after 9/11, my mom had her hijab ripped off her head. muslim-american communities were shattered due to the american government suspecting every muslim in america of terrorism and subjecting them to interviews and even deportation. i was in school afraid to embrace my religion because islam was being equated to terrorism. i was bullied for being a muslim and constantly called a terrorist. and let's not forget the millions of muslims that were killed and displaced because of the war on terror. MILLIONS.

it took years for muslims to feel "normal" again. of course, we still felt the uncomfortable stares and the subtle islamophobia. but it was so subtle. we almost forgot it was there.

and now, we're back to straight-forward, blatant islamophobia:

a 6-year-old muslim palestinian boy was stabbed 26 times

rashida tlaib is being censured and her colleague openly said 'all of them’ when a democrat asked how many dead palestinians will be enough?

van jones said to take a stand against muslims at a pro-israel rally

there were 1,283 reports of anti-arab and anti-muslim bias since oct 7 which is a 216% percent increase from last year

pro palestinian protestors are being called terrorists and terrorist-supporters

celebrities like amy schumer, brett gelman, karlie kloss, noah schnapp + more are spreading lies and propoganda against muslims

this is why its so frustrating to me when celebs like noah schnapp and amy schumer are sitting in there million dollar penthouses saying they're "scared." no, you have nothing to be afraid of. the world governments are clearly standing with YOU and protecting YOU. muslim women wearing a hijab are scared. muslim mothers and fathers are scared. muslims that can't openly practice their faith are scared.

muslims have been suffering in their own countries AND in america. we've always been afraid. how can we not when a muslim child was stabbed 26 times, simply because he was muslim? how can we not when people are asking to take a stand against muslims? how can we not when a genocide is happening and no one is doing anything to stop it?

Garp, Fascism, and Parental Failure

Garp is truly one of the most interesting One Piece characters for me because of the extent to which his dogged, relentless devotion to a fascist system–and the supposed "order" it promises to uphold in the face of anarchy or rebellion–perseveres no matter how many times it fails him and his son and his grandsons. He's fully aware of the deep-seated corruption and atrocity, and feels some kind of moral obligation to bend its rules to protect the innocent (as we can see with his attempts to protect Rouge and Ace), but when faced with widespread femicide and infanticide, genocide, slavery and endless examples of egregious cruelty, he is unable to comprehend the notion that the system is indefensible, or that the only moral choice he can possibly make when faced with that level of atrocity is to leave and resist it. His son recognizing the inherent, inexcusable failures of the World Government and its armed enforcers–literally quitting the force to start a revolution– changes nothing. The order to slaughter pregnant people and infants at Baterilla can't convince him otherwise. The countless instances of bribery, the tolerance of atrocity from state-sanctioned privateers, everything about the history of the Valley of the Gods are all things he's aware of, and takes issue with, but never comes to the conclusion that he cannot affect positive change within a system designed for oppression. The public execution of his grandson–a prime example of the marine's fundamentally irrational, arrogant, vindictive cruelty clearly bound to blow up in all of their faces even before their Pyrrhic victory at the summit war–makes him waver, but even when confronted with this obvious, indefensible injustice against a child he raised and rescued by people seeking to murder him on live TV and desecrate his corpse as a show of power, he cannot bring himself to act against it in any meaningful way no matter how much it hurts him to leave his grandson to die. If he can't veto it, he'll stay Vice Admiral and suffer through Ace being sacrificed on the altar of fascist state control, and functionally leave Luffy for dead in the process while he's at it. He fails every single person he wanted to love–Ace, Luffy, and almost certainly Dragon–and allows himself to be reluctantly complicit in countless crimes against humanity again and again and again because he's so deeply steeped in this notion of preservation of order through state control that he convinces himself that even this disgusting, atrocious, fundamentally flawed and untenable excuse for a government is better than abolition, better than revolution, or just the act of expecting accountability or literally anything better from the systems that issue false promises to protect you. Dadan beating the living shit out of him and calling him a failure as a grandfather, as a self proclaimed defender of the people, is one of the most important scenes in the Postwar Arc because a lesser series might frame Garp as a tragic, helpless figure suffering more than anyone else due to conflict of love and duty, but One Piece refuses to whitewash his actions/inaction or allow the grief and suffering caused by systems he's complicit in to take precedence over its real victims: the D brothers.

There's so much I could say about statism and anarchism and the ways people have internalized the supposed necessity of state violence to the extent they can't oppose that violence even when it ruins them or their loved ones, but that horrible indoctrination and its devastating consequences for both him and his family are what makes Garp so fascinating to watch and so thematically/politically important to One Piece as a whole.

Something I see and have seen more of since the SA hearing started was people taking tweets/statements in Hebrew and using Google translate to claim these Israelis are saying really racist, crazy things. Like I'm sure there are asshole Israelis who spout off racist shit, but every country has that, and people can cherry pick whatever they want.

But part of me doubts all of these tweets are even translated correctly. I mean, Google Translate is notoriously bad, but suddenly, it's reliable? I'm sure it's fucking up in some cases, and I wouldn't be shocked if some are straight up wrong or faked (it's not that hard especially now with ai).

But again even if all these racist tweets calling SA's monkeys/slaves and should be bombed are true, those don't represent all Israelis and its clear they're picking the worst examples. Also, it's so annoying to see this idea coming from people who defend the antisemitic stuff in their movement by claiming it doesn't represent all of them. So again it just becomes anouther double standard for Israel/jews in general.

Hi Nonnie,

Absolutely, you're right that there was a lot of taking things out of context, like presenting something that an Israeli official said about destroying Hamas, as if it's said about all Palestinians.

But you're right to be skeptical that maybe some translations are incorrect. Automatic translations ARE bad, but there are also people who are intentionally mistranslating.

I'll give you an example. I'm sorry now that I didn't save that post, but I found the vid that the post used the first 5 seconds from. It's a vid of Yoav Gallant, Israel's Defense Minister, speaking about how, "Gaza won't return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything." Which sounds pretty damning, right? Except the translator intentionally skipped four short words in Hebrew. Gallant actually said, "Gaza won't return to what it was before, Hamas won't be, we will eliminate everything." <- These 3 short words (Hamas lo ihie) totally change the meaning! Here's the vid, and a transcription of the Hebrew words, if you wanna try and follow: "Azza lo tachzor lihiot ma she'hi haita, Hamas lo ihie, nechasel et ha'kol."

Please note that this is an official translation, from an actual news source, the Al Arabiya channel. Which shows you how much you can trust media that's biased against Israel.

Those three omitted words make it clear that what Gallant means will change after the war is specifically that Hamas will be removed from Gaza, and 'we will eliminate everything' refers to the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas in Gaza, not to the entire area.

What gets to me is that you can clearly hear Gallant say 'Hamas' at the start of his second sentence, even without understanding Hebrew or following the entire transcription, so you don't even need to take my word for it. You can listen to it for yourself, and see that someone omitted the word 'Hamas' from the translation, which in the context of a sentence then quoted by countless anti-Israel social media accounts, and by South Africa at the UN's International Court of Justice, is quite a significant omission.

