We've become what we abhorred.

https://www.tumblr.com/the-garbanzo-annex-jr/726765743604105216/

"The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the massacre at al-Shifa was one of the largest in Palestinian history, estimating that at least 1,500 people had been killed, injured, or reported missing, “with women and children making up half of the casualties.”* The organization also confirms that at least 22 patients were shot while in their hospital beds, while the number of displaced persons sheltering at the hospital who were forced to evacuate southward was estimated to include 25,000 people. Moreover, 1,200 housing units in the vicinity of al-Shifa were destroyed.

Despite the army’s claims about the al-Shifa operation’s strategic and military importance and the number of alleged Hamas and PIJ members it had arrested and killed, it obfuscated the real intended purpose of the operation, which was to destroy the health system in northern Gaza and worsen the already disastrous humanitarian conditions. The entire compound is now unfit for use. Even the morgue, containing countless bodies of the slain, was burned down."

it is a testament of the strength and acuity of jonathan glazer's work that the zone of interest is such an apt metaphor for so much of what continues to happen in the discourse around israel and particularly bds (the soft fandom zionists, the tech conferences, the companies with zionist investors etc) wherein people want to exist within the zone of interest without ever confronting that they are in the zone of interest

people think the zone of interest means directly "supporting the actions of the idf" as though making a token "i hate violence" statement takes you out of the zone of interest... but in truth the actions of the idf are what allows for the privileges that obscure the brutality of the occupation. there is no way to be an apolitical fandom zionist, to enjoy the spoils of occupation without being associated with occupation.

calls for boycott, criticism, and anger (even if some are excessive, and even if some are unfair) are a desire to pierce the zone of interest. they are an acknowledgement that israeli identity can never be considered independently of palestinian suffering, and that the normalization of this has always been a tacit acceptance of palestinian subjugation.

the defensive desire to reject that and consider it bigoted or hostile in the midst of an active genocide is indicative of a moral rot. and tragically it's always very obvious who is concerned that these calls may be misplaced, and who is just angry that they exist in the first place. like there's a pretty obvious difference between agreeing not every celebrity who drinks a starbucks or has to do an ad for a company with investments in israel is an overt zionist, and being mad that people think being associated with zionism or israel is something that should be addressed at all. fandom zionists (who claim antizionism) are usually the latter. they want to preserve the right of companies to invest in israel and celebrities to make statements of support and cultural events to continue unabated without criticism—in other words, to maintain their zone of interest.

zone of interest aside, these same people would've called you bigoted for getting mad at the balfour declaration—"oh so now british lords can't express sympathy with jewish ppl? btw he said nothing should prejudice the rights of non-jewish communities in palestine. you're all so extremely blinded by hate you don't even want people to show sympathy for us. getting mad about it isn't going to help palestinians."

This is why, in spite of severe differences on some issues, I stay in the game (electoral politics) and fight. I know that candidates I have supported and indeed some of my fellow Democrats have the exact opposite position on Israel / Gaza. Yet they are part of the coalition. To  fight for a majority coalition we have to live with each other under the same tent. That’s the only way to win on issues and indeed the very existence of people groups in this country. It ain’t perfect. Nor can it be. The tools we have left are persuasion and solidarity. Because if our position is all or nothing, we must crush the other side, then we have become the other side.

Every time I advocate for voting people are like "no you shouldn't vote! Read this literature, it'll totally change the way you view voting!" And every single time it's the same fucking "you shouldn't vote because both parties are exactly the same so it won't make a difference who wins" bullshit wrapped up in some fancy language

Palestinian artist Wadeei Khaled

Via @danacea at Bluesky.

Knowing that the Red Crescent staff shared their coordinates with Israeli forces when they embarked on their rescue mission in January to save 6 year old Hind who was trapped in a car with dead family members, and knowing Israeli forces struck the ambulance when it was meters away from where Hind was, killing everyone.

We just cannot be totally shocked now to learn that the WCK also shared their coordinates with the Israeli forces and they too had not one, not two, but three of their marked vehicles targeted separately killing 7 of their staff.

It's all part of the same plan with the same agenda on a genocidal loop. It's systemic evil and literally predictable at this point.

It needs to be stopped and calls for ceasefire just won't cut it now. These calls need to be elevated to hold Israel accountable for the crimes it has been literally broadcasting.

The Road to Perdition

I’m beginning to understand that inhumanity is a road. When a generation of people are taught that they are special and chosen, and that another group of people are a subhuman pestilence in their land, they are paving a road to perdition.

“He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to” -Harry Emerson Fosdick

On this road, the daily oppression, humiliation, and petty cruelties against the oppressed people will pass largely unnoticed by the dominant group and outsiders. The road will appear smooth and unobstructed. The consequences can be carefully concealed from themselves and the outside world… for a time. But eventually the oppression becomes untenable. Human spirits can endure being crushed for only so long. The oppressed will finally lash out. Violently.

The dominant group is shocked. Fearful. And ultimately vengeful. Leaders will seize the opportunity to unleash an orgy of violence so brutal, so obviously inhuman, that it will shock the world. It will reveal the animus which has always been under the surface, but is now revealed in all its barbarity. The thin veneer of a democratic, civilized society is stripped away. This level of barbarity against humanity shows us what we are capable of. It may be claimed this was done in the interest of dominant group safety, but in the company of a group of people willing to do this to another group of people, is anyone truly safe? How can Pandora's box be closed?

“You can never replace anyone because everyone is made of such beautiful, specific details.”

— Before Sunset (2004), Richard Linklater

“People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.”

— Rick Riordan

Are We So Different?

“Our emotional and political culture is closer to that of the perpetrator than we think — not in terms of wanting to kill another ethnic group, but in terms of these are the aspirations for which we are prepared not to think about who is excluded from those dreams of comfort and security. In some ways, our comfort and security might be built on the exclusion of those people.” —James Wilson, Producer of the movie, "Zone of Interest"

At the Intersection of Faith and Life: Awakening from the Sleep of Inhumanity

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

We see wars but rarely do we understand the battles. And these conflicts are proxy wars. The question we need to ask is:  who is the proxy for whom?

"The human mind is not, like ChatGPT and its ilk, a lumbering statistical engine for pattern matching, gorging on hundreds of terabytes of data and extrapolating the most likely conversational response or most probable answer to a scientific question. On the contrary, the human mind is a surprisingly efficient and even elegant system that operates with small amounts of information; it seeks not to infer brute correlations among data points but to create explanations. Let's stop calling it Artificial Intelligence and call it what it is: Plagiarism Software. It doesn’t create anything, just copies existing works from artists and alters them sufficiently to escape copyright laws. It's the largest theft of property since Native American lands by European settlers. " -- Noam Chomsky

Where You Stand

I was saddened the other day to see a post by friends who moved away years ago. The post was a clip of a well-known US politician spouting conspiracy theories, lies, and slanders. It made me sad because I realized how much they had changed. When they lived here, in a mixed neighborhood, with the marginalized people they encountered daily, they were changing into a more compassionate human beings. Now, the longer they live in the one of the whitest, most rightwing, and racist parts of the country, they post MAGA stuff.

Gustavo Gutiérrez said,

“Where you stand changes what you see.”

I would paraphrase,

“where you stand changes what you be.”