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#currently trying to fight antisemitism
desertsandsnstarrysky · 2 months
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I think I’m gonna take a long break on here, it’s been real but I’m absolutely just totally done with the antisemitism…
I’m throughly disappointed with humanity…
I don’t not want Palestinians dead…I don’t want anyone dead to be quite honest!
And I also do not want fellow Jews to die as well !
MOST OF YOU You pro Palestinians are NOT FOR PEACE…( keyword most)
You want Jews dead… and THATS NOT OKAY!!!
Zionist or not!
And when you literally start telling them to kill themselves “kys” end your life and all that, you are just as equal to a murderer… by condoning this behavior!
Or talking about destruction of Israel as if the lives there that live deserve to die … WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!
You realize Israel is a whole fucking country, a region full of individuals, human beings that live there! Different hearts and minds, different thoughts, feelings, etc!
So when you say they need to destroyed, bombed, eradicated, deconstructed, or anything like that you are talking about basically wanting to kill all who live there!
When you tell ANY JEWISH PERSON TO DIE, you are not FOR PEACE! No, You are a piece of shit!
You are a Nazi, point blank if you want the country of Israel to be destroyed… end of discussion!
And honestly do not call yourself a person for peace if you talk like that… it’s absolutely antisemitic and garbage!
Both sides suffer from this war! Both Palestinian civilians and Israeli and everyone else who lives there And ALWAYS HAVE!!!
Stop using fucking lizard brain logic and realize both sides are SUFFERING!
This isn’t fucking red vs. blue team games!
It’s not a fucking soccer game and we’re keeping score, all of the people matter in this!! Every single life!!!
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gothhabiba · 6 months
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Hi, this is very ignorant. I'm trying to read as much as I can on Palestine and Zionism but there is one point I cannot find an answer for. Given that Zionism is not Judaism, given that at the beginning most Jewish people did not share this view and was actually supported by christians with antisemitic views, given that it was conceptualized as a colonial project that could only be actualized by ethnically cleanse Palestine, one thing I don't know how to disagree with Zionists is the idea that Jewish people do come from that land. Even if European jews are probably not genetically related to the Jewish people from there, I think Jewishness is something that can be constructed as related to that land. This of course does not mean that Palestinians are not natives too and they have every right to their land. However I don't really know how to answer when Jewish (Zionists) tell me that Jewish people fled that land during the diaspora. Other than "yeah but the people that stayed are native that underwent christianization before, arabization later, grew a sense of nationhood in the 19th century and are Palestinians now"
It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what "indigeneity" is to believe that it means "whoever has the oldest claim to the land." Rather, to describe a people as "indigenous" is a reference to their current relationship to the government and to the land—namely that they have been or are being dispossessed from that land in favour of other private owners (settlers); they have a separate, inferior status to settlers according to the law, explicitly; they are shut out of institutions created by the settler state, explicitly; they are targeted implicitly by the laws of the settler state (e.g. Israeli prohibitions against harvesting wild thyme or using donkeys or horses for transportation); the settler state does not punish violence against them; &c. &c.
It is a settler-colonialist state that creates indigeneity; without one, it is perfectly possible for immigrants to move to and live in a new location without becoming settlers, with the superior cultural and legal status and suppression of a legally inferior population that that entails.
If all that were going on were some Jewish people feeling a personal or religious connexion to this land and wanting to move there, accepting the existing people and culture and living with them, not expelling and killing local populations and creating a settler-colonialist state that privileges them at the expense of extant populations, that would be a completely different situation. But any assertion of the land's fundamental Jewish-ness (really they mean white or European Jewishness—the Jewish Arabs who were already in Palestine never seem to figure in these arguments) is a canard that distracts from the fundamental issue, which is a people's right to resist dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Decolonize Palestine lays out some of the ethnic and cultural history of the region, but follows it up with:
So, what does this all mean for Palestine? Absolutely nothing. Although the argument has many ahistorical assumptions and claims, it is not these which form its greatest weakness. The whole argument is a trap. The basic implication of this line of argumentation is as follows: If the Jewish people were in Palestine before the Arabs, then the land belongs to them. Therefore, the creation of Israel would be justified. From my experience, whenever this argument is used, the automatic response of Palestinians is to say that their ancestors were there first. These ancestors being the Canaanites. The idea that Palestinians are the descendants of only one particular group in a region with mass migrations and dozens of different empires and peoples is not only ahistorical, but this line of thought indirectly legitimizes the original argument they are fighting against. This is because it implies that the only reason Israel’s creation is unjustified is because their Palestinian ancestors were there first. It implies that the problem with the argument lies in the details, not that the argument as a whole is absolute nonsense and shouldn’t even be entertained. The ethnic cleansing, massacres and colonialism needed to establish Israel can never be justified, regardless of who was there first. It’s a moot point. Even if we follow the argument that Palestinians have only been there for 1300 years, does this suddenly legitimize the expulsion of hundreds of thousands? Of course not. There is no possible scenario where it is excusable to ethnically cleanse a people and colonize their lands. Human rights apply to people universally, regardless of whether they have lived in an area for a year or ten thousand years. If we reject the “we were there first” argument, and not treat it as a legitimizing factor for Israel’s creation, then we can focus on the real history, without any ideological agendas. We could trace how our pasts intersected throughout the centuries. After all, there is indeed Jewish history in Palestine. This history forms a part of the Palestinian past and heritage, just like every other group, kingdom or empire that settled there does. We must stop viewing Palestinian and Jewish histories as competing, mutually exclusive entities, because for most of history they have not been. These positions can be maintained while simultaneously rejecting Zionism and its colonialism. After all, this ideologically driven impulse to imagine our ancestors as some closed, well defined, unchanging homogenous group having exclusive ownership over lands corresponding to modern day borders has nothing to do with the actual history of the area, and everything to do with modern notions of ethnic nationalism and colonialism.
I would also be careful about mentioning a sense of "nationhood" or "national identity" in this context, as it could seem to imply that people need a "national" identity (a very specific and very new idea) in order not to deserve genocide. Actually the idea that Palestinians lacked a national identity (of the kind that developed in 19th-century Europe) is commonly used to justify Zionism. Again from Decolonize Palestine:
This slogan ["A land without a people for a people without a land"] persists to this day because it was never meant to be literal, but colonial and ideological. This phrase is yet another formulation of the concept of Terra Nullius meaning “nobody’s land”. In one form or the other, this concept played a significant role in legitimizing the erasure of the native population in virtually every settler colony, and laying down the ‘legal’ and ‘moral’ basis for seizing native land. According to this principle, any lands not managed in a ‘modern’ fashion were considered empty by the colonists, and therefore up for grabs. Essentially, yes there are people there but no people that mattered or were worth considering. There is no doubt that Zionism is a settler colonial movement intent on replacing the natives. As a matter of fact, this was a point of pride for the early Zionists, as they saw the inhabitants of the land as backwards and barbaric, and that a positive aspect of Zionism would be the establishment of a modern nation state there to act as a bulwark against these ‘regressive’ forces in the east [You can read more about this here]. A characteristic feature of early Zionist political discourse is pretending that Palestinians exist only as individuals or sometimes communities, but never as constituting a people or a nation. This was accompanied by the typical arrogance and condescension towards the natives seen in virtually every settler colonial movement. That the early settlers interacted with the natives while simultaneously claiming the land was empty was not seen as contradictory to them. According to these colonists, even if some scattered, disorganized people did exist, they were not worthy of the land they inhabited. They were unable to transform the land into a modern functioning nation state, extract resources efficiently and contribute to ‘civilization’ through the free market, unlike the settlers. Patrick Wolfe’s scholarship on Australia illustrates this dynamic and how it was exploited to establish the settler colony.
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edenfenixblogs · 5 months
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Let’s put some numbers to Jewish fear right now.
In news that I’m sure will thrill all antisemites, it would take startlingly little effort to foment widespread violence against us and cause another genocide of the Jewish people.
I have had many fellow Jews express to me how overwhelming it is to see the rising antisemitism. I have seen many Jews express fear at being drowned out of public, online, and IRL spaces due to dangerously violent vitriol.
I have also seen people who claim to advocate for Palestine—especially western leftists—openly mock Jews who express this fear.
Finally, I and my fellow Jews have often expressed that, while we wholeheartedly support Palestinian freedom and self determination, it is exhausting to have to say so repeatedly, especially when we are trying to advocate for ourselves. This is not due to any latent or widespread hatred of Muslims, Arabs, or Palestinians. It is because we are an extremely maligned and marginalized minority that is fighting to be heard against strong, hostile forces that at best wish we’d shut up and at worst want us eradicated from the planet.
There is a disconnect about how much harm people can do to Jews by spreading antisemitism and refusing to dismantle their own internalized antisemitism—and everyone has internalized antisemitism. It is one of the oldest forms of prejudice in the world and is found in almost every single culture. It is as, if not more, pervasive than white privilege. Yes. You read that right. And if asked to elaborate, I will provide numbers on that to the best of my ability. For the purposes of this post, however, I want to focus on the global distribution of religious groups only.
Specifically, this disconnect is between Jews who are fully aware and feel the affects of this damage and goyim who simply do not comprehend our marginalization.
To help, let’s put some numbers to this. In this post, I’ll be using the Pew Research Center’s survey and findings on the Global Religious Landscape. This is the most recent data from a reputable source that I could find which surveyed every world religion at the same time. While the Jewish population has grown slightly in the intervening years, so have most (if not all) other religious populations around the globe. I wanted to use figures measured at the same time to avoid bias for or against any religious group.
For the purposes of this post, I will not be discussing folk religions or other religions. This is not because they are not important. This is because they are not a monolith and individual folk religions and other religions may have even fewer adherents per religion than Judaism. I am currently only focusing on religions and religious groups who have more adherents than Judaism.