And this is just one example. So yeah, absolutely DO NOT TRUST translations that come from anti-Israel sources. They have every reason to lie, omit and distort, and millions who blindly believe them.

As for how there are some bad apples in Israel, of course there are! Every human group has both horrible and amazing people, and everything in between. That's not the question. In the context of a state, it's a question of whether these people represent an actual policy? Do they even have power to dictate policy? When they say awful things, how are they treated, are they embraced, or denounced? Is the implementation of the state's actual policy in the field indicative of genocidal intents, or do the over 10,000 aid trucks allowed by Israel into Gaza so far, speak louder than an insignificant Israeli politician, who doesn't even have the authority to dictate Israel's policy regarding Gaza, and who thinks he's scoring some cookie points by saying some dumbass shit?

Like one Israeli politician, who's in charge of heritage, whatever that's supposed to mean (I can't tell you a single accomplishment of his, or a task he oversees, but he certainly isn't in charge of ANYTHING that has to do with the war) who was asked (so this dumbass didn't even come up with this dumb take himself), "Would it be a possibility for Israel to use a nuclear bomb on Gaza?" and he said yes. He didn't come up with this idea, he didn't say it's a certainty, he didn't call for its execution, he was just asked about the option and said it exists, except anyone with a single brain cell (yes, you can tell my opinion of him), and certainly the people in Israel with real power, would tell you that even if anyone was that inhumane, dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, which is right by Israel, with tons of Israeli communities right next to the border, would kill countless people in Israel, too. Which I am sure he would not actually support in a real life scenario. Oh, and he also got denounced and suspended right away. And still he was quoted at the ICJ, because why not? We all know every country is measured by what its dumbest, least consequential politician says, not by what its leaders do... Oh wait, no. That's just Israel.

So yes, you're right. It is an application of a double standard that discriminates the Jewish state, while most countries aren't treated that way, and while Israel haters themselves wouldn't wanna be treated like that.

I hope you're well, and taking care of yourself in the face of all of this hateful propaganda and discrimination! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

Biden ‘quietly’ gives massive bombs to Israel — even as establishment voices say, Stop the genocide

The devastating news from Washington this week was that in spite of lip service against Israel’s war on the people of Gaza, the Biden administration “quietly” approved the transfer of more massive bombs to Israel.

Biden is sending along more than 2000 one-ton bombs and 500-pound bombs, the Washington Post reported (per Common Dreams).

“This is cowardly,” Yousef Munayyer wrote. “If you are going to be full backers of genocide, own it. We see you and history sees you as well.”

“This is obscene,” Bernie Sanders wrote. “We must end our complicity: No more bombs to Israel. The U.S. cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000 lb. bombs that can level entire city blocks.”

We can only imagine how horrifying such armaments are here in the West. Gazans don’t have to imagine. These instruments of annihilation have generated a neverending nightmare. Even the Washington Post says these bombs “are almost never used any more by Western militaries in densely populated locations due to the risk of civilian casualties.” But Israel has used them extensively.

Which is why more than 31,000 Palestinians have been killed, the vast majority women and children. Israel justifies the slaughter of civilians by arguing that a majority of Palestinians approve of Hamas’s attack of last October. So, collective punishment is policy.

At least Biden’s hypocrisy is being reported in the Washington Post. And we are seeing a broad movement in progressive circles to end Israel’s immunity to international law.

Harvard Law School’s student government voted for the university to divest from Israel. The global activist network Avaaz has got half a million signatures calling for a cutoff of U.S. aid to Israel.

America is Israel’s biggest arms dealer. You are giving American weapons to a government that is blocking life-saving aid and violating international law. This will only stop when you demand it stops.“

Public opinion is also horrified. A Gallup poll finds that 55 percent of Americans oppose Israel’s months-long military campaign (while 36 percent approve). “A mere 18% of Democratic voters approve of Israel’s effort.” And 75 percent disapprove.

Gallup poll published March 27 shows that American Democrats’ support for Israeli actions is plummeting over three months.

Biden is not only defying his base. The liberal political establishment has now turned against Israel’s war. The head of the Democratic party think tank, the Center for American Progress, called for a cutoff of aid.

The United States, by its own imposed standards, cannot heedlessly deliver offensive weapons as the Israeli government continues to bombard and starve innocents on a mass scale. These actions have nothing to do with self defense; they are clearly intended as collective punishment and are resulting in the complete devastation of Palestinians as a people.

The former top State Department human rights officer told NPR that it is time to apply the same rules to Israel as other countries. Charles Blaha:

[T]he State Department has said publicly that the same policy applies to Israel as apply to every other country. In practice, Israel gets special treatment…. You may recall the Biden administration suspended items that could be used in offensive air-to-ground operations for Saudi Arabia because they were causing civilian casualties. Those civilian casualties are nowhere near the civilian casualties that Israeli air-to-ground operations have caused so far. Yet unconditional transfers of air-to-ground munitions continue.

Joe Rogan called it “genocide” and a “holocaust” this week. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Israel was going too far. Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg, trying to run from his own past, ran a piece saying, “U.S. Support for Israel’s War Has Become Indefensible.”

And at the Stimson Center this week, when Barbara Slavin said it’s not genocide because it’s not equivalent to the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda or the Nazis killing 6 million Jews, Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace shot down that defense.

The definition of genocide under international law does not require it to meet that bar… It does not have to rise to, Trying to kill every member of a race in the world [to be a genocide. The idea that] ‘it can’t be genocide if it doesn’t kill everybody.’ That isn’t what it means under international law.

So the genocide is having consequences, even in the cowardly seat of empire.

@saxor117

as per usual, I'm publicly answering to all sorts of disgusting individuals on tumblr instead of just blocking them, because I'm dumb like that and have no chill. I can't stand the injustice. And I will not tolerate someone, who probably never even been to Ukraine nor experienced the war, calling me a liar.

Here's a video where you can clearly see russian missile hitting the mall. Although, if you were interested in truth, than you would easily find it yourself.

I live in a small rural area right across the river from Kremenchuk, just a few kilometers away. I almost rented an apartment in that district for my grandmother who was forced to evacuate from Donbas (because russia if fucking razing Donbas to the ground at the moment). Good thing I didn't. Who knows, maybe she could be in that mall. Or my husband, or me. I am so bad of a liar that I posted about the explosions way before it was clear where exactly this happened. The blast was quite powerful, and I honestly thought it could be my last day on earth.

"Literally no evidence that russia target civilians"? I don't know, how about the whole fucking cities and villages being razed to the ground? Dozens of videos of russians opening fire from tanks at apartment buildings or riding over civilian cars with innocent people inside? Tens of thousands of killed Ukrainians?

Someone today made this compilation of shopping centers destroyed by russia. Are these all military targets?

The thing that you call a "military factory" is in reality the Road machines factory "Кредмаш" and it produces asphalt mixing machines.

But I want to talk about something else. When it became normal to invade a sovereign country, completely unprovoked and unjustified, and target its military even? What about it is okay?

