region have been able to make peace with Israel only when they've set aside the concerns of the Palestinians, who continue to be in a 1960s mindset. Partly this is because Palestinians have something resembling democracy, where their leaders are representative of mass opinion, when this isn't the case in Egypt or the monarchies. Take Palestinian claims at face value, they seem reasonable. But consider Arab mass opinion and behavior in the context of what has been going on since 1948, and the story is quite different and shows the moral superiority of the Israeli position, which is based on them accepting the fundamental values of Western civilization. We should all want our country to be on the side of what is right instead of treating the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as moral equals with us serving as neutral arbiters."
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib on X - "The past 24 hours have entailed the most intense & horrendous wave of attacks, threats, harassment, and abuse against me by those who allege to be “pro-Palestine” activists, particularly after the publishing of my latest piece in the Atlantic. This is nothing new, and I’m not in the slightest asking for sympathy or for anyone to “feel bad” for me – I can handle myself and my well-being. I’m merely sharing these examples (and the attached screenshots are a tiny sample) to remind everyone of the incredibly toxic forced conformity that is violently imposed upon the diverse and varied voices within the Palestinian community in Palestine and throughout the world. Think of this when you wonder why the people of Gaza have been living under Hamas’s violent and authoritarian rule for almost two decades. This is why I’m essentially the only prominent voice in the English-speaking world that’s both pro-Palestine but also pro-pragmatism, pro-coexistence/peace, and explicitly & unequivocally anti-Hamas and violence. I speak for myself and have never claimed to be a “leader” or “spokesperson” on anyone's behalf. But it is a fact that numerous Palestinians hold elements of my views/beliefs but are perpetually afraid to speak out/up, lest they be labeled Zionists, traitors, sellouts, intelligence assets, cowards, and every imaginable insult and abusive name you can think of. I’m talking about academics, politicians, businesspeople, peace activists, and countless others who are desperate for a new approach and a revitalized pro-Palestine movement but are terrified to voice their authentic opinions. Whether it was Arafat rejecting the 2000 Camp David proposal, Abbas refusing Olmert’s 2008 deal, or random people voicing their opposition to violence & the resistance narrative, the mob can be truly scary and intimidating for so many. The Palestinian people are immensely diverse and hold wide-ranging positions and takes. Yet, some of their own compatriots and “allies” are their worst enemies – think about that when someone tries to say all Gazans are Hamas or all Palestinians are this or that."
Clearly, the cyber lynching of a Palestinian peace activist by the terrorism supporters shows that the Zionists are to blame!
moe tkacik on X - "The idea that Arafat rejected a legitimate peace offer in 2000 has been thoroughly debunked. Norm Finkelstein has gone through the archival material. No such thing happened. You are getting pushback from pro Palestinian voices because youre accepting false narratives based on Israeli propaganda that is currently being used to justify a genocide. And you're doing it in the Atlantic which has emerged as the leading journal of middlebrow Genocide denial."
Wilderness on X - "No, it hasn't Finkelstein chooses his conclusions in advance and works backwards Meanwhile the long time Saudi ambassador corroborated both Israeli and American accounts, though with far more detail and shade"
Unironically Ellie on X - "Clinton was there and gave a first hand account but you believe Finkelstein, who has no known agenda (sarcasm), and did the “research”. I hope you recognize how willing you are to steep yourself in propaganda. Really, the question is why you want to believe alternative history."
moe tkacik on X - "and fucking Bill Clinton would never tell a lie"
chantal s Brahmi on X - "There are others alive who were there .”The Missing Peace” Dennis Ross”US envoy to the Middle east “ from 98-2000 Read it you may gain yet a different perspective to the current war."
Zionism is indigenous Jewish rights 🇮🇱 on X - "The other negotiators agree with Clinton of course"
(((Rabbi_L_Sykes))) 🎗️ on X - "The people in the room, not Finkelstein, not you, not other Arafat sympathizers/apologists, reported what happened in the room and Arafat’s rejection. The world would have been a lot different if he made a different choice. But please, keep apologizing for him. I know it is difficult when the facts and “your truth” don’t align but stop giving Ahmed a hard time when he actually knows what is going on."