In descending order of adherents, there number of people in the world belonging to these groups:
2,200,000,000 (2.2 Billion) Christians
1,600,000,000 (1.6 Billion) Muslims
1,100,000,000 (1.1 Billion) Religiously unaffiliated people
1,000,000,000 (1 Billion) Hindus
500,000,000 (500 Million) Buddhists
14,000,000 (14 Million) Jews
Reduced to the simplest fractions there are:
1100 Christians for every 7 Jews
800 Muslims for every 7 Jews
550 Religiously unaffiliated people for every 7 Jews
500 Hindus for every 7 Jews
250 Buddhists for every 7 Jews
Combined, there are 6,400,000,000 non-Jewish people in religions or religious groups (including religiously unaffiliated people).
This means that for every 7 Jews there are 3200 people in religious groups who outnumber us.
Jews are 0.2 % of the global population.
When we tell you that hate is dangerous, it is because…
It would only take 0.21% of 6.4 Billion people to hate us in order to completely overwhelm and outnumber every single Jewish person on the planet. In other words, only 67.2 out of every 3200 people.
And given how violent and aggressive people have become toward us in recent weeks, that doesn’t seem far off.
No, most Christians, Muslims, Atheists/Agnostics, Hindus, and Buddhists do NOT hate Jews.
But if even 0.21% of them do hate us, Jews are at a legitimate and terrifying risk of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
It is not possible for Jews alone to fight this rising tide of hate. There simply aren’t enough of us. And many of us are too scared to tell you the truth: if you don’t vocally and repeatedly stand up for Jews (and not just the ones you agree with) you will be complicit in the genocide that follows. Police your own communities.
Nobody acting in good faith is asking you to abandon Palestinians or their fight for self determination and equality in their homeland. All we are asking is for you to learn about antisemitism, deconstruct it in yourself, and loudly condemn it when it occurs in front of you. We are asking you to comfort us and not run away when we are scared or even angry at you. Because a lot of us are angry with you, because we are extremely scared right now and many of you are not helping us. Many of you are actively and carelessly spreading dogwhistles that further the global rise in hatred against us.
You can support Palestine AND avoid Islamophobia WITHOUT making antisemitism worse. But you can’t stop antisemitism by staying silent in the face of it. And if you don’t speak up, you will get us killed. Silence, in this case, is quite literally violence.
Many of us have armed guards posted at our synagogues and schools and community centers because of this. I certainly had times where my synagogue and school had to have armed security for our safety.
The only reason more of us haven’t died already is because we have millennia of experience in confronting this kind of hatred and guarding against it.
But in pure numbers, if you don’t speak up for us now, we don’t have a chance at survival without support.
So, what can you do, specifically?:
* Make a stand or public statement about condemning antisemitism without mentioning another group. Acknowledge Jewish fear, pain, and current danger without contextualizing it in someone else’s. It could literally be something as simple as “Antisemitism is bad. There’s never a reason for it. I won’t tolerate it in presence in real life or online.” If you cannot bring yourself to publicly make this statement, you should have a serious look at yourself to understand why you can’t.
* Learn about the six universal features of antisemitism and the many, various dog whistles affecting the global Jewish community
* Do not welcome people who espouse rhetoric that includes any features from the above bullet point in your community unless you are able to educate them and eliminate that behavior.
* Check in on your Jewish friends, regularly and repeatedly. Do not wait for them to reach out to you. They are scared of you. Even if you don’t have the emotional space to have conversations about antisemitism. Just send a message once in a while, unprompted, “Jfyi, antisemitism still sucks. I support you.”
* Redirect conversations about which “side” is “right” to how to attain peace. Do this by saying that this line of argument is not conducive to peace, and link to a well-respected organization not widely accused of either antisemitism or Islamophobia that is devoted to achieving a peaceful resolution, increasing education, or providing humanitarian aid to relevant affected groups—including Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs. You can find over 160 such organizations at the Alliance for Middle East Peace https://www.allmep.org/
* Look to support experienced groups without widespread and verifiable claims of prejudice against either Jews or Muslims or Arabs or Palestinians. Many of these organizations can also be found at the AllMEP link above. Avoid groups on the shit list as well as unproductive and harmful movements.
* Do not default to western methods of political demonstration. Specifically, protests are not useful in attaining peace in western nations at this time. Israelis and Palestinians can and should protest to the best of their abilities in Israel and Palestine so as to pressure their own governments. However, protests in western nations have proven to be poorly regulated and to further the spread of bigoted rhetoric and violence against Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians. Furthermore, there are nearly as many Palestinians in the world as there are Jews. It is extremely easy and common for the voices of bad actors and bigots on all sides to completely drown out Jewish and Palestinian voices and concerns at these events.
* Spend more time listening and learning than speaking and acting. Anyone who tells you this conflict is simple is someone who is lying to you. Take the time to learn the ways in which your actions and words can get people hurt before joining the fray.
* Stop demonizing Zionism as a concept, even if you disagree with it. Understand that it is a philosophy with many different movements that often conflict with each other. The Zionism practiced by Netanyahu and the Likud party is NOT representative of most Zionists or interpretations of Zionism. It is an extremist form of Zionism known as Revisionist Zionism.
* Don’t deny Jewish indigeneity to the levant. It doesn’t help Palestine and hurts Jews by erasing our physical and cultural history as well as erasing the Jews who remained in Israel even through widespread diaspora.
* KEEP THE HOLOCAUST OUT OF YOUR MOUTH
Things That Are Always OK
* Denouncing Antisemitism loudly and publicly
* Denouncing Islamophobia loudly and publicly
* Telling your Jewish and Muslim and Arab friends you support them and won't abandon them
* Elevating the work of respected, widely accepted people and organizations devoted to attaining peace for all, rather than just one group of people.
* Develop media literacy
* Understand what aspects of the current western leftist movements Jews are criticizing, rather than assuming our criticisms are motivated by hatred for Palestine or Palestinians.
* Expressing sorrow for civilian deaths regardless of religion or nationality.
* When you are not Jewish and you share a post about antisemitism from a Jewish person, please say you’re a goy. This isn’t because you’re not welcome to share. This is because it is indescribably comforting to know we aren’t just talking amongst ourselves and screaming into the void. Let us know you are supportive of us. It doesn’t mean that you or we hate Palestine or Palestinians or that we oppose their full and equal rights in our shared homeland.
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fromgoy2joy · 4 months
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I have been… biting my tongue from saying things. 
Partially because I’m not “really Jewish” (on the way to it via conversion), and because I didn’t want this blog to be political. 
But I realize I want this page to be a safe space. If anyone takes issue with what I’m about to say, I don’t want them on this page. 
I joined the college jewish community very shortly after 10/7 and was immediately welcomed in. There was no separation between me and the girl who had gone to orthodox shul all her life and was the head of the state youth group. I was told explicitly  “you are one of us. And together, we are mourning. We have lost our people and so have you.” 
Still I felt no authority to speak on things as insidious as antisemitism until recently. But how many times do you have to experience an antisemitic incident until you get to stand up? 
Six. The answer is six. 
Since explicitly aligning myself with Jewishness, I have lost friends who told me I have “dual loyalties” in so many words. I’ve been ostracized in events because we were singled out . I’ve been followed back to my dorm room from events by people hurling genocide accusations at me- white girls wearing keffiyahs who don't know anything about the Nakba when I try to connect with them about how awful it was.
My face was used in a local “fight jew hate” campaign” where I’m in a group of people with clearly middle eastern descent. But what circulated around my campus was my blonde hair and blue eyes, with people using laughing emojis.
“This is who we’re supposed to be defending!? Bitch please! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣” 
(Which is perfectly ironic because they singled out the person who wasn't ethnically Jewish and focused on her. )
Campus security and the disciplinary office knows me quite well from all the reports I've filed whether for me or other people.
I leave campus for breaks. Even though I’m returning to my highly Catholic conservative family, I breathe a sigh of relief. I don't have to look over my shoulder constantly or check myself in the surroundings I'm in. I already feel the dread about returning in January.
What hurts is the blindness- the lack of nuance- that is being given. Every single Jewish person at my school is not a self described zionist, other than that they acknowledge Jewish indignity to the land, and that there was a reason for the creation of Israel- not even justification in the current state or the matter it came about.
But they- and we- shouldn't have to prove ourselves. We shouldn't be debating if we should fundraise for Gazans (we are) in case someone accuses us of "lying about our intentions" or if we'd be pointed out as "the good jews!" They shouldn't have to have a tab open on their computer for Israeli passports, even though they desperately don't want to leave the United States. I shouldn't have to wonder whenever I'm at a synagogue "If I get killed here in a terrorist attack before being immersed in the mikvah, will I get a Catholic or Jewish funeral?"
But that never mattered. Our voices never did. Unless the antisemitism came from a high school dropout neo-nazi with a shaved head and swastika jacket, it's never going to matter.
I will never forget- even as I advocate for Palestinians, call for a ceasefire, and donate. Or any other cause where I'll be marching besides these activists I can never call well meaning.
I could go on and on about it. But I won't be able to write it out in this post.
All I know is when the counsel of rabbis ask me if I'm ready to be apart of an unpopular group, I'm going to have to fight myself from laughing at the question
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jewreallythinkthat · 4 months
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One of the things that is frustrating me the most about the current I/P "discourse" is that myself and most other lefty Jews I know aren't even able to try and talk about peace and solutions to the issues faces in the Middle East because we are too busy having to fight for our own lives against waves of hate. If I didn't have to spend hours trying to explain what words literally mean to someone purposefully misusing them and straight up lying, maybe we could both be trying to do something about the current situation.
But that's not what most of the online antisemites want. It's never been about peace otherwise they'd actually engage with the Jewish community and listen to them instead of tokenizing people like JVP
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ionlytalktodogs · 5 months
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Yeah it’s not religious trauma, it’s jews being the vermin they have been for thousands of years. Your ancestors have stolen, lied, and abused the welcome they’ve gotten and now you are trying to exterminate Palestinians.