Not only every civilian person killed and civilian object destroyed is a crime for which russia is fully responsible, but the killing of every Ukrainian soldier is a crime as well. Because russia has no excuse, no real reason for this war, other than conquest and genocide.

And here's a link to the video of todays missile strike on an apartment building in Mykolaiv. Just to add to "no evidences"

Fuck you so much

You're not exactly what I'd call a political profile so why involve yourself with the Palestine war. Look the middle east is in war all the time how is this any different? If those morons are going to just keep killing each other then I say let them.

... This actually kinda makes me want to cry a little at how ignorant that comment was.

It's not a war, its genocide flat out GENOCIDE. The people of Palestine have done nothing wrong, simply because the people of Israel believe they are the "Chosen people" or the fact that they want the Palestinian land and thus came to the stupid conclusion that Palestinians are unworthy of life or should be purged simply for existing. They are fucking monsters, every single one of them and are hiding behind lies, money, and religion to keep things going their way. You probably think I'm racist for saying that Israel is a terrorist state or that it's all evil, well let me tell you this.

They don't care that 40% or more of Palestinians slaughtered are children.

They don't care that the survivors are starving to death.

They don't care that most they have slaughtered couldn't even fight back.

They are actively trying to sell stolen Palestinian land to get U.S. civilians to promote them as the good guys.

They are actively spreading online propaganda that the Palestinians are "getting what they deserve".

The are also spreading TikTok propaganda to show the IDF as true heroes just like how the U.S. uses TikTok to promote the military as "totally awesome" and not lame or psychologically damaging at all.

And they want everyone to feel bad about badgering them for causing the genocide in the first place. THEY WAN'T YOU TO FEEL BAD ABOUT GETTING MAD AT THEM FOR COMMITTING GENOCIDE! HOW MUCH MORE FUCKING PETTY CAN THEY GET?

Everyone hated the German Nazi's under Hitler and like to talk about how much of a stupid shit he was. Yet when modern Nazi's like white Neo Nazi inbred fucks or petty ass Isralian Nazi shits show up suddenly the Western media and almost everyone in the world just wants to turn their heads and focus on other stuff. Worst off some are even willing to say Israel are the victims or really their geocide is justified, its absolute bullshit. They there are people like you that clearly don't understand the situation.

Your right I'm not a political Tumblr blogger I just like to reblog that stuff so everyone can stop ignoring the blatant genocide that is happening. Barely anyone focuses on them anyways, but I still do it, why? Because I can't stop, no I won't stop. I'll never stop until this conflict is over and Israel pays for what it's done. Even if that never happens, I'll never let them forget or let their children forget the monsters they were.

I know I'm barely making a difference in the end, but I don't care. Until it's over I'll keep saying it, Israel is a Terrorist State.

Never Forget Palestine's Pain!

Never Forgive Israel's Crimes!

Long Live Palestine!

From the river to the sea Palestine will be free!

"The big question is, even if 'Israel' manages to win its six-front war, even if 'America' manages to win its world war, then what? The whole climate is still collapsing, and even they live in the climate. 'Israel's scorched earth policy in Gaza is just a sign of the coming times for everyone, when the whole Earth will scorch. The meta-crisis is really an entropy crisis which we experience as pollution. Warfare is just the worst sort of pollution, the sort that kills you instantly. In just 120 days, 'Israel' and America have produced nearly 300,000 kilotons of carbon unproducing 30,000 people. The full climate impact is likely 7-8x higher, equivalent to a dozen countries just chilling. Millions of tons of metal and other resources have been shipped from all over the world in order to be dumped on children in Palestine. The Gaza Genocide is an absolute orgy of emissions and waste in a climate that simply can't take anymore. This grotesque genocide is just the culmination of 400 years of colonialism. It's no coincidence that the greater White Empire (America, Britain, etc.) is by far the worst polluter in history. It's no coincidence that the US military is the single worst polluter now. It's causal. Colonialism was the cancer that gave corporations private rights to something that isn't even public. The sun, the land, the animals, the plants; they don't belong to us. They belong to the gods. They are the gods. The gods of sun, the gods of trees, and the new, apocalyptic, gods who clearly said that the end was coming. You don't even have to believe the signs anymore. We're at the destination. Natural life (which includes us) is being killed by artificial life (which we are merely included in). We're just the bacteria inside the guts of higher beings we call corporations or even countries. It is this species of artificial life which is killing the natural world, and we're just along for the ride. I call these creatures godlike because just look at the power they have over us. They can kill, cage, and harness us like so much chattel, but there's one thing they can't control. That's the weather. Those are the elder, greater, gods, and they're not too happy about the upstart idols. Who are these old gods? The gods of sun, the gods of weather, the gods of climate above all. Heathens call this 'climate change', like it comes out of nowhere. What we are experiencing is the wrath of the gods. The gods are striking back through the weather and they'll win, because they're actual gods, not craven idols made out of steel and silicon. Even the more recent Abrahamic God is clearly apocalyptic. Prophets and messengers have been telling us to get our shit together for the end times. Whatever 'civilized' path we were on 3,000 years ago was already clearly wrong, and we were clearly warned that it wouldn't end well. Well, here we are. You can't say you weren't warned. Whether it's from Resistance or their own arrogance, within our lifetimes both 'Israel' and 'America' will fall. Even if they win all these wars against other people, how do you win against the climate? How do you win against math? How do you win against the gods? What do you even win in this context? It's like hitting the snooze button on apocalypse with a 3,000 pound bomb. You're just making the destruction come faster. White Empire is not long for the world, because the world is not long for the world. Even if it survives the rebellions of men, it cannot escape the judgement of the gods. If the whole climate is collapses, everything else necessarily collapses too. Like castles in the sand. In a few decades (at best), Empire's scorched earth policy in Gaza becomes redundant. Any Empire that exists will run out of gas and catch on fire at the same time. Empire loses by default. A victory for no one."

Hello,

Ive been following you for years and I love your blog. In all my years on this website I have never posted, sent an ask or a message, commented or interacted with anyone on this website in any way. However seeing your recent posts about Palestine made me feel like I had to say something.

Just because you support the “weaker” side, it doesn’t make you immune to lies and propaganda.

Please educate yourself before you spread misinformation and/or misleading info.

I am a citizen of Israel. This conflict started when Hamas brutally murdered hundreds of innocent civilians, including elderly and children. They kidnapped over a hundred more. They are known for being a terrorist organisation whose stated goal is to murder jews.

I am terrified. My people are forever scarred. I and everyone I know have lost loved ones in this war. And the fact that people like you in these terrible times choose to focus solely on the suffering of the Palestinians, ignoring and justifying our suffering, speaks volumes.

The bombings you speak of, are a retaliation for the slaughter of October 7th. Israel warns citizens in advance, in order to prevent as many casualties as possible. But we cant just ignore the murder, kidnapping, rape and harm to our people like you do. We have no choice but to defend ourselves.

We have no interest nor desire to commit genocide against the Palestinian people. If we did, we would have already done so. Instead we financially support Palestine, despite the fact they use this money not to better their lives, but to instead attack our civilians.