Jonathan Kay on X - "the @YorkUniversity Politics dept "Palestine Solidarity Committee" pronounces Zionism "a settler colonial project...that upholds global white supremacy" It also wants to abolish anonymous faculty voting, so it can punish Zionists & other foes of "anti-racism" for crimes vs DEI"
Ridvan Aydemir | Apostate Prophet on X - "Popular Palestinian TV in Gaza teaches children to attack and kill Jews. These children grow up to become terrorists."
Why don't the Zionists want peace?
Libs of TikTok on X - "Leader of “Within our Lifetime”, a radical pro-Palestinian activist group, claims the police ripped off her hijab and brutalized her. The bodycam footage shows the police gently FIXING her hijab and hair for her to respect her religious beliefs while she was being arrested. Thanks to free speech on X we can demolish fake news narratives instantly!"
It's no surprise the terrorist supporters also lie about other things
Richard Hanania on X - "Golda Meir on the Arabs regarding the Yom Kippur war: “It’s ridiculous. They start a war and lose. And they want us to hand it to them.” This is the story of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948. Failed societies should not be rewarded for bad behavior."
Gad Saad on X - "This is weird. I did a search of “Israel” in the Noble Qur’an and found 47 verses. A search of “Palestine” yielded 0 hits. It’s as if the Jews are in the indigenous people of that land even according to the Noble Qur’an."
Meme - Tamer Masudin: "As a Muslim I can confirm"
Peter Baum: "FACT
For the muslims who believe that "Israel is only 76 years old" The word Israel is mentioned 43 times in the Quran. Israel is not "younger than your grandma". Israel is older than Islam."
TikTok risks turning a whole generation into anti-Semites - "My Jewish daughter is being tortured by TikTok. Yesterday, she opened the app and gave me a guided tour. First came videos of teenagers surrounded by anti-Israel slogans, singing along to the notorious Michael Jackson tune They Don’t Really Care About Us: “Jew me, sue me / Everybody, do me / Kick me, k*** me / Don’t you black or white me.” There were endless examples, created by children in a herd drive for likes. That was the tip of the iceberg. Another featured Ayatollah Khamenei smiling beatifically over heroic music. Who’d have thought that dropping our children into the grip of a Chinese-owned platform was a bad idea? In a fiery Zoom call with TikTok execs this week, the actor Sacha Baron Cohen accused it of “creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis.” He and other Jewish figures described how it was awash with comments like “Hitler was right” and “I hope you end up like Anne Frank”. In isolation, these could be dismissed as schoolyard insults. En masse, they are a toxic social movement. On Friday, TikTok was forced to delete the #lettertoamerica hashtag after shares of Osama Bin Laden’s 2002 manifesto – which justified 9/11 by the sins of the Jews and the west – spiralled out of control. Millions of users, many of them young women, were besotted, saying their eyes had been opened to a hidden reality. A transgender writer called Gretchen Felker-Martin praised 9/11 as “the most principled and defensible thing he ever did”. In February, Felker-Martin had expressed a desire to slit JK Rowling’s throat. Things have come to a pretty pass when a trans man becomes infatuated with a jihadi and expresses a wish to kill a children’s author. Before our eyes, a generation of young people is augmenting its luxury beliefs with support for jihadism. This is moral and intellectual vacuity, an internet brain-rot arising from a propaganda mechanism the like of which the world has never seen. On the surface, it is utterly bewildering. Look deeper, however, and this content on the platform is a digitally enhanced and dumbed-down version of a long convergence between western radicals and Islamist fanatics... [Hamas's] former leader Khaled Mashal said: “The Algerian people sacrificed six million martyrs over 130 years… No nation is liberated without sacrifices.” Unsurprisingly, a major part of Hamas’s strategy is to manipulate Israel into killing civilians. The old-fashioned anti-imperialism of the likes of Jeremy Corbyn has become the guiding principle of a generation radicalised by social media. In 2021, Black Lives Matter became its racial wing; Hamas is now its religious column, with jihadi rapists refashioned as symbols of resistance. This is an achievement Islamic State could only dream of, facilitated by antisemitism. In another TikTok trend, youngsters film themselves weeping performatively over Gaza. If idiocy and narcissism is the hubris of our society, Hamas has become our nemesis."
It's amusing how Palestinians keep proclaiming that they want more martyrs, yet Jews are blamed when they are given their wish. Minorities have no agency as usual