Go drink some children blood and clip some coins, you usury-lowing goblin (and not the good kind of goblin).
Yeah so this is like hilariously comically antisemitic so I’m not going to respond really but I need everyone else to know that people don’t just say shit like this to me online they say it in real life too. Antisemitism is real and current. If you believe in “punching nazis” put your fucking money where your mouth is and actually FIGHT ANTISEMITISM
Blood libel, greed, dehumanizing…if you think this is okay, you are a horrible human being.
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stil-lindigo · 5 months
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Hey, I just wanted to share something with you, as someone who's so invested in the Palestine conflict, I hope it might inspire hope, even a little.
I was born and live in Egypt, a very conservative and religious country. These days I deleted my Tiktok and rarely ever use Twitter, as I'm in my senior year, and seeing the constant deaths and torture was getting into me so much that I couldn't even eat or drink properly, nevertheless properly study. I honestly am not proud of myself for doing so, but there's comfort in the fact Egypt is so Pro-Palestine. There's a lot to be done, and even for people like me, we can help.
My school has been donating food, clothes and blankets to Palestine. The McDonald's in here have been trying to distance themselves, claiming they're "100% Egyptian", only to get mocked and insulted. I go by the local McDonald's, there's a lot of schools where I am, around 5 in two blocks, and where before they were constantly so full, these days they're so empty. I can only see maybe 3, 4 people in there. A lot of people in my school are on a complete strike, against every American product. We've resorted to buying and getting local products instead. Egypt is doing very poorly economically at the moment, but there's still a lot of effort into knocking out American products, even if not by the companies, by the youth and the children. I can't go a single class without one of my teachers openly supporting Palestine. My Arabic teacher constantly uses the people in Gaza to teach me grammar, calling them brave and courageous. My geography teacher denies Isreal, and has been in league with others to get more donations and aid. Egyptians believe so truly that Palestine will be free that it's hard not to think so too. I've had classmates openly agree that if they could, they'd join the army to help fight for Palestine, I've seen more people than ever mocking the current regime, I've seen more people than ever falling out of the American illusion and seeing it for what it is. I've spent a lot of religion classes being taught Arabic brotherhood and chivalry, when previously, the lessons were stereotypically conservative in nature and I used to despise them for it.
Yes, the government sucks like every other, but there's an air of open support in here. No one is losing their jobs for stating the truth, homes and shops are waving the Palestinian flag. Even the antisemitism, which was rampant, has seen a noticeable decline. People in here stand for Palestine.
I want to also let you know you've been an inspiration for people, or at least, to me. I want to be able to participate more, and I see your reposts and reblogs and I want to do even more than what I did at the start, which was retweeting and reposting and sharing what I can to my friends. Unfortunately due to my current living situation and my terrible memory, I missed being able to donate to the school, but they have stated to open up donations again soon, and I'm preparing in advance for that one. I was not raised Zionist, but I was raised warned against participating in political affairs, saying I'd be put in more trouble, and even could be killed. But I see you and I see so many Americans losing their jobs and being branded criminals and as moral failures for speaking out, and I find it harder and harder in me not to also speak out. And even if I'm not constantly retweeting and reposting, there is something I can do. You helped me realize that, and I'd like to thank you.
I hope this cheers you up even a little, I've noticed your posts these days expressing how much this has been upsetting you. It's been upsetting to all of us, and I want you to know that it's not fruitless, no matter how many western countries and how many bootlickers make you feel otherwise. This ordeal has taught me the world is a brotherhood, politics and money are never a reason for why we should not stand together, and why we shouldn't speak for those having their voice silenced.
Please excuse me if something comes off wrong or unnatural. Like I said, I was born and I live in Egypt, English is not my first language and I still have issues communicating my personal thoughts in it. Please never don't stand for Palestine. Please never lose hope for it, like the Egyptians never have and never will. Please never let people make you feel hopeless and insane.
Thank you for listening to me, thank you for caring about Palestine when it would've been easy not to. Thank you for using your platform, and if you found it in you to read this thing, thank you for giving time to a brown Arab, when the world so strongly encourages you not to. Please continue to inspire justice, and I hope the world one day continues to inspire hope for you.
��� anon, I cant explain how much I appreciate you sending this message. I know there is hope for Palestinian liberation, I know that we will see freedom for Palestine. But god do I need the reminder sometimes that we aren’t all just shouting into the void. My country of Australia shamefully takes a cowardly stance on Palestine, always deferring to the US to guide our foreign policy, and yet always claims moral superiority over other countries such as yours. Thank you, really thank you so much for sending this message. I feel so so honoured to have earned an audience that includes you. I believe an audience does reflect an artist, and to know I have done you proud in any way makes me feel full.
And please don’t ever feel ashamed of your English, you are eloquent and have a wonderful, compassionate voice, and you have inspired hope in me for yet another day.
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hedgehog-moss · 7 months
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I've received some absolutely deranged anons since reblogging that post saying celebrating mass slaughter of civilians is fucked up no matter what. One ask saying "wtf are you talking about, no one is celebrating anything, people think Israel is the victim as always" was sandwiched between two other asks, one cheering for genocide, one confused and uncertain as to whether or not going house to house slaughtering entire families is always a bad thing. Not using the word genocide lightly btw, the first ask was like "death to colonizers, all colonizers should die, there are no civilians in Israel, the death toll should have been higher." Another ask was 3 paragraphs that amounted to a clearly satisfied "reap what you sow." What did the murdered babies sow exactly? Or the abducted grandma who was a lifelong peace activist, who regularly drove people from Gaza to Jerusalem for medical care? I've seen lots of such comments in the notes of one post the other day, bonkers levels of dehumanising antisemitism, which was what prompted me to reblog a post by someone with a moral compass.
For a lot of progressive social media 'activists' the question of whether or not to condemn child murder is a really complex moral dilemma when it's being done by the right oppressed group or, let's be honest, if it's Jewish children being murdered for a good cause. It's repulsive. The idea that you can "side" with the children trapped in Gaza subjected to war crimes by hesitating to condemn war crimes against children on the other side is repulsive. The adults at that music festival and in surrounding villages didn't deserve to be massacred either but it's hard not to keep focusing on the children in the process of desperately trying to find a line in the sand with people who claim to care about justice. I wasn't going to make any more posts because the last thing social media needs is more unaffected people giving their 2 cents on this topic, but yeah I'll just say, if your moral stance is that being oppressed and persecuted long enough gives you the right to fight for your land at any cost, including costs borne by innocent children, then you are ideologically aligned with Israel's current government. Not everything is justifiable if done by / to the "right" people in the "right" circumstances. Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what absolute (not relativistic, not contingent on context, incentives, or purpose) moral values you hold—any at all—if you can't draw a line in the sand with "rape" and "child murder" always on the other side of it.
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unbidden-yidden · 2 months
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Honestly watching western goyische leftists veer sharply into blatant, violent antisemitism ostensibly due to Palestine inspires a very specific type of rage in me that can only be triggered by ideologically-driven hypocrisy.
It's like watching the anti-abortion people also oppose comprehensive sex education and birth control while lamenting at how many abortions are currently happening. Every single person with more than one functioning brain cell knows that the only way to reduce abortions (not stop them, because that's literally impossible) is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies - something for which there are mountains of evidence demonstrating that comprehensive sex education and birth control can accomplish. But they don't want those things, because they allow childbearing capable people reproductive autonomy and freedom. So they DARVO and move goalposts and in general try to pretend it's about protecting babies when it's literally just about controlling women, girls, and people they're misgendering as such. Because if they truly cared, if they were genuine in their beliefs, they would support whatever method was most effective at reducing unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions.
The antisemitic "pro-Palestine" leftists do the exact same thing by ramping up antisemitism in the diaspora, despite the fact that the main driving force behind Zionism is a desire for Jewish safety. If you make the entire world unsafe for Jews except Israel, and you also want to dissolve Israel, where does that leave Jews? And I get that a lot of people just straight up do not care, genuinely want us dead, but here's the thing: people who are backed into a corner are going to fight for their lives. That is what Israel has done for the last 75 years. They have nowhere else to go, and the more antisemitic you make the diaspora, the more Jews will congregate there out of necessity.
If you don't address the root cause in a humane way, you are never going to make headway and you're literally just spraying water on a grease fire.
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I'm a Zionist.
I'm tired of pro-Palestine anti-Zionists trying to turn 'Zionist' into a bad word, an antisemitic slur. And they demand that we Jews reject Zionism and that we only embrace alternative responses to antisemitism that they approve of.
You know what happened to the Jewish proponents of other solutions? The assimilationists, Bundists, territorialists, and Jewish communist revolutionaries were murdered. And now, the left wing antisemites hate the Zionists too. Why? What did the Zionists do that was so offensive to the anti-Zionists? I'll tell you what they did.
Zionists created the first independent Jewish state since the Bar Kokhba revolt. Zionists tried to bring as many Jews to safety as possible while the rest of the world closed their doors to them. And when they couldn't do so legally, they risked their lives to bring Jews home covertly during the Aliyah Bet. Zionists restored an indigenous people's sovereignty over their own land after a millennia of colonization, deforestation, and dispersion. Zionists restored an ancestral and historic language after millennia of forced disuse. Zionists took in and saved the lives of the Mizrahim when they were violently expelled by their home countries. Zionists created a prosperous, liberal democratic nation state in a part of the world very hostile to every word of that. And Zionists successfully defeated one, two, three, four, and are currently fighting off a fifth genocidal war of annihilation against all of their accomplishments and people.
What did the anti-Zionists do? They opposed every one of those things.
So, when you anti-Zionists hurl that label at my feet, 'Zionist', as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, because I will pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honor.
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desertsandsnstarrysky · 3 months
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I keep getting followed and stalked by this one Hetalia user named /@ragdollpie and a few of their followers on my social media. (One called
/@borzoimuffin I believe as well.) anyways,
Please if you respect the Jewish community and those who have had family in general during the holocaust block them!