Beware of misinformation like the accusations against Israel for bombing the hospital in Gaza. That is a straight up lie that was proven false, and the Hamas spread it along with lies about how many people got hurt, in order to convince people like you that they are justified. And its working.

Before you accuse others, maybe check your own biases and think to yourself why a Palestinian life is worth something to you and an Israeli one isn’t.

Can you even imagine what it feels like to go online after such a tragedy for a little relief, only to see people like you calling for my death?

And yes, that is what you’re doing by supporting and encouraging the actions of Hamas. An organisation that cares more about killing innocent civilians like me than protecting its own people.

I hope that if you can’t take the time to properly understand this complicated situation, you will at least stop talking about something that you clearly don’t understand.

You know, I put all of this in a private post initially. I've been largely focused on spreading charity posts, actual concrete things that can be done to save the innocent people caught in the crossfire. But clearly, my message has been mixed, so I'll define it right here.

This is just something that seeps into my bones and I had to say it somewhere: the sheer refusal by both sides to admit what they're doing. Oh, we thought that music festival was soldiers....wait no we didn't, it was random Gazan civilians who did it instead, not us, hurt them instead. Oh we are going to wage all out war....no those innocent civilian casaulties weren't us, it was them! (No, the cause of the explosion has not been independently proven. It has, however, been proven that Israel shelled the place three days earlier as a "warning" then called ordering an evacuation shortly before.) Put down an evacuation order so short and so sudden the UN protests that civilians can't possibly get out in time, then bomb one of the convoys. Tell your countrymen the evacuation order was fake so you get more human shields. More rockets! More airstrikes! More "accidents" to the tune of hundreds of civilians dead, and you never have to carry the burden or the blame for any of it. Shoot from far enough away, target enough civilians, makes it easy, makes it fun. The glory of war with none of the guilt and none of the risk! Ain't that a wonderful thing. Ain't that a fucking joke.

I grieve for the innocent Israeli citizens slaughtered because Hamas cowards wanted to kill the defenseless. I grieve for the people in Gaza getting slaughtered because neither side cares if they live or die. The difference between the two is not that one life is worth more than the others. That is morally repugnant and fundamentally absurd. The difference is that Israel is getting aid from many nations, while other nations only give aid to Hamas, not the people of Gaza. They need humanitarian aid, they need someone to speak for them and beg for restraint, which is why I'm primarily reblogging posts that call for humanitarian aid to them and for a ceasefire so they can, at the very least, have the evacuation time they should have been allowed. It is not because their lives are worth more, but because to far too many, their lives are worth less.

I understand your pain and fear, and I am deeply sorry for your loss. I too find those rooting for Hamas or declaring that the victims deserved it for being settlers repugnant. But the people of Gaza did not do this, and if it's a choice between them living and Hamas dying, I will choose their lives every time. I will always choose life. And I refuse to apologize for that. Violence like this is a cycle, revenge and revenge and revenge again because you cannot kill an idea with bombs, only keep destroying until nothing is left to fight over. You cannot stop a cycle by continuing to spin.

are spidersonas still a thing? yes? cool cool...

Okay, he's not my spidersona per se, he's based on a favourite character from a forgotten 80s show (robin of sherwood, and the character's name is Nasir, if you're interested) but I wanted to make a spiderman based on him since watching atsv, but because of how well Pavitr was designed (culture and representation wise) I wanted to make him also more representative, but had no idea where to start where to even find designs or inspiration. So I wrote down in one of my many diaries that he's Palestinian, and left it at that for months.

And, if you're somehow not yet aware, Palestine has actually been noticed by the west for the past month, though it should have been for more. People should not have to die, civilians should not have to die, hospitals, mosques, churches, schools, bakeries and people should not be targeted by a powerful military, blamed for the conditions of their suffering and resistance under an apartheid state. I'm Polish, fun fact, and when Russia started its invasion of Ukraine we were all crapping ourselves, supporting the Ukrainian fight back against people who had already oppressed them in the past. Of course, every story of oppression is different, but the moral is this: the world supported Ukrainian resistance against oppression, and suddenly when it's in the oh-so dreaded middle east, it's apparently a threat to everyone, and apparently it's completely justifiable to murder innocent civilians, but not justifiable for them to fight back. Ideally, I'd like to say "violence is never the answer, it's not correct to fight fire with fire" but realistically, after 75 years of oppression, of western ignorance, what other options are there? You cannot debate for peace with a government that calls you "children of darkness" or "human animals" or whatever other dehumanising things the Israeli government and military have been saying. Now is the obligatory time I feel I need to clarify, no, I do not support acts of terror (from either side!! Israel deserves as much criticism as Hamas, if not more, seeing as they are a powerful military) and no, I am not antisemitic. I have not been studying World War 2 for almost 4 years as an autistic hobby to be called antisemitic, but also neither to ignore a genocide unfolding before our eyes on social media. My issue is not with Jewish people, who have suffered for years, centuries, especially in Europe, my issue is with the weaponisation of the Holocaust and the misleading Israeli/ Zionist idea that they, the children of the Holocaust, cannot cause the same atrocities. Especially when many, many Jews, also children of Holocaust survivors have spoken out again Israel and its actions towards Palestinians. Trauma is a cycle, one that the state of Israel has clearly not dealt with and is now willing to cause in another population.

So. Autism and activism (another fun fact, I'm a former climate activist who quit due to burn out) combined in my brain to make this artwork. I have a few more drawings of Nasir as spiderman, I'm still mulling over if I want to post them, but if people want to take my design and run with it, redraw it, make it more accurate or interesting (I literally just took the patterns on the keffiyeh and threw them on a spiderman suit, not very creative, or not as much as it could have been) absolutely do so. I would ask for a little credit, but if you feel you make the design entirely your own, it's yours. I'm just some Polish idiot living in the UK, what do I know about accurate middle eastern representation? (Also feel free to use this as pfps and what not, I don't care, I'll be happy with the knowledge I drew it, and if it makes you happy, I've achieved more than I hoped.)

Obviously activism has more to offer than just drawing spiderman, so if you can, write to your MPs or representatives or what have you, share information (I will do my best to share information on tumblr as I have been very inactive on here recently), maybe even attend protests if you can, but first and foremost, stay thinking!! Stay learning and educating yourself as having information keeps you one step ahead of propaganda. If you have the energy to, compare and criticise different news outlets, find yourself some Gazan news sources and journalists (a lot of people have been following Motaz, Bisan and Plestia on Instagram, I don't have that but it's easy to find reposts of their videos on tiktok or twitter) and stay informed!! Boycott those companies suggested by BDS, MacDonalds, Starbucks and Disney as the main ones (or just ignore capitalism all together and shop local!! That's what I've been trying to do, but obviously it's not an option for everyone, it's better to have focused efforts on those big three than smaller, scattered attempts at boycotting). We all have something we can do to help and show out support.

