How zionists talk about the murder of 4, 8 and 10 years old children

from naoki urasawa’s pluto

while this was a commentary on the american forces in iraq, this feels very relevant still. the use of an elusive mostly imaginary target gives them an excuse to exact violence upon civilian life

award-winning palestinian children's illustrator baraa awoor writes:

"what use is it to be an illustrator of children's books when the world has sentenced the children of your country to the death penalty, to vanish, to genocide?"

some of baraa's illustrations:

this is an illustration for youssef, whose mother is remembered running desperately into the hospital asking if anyone had seen a "small white boy with beautiful curly hair, his name is youssef," a description which was remembered by millions when she finally identified his body:

this illustration is for young omar, who was hugging his little brother and teaching him how to repeat the shahada after him (a prayer spoken by muslims before their death) as he lay on his hospital bed:

"we want a new year that doesn't kill us or our children, we want it a year without blood, without screaming, without pain, we want a new attempt to get our lives back, or something that resembled our life, even if life is a lie we still cling to it, return life to us—a new year's card unlike any other year:"

In my opinion, Bill Watterson deserves way more credit as one of the great paleoartists.

He did not need to go this hard, but he did, and he has my everlasting respect for that.

these photos were taken by mohammed salem and klaus thymann (click pic), showing the rise of parkour in gaza’s shati and khan yunis refugee camps. unemployment in the camps is high, and with little to do and limited resources, some have turned to parkour as a means of escape.

as abdullah enshasy, who cofounded gaza parkour team with mohammed aljkhbeer, explains, “i have witnessed war, invasion and killing. when i was a kid and i saw these things, blood and injuries, i didn’t know what it all meant.”

adds aljkhbeer, “there is a big relationship between parkour and barriers that we’re surrounded by in the gaza strip. there’s the blockade, walls are everywhere. …parkour gives us a sense of freedom and allows us to endure these conditions without getting deeply depressed.” 

for a sport that is literally about overcoming obstacles and living beyond imposed physical restraints, parkour has perhaps even greater resonance in the the narrow, politically and militarily confined gaza strip, which is home to a densely boxed in population of 1.7 million palestinians.  

but enshasy notes, “at first people didn’t accept us. they would say, ‘you jump like monkeys and you climb buildings like thieves’.” but as their facebook page explains, parkour is about breaking conventional paths in life and finding your own.

(similar posts)     

"Good morning. All the residents of al-Arish (an Egyptian city in Sinai) woke up today to violent shaking in their homes as if it was an earthquake. This was the result of the Zionist entity bombing Gaza that is about 70 kilometers away from us. Imagine the horror of how it is there."

An excerpt from a comic I made a couple years ago about fishing in video games. Full comic is on my ko-fi for free (or a couple bucks if you’d like). Happy fishing!

the amount of resources and political energy and policing it's taking to suppress criticism of israel, between the students facing cops, the faculty being suppressed by administrations, the administrations facing pressure from their boards of directors, the people being suppressed by their leaders, the politicians ignoring their phones ringing off the hook, egyptian actors being blacklisted for refusing to attend a film festival during a genocide, the football fans being prevented from carrying flags

genuinely is it worth it? isn't it more realistic to just ask israel to end apartheid than to get dictators to force everyone else in the world to normalize with apartheid? like this is just absurdity theatre at this point, asking people to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears and close their hearts just bc israelis want to kill palestinians more than they want equality

like no offense but its ridiculous that we live in a world where saudi arabia has blackpink touring in riyadh but we can't convince israelis to stop dropping white phosphorous on children in the name of ethnoreligious fundamentalism

I’m wondering if you have some kind of resource or advice for responding to people who are being confrontational about Israel/Palestine stuff and trying to argue w/ you about it other than just being knowledgeable about the topic. I’m not totally new to the situation but I’m definitely still learning and I’m really bad at making my case or explaining things to people who are more on Israel’s side. I know the things they’re saying are wrong but I don’t remember the exact details of things I’ve been reading lately and I don’t know how to refute things like “Jews are entitled to a homeland” or “all Jews in Israel will be killed or chased out if Palestine becomes a single state” etc in a way that doesn’t sound like me talking out of my ass.