They called me a Nazi fetish artist and that is basically a spit in my face. And very rude.
Because they got this way because their s/o or partner came onto my instagram and proceeded to insult my art and so I did… I did slip and say their art is an “eyesore” but you guys legit threw hands first, you could’ve just left me alone and ignore or block me, but you had to throw that dig in!
Did you expect me to not defend myself? While you guys basically went and stalked around for me?
And not only that but they are trying to basically find me on many other platforms after I initially tried to sent me a message on instagram the first time but my DMs would not go through and basically when I sent them screenshots about how their behavior was disrespectful and how I felt horrible being called a Nazi, the messages ended up not showing up.
So I don’t know why their intentions to do so was simply for pure control of the fandom, to call out unnecessary and make drama or what, but I’m not the type to make any issues at all.
So please for me. Do not engage with them if you support Jewish folk. Because they clearly shown their “pro Palestine” support by calling me a Nazi Zionist. (I’m neutral about Zionism by the way.)
And they are stalking me online. Which is absolutely absurd… like just leave me alone. If you find them anywhere in any platform, just block and disengage! Oy!
I’m not even PROMOTING NAZI BEHAVIOR! This was all in reference to how the ship existed because I’ve SEEN OTHERS IN THE PAST IN THE FANDOM SHIP THEM.
And also, the ship has a deeply rooted and complex emotional meaning behind it that HAS TO DO WITH MY OWN TRAUMA! Where and anywhere am I showing Nazi fetish at? With one picture!?! Really? 💀 don’t tell me they’re one of those “antis”
I know one thing, they sure are obsessed with characters like Greece and Turkey, whom committed an atrocities to the Jewish folk for HUNDREDS OF YEARS! So let’s CLAP BACK AT THAT … HMMM HOW DOES IT FEEL TO DRAW CHARACTERS THAT AUTOMATICALLY ANTISEMITIC BY DEFAULT?
but guess what??? I didn’t come find you and stalk you, and called you disrespectful things because you draw problematic history… You DID 🫵
I have enough brain power in one brain cell than in the amount your entire head and your little wolf hunting posse’s heads to know that if something on Hetalia bothers me and causes me discomfort, to block it!
BECAUSE I KNOW HETALIA HAS TOPICS IN IT THAT ARE LESS THAN FAVORABLE DUE TO HOW COUNTRIES/NATIONS ARE!
But you know what? I could sit down and decipher this down with you, piece by piece and you still wouldn’t listen or even be civil about it. So I’m done! Now LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!
Oh and if you have any fans who have had family killed in the holocaust, you need to be blocked by them! They need to really know how much of a antisemitic person you are! Disgusting! Do NOT CALL ME A NAZI!
I don’t give a fuck who you think you are… do not call a Jewish person a Nazi!
//slams fists on table over and over again
Do not call a Jewish person a Nazi! Do not! Do not! Do not!
I don’t care what the fuck you do with your life… do NOT CALL ME, A JEW A NAZI!
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The accusation of "Pinkwashing" is a conspiracy theory that taps into several antisemitic canards. Specifically, it paints Israeli support for queer rights not as a hard-won fight by a minority group inside of a flawed democracy. Instead, Israel's record on queer rights is cast as a malicious intentional public relations move by a hive-minded conspiratorial group trying to distract from their other crimes.
Once you believe that, anything positive from Israel can be believed as part of a broader conspiracy theory for nefarious purposes.
And from that, it's not a big leap into believing that anything from Israel - which is home to 50% of the world's Jewish population - is also just as malicious and insincere.
And once you're there, it's easy to agree with the following statement:
"[...the National Socialist movement] will prevent the Jewish people from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations."
That was declared by Adolf Hitler, in a two-hour-long speech he delivered on January 30, 1937 in the Reichstag - the fourth anniversary of his appointment as Chancellor of Germany.
The Pro-Palestinian movement is, in its current form, literally impossible to tell apart from actual Nazis.
Adapted text from @the-library-alcove
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viv-hollande · 5 months
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Ok, so this is a post that I should have made sooner. I've been somewhat out of the loop with regards to current events and the state of discourse on this website courtesy of a pretty serious depressive episode from which I am only just now recovering. As I have emerged from this state I have been pushed towards a conclusion about this website and the state of discussion around the ongoing Israel-Gaza War that I had thus far avoided due in part to my barely possessing the energy to keep myself alive and due in part to my denial that the conclusion could be true. But that denial can no longer hold.
It has become openly apparent that the pro-Palestinian camp on this website has become popularly infused with a degree of blatant, aggressive antisemitism that I, in my naivety thought impossible in the days just after October 7. I am trying to avoid turning this into a mea culpa because that would be unproductive and feel self-serving, but I do feel an obligation to admit that I disregarded prescient warnings from Jewish users whose warnings I dismissed as over-blowing a problem that I felt was real, but more limited in scope than they made out.
I'm neither an idiot nor am I ignorant. I am well aware of the long history of antisemitism in leftist politics and in the Palestinian Liberation movement. Back at the beginning of this crisis I was prepared to see the occasional instance of antisemites using the inevitable, overwhelming Israeli retaliation as an excuse to air their hateful politics. I was prepared to see both the well-meaning but ignorant and the malicious alike sharing tweets from antisemitic pro-Palestine accounts, spreading and normalizing low-grade, subtle antisemitism. Make no mistake, this should have been condemned. Antisemitism, like all bigotries, has no 'safe' level. There is no background level of antisemitism that society should just accept as normal. But I was more focused on the inevitable cacophony of suffering that Israel would almost certainly begin meting out, and so I failed to act.
The fatal blow to my denial was the increasing prevalence of the use of quotation marks around the word "Israel" and "Israeli". The first few times I saw this, I didn't really understand what it meant. Still laboring under the belief that antisemitism was a manageable problem on the left, I was certain that most of the users on this site, well-intentioned, goodhearted, critically thinking people that they were, would have recognized and called out even disguised antisemitism before it took over a good 20-40% of all posts about the conflict. I was a damn naive fool. For those, like past me, who have not cottoned on to the meaning of the quotation marks, they have become a way to express the denial of the legitimacy or even existence of, individually or all together, the State of Israel, the Israeli people, or the right of either Jews or Israelis to identify as Israelis.
CONGRATULATIONS TUMBLR! You have successfully revived from depths of 4chan neo-Nazi boards the (((fucking echoes))).
Are you serious? Are you fuckers for real? This, right here, encapsulates the pitch-black absurdity of this whole situation and why I remained in denial for so long. Never, in a million years, would I imagine that the proudly pro-Social Justice, anti-fascist, 100% Certified SAFE-SPACE(tm) website would end up using the same language as the goddamn Nazis on 4chan. I thought this website was smarter than that. But noooo, it turns out that I was a damn naive fool.
This was where the post was originally going to end. I say my piece, hope to change a few minds, and commit myself to actually fighting antisemitism instead of sitting back and dismissing the problem. But I figure, while I'm here and while I still have the driving forces of anger and guilt pushing me along, I may as well put pen to paper and spew forth my other thoughts on the ongoing crisis. I am thus compiling a much longer post detailing my thoughts on some aspects of the current situation. [EDITED ~1:25 AM GMT, 5 Dec 2023: add link to finished post] That post will definitely be long, probably be angry, possibly wrong on some aspect of fact, and will absolutely be pretentious, preachy, self-righteous and hubristic to a positively Hellenistic degree. Brief, non-comprehensive summary so you can decide whether or not get mad at me ahead of time;
Israel does apartheid, or near enough for government work.
Israel is definitely conducting a campaign of forced displacement, possibly amounting to ethnic cleansing, but I remain unconvinced of the claim of genocide.
Hamas may or may not be a anti-colonialist revolutionary group, but it definitely is an antisemitic terrorist organization with genocidal aspirations and actively supporting them is morally indefensible. Yes, this includes the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Anti-colonial and other revolutionary movements do in fact have fundamental moral obligations and suffering oppression does not give you carte blanche to do terrorism, even when an oppressor attempts to render peaceful opposition impossible. There is a middle ground between peaceful marching and 850+ dead civilians; aim for that.
The left is just as prone to unhinged conspiracism as the right.
Verify your sources, for fuck's sake.
Use nuance. It won't kill you.
There's more, but it's a little difficult to summarize an unfinished post. If you want to argue with any of these points, go ahead, just keep in mind that a longer, more comprehensive post is in the works that might have the answer to your argument/complaint/insult/intellectual disagreement. If that post isn't up by midnight GMT on Friday, assume I forgot about it and argue away. In conclusion, antisemitism is bad, apartheid is also bad, Tumblr is a hellsite (derogatory), "From the river to the sea" is, in fact, antisemitic, seriously, stop saying it, take Jews seriously when they warn you about antisemitism instead of writing them off like a damn naive fool, and last but not least, free Palestine.
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matan4il · 2 months
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Daily update post:
This is what it looked like when a school bus with teenagers happened to find itself in an area being bombed by Hezbollah, in northern Israel the other day. The post says that these rockets evaded Iron Dome, but since this is an open area, it's more likely that ID simply didn't try to shoot it down, because it's only meant to intercept rockets it calculates will hit urban and residential areas.
instagram
And THIS is what it looks like when a rocket that is supposed to be intercepted by Iron Dome gets past it (in the southern city of Ashkelon, pic from Oct 17):
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And THIS is what it looks like when a rocket IS intercepted by Iron Dome, but there's always debris, and it has to fall somehwhere (pic from Ashkelon, from yesterday):
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And today, a rocket barrage was launched at the northern city of Kiryat Shmona from Lebanon, a civilian building was hit directly, responsibility was claimed by Hamas. This is a reminder for ignorant people asking how can there be so many dead when Israel is fighting just one terrorist organization? Israel is fighting more than one, on more than one front.