However, from my burnt out activist's perspective I have to highlight that you MUST take time for yourself, your hobbies, your wellbeing. Yes, you are privileged to be able to turn it off, but from my privilege of experience, I tell you that you will burn out and loose your spark. You need to be able to support those who need us (and not just in Palestine, but in the DR of Congo and many other places where crises and genocides are occuring) but you can't do that if you've burnt yourself out. You, your comfort and safety is important, your ability to sustainably fight for these important causes is more valuable than you know. Important causes like these require a lot of energy, but we as activists cannot let ourselves become completely burnt out as there will be no one left to fight. Just pace yourself. Do as much as you are comfortable with. Everyone has different styles of activism, different abilities, and that's the beauty of us. We can do so much if we don't start with too much and end up burnt out.

In conclusion, Free Palestine <3

NAOMI KLEIN

April 24, 2024

My friends, I’ve been thinking about Moses and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in me has always been uneasy about this story. What kind of god is jealous of animals? What kind of god wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself? But there is, of course, a less literal way of understanding this story. It is a lesson about false idols, about the human tendency to worship the profane and shining, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.

What I want to say to you this evening at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshiping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism.

It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery, the story of Passover itself, and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide. It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the Promised Land, a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across faiths to every corner of this globe, and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militarist ethnostate.

Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba. From the start, it has been at war with collective dreams of liberation. At a seder, it is worth remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism has long equated Israeli safety with Egyptian dictatorship and unfreedom and client state. From the start, it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings, but as demographic threats, much as the Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites and thus ordered the death of their sons. And as we know, Moses was saved from that by being put in a basket and adopted by an Egyptian woman.

Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm, and it is time that we say clearly it has always been leading us here. It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments — “Thou shall not kill,” “Thou shall not steal,” “Thou shall not covet” — the commandments brought down from the mount. It is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children.

Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value that we place on questioning a practice embedded in the seder itself with its four questions asked by the youngest child. It also betrays the love that we have as a people for text and for education. Today this false idol dares to justify the bombing of every single university in Gaza, the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses, the killing of hundreds of academics, scholars, journalists, poets, essayists. This is what Palestinians call scholasticide, the killing of the infrastructure and the means of education.

Meanwhile, in this city, the universities call the NYPD and barricade themselves against the grave threat posed by their own students asking them... questions like “How can you claim to believe in anything at all, least of all us, while you enable, invest in and collaborate with this genocide?”

The false idol of Zionism has been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long. So tonight we say it ends here. Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by its very nature. Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that ethnostate, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred, including hatred against us as Jews. Our Judaism is not threatened by people raising their voices in solidarity with Palestine across lines of race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender identity and generations. Our Judaism is one of those voices and knows that in this chorus lies both our safety and our collective liberation.

Our Judaism is the Judaism of the Passover Seder, the gathering in ceremony to share food and wine with loved ones and strangers alike. This ritual, light enough to carry on our backs, in need of nothing but one another, even with — we don’t need walls. We need no temple, no rabbi. And there is a role for everyone, including especially the smallest child. The seder is portable, a diaspora technology if ever there was one. It is made to hold our collective grieving, our contemplation, our questioning, our remembering, and our reviving and rekindling of the revolutionary spirit.

So, tonight — so, look around. This here is our Judaism. As waters rise and forests burn and nothing is certain, we pray at the altar of solidarity and mutual aid, no matter the cost. We don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name. We want freedom from the ideology that has no plan for peace, except for deals with the murderous, theocratic petrostates next door, while selling the technologies of robo-assassinations to the world. We seek to liberate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid, that wants our children afraid, that wants us to believe that the world is against us so that we go running to its fortress, or at least keep sending the weapons and the donations.

That is a false idol. And it’s not just Netanyahu. It’s the world he made and the world that made him. It’s Zionism. What are we? We, in these streets for months and months, we are the exodus, the exodus from Zionism. So, to the Chuck Schumers of this world, we do not say, “Let our people go.” We say, “We have already gone, and your kids, they are with us now.”

The world looks a lot different from Kibbutz Kfar Aza than it does in the United States or any other point on the planet. The difference is obvious in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or anywhere else in Israel. Throughout the world in most mainstream media accounts and commentary from supposedly enlightened members of the chattering classes, the current war being fought in Gaza between Israel and Hamas is seen as merely the latest twist in a long cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. From that perspective, it’s just more evidence of the cruelty of war to which the only possible moral response is to tell everyone involved to stop it, especially when the alleged underdogs—the Palestinians—are being defeated.

To those who look on from afar, the history of the conflict or the rights and wrongs of how the war started—even the unspeakable atrocities committed on Oct. 7 at Kfar Aza and 21 other Israeli communities when Palestinians associated with Hamas violated a ceasefire, crossed the border and murdered, raped, tortured and kidnapped people—are just details that act to incite the combatants.

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But those details matter, especially if they involve the right to live in safety and relative peace.

A just war

This war is between a democratic nation fighting for its existence against an Islamist movement whose goal is the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. Yet many outside of Israel, even those who do know the history and essential nature of the two sides in this struggle, such as President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, are increasingly speaking as if the only thing to do is to end the war as soon as possible. They say the aftermath of the war must mean that Hamas survives—and gets away with mass murder. That means the Palestinians are rewarded for such abominations with an independent state that will likely have the ability to pursue the terrorist organization’s goal for many more days like Oct. 7. Somehow, that makes sense in Washington and other places.

But not in Israel.

The overwhelming majority of Israelis, including many, if not most, of those who oppose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, see it very differently. And to understand why, maybe you need to go to Kfar Aza and see the ruins and makeshift memorials to the people who lived in that small kibbutz near the Gaza border who were brutally murdered, raped or kidnapped by Palestinians.

If so, you’ll soon realize that the battle with Hamas isn’t one about Israelis ruthlessly harming Palestinians. Nor is it about “white” oppressors seeking to dominate powerless “people of color,” as many left-wing Americans think. Nor is it one in which tired diplomatic theories about a “two-state solution,” which have repeatedly been rejected by the Palestinian people, can be employed to get a messy situation under control, not to mention ease some of Biden’s political problems.

To be in Israel during this war is to experience both the strength and the fragility of the Jewish state. Yet the general public wouldn’t necessarily think that if all they know of the Middle East is what’s seen on news shows. After all, life goes on pretty much as normal, even if some businesses and farming areas in southern and northern Israel have clearly suffered due to the absence of employees because so many people have been called into active military service. The buses and trains are running, and people still go to the movies and concerts, as well as other normal activities.

The hotels are also full, but not with tourists. That is a key giveaway that something isn’t right. Walk into many hotels in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, and something is a little off. They’re packed with people but not tourists on vacation from abroad. Chat with even a few of the hundreds of thousands of Israelis—families with small children and elderly people prominent among them—who were forced to flee their homes in the south near Gaza and the north near Lebanon, and you get a view of the war that is omitted in the breathless coverage of Palestinian suffering.

A country united by grief and determination

To understand what’s going on, you need to talk to Israelis who have been called back into the military and willingly risking their lives fighting in Gaza. Though they’re eager to resume their regular lives, many I spoke with are just as ready to return to the battlefield because they know the job of destroying a deadly threat to their country isn’t finished. While international opinion deplores the possibility that Israel will attack the city of Rafah—Hamas’s last major enclave inside Gaza—few Israelis I spoke to, including those who have served, are prepared to halt the war until all of the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 massacres are stripped of the ability to repeat their crimes.