the absolute best resource in the world for this is https://decolonizepalestine.com which explains things quite clearly and lays out common arguments with sources

this works with people who genuinely want to learn, but there are some people who will never listen because they are racist. there's really no way around this one. like people whose eyes glaze over when you talk about palestinian life and dispossession. it's much more difficult to talk to them.

that said once you grow familiar enough with the talking points and you know the real history and context of the situation it becomes really hilariously predictable—i just saw this video of ben shapiro getting owned by a pre-recorded video he was reacting to and it is truly one of the funniest things i've ever seen

i believe in accessibility so ive been trying to keep the tone of my posts entry-level and relatively civil. i can afford this much because im not palestinian so i have some degree of removal. but if you guys saw the state of my inbox, you would understand why refusing to justify, explain or clarify anything might be more dignified. there are almost ten thousand people dead right now. i feel like a lot of people are just not understanding the weight of this. more children have been killed in gaza in the past three weeks than in all of the world’s conflicts combined in each of the past three years. this is so far beyond crime, so far beyond mass murder, that sometimes i think entertaining questions about it at all is complicity in and of itself. in a normal world, the entire global apparatus, every international body, would be falling over itself to stop this. the prospect of so many civilians—and most significantly children—dead is actually the worst-case scenario. it is what international law was created to prevent. i say children specifically not because adult palestinians are not equally valuable, but because this is a war on children. gaza's population is 50% children. these airstrikes are most lethal on the smallest and most vulnerable bodies. entire buildings are crumbling on kids. they are being murdered in their homes, by their homes.

deliberately. by people with the most advanced military and surveillance technology in the world. by people who know exactly where every single civilian in gaza is. by people who have their phone numbers and send them threatening texts. by people who have drones observing their every movement. by people who are watching them starve, bombing their bakeries, barricading their water. they bring down buildings on children on purpose.

it's a genocide. and still we talk.

While most Palestinians do not want to wipe out the Jews who live there, wouldn't Hamas make that call? Are they not the ones in charge? They seem to really like killing Jews and I don't think they really care what the average Palestinian thinks.

hamas 2017 charter:

israeli government, politicians and military:

(you can click thru this thread to see everyone's individual positions within the israeli government—a refreshing array of parties)

now i don't think it takes a genius but i would say the group that openly states it wants to wipe out another group, has murdered 3000 children in two weeks, and has been occupying and systemically brutalizing the other group for 75 years doesn't really have the moral high ground on who "really likes killing" no?

For anyone looking to educate themselves, the second teach-in, this time on Gaza's history, will be on the Jadaliyya youtube channel at noon on Friday.

Beshara Doumani is the currently serving president of Birzeit University and author of Rediscovering Palestine. Ilana Feldman is the author of Governing Gaza and Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics.

what is there to say anymore when the occupier bombs a hospital and kills a thousand people, mostly children, who were already under seige for eleven days and you know nobody is going to stop them. now a thousand people are dead, hospitals are out of power, there is no food or water, and none of us can do anything. egyptian truck drivers are screaming at the border because they won't let them in with aid and keep sending them back. what is there to say. what is there to say. what is there to say. what is there to say.

Salma Ibrahim, 37, left al-Nasser street in Gaza City with seven members of her family on Saturday. “We started to leave as all our neighbors left fearing death and destruction as the Israeli army will target underground Gaza to destroy Hamas tunnels. We don't know what is going to happen or where to go,” she said. She was exhausted as she trudged south like thousands of others in a scene reminiscent of notorious photographs of the Nakba or the Catastrophe when an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were forced to depart their homeland in Israel in 1948. “It remains a deeply traumatic event in their collective memory and continues to shape their struggle for justice and for their right to return to their homes,” says the United Nations. A massive crowd of exhausted people was striving to move swiftly; some clutched a pillow, others carried bags and bottles of water. A number of women were shouldering their children. "It is like the 1948 Nakba,” Ibrahim said. “We are afraid they will ask us to leave south Gaza and go on to Egypt at a later stage.” Many fear even the tiny strip of land that many have described as an open air prison camp will soon be lost altogether to the Palestinian people.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the 45 families in Gaza that are just… gone.

That news story has truly been haunting me all day.