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The family of a Hamas senior has been smuggled out of Gaza to Egypt. This is not the first time we find out that people affiliated with Hamas get to leave Gaza. ANYONE putting pressure on Israel to surrender to an antisemitic, genocidal terrorist organization, needs to explain why is that better than putting pressure on Hamas to surrender and release all the hostages immediately, or on Egypt (or Qatar) to allow in Gaza civilians, and not just the people with connections to a terrorist organization.
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I've been listening to a lot of interviews about the innovation that Israel has had to employ, in tackling the urban war challenges that Hamas has presented it with in Gaza, the likes of which I'm not familiar with in modern warfare, and in emergency medicine. As I was listening yesterday to the story of the recovery of a soldier, which seems no less than miraculous, it suddenly hit me, that no matter how much the world is publicly condemning us, the second they can, they will privately rush here to learn from us. Whether people will recognize it or not (and let's be real, the latter is more likely), a lot of lives will be saved all over the world, thanks to the experience and breakthroughs Israel is currently accumulating in these tragic times.
This is Aviad Halevi.
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On Oct 7, he was at the Nova music festival, with two of his friends. Aviad had a chance to flee Hamas' carnage, but he chose to stay with a wounded friend instead. Aviad was corresponding with his family, and his dad decided to grab a weapon, and drive into this area, still very much controlled by the terrorists at that point, in order to save Aviad and his friends. In order to get to their location, the father had to shoot terrorists he encountered on his way, and he did make it, but only to find three bodies. He loaded them into the back of his truck, which might have possibly saved them from becoming 3 more of the corpses held hostage by Hamas.
The next vid features Sabine Taasa, who lost on Oct 7 her husband and their 17 years old son, Or. There's another vid where she talks about what her own family went through, how she found two of her sons bleeding, the youngest without his eye, and how Koren told her that the terrorists killed Gil, his dad, asking why didn't they kill him as well. I might post it separately later. In this video, she talks about the hand drawn map found on one of the terrorists killed by Gil before he was murdered himself. I heard other survivors of Hamas' massacre mention these maps, which instructed the terrorists on who lived where, and on who to target first. The survivors said these maps could be in the hands of Gazan terrorists only thanks to Palestinians from Gaza who used to work in Israel, and many talked about their deep sense of betrayal.
May all of the murdered's memories be a blessing.
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
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ohtobeleah · 8 months
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Bruises // Jake Seresin
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Chapter Seven: [War Wounds in the Ward]
Summary: When help finally arrives, Jake believes it may be too late. The extent of both your injuries are finally revealed and the both you come face to face with the reality of just how long you’d been held in captivity for.
Series Warnings: Heavy themes of violence, sexual assault, torture. 18+ content. Minors DNI. Mature themes. Being held in captivity. Hostage style situation. Main character death! Whump, Angst. Conversations that discuss antisocial & antisemitism views.
Word Count: 7.4k
Author Note: THIS SERIES IS CONFRONTING, FICTIONAL, AND DEPICTS IMAGES OF TORTURE. DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU BELIEVE THAT THIS SERIES WILL BE DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR MENTAL STABILITY. CURATE YOUR OWN TIMELINE.
Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist
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“We gotta move.” How this guy got the key to Jake’s cell he’d never know, but what was important was that he had it and he was here now. “We’ve got about ten minutes to get you both out to the medi-vac.” 
You never would have guessed how quickly Jake Seresin could still move in order to put his body on the line for you. At the sight of someone coming into his cell yet again, rescuer or not—he was shielding you with everything he had. No one was touching you, not again. 
Once the man was inside Jake's cell he took a knee to assess your current state. At the mere thought of anyone touching you Jake flinched and held you a little tighter. He wasn’t sure who he could trust, wasn’t sure if this was real or just some cruel joke. Another attempt to shatter any kind of hope. 
“It’s okay Lieutenant, you can let her go.”
“I don’t trust you.” Jake used his body to shield you as much as he could. He was done letting people hurt you, including himself. The man in the dark mask paused, but then in order to gain Jake's trust, he took that mask off, revealing his identity to Jake as he tried to reach out to gauge your pulse. “Please don’t hurt her, she’s been through enough.” 
“I’m not gonna hurt her Jacob.” The man with silver hair and a cocky half smile confirmed. “My name is Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS, I’m gonna get the two of you out of here.”
“Who was the woman, the one who gave me the note?” Jake couldn’t stop thinking about her and her lifeless body. Who was she? How did she get a note from Rooster? How did she know help was coming? There were so many unanswered questions he thought he’d never get answers to. 
“CIA—deep cover agent, she had sent out a coded message around the time the two of you went missing. Descriptions matched, your friend Rooster I believe?” Gibbs was still trying to find your pulse. “Yeah he told her to write a note out, give you something to fight for.” 
“Hold tight, Stay alive—“ Jake repeated to himself just under his breath, the agent who wasn’t happy with how weak your pulse was nodded too. 
“Which is exactly what she’s gonna have to do, let’s get her out of here before it’s too late.” 
“Gibbs!” Another man came racing down the hallway. “Gibbs we gotta move!” He was dressed in the same dark uniform as Gibbs was. “They’re angry as shit, like ants! A hive of angry ants.” 
“I thought I told you to distract and disturb?” 
“Yeah well, change of plans—we gotta get the hell outta dodge, now!” 
Jake wasn’t all that sure who to follow or what to think. He only knew two things for sure, one being he had to get you out of here while he still had a chance too. And two? He couldn’t run. He couldn’t come with you. He was damaged goods. 
“I can’t go.” Jake confessed with a deep sigh as he handed you over to the man who’s just come racing in. He ran his finger down your cheek and tried to hold it together. Was this the last time he was ever going to see you? “She’s in a really bad way, please take care of her, get her out of here.” 
“Lieutenant it’s now or never—“ Gibbs made sure to remind Jake. 
“They put a pacemaker inside my damn chest alright! I can’t let my heart rate get above one forty!” Jake explained as the older man helped him to his feet. “The Commander has a remote control for it too, and I gotta be honest with you, I’m not all that keen on the idea of my heart exploding inside my fucking chest.” 
“The Commanders dead.” Gibbs tried his best to bluff his way through this. He had to get Jake out of here, there was no backup plan. It was now or never and never wasn’t an option. “He’s gone, ain’t got no way to press that button.” DiNozzo knew as a matter of fact that Dennis Gervais was well and truly alive, because he’d just come from the same room that he was in. “So we focus on keeping your heart rate down and get you out of here.” All Jake did was nod as he looked at you just barely breathing, barely holding on for dear life. You’d been through so much—he owed you this much, to try till his dying breath to get you out of this hell. “DiNozzo you take Y/n, I’ll guard Jake here and we’ll get ‘em on the medi-vac before shit gets too out of hand.” 
“On it boss.” Tony acknowledged the plan and knew the risks involved as he bent down to pick you up and pull your nearly lifeless body across his shoulders so that he could carry you. “Okay ma’am, sorry if this hurts a little.” 
“We’re heading down the hall, taking the first left and making a run for the stairs that leads up to the ground floor—it’ll take us right out to the loading bay.” Jake couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Gibbs knew it was going to be a hard pill to swallow as the group started to make their way out of the cell. 
“You mean to tell me there’s been an exit door right down the hall this whole time!!” It made him sick to his stomach. Freeform was right there all along. It made things so much worse knowing it was right there. 
“We’re gonna get you home Lieutenant, just keep in step and don’t look back.” Gibbs commanded as he made sure his weapon was loaded. “Let’s get these two out of here DiNozzo.” 
Jake watched as DiNozzo took off running with you slung across his shoulders. His heart ached on two fronts, one being he knew you were about to be safe, about to be away from all this. The other being he hated whenever you were away from him. When you were with him you were safe in his arms. Apart? He couldn’t help you. 
There were guards slain in the hall from where gunfire had recently rung out, Jake tried his best not to get too caught up but he couldn’t recognise a single soul. None of them he knew from his time trapped. They were just foot soldiers. 
“Take a left DiNozzo!” Anthony corrected his direction promptly as Jake followed, he was being careful to pace himself. He didn’t want the beeping to start, not now. It couldn’t, he was relying on everything he had left inside him to keep it down. To breathe steady, In and out. 
“Right! Sorry!” Gibbs was the last one up the stairs, he was protecting his people, firing the odd shot at anyone who tried to stop them four of them from getting where they needed to go. 
“Jake?” It was the softest of whimpers that escaped from your lips as DiNozzo carried you up the stairs. “Jake?” You mumbled again, only this time a little louder and more confused. “What’s going on?” 
“You’re okay ma’am.” Tony tried his best to calm you before you had a chance to panic. “Jakes right behind me, I’m special agent Anthony DiNozzo with the NCIS.” 
“Oh.” Was all you could say as you dangled over Dinozzo's shoulders. “Oh god someone found us.” It was more like you were trying to convince yourself this was real. “Someone came.” 
“We did ma’am.” DiNozzo confirmed as he opened the latch on the door that led out to the loading dock. “We’re not out of the woods yet though, so just stay with us for a little while longer okay?” When he was finally able to unlock the heavy metal door, DiNozzo was delighted to see the medi-vac choppers coming in for landing. “Over there!” He shouted back at Jake and Gibbs before he took off running with you on his shoulders. 
The sunlight burned Jake's skin as he stepped out into the light. God how long had it been since he’d felt the warmth of the sun on his usually tanned skin. He’d never been this pal, this skinny, this unkempt. 
“There’s someone who wants to speak with you, Lieutenant.” Gibbs smirked as he escorted Jake across the snow and over to the helicopter that would be taking him back to the carrier. He handed him a radio, one of those sat nav ones. 
Jake held it up so he could talk just as five F-18 Super Hornets came racing past to pepper the building with ammunition. It was a full takedown if there ever was one. A covert operation to get you and Jake back. The signal had been given and it was go time. 