You don’t have to do a lot of reporting before you realize that morale among Israeli soldiers is high and stretches across all the cultural, political and religious debates that divide Israeli society. It’s not because they relish war or bloodshed. They don’t want to kill Palestinians and also grieve the loss of so many of their comrades—casualties made more likely because of the strict rules of engagement that prevent the Israel Defense Forces from fully utilizing the firepower at their disposal to lower the number of civilians killed because Hamas uses them as human shields.

Their spirit remains strong. They know that what they are doing has nothing to do with the lies about “apartheid,” “settler-colonialism,” “occupation” or “genocide” that are thrown about at antisemitic demonstrations in U.S. cities or on college campuses and are treated as acceptable discourse in mainstream publications like The New York Times.

Israeli soldiers—young conscripts and veteran reservists alike—aren’t down about the war because they know that what they are doing is defending their homes and families. It’s the civic faith in the justice of their cause that resonates throughout Israeli society and pervades the thinking of those who have sent their loved ones to battle. It is also felt by the grieving families of those who didn’t come home. Israel is a nation that is united by both anguish and determination.

Americans understand war differently

This may come as a shock to Americans, who are used to thinking of wars in a very different way.

Since World War II, Americans were sent to fight dismal and bloody proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam, where the rhetoric about defending democracy against communism rang hollow for many. That was just as true about the attitudes toward the wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq in this century. Despite any initial enthusiasm about punishing the perpetrators of 9/11 or toppling dictator Saddam Hussein, those conflicts turned into messy quagmires that most Americans—whether on the right or the left—wished to escape. Though the opponents of the United States were clearly evil, by the time both wars ended in what history will record as defeats, they hardly seemed worth the sacrifice of blood and treasure that had been expended on them. Even before the final rout of Americans during the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, these wars had already been sealed in the country’s collective memory by both popular culture and the opinion of most serious commentators as terrible mistakes.

Coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas makes it seem as if it is another version of hapless and brutal Westerners fighting Muslims in futile efforts that cannot succeed, similar to the way Americans failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the overwhelming majority of Israelis—from secular left-wing Tel Avivians to pious Jerusalemites and all points in between—know their war is different.

They understand that their opponents are not in far-off lands like America’s in recent decades, and their raw violence directly threatens them. Though Israel has prospered in the 75 years since the Jews regained sovereignty in their ancient homeland, it hasn’t known a day of complete peace. Palestinian Arabs, their foreign allies and enablers in the Muslim and Arab world, as well as those in the West and international community, have never given up their quest to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet.

Places of pilgrimage

That’s why the view from Kfar Aza, and other Israeli kibbutzim and towns throughout southern Israel, is so different.

The sites of the massacres have become places of pilgrimage for Israelis and visitors to the country—and rightly so. To see the homes in places like Kfar Aza that were riddled with bullets and/or burned by the terrorists, and to learn of the horrible fates of their inhabitants, is a searing experience. The same is true for the fields where the Nova music festival took place, and where hundreds of young people were slaughtered, raped and kidnapped—and which are now filled with makeshift memorials to the victims and those taken hostage. Just as haunting are the nearby fields where the wreckage of hundreds of burned-out cars of festival attendees have been piled up and for the time being, left as a gruesome reminder of their fate.

After a brief period of interest and empathy, most of the international media lost interest in the story of Oct. 7. Americans don’t hear from those who survived the attacks or those who risked their lives to rescue some of the victims. But their stories do resonate with fellow Israelis, who understand that they could have just as easily found themselves the prey of Hamas murderers hunting for Jews to torment and kill on that terrible day.

The fate of the hostages also hangs over the country. The pain of the families of those who are still held in captivity by Hamas is felt by everyone there. And while politics has intruded into the discussion—as the anti-judicial reform movement that paralyzed the country has taken control of the weekly “hostage square” protests in Tel Aviv and focused their animus at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than Hamas—support for the war effort remains largely unshaken.

The notion of stopping the fighting to allow Hamas to survive while still armed and in control of part of Gaza is widely considered reasonable elsewhere, but not in Israel. There, they understand that if Hamas is allowed to fully escape the consequences of the war it started, it will only mean that it will be allowed to make good on its promise to repeat the Oct. 7 atrocities again and again.

The widespread assumption in America—even among major Jewish organizations that are supposed to have Israel and the Jewish people’s best interests at heart—that a Palestinian state must be created after the war ends is opposed even by most on the Israeli left. They know that rewarding Hamas and its supporters with such a gesture isn’t just an invitation to more bloodshed. It’s also immoral and will ensure that the conflict never ends. The independent Palestinian state in all but name ruled by Hamas in Gaza before Oct. 7 was evidence of what such a “solution” would mean for Israel. They understand that a state in Gaza, as well as one in Judea and Samaria, controlled by genocidal terrorists and their morally equivalent political rivals—the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah Party—could place the entire country in danger.

But that’s hard to see in Washington, even by those not motivated by leftist ideologies to hate Israel and to cheer the slaughter of Jews. Still, it’s a truth that is difficult to escape when looking at the ruins of Kfar Aza.

How will Biden stop Israel? He has no jurisdiction in Israel. It's a different country. As much as you USAmericans like to think you're special and other countries are countries in name only, Israel still is an independent country and the USA has no legal power to order Israel to do anything. Or are people saying the US should start a war against Israel? Because that's what it would be if Biden ordered a military intervention by the USA. He can call for a ceasefire just as much as any other world leader, but Israel clearly is not going to listen.

anon you do an amazing job of dressing up your heinous defense of us complicity in israeli occupation and the genocide of palestinians in the language of anti-us imperialism. the problem is you're not spewing your bullshit at someone who doesn't know anything about israel and the united states' history, and so i will not be falling for this latest bit of vomitous apologetics and propaganda that's doing the rounds. eat a dick, but in case anyone else wants to know why anon is full of shit and why the us actually does have SOME significant leverage with israel, let me explain.

when I say the united states and joe biden as president could actually do something to stop israeli war crimes, i am not talking about military invention. i've always been anti-war with very few exceptions and i'm not about to call for war that would result in utter devastation. the us military could easily and handily force by violence israel into submission (we are good at that unfortunately) but that's horrific and it would undoubtedly result in the deaths of millions and also probably further destabilize the entire region since we're very, very good at that, too. no that's insane and also would never happen, the united states needs israel to be right where it is and maybe just a little less insane for geopolitical hegemonic and capitalist reasons. so not only am i not immoral enough to call for the brutal murder of random civilians in israel (how would that help palestinians who of course would also be brutalized) but i'm also not delusional enough to even think that's a possibility. thankfully. israel is damn lucky to have the united states as a country-sized human shield that keeps the rest of the region from throwing hands, because clearly the rest of the region is showing a lot of restraint right now. and of course that's a good thing. i don't want a fucking world war to break out.

i'm talking about money. i'm talking about aid. i'm talking about the weapons grants we send to israel, the money that israel uses to fund palestinian ethnic cleansing. that is the leverage that the united states above every other nation has with israel. and yes, israel certainly might be able to buy their own weapons, but losing us aid would be a real hit to israel. and if the us withheld its aid, my guess is the us wouldn't be the only supporter of israel to withhold financial aid.

eisenhower threatened to end all us aid to israel if israeli troops didn't withdraw from egyptian territory during the suez crisis. that did in fact work. presidents ford, carter, reagan, and hw bush all used this leverage to get concessions from israel.

of course it wouldn't mean israel couldn't continue to do horrible shit, but if the us actually held israel to account financially, they'd have several billion reasons to change course. and that would mean an end to funding iron dome... and that would probably give israel a bit more reason to chill out.

there was an article i read recently that i can't find rn of an israeli official saying that of course israel depends on us aid but i can't find it so if anyone knows what i'm talking about, send me the link.