“What took you so long?” Jake wasn’t sure who it was going to be, but he knew they were all up there. All cheering that he was alive, that you were alive. That the pair of you were being rescued. Hey did however have a slight inkling as to who might answer. “What the hell has the Calvary been!” 
“Hey Hangman.” Rooster bellowed through the radio as he flew closer to the building just to drop a missile on the southwest corner. “You look good!” Jake couldn’t contain his laughter, this was really happening. 
“I am good, Rooster.” He remembered what he’d said all those years ago. “I’m very good.” Jake sighed as he watched his colleagues and friends dismantle the building you and Jake had been held hostage in for what felt like forever. “Now get us outta here!” 
“We better keep moving, Lieutenant.” Gibbs ushered Jake over to the other medi-vac helicopter, it had all gone according to plan. Jake had kept his heart rate below one twenty as his watch kept telling him. You were being loaded into the other helicopter, strapped to a medical gurney and fitted with oxygen immediately. Jake watched on as the building the four of you had just come out of went up in smoke and flames. Insurgents scurried out for their lives at any exit they could take. “Let’s get these birds in the sky!” 
“Yes sir.” The pilot copied just as Jake saw the man he’d been told was dead appearing out of the smoke, surrounded by insurgents with guns who aimed right for the two medi-vac helicopters. 
“Come on probie help me get her strapped in.” Tony grumbled as he fiddled with the straps around the wheels of the bed you were on. He didn’t want it to budge. “How the hell did you get the easy job anyway!” 
“Easy job!! I’ve been out here for ten minutes fending off enemy fire!” 
“I thought you said he was dead!?” Jake hissed as he eyed off the man who’d put you both through hell. He couldn’t help but to say as he thought about making a break from the helicopter just to get his revenge from n the man who’s done so much damage. But he couldn’t, Jake wouldn’t do that as the helicopter began to rise from the snow covered ground. He wasn’t going to, not for any amount of money, you’d told him when the pair of you were first captured to never play the hero again—but Jake was a villain. A hero would sacrifice anything for the greater good. He’d see anything ax expendable. 
But Jake would walk through fire and cross the seven seas for you, he had no such desire to want to play the hero. He just wanted to be safe again, with you. So knowing you were already safe, there was no reason to go back. There was no reason to want to be a hero. 
“I lied—“ Gibbs sighed as he aimed his weapon. “Get us up in the air!” Jake knew the moment he saw The Commander standing there watching him escape that he wouldn’t let him go without a fight, without causing enough damage that he might not make it out alive. As the helicopters took off you sat up just to watch the group below you get further and further away. 
You were safe. Jake was safe. You were finally getting out of this hell together. And then? Everything you thought you knew came crashing down around you as you watched what appeared to be Jake's lifeless body fall out of the side of the medi-vac helicopter. No. Not now, not after everything you'd been through. 
“NNOOOOO!” You cried out from behind the oxygen mask you'd been given. “JAKE!!”
Jake first fell to his knees as his hand gripped at his chest. The pain was all too real, too overpowering for him to stay steady on his feet. The Commander stood grinning ear to ear as he watched Jake fall out of the Medi-vac that was in the process of taking off. It would have been a solid hundred metres give or take a few. But it was surely enough to break Jake's jaw on impact. 
“You’re not going anywhere Seresin!” The Commander growled as he and his men ascended on Jake. Two of them pulled him harshly up by his forearms as they forced Jake to look up at the very man who had caused so many people so much pain. “Your girl might get out, but you–you won't ever see the light of day ever again. 
“Take us back to the carrier!” DiNozzo ordered the pilot who had carried on his way. You were in complete hysterics. You couldn't leave, not without Jake. 
“WE HAVE TO GO BACK!” With all your might you were trying to get up off the bed. “WE CAN'T LEAVE HIM!” You felt like you couldn't breathe, Jake had been your rock this whole time. You'd seen the worst in people but also seen the best in him. You couldn't leave him behind, you couldn’t betray him when he never once let you give up. 
“Ma’am, Ma’am you need to try and relax alright, Gibbs will figure it out.” Tony reassured you just hoping that his boss could pull something together. “We’re not going to leave him here, but we need to get you back to people who can help keep you alive.” 
“I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you dead just because I can and for what it's worth? Your name will be forgotten once we are one word and one people, Jacob.” It was the worst kind of pain, a pain unparalleled to no other, the kind of pain that takes your breath away. That kind of pain that stops blood in its tracks, that shortens ligaments and tendons as you seize. “If only you’d just stayed the fuck away.” The Commander spat as he stopped Jake's heart, he fried the pacemaker in his chest past the breaking point and when his finger finally came off the little button in his hand: Jake was just thankful to have gotten to hear you say you loved him. Even if you only said it back to even the playing cards. 
Jake knew you could never love him. Not after this, not after you’d gone through unspeakable agony all because of a split second decision he made. 
“You’re not, you’re not going to win this.” Jake struggled out as he looked up at The Commander. “Dennis—“ That struck a raw nerve as The Commander reached for a handgun one of his men held. He wasted not a single second before peppering three rounds into Jake's gut. 
“Maybe, but you won’t be around to see the outcome.” 
Jake Seresin laid dying in the snow surrounded by insurgents as five F-18 Super Hornets laid waist into the building you'd both been held captive in—destroying every crevice, every brick. But ultimately it was just a little too late. You’d be okay though, you had to be. Jake had to believe that as his blood stained the China white snow he laid in. 
The expected was always easier to accept than the unexpected. 
“Everybody get to the evacuation points, if you see anyone you don’t trust? Kill them.” Jake could hear The Commander ordering his men before he kicked the heel of his boot into Jake's face. “Goodbye Lieutenant Seresin—you really did your country proud.” The condescending tone in The Commander’s voice really drove it home that all this had been for nothing. He was going to die, killed in action his final report would say. 
The last thing Jake thought about as he laid in the snow watching as the medi-vac helicopters flew away, one of which had you finally safe on, was that he hoped you went on to live a beautiful life. Got back on your feet, healed from everything you were subjected to, went on to love and experience all the good the world had to offer. He thought about what kind of guy would be so lucky to marry you, have a life with you, raise your children, and watch you thrive. Because it wouldn’t be him. He was okay with that though because you were safe now, Jake Seresin was okay with dying so long as it meant you got the help you needed, that you deserved. 
“I love you.” 
Because you weren’t ever expendable. Not to him. 
***~***~***~***~***~***~**
People have scars in all sorts of unexpected places. Like secret road maps of their own personal history. Diagrams of all their old wounds. Most old wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar, but some of them don't. Some wounds you carry with you everywhere, and although the cuts are long gone: the pain still lingers. 
“Where's Jake?” It was the only thing you could say as you fought off unconsciousness. “Where's Jake? Where is he?” 
“Lieutenant Y/l/n we need to get you into medical so we can start you on IV fluids and antibiotics–” It was a voice you didn't recognise that replied to you as you were being wheeled off the medi-vac and onto the deck of the carrier. “Someone let the Swaine know we’re on route!” 
“Where's Jake?” Why wasn’t anyone listening, why wasn’t anyone answering you? “Please someone tell me he’s okay, that he’s alive? Please?”
It truly was a spectacle on the deck, but in all the commotion of your big arrival no one was listening to what you were mumbling behind your oxygen mask. No one except for one sandy blonde aviator who was pushing past every person he had to in order to get to your side as they wheeled you across the runway. He’d barely shut off his F-18 before he was racing down the tarmac after you. 
“Hey!” Bradley beamed as he reached your side, his hand slipped into your as he walked with the team who were in charge of getting you where you needed to go. “Hey, Hollywood, holy shit–” He couldn't believe you were alive, sure none of them had ever given up hope and from the fleeting information they had been given during your time in captivity, he hoped that CIA agent was still alive, but still he couldn't believe you were actually back. It had been so long. “You’re safe now, we’ve got you.” 
“WHERES JAKE!” It came out as an agonising scream until Rooster could see your tears. “Where is he Bradshaw?” As far as Bradley was aware Jake's rescue Evac was still in the process. He’d fallen and that's all Bradley knew for sure. 
“He’s right behind you, they got him Hollywood, you don't have to worry anymore.” DiNozzo, the Special Agent in charge of escorting you back to medical, looked at the aviator across the gurney from him. He knew that Jake was still yet to be evacuated. He was still on the ground the last Tony saw. “You can rest now, it's alright, Jakes right behind you.” 
“Oh–” You sighed as your entire body relaxed, it was a weight you didn't realise was compressing your chest. “Oh good.” It was only then did your body allow you to go into complete rest. You fell into unconsciousness seconds after being told that Jake was okay, he was coming, that he was right behind you. 
“We’re losing her, we gotta move.” One of the officers informed Bradley as he stood still, watching as you were wheeled into the carrier. Not knowing if you were actually going to make it out of this hell alive. 
***~***~***~***~***~***~**
Jake swore the chill of the snow would take him before his heart gave out. He couldn’t move a single muscle as he laid there on his back in the silence—only burning rubble seemed to break through the deafening silence of his last moments on earth. 
He thought about you, the entire time. How your laugh would fill up the Hard Deck and how he’d roll his eyes in response. It was stupid really but Jake honestly thought if he didn’t get involved with you personally it would be easier to forget about the way you made him feel whenever you walked into a room. 
“Y/n.” Your name sounded so familiar to him, so alluring and all consuming. “Y/n.” It brought him comfort in death. To whisper your name to himself as his life drained from him. “Y/n.” 
“Not Y/n—“ Gibbs groaned as he pressed gauze into Jake's stomach and moved his hands to cover it. “Keep your hands on that.” He told Jake with a hushed tone, like he was trying to keep quiet. “Lift on three, one, two—three.” 
“AAHHH!” Jake couldn’t help the agonising whelp that escaped his mouth as he was lifted up onto a stretcher. Had they come back for him? Surely not—at this point he was dead weight. Why on earth would they turn back for him? 