Obligatory, you can be trans in the game, there is a trans character that’s prominently featured. The goblins aren’t connected to any race other than the points you’ve made up.

The whole suppressing a goblin rebellion plot everyone was calling racist and problematic actually turned out to be an operation where the goblins were framed by the actual antagonists and the goblins were innocent all along. This is revealed later in the game.

I’m sorry your upset. Be better. You embarrass the real members of the trans community by getting upset at a non issue, now speak out against atomic heart funding a terrorist nation attacking a peaceful one, thanks.

Made up? This is a text book case of blood libel. This is a game made by neo nazis that uses the IP of a known antisemite. The goblins are very clearly antisemtic caricatures. The inclusion of a shofar silenced by a non-kosher cheese that references the Fettmilch pogroms of 1612 is included in the game. It is so blatantly antisemtic. Y'all just care more about a dogshit game than jewish lives.

The trans woman character is voiced by an unlisted va that gives her a masculine voice. Her name is SirOna Ryan, aka he she ryan. A friend who hadn't seen her since pre-transition & in years immediately clocked her & recognized her. It's blatantly transphobic. The dev team is also so notoriously homophobic that this is the only queer character in the game. A transphobic caricature of a trans woman.

Supressing a slave revolt is pro slavery. It doesn't matter if the slaves turned out to "be good all along"(also a deeply weird a fucked up narrative in it's own right), it's racist regardless. Y'all care more about this dogshit game than y'all do about racism.

I am a real trans person. I am now officially living in the worst state in the US to exist as a trans person because it is now A FELONY TO BE TRANS IN PUBLIC in my state. If I am openly trans in this state I can be arrested, charged, sent to prison, and if I don't die in prison, will have 0 rights if I make it out of prison. Which I doubt because my government wants us dead. This legislature was lobbied for using money & rhetoric from JKR's campaign for trans genocide.

A town in my state has also just been revealed that its CITY COUNCIL has compiled a HIT LIST agaisnt queer people & their families in that town. These are real world issues that I live with. My life as a trans person is in danger. I'll never be able to start T here, or get a hysterectomy. My friend can't get top surgery now. My little sibling can't get any trans affirming healthcare now either. I can't afford to leave, and even if I could, I would never be able to leave my people behind.

This is what giving the TERF Supreme more money and power does. She is personally funding trans genocide with y'all's money because y'all don't care about trans lives.

I'm an embarassment? You can't even say that too me off anon & with your full chest. I, and every trans person in my state are fearful for our lives more than ever. How long until we start getting rounded up? My state is notorious for how torturous our conversion camps are, I don't want to find out what they'll do to us when they've got us all locked up in prisons, but that is now a very real reality I face.

But y'all don't care about trans lives or jewish lives or BIPOC or any of that. You want to play a bad game & not face any backlash for it. You want to never be confronted with the objective reality of your choices. Y'all could choose to simply never talk about online, but that has never seemed to occur to y'all. No, y'all wear your bigotry like a point of pride to purposely agitate marginalized folks. Y'all can't even do the BARE MINIMUM to be decent human beings. I don't give a single fuck about y'all's opinion about trans people being "embarassments" for being upset at y'all for funding our genocide.

Anothing thing, I'm slavic. 2nd gen Polish. I'm very tapped into the war with Ukraine and how awful Russia is as a colonial superpower. I have living family that remembers how bad living under Russian rule is and family living in Poland right now. But I wasn't talking about a terrorist attack being funded by a game and IP that is frankly hardly anyone is talking about & isn't anywhere close to having the cultural chokehold HP still has. Made by a game studio with less than 40k followers on twitter. I was talking about a deeply racist, antisemtic, transphobic IP being used to make a deeply racist, antisemtic, transphobic game that funds trans genocide.

BUT HERE IS MY OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON ATOMIC HEART: Don't buy it & don't support the devs that help fund terrorist attacks & have anti-Ukrainian sentiments everywhere in their game.

ALSO DON'T GIVE MONEY TO THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL & INFLUENTIAL TERF TO FUND TRANS GENOCIDE TO PLAY A BROKEN GAME MADE BY NEO NAZIS THAT IS PRO-SLAVERY;BLOOD LIBEL;ANTISEMITISM:THE GAME!!

LITERALLY get fucked. Y'all are sick & twisted & I hope y'all have a horrible life. Genuinely.

The formerly respectable platform formerly known as Twitter has become a haven for Russian trolls (many of whom are likely bots).

Comrade Musk is intent on repeatedly performing digital fellatio on Vladimir Putin. I suppose that failing oligarchs need their own safe space.

Now analysis by a volunteer group of researchers who track Russian-language information operations on X says Russian trolls flocked to Musk’s post and news accounts that reported on his meme. “The Zelensky tweet from Musk seems to be the most commented by Kremlin trolls over nearly three months,” says Antibot4Navalny, the anonymous group of volunteers behind the findings. In the days after the post, around 160 inauthentic accounts pushing pro-Russian messaging sent some 400 posts praising Musk as a “Russian patriot” and photoshopping him into Russian military uniforms, according to the group. They say the main messaging can be summarized, in part, as “Comrade Musk supports Russia.” Three independent experts, including one former disinformation researcher at Twitter, reviewed the findings from Antibot4Navalny and concluded that the accounts praising Musk and pushing Russian narratives are likely to be part of a coordinated campaign. They say that while there was a small number of accounts pushing the messaging—the post has 93 million views—the targeting may show the accounts testing their messaging and tactics.

Hey, it's the RUSSIANS who are calling Musk "a "Russian patriot". From them, it's a compliment. Outside of Russia in the current context, it's more likely to refer to war criminals committing genocide.

One former Twitter disinformation researcher, granted anonymity to allow them to speak freely without fear of retaliation, looked at a sample of the accounts highlighted by Antibot4Navalny. “Most accounts had multiple signs of inauthenticity,” the former staff member says, pointing out that their analysis was done using public-facing data, and only X would be able to make “hard findings” based on technical data available to the company. The former staff member says the accounts had repeated behavior in reposts and “inconsistent or clearly falsified” personal information. “There was a spectrum for how realistically or well chosen an account's profile pic is,” they say, with some profile images being pulled from elsewhere online.