“Get him on that medi-vac now!” Gibbs ordered as he stood and looked around, it seemed as though The Commander had been able to flee with a handful of insurgents. “Stop the bleeding as fast as you can.” 
What's worse? New wounds which are so horribly painful or old wounds that should have healed years ago and never did? Maybe old wounds teach you something, maybe they remind you of where you've been and what you’ve overcome. They teach you lessons about what to avoid in the future. 
That's what Jake liked to think. Because as he let his head rest back against the stretcher and thought about how beautiful the embers of that god awful building were, he couldn't wait for these new wounds to become valuable lessons that didn't hurt as bad as they did now. 
***~***~***~***~***~***~**
Every cell in the human body regenerates on average every seven years. Like snakes, we shed our skin. Biologically, we’re brand new people. It's imperative, change that is. You might look the same, you probably feel the same, but the change isn't visible. At least not for most people. 
“She’s waking up—“ You barely heard it, the husk of a familiar voice that came from beyond the darkness. “Do you want me to leave?” 
When people say things like ‘People don't change’ It drives scientists crazy, because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy. Matter. It's always changing. Morphing. Merging. Growing. Dying. It's the way people try not to change that's unnatural. 
“No kid, no—“ Again, another familiar voice echoed beyond the darkness as you were brought back into the light. A steady beeping droned in the background monitoring your vitals. “You stay, I’ll go check on how Lieutenant Seresin is doing after surgery.” 
The way people cling to what things were instead of letting them be what they are. The way you cling to old memories instead of forming new ones can be just as damaging as trying not to evolve. The way people insist on believing, despite every scientific indication that anything in this lifetime is permanent. 
“Okay, yeah—let me know how he is?” Bradley asked as your dad, Commander ‘Hollywood’ Neven, tapped his shoulder as he sat by your bedside. Watching over you as you recovered from what had been some of the most extensive and exhausting surgeries Rooster had ever seen. 
His mother had had a few operations in her battle with Cancer—but none of which came close to what he was told you were going through. 
From the complete orthopedic reconstruction on your shattered wrist to the skin graft on your lower back, to the plastic surgery repair made to damage done on your face. Some scars would remain—but your surgeon was pretty hopeful that the swelling would go down. It made Roosters heart break. 
“Roo—“ It was the first thing you managed to struggle out. Your throat was so dry as you tilted your head to the side just slightly to see him better. “Hi.” The light hurt your eyes, in a way it felt good to be out of the dark. 
“Hey Hollywood.” Bradley smiled as he reached out to grab your hand. “Tell you what you know how to scare us, don't you?” You couldn't help the oh so soft smile that crept across your face when you realised you were home, that you were finally safe. “How you feeling?” 
“Uh–” You didn't know what to say. Your entire body ached for various different reasons all the more painful to describe than the last. You were a plethora of injuries, a thesaurus of unspeakable acts of violence. And even though there wasn't a part of you that didn’t hurt, all your mind could think about was Jake. So you lied. You lied straight through your teeth. “I'm okay.” Bradley didn't believe it, not for a second. He had seen the state you were in when they airlifted you back to the carrier. And it seemed as though your number one priority hadn’t changed. “Where's Jake? Is he okay?” 
“Hangman's–” You interrupted Bradley quicker than he could explain Jake's current status. 
“I asked where Jake was Rooster, Hangman isn't Jake.” The man who had done everything he could to protect you wasn't Hangman. He was simply Jake. “So please, just tell me Jakes alive?” Bradley complied with your very specific request and told you what you wanted to hear first. 
“Jakes alive.” He nodded. “But he's critical, he's been in and out of surgery for a few days Y/n.” Rooster had collected a series of coffee cups on the table in your hospital room, ranging in size and kind. He must have been here with you for a while. “Your dads seeing to it that he gets the best care.” 
“How long have I been out?” You asked next, everything was blurry. You could remember bits and pieces of being rescued, but not many. You could hear the sound of the helicopter blades in your head, but faces were all distorted in your memory. You could remember Jake holding you, his warmth protecting you from all harm, but then you saw him fall. He fell. Over and over in your mind you watched Jake fall and then you heard your pain filled cries of pure heartbreak. “How long has it been?” 
“Since we got back here, a few days–you've been on some pretty strong painkillers and the doctors just kept telling me you'd wake up when your body was ready.” It was nice to fill in the gaps. But there was one gap you weren't sure if you wanted to fill. 
“And how long were Jake and I, you know, held for?” Bradley wasn't sure if he should be the one to tell you, but then again, if you wanted anyone else to tell you, you would have waited to ask them and not him. So he told you, point blank. 
“Almost Three months.” 
“Oh god.” Change is constant, how you experience change, that's up to you. “No, No no no it cant have been three whole months Rooster.” It can feel like death, or it can feel like a second chance at life if you open your fingers, loosen your grip and go with it, it can feel like pure adrenaline. 
“Y/n?” Bradley frowned when he heard your heart rate monitor start to beep at a faster rate than the machine was comfortable with. “Are you okay?” You felt like you couldn’t breathe as your brain tried to process the harsh reality that you and Jake had been held prisoners for three whole months. Your airways were tightening, like someone had their hands around your neck and was squeezing, holding you down, choking you. “Hey! Hey, I need someone in here! Nurse!” Bradley jumped up to his feet and hit the panic button as you began to cry, panicking as your body didn't feel like your own. 
“Oh god, I can't breathe!” You cried out. “Rooster, help!” Like at any moment you can have another chance at life. Like at any moment, you can be born all over again. Or die from the pure weight of it all. 
“She's having a panic attack or something.” Rooster explained to the nurses who were first into the room. “I don't know what to do.” 
“It's the Asthma, sir.” One of the nurses explained. “She needs ventolin.” 
***~***~***~***~***~***~**
“You gotta wake up for me.” An induced coma, that's what the doctors had told you. That's what they said Jake needed in order to heal. In their words, his injuries were extensive, critical and very much life threatening. But while you watched Jake breathe through tubes and held his hand just to let him know you were there, you had to believe that he was going to be okay. That he’d pull through and you'd get to see his smile again. 
“You don't get to leave me now you son of a bitch do you hear me?” You leaned in to whisper in his ear. “I'll be so pissed if you leave me here.” You snarled right in his ear so that he could hear you. “I'll come and find you in the afterlife and when I get there? I'll rain hell down on you for all eternity.” You weren't expecting a reply, not with Jake being in an induced coma and all. The tubes alone would have stopped him from replying even if he was awake. “Please wake up soon, I really miss you.” With your good hand, you gently ran your palm up his forehead and moved the hair that had fallen across his face away. The bruises were dark and extensive, but Jake was still there under it all. Under all the swollen and bruised skin and bone. Jake was still there. Your Jake was still fighting with everything he had. “I love you, please don't leave me.” 
You sat back in your chair, the one you had been in since you were able to leave your own room during the day and visit Jake. You had to take your IV pole with you though, it was a non negotiable. You had to stay hooked up to antibiotics to fight off the infection in your lungs. It hurt to breathe, so the oxygen tank came too. 
“How are we doing today Kiddo?” You dad asked as he came to visit you like he did every day. He, like all the other aviators that came to visit you and Jake, had gotten used to finding you up in Jake's room up in the intensive care ward. 
“My lungs are on fire but it beats the alternative.” You only took your eyes off Jake for a second to acknowledge your father, who so far, hadn’t pried too deep into finding out details of your imprisonment. You knew he'd have to take off the farther figure hat and replace it with his Commander of the pacific fleet hat soon enough. “The doctors said they’re happy with Jake's stats, said he might be able to come out of the coma soon.”
“That's good to hear sweetheart.” Your dad replied as he stood at the end of Jake's hospital bed, eyes off the man who had kept you alive from what he could tell. “I've uh, i've organised for you to speak to someone, someone who might be able to help you start to process what you went through.” 
“I'm not interested.” It was as dismissive as it could be. You had no intention of leaving Jake's side for any longer than you had to. You didn't want to talk to anyone about any of it, they wouldn't understand and you certainly had no desire to explain all your trauma to a complete stranger. “With all due respect, dad, I don't have any intention of returning to active duty, so a therapist signing off on a clearance form that I’m mentally capable of returning to work, isn't needed.” You added the explanation at the end without so much as looking at your dad. You had a sinking feeling in your gut the more you thought about it. The more you were told about the people you had been tasked to take down. To dismantle. 
“Baby girl.” Your dad tried to reason with you as a father and as Commander. “You are a highly skilled weapons system officer, the Navy cannot afford to lose you.” 
“But yet I wasn't good enough to not be labelled as expendable huh?” The room was cold, but your heart was colder now more than ever before. It made sense but at the same time it didn't. Why? Why would the man you looked up to, respected so much–do this to you? 
“What are you talking about?” 
“Did you know that I was sent on this mission? Why I was chosen over Bob and Fanboy, two highly skilled, highly decorated WSO that Jake already worked with and had worked with for years?” Your dad was silent. Of course he knew, he had to have known considering the stakes of the mission. It just hadnt crossed your mind until you were sitting at that dining table with The Commander being told details you weren’t privy to prior to your file being selected. 
“I–” There was nothing your dad could say to change your mind about the situation. He knew, he had betrayed you. 
“I almost died, dad.” You barely spoke above a whisper all the while you kept your eyes on Jake's face. “And you signed off on this mission, knowing that we were going in blind with half a file that contained only basic information.” 
“We knew you were capable.” Your dad was firm with you, like a Commander would be. “I knew you were ready for this, and I knew you were capable of understanding the risks involved—none of us banked on Seresin not knowing how to let go.” So it was true. They all believed the same thing, that if push came to shove Jake would save himself, not his WSO, not his Wingman. No one. 
“You used me as collateral in case it didn't go according to plan!” 
“Darling, you cannot blame me for what happened—I signed off on the mission file, the admirals were given recommendations, your name and file happened to be one of many.” 
“I need you to leave!” You snapped with tears streaming down your cheeks. Now more than ever you wished Jake would just wake up. “I need you to leave and I need you to understand that I don’t have any intention of talking to any therapist or physician or anyone!” It was then you took your hand out of Jakes to pick up one of the empty coffee cups on Jakes bedside table, one of the many you had begun to collect, and threw it at your dad. “Get out!” 
He did. He did what you asked without a fight, knowing the consequences of his actions along with many others would come back to bite him. You and Jake were not letting this slide, not in a million years. 
“Where is it?” You mumbled to yourself as you fumbled around your pockets for your inhaler. You didn’t understand the panic induced asthma yet, but you had been told how to manage it. “Where is it?” When you finally found the little red inhaler in the pocket of your hoodie, you took a single hit of the ventolin and tried to calm down. 
“Miss Y/l/n, are you staying for morning rounds?” One of the doctors who had been looking after Jake asked as he came into the room. Followed by his interns. 
“Yes please—“ You sighed as you got comfortable and reached out for Jake’s hand again. “And for the love of god Doc tell me you’re gonna wake him up soon?” 
All he did was smile in return before looking over to one of his interns. A young female who looked all the more surprised that she was being called upon to present.” 
“Uh this is Lieutenant Jacob Seresin, sustained three gunshot wounds to the middle abdomen that resulted in severe blood loss, major cardiac trauma resulting in a heart attack that left his right aorta damaged.” It was nothing you hadn’t heard before, could probably resight it all yourself by now you’d heard it so many times. “A broken mandible as a result from falling one hundred meters and multiple other injuries ranging from minor to major abrasions, bruises and laceration that all seem to be on the mend.” Hearing it every day didn’t get any easier. Until the last part that put fresh hope in your heart. You hadn’t heard that part before today. 
“Due to be slowly woken from an induced coma as of today.” 
***~***~***~***~***~***~**
“Today could be the day Y/n.” The first twenty four hours after surgery are critical. Every breath you take, every fluid you make, is meticulously recorded and analysed, celebrated or mourned. But what about the next twenty four hours? “You just have to remember that both of you went through hell, his body needs time.” Phoenix had brought your flowers. A kind gesture that put a sparkle in your eye for only a few minutes. You were back at Jake's bedside, curled up under a blanket in your chair with your IV poll still at your side. “You need time.”
“I just really need him to wake up—“ But what happens when that first day turns into two, three and four and then those days turn into weeks and possibly turn into months? “I’m starting to lose my mind—the longer he sleeps the more time I have to convince myself that they won.” You explained to Phoenix who fluttered about Jake's ICU ward room. Tidying up, making sure you had company. “That they broke him, me.” 
“They apparently picked the guy up on the coast of Positano—“ It wasn’t the first time you’d heard it but it still felt so surreal to hear. “And that CIA lady's body was recovered a few days after you were rescued.” You’d never met her, but Jake had. The CIA and the NCIS were working together to get this guy long before you were assigned your mission. “So was Captain Hewens.” Phoenix made sure to remind you. “I don’t think he won Hollywood—if he won I don’t think you’d be sitting here.” 
“He didn’t win.” The goal of any surgery is total recovery. To come out better than you were before. But for you and Jake? There was no certainty that the two of you could ever go back to the people you were before. “Ain’t no way he won.” Jake mumbled as he stirred slightly, his hand gripped yours back for the first time since you were able to visit. “He didn’t win—this is nothing I can’t handle.” 
“Oh my god Jake! You’re awake!?” You cried as you got as close to him as you possibly could. “Hi, hey I’m right here yeah? You’re gonna be okay.” 
“I love you—“ Jake needed to say that. He needed you to know. “You’re okay? I’m not dead am I?” 
“No, no you're not dead Jake.” You couldn’t help but to chuckle with utter relief. “You’ll know we’re dead, remember? when it’s just us, on a farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere, just the two of us.” You whispered as you pushed his hair up and away from his forehead. 
“Count me in for that version of heaven.” He’d barely opened his eyes, but Jake had missed your smile oh so much. He would do anything to see it, like a damn fool head over heels in love, he’d do anything. “So we made it? We’re out?” 
“We’re out, we’re home and we’re safe.” Some patients heal quickly and feel immediate relief. For others, the healing happens gradually and it's not until months or even years later that you realise that you don't hurt anymore. “You saved my life Jake Seresin—you never left me hanging.” 
“I’ll leave you two alone for a little while.” Phoenix politely excused herself to go check in with the nurses station about notifying a doctor that Jake was awake. You appreciated it—because now that he was awake you weren’t leaving his side. 
“Are you okay?” Jake asked as he just tried to focus on breathing. When he was finally able to open his eyes they were in you and never left. “Woah, I kinda forgot what you looked like without the dirt and grim, you’re beautiful.” 
“Apparently I’ve got a pretty serious infection in my lungs that gives me asthma attacks when I get worked up but other than that I think I’m okay.” You explain knowing Jake would honestly want you to tell the truth rather than just say you were okay. “And the last thing my body was focused on was maintaining its cycle so I lost my period.” Jake knew why you were mentioning it. “Guess my body just knew what it had to do and not drop any eggs.” Jake squeezed your hand a little tighter and brought your palm up to his lips. “So no need to abort any insurgent fetuses.”
“How long?” You’d asked Rooster the same question, it ended in a panic attack. But again—if Jake wanted to know from anyone else he would have asked them and not you. “How long were we in there for?” 
“Almost Three Months.” So the challenge after every surgery is to be patient. But if you can make it through the first few weeks and months? If you believe that healing is possible–then you can get your life back.
“Guess we’re gonna be pretty messed up for a while aren’t we?” Jake sighed as he fought back tears, this was hell on earth. His entire body hurt but not nearly as much as his heart ached looking at you with his head full of your screams. “But I’m so glad you’re alive.” 
“I’m really thankful you’re alive too.” But that's a big if. “And I know that isnt gonna be easy, it’s gonna really hurt—and be really hard, we’re gonna have to work at this everyday.” You were trying to keep yourself together for Jake’s sake as you let your hand squeeze against his. “But I want to do that because I want you.” 
“You sure about that hotshot?” Jake breathed in softly as his heart beat steady without any doubt that you were the love of his life. “I’m the one who got you into that mess in the first place.” When you nodded softly as tears fell freely down your cheeks, Jake knew one day he’d ask you to marry him. 
“I want all of you, forever, you and me, everyday.” You added, but then there was the pause Jake was waiting for. He knew it was coming because he was thinking the same damn thing. “But we have to heal first, recover—I think the worst thing we could do for each other would be to go into a relationship when we’re literally being held together by glue and some staples.” 
“Can we recover together? But unofficially?” Jake smiled softly as he reached out to cup your still bruised cheek. “Because I unofficially love you, and unofficially I think that I’m not going anywhere.” You let out a laugh, a laugh so pure it brought Jake back to life. He needed nothing but you, forever. 
“Unofficially that sounds like a pretty good idea.” 
***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~
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leftists in my town (a big city in germany) literally refuse to go to lectures/talks by jewish scholars who report on the current situation, for no good reason. any expertise is written off, they don't even look into the content. a friend literally said 'it souded pro isreal' - I read the description and it just didn't. It sounded like an expert trying to show a critical view of Isreali politics in fact. my jewish friends are afraid to come out to pro palestinian protests, because militant leftists burn isreali flags (mind you, these are white, german people. i wouldn't blame palestinians). all nuance is gone. people start romanticising hamas. like what the fuck happened do people no longer manage to keep two thoughts at once? nethanjahu is a fucking monster, imperialism is bad, but guess what, so is hamas? why is that controversial? also in 2014 when lots of syrians came, all arabic courses were booked out because people wanted to help and show solidarity and get to know these new people coming. thousands at airports to pick them up. i was among them. but then when ukrainians arrived, when we had protests against russia, i didn't see A SINGLE FUCKING PERSON showing up. why? is imperialism not bad when it comes to Russia because you think 'communism' there was great? eastern european voices are drowned completely. why can't we support palestinians AND jewish people in germany? attacks on jewish people have skyrocketed. we have a far right party gaining the most votes and people pretend like you're a monster if you call out antisemitism. jewish people in germany are not bombing palestine. jewish people in germany are a minority that is under constant attack. why can't be support syrians AND ukrainians? we must join together against imperialism but literally people are too stupid to see that they are being instrumentalised to influence the elections in the U.S. in particular. same happened 2016 and no one learned. it's frustrating. you don't have to sacrifice one fight for another. i support palestine. i support syrians. and then i check to see who shows up for Jewish people in germany and ukrainians who are also under genocide like conditions in Russia. and it's fucking no one. 80% of people during these ukraine protests are ukrainians. anyway. The israeli government is fucked, as is the U.S. government, as is Russia and as is Germany's and it will be a lot more fucked in the near future if everyone doesn't get their shit together.
ok this is going in my cringe compilation
1. theres nothing wrong with burning israeli flags. israeli flags dont represent jewish people in general. id be happy to see an israeli or american flag burning
2. if you expect me to condemn hamas or equate the israeli government and military with anti colonial palestinian resistance youre in the wrong place
3. your government is funding this genocide including the far right party (to my knowledge) which fully supports israel and wants to deport all non white people including (or maybe especially) palestinians and arabs- why are you conflating this with people protesting against the genocide??
4. do you not think germans are also super racist to syrians and refugees in general despite whatever it may seem about accepting them at first? people were really casually racist to me about refugees in germany when i was there
literally the only relevant thing here is that your friends didnt wanna go to an event and that attacks have increased, idk check your fucking friends and countrymen, because that predates israel, stop conflating actual antisemitism with people rightfully opposing a war their government is funding and colonized people for rightfully resisting extermination
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