It's likely that Russia is using Twitter as a wide open proving ground for disinformation for the 2024 US election.

If you are still on Twitter/X, you are an unintentional accessory to Putin, Musk, and MAGA fanatics. I don't even visit Twitter any more. The only time I see tweets are when people post them elsewhere.

It may be painful to leave Twitter if you've been there for years, but think of it as analogous to quitting smoking or some other bad habit. You'll soon be digitally healthier after you leave.

I love seeing your posts about like bandom history and just discussion and reflection from a more mature adult's angle, it's really relatable to me at 29. And while I have not involved in bandom before late 2015, I have studied a lot myself, and Panic! and Brendon were my first faves and still high up there. It really disappoints me how brutal antis are as I have figured them out to a T, treating minor errors as hate-crimes from Brendon but not anyone else. Are we not all human?

i havent checked my messages in so long so im not 100% certain when this was sent but this was a really nice thing to stumble upon today 😭😭😭 it makes me feel good to know that there are people out there who can sort of ~smell what im stepping in~ so to speak and that when i talk about this stuff its not always falling on deaf ears. ive always rejected the term “anti” because it feels so immature to say, but honestly what other word is there to even describe most of these people? haters? bullies? assholes? they dont have any actual critical thought behind why they came to hate brendon, they just know it became the cool and popular thing to hate him and “blame him” for shit and they couldnt bear the thought of not following the crowd and fitting in. youd be hard pressed to find me anyone whos life has been documented and scrutinized for as long as and as harshly as brendons since they were a teenager who HASNT stumbled or fucked up or put their foot in their mouth at some point. its wildly hypocritical because these people act very pure and righteous, and like theyve never done or said anything wrong or questionable or problematic in their lives which is just…. quite literally patently untrue for every person on earth. to assert moral and ethical superiority over a person like brendon is to be horrendously disingenuous, and it grossly highlights the efficacy of social media fandom war smear campaigns, lack of proper journalism, and the terrifying degeneration of peoples ability to engage in critical thought and perform unbiased fact-based research. these people act like brendon singlehandedly committed genocide or some shit, and honestly i find these people spend far more time thinking and talking about him than we as fans do. like he quite literally lives in these peoples heads rent free, and these are the same people who call us pathetic for still enjoying him and his music after all these years and not dropping off and following the crowd of sheeple like they did. like these people have the nerve to behave like 13 year old lunch-room bullies and then turn around and call people cringe and pathetic for *checks notes* … enjoying someone and their art and music. like honey the call is coming from inside the house. they love to use the classics like “jeez its just a joke” or “its not that deep…” when the reality is that if it was truly not that deep they wouldnt spend so much time obsessing over him and talking about him more than his fucking fans do. they quite literally troll his and panics tags and quote retweet and reblog almost everything they see with a shitty snide remark that they truly think is soooo clever and original (🙄) like its their fucking 6 figure paid career path. they constantly poke the bear, go swinging at a hornets nest with lead pipes, and then they get confused and pissed when they get bit and stung. like literally dude what did you expect? you come into a space specifically to cause trouble and piss people off and then act like the victim when you actually accomplish that??? call people cringe and fail and annoying and strange when they get emotional over something they clearly care deeply about??? as though if the tables werent turned these people wouldnt immediately start screaming crying throwing up and playing the victim. honestly though at the very end of the day i truly believe these proudly self-proclaimed “haters” are more miserable than ill ever be no matter how bad my life circumstances get. because ultimately i only spend a few hours, maybe a day or two at most being pissed that these bullies and mean-girls exist and love to invade our spaces for shits and giggles. but they apparently spend entire days, weeks, months… YEARS of their lives being bitter and vile and mean for the sake of maybe 10 likes on twitter and 5 minutes of internet validation. what a sad fucking existence. i prefer to be someone who enjoys things and engages with and consumes things that make me happy and joyful thank you :) anyway sorry for the ramble! if you read all of it i appreciate and love you for it!! 💕

Ghazi Hamad is the Hamas leader I was referring to. He did an live interview on a Lebanese news channel on October 24th. I don't speak Arabic, but Memri TV quotes him as saying

"Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force."

And

"We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs."

I don't speak Arabic, so maybe Memri is lying to me. Maybe it's biased and I'm misinformed, maybe Hamad isn't representative, but I'm not lying. That's why I sent you that ask, to try to get your side. Because I genuinely don't know how Israel can have a ceasefire with Hamas if Hamas is committed to repeating October 7th (that is what the "Al-Aqsa Flood" is, right?) until Israel is destroyed.

That's not to say that I agree with the way Israel has gone about this war. I was referring specifically to a ceasefire. Do the sources from your article say that Hamas surrenders in that proposed agreement? Or do they go on to slaughter and kidnap more civilians? Could that not be why Israel agreed to humanitarian pauses instead of a ceasefire?

(Also, you accuse me of lying and then immediately misquote me as saying "all sides" instead of "multiple sides" but whatever.)

It is disgusting to me though that you refer to it as "empty threats". When Hamas indiscriminately slaughters civilians at a music festival, is that empty to you? Does a pile of women with their hands tied behind their backs, no pants, and a bullethole in the head matter to you? When they go kibbutz to kibbutz slaughtering civilians, is that not a genocide to you? Or does it not count because they're Jewish?

5 hours where hamas doesnt bomb people hardly constitute “humanitarian pauses”, frankly. but i’ll take ur word for hamas saying that, memri tv’s translations have generally been accurate so i assume it would be accurate there. that said, long before october 27, several israeli officials and soldiers have blatantly and explicitly said that they plan to entirely erase gaza and take over gaza. not to mention israel’s history of uplifting hamas with the goal of dividing and conquering & making it hard for palestine to form a state.

the source said that hamas offered to return dozens of hostages for several days of ceasefire. you could click the link, you know. it says israel rejected it because they dont want a ceasefire for several days. can you explain how its meant to somehow help the hostages to constantly bomb the same little strip the hostages are in indiscriminately? clearly israel doesn’t even care for the hostages because they’ve taken actions that wouldnt somehow spare them.

i dont care what you find disgusting. hamas has existed for decades and only on one event have they actually managed to make significant damage, and even then it did not manage to do more damage than israel has been doing for decades. them saying “we’ll do it again and again” and israel actively, actually, doing the war crimes theyre saying theyll commit (whereas hamas did not in fact manage to do october 7 again and again) is an empty threat, at least comparatively. you trying to turn this around on me while justifying the mass-killing of palestinian children, palestinian civilians, even palestinians in the west bank with nothing to do with hamas is a joke.

if it’s a genocide for hamas to have committed attacks on one day, then how the fuck is it not genocide for israel’s govt to explicitly say they want to commit a genocide and to have a 75 year history of mass-killing and oppressing palestinians? i didnt once justify hamas’ attacks on october 7th, but you’ve happily justified every attack by israel prior to that and every attack by israel (ie the attack on october 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 etc all the way until november 22) since that day.