@BriannaWu The example is inappropriate because civil marriage is an option. It makes little sense to go through the Jewish rabbinate for an interfaith marriage.
For the most part, Israel is a secular society.
About to brief Conservative and Labor members of Parliament on UNRWA. Will repeat the message: reverse the equation. Support Palestinians who want to end the century long war against the Jewish state, not - as has been the case for 75 years - those who continue to pursue it.
I know this was funny, but it also unintentionally provides good insight as to everything that has happened since 10/7. The intentional conflation between things reasonable people support (peaceful protest) and criminal things is meant to portray all of those things as in the same category. It's meant to normalize behavior people would otherwise view as clearly wrong. El-Kurd was just a little too obvious about it here, but this reframing of despicable behavior and views as something that fits with things people otherwise support and that is morally right has been central to the anti-Israel efforts since 10/7.
You see there are plenty of people, like El-Kurd, who hate Israel and are legitimate Hamas supporters. Nothing that happened on 10/7 bothers them at all. They don't share the values most Americans are used to. But because they want to influence those Americans they realize they have to reframe their views. They can't openly admit they support the mass rape and slaughter of random Jews so instead they simply deny it happened or say Israel must be responsible. They can't openly admit they support an anti-American hateful terrorist group like Hamas so instead they pretend like Hamas isn't part of the equation and only Israel's response matters. Most importantly, they can't openly say they don't believe Jews have a right to self-defense so instead they have to frame that defense as something else (thus "genocide"). Almost every one of these people celebrated on 10/7 and was screaming about the Israeli response by 10/8. At least half a dozen real genocides are going on right now around the world and they either don't care about them or, in many cases, support them. This isn't about innocent people dying for them, it's about how to use those deaths against people they hate. And it's up to other decent people to recognize what they are doing and dismiss their attempts to reframe support for terrorism and bigotry as just a deep concern for civilian deaths.
“October 7th is the realization of the Palestinian vision of return. It was never innocent. It always had the element of violent, brutal triumphalism over the Jewish state. Aid should go only to those who declare no intention of ‘freeing Palestine from the river to the sea.’”
WATCH | Dr. Einat Wilf's powerful UNRWA testimony and transcript — February 27, 2024
https://t.co/6kzkpw85pR
“We need to understand that UNRWA is, first and foremost, a Palestinian organization. UNRWA started with the best of intentions to settle Arab refugees from the war, was hijacked by the Arab refugees themselves to become a purely Arab Palestinian organization, for the singular cause of ensuring that the Jewish state knows not a day of peace until it is undone.
UNRWA is a classic case of you get what you pay for.
So we need to make sure that we pay for something else.
For 75 years, money, legitimacy, support, services, aid, were given – were funneled – to the perpetuation of the myth that Palestinians are still – uniquely, from all the tens of millions of refugees throughout the 20th century – refugees from a war that we think ended 75 years ago. But they don’t think it ends until they win it to their cause of no Jewish state.
So all the Western legitimacy, the global legitimacy, the funding, the aid, the services were funneled to the perpetuation of the myth of the refugee status and to the belief and the fictional idea of a right of return.
And lest we think that return is an innocent idea of just feelings of nostalgia to a home that belonged to a great-grandparent in today’s Israel, October 7th is return.
October 7th is the realization of the Palestinian vision of return. It was never an innocent idea. It always had the element of violent, brutal triumphalism over the Jewish state. All the money supported that for 75 years.
So what we need to ask right now is not who will replace UNRWA – that doesn’t matter – but what? What will replace UNRWA?
And what needs to replace UNRWA is any mechanism that only funnels legitimacy, support, money and aid to those who are taken off of UNRWA’s rosters; those who are no longer registered as refugees; those who sign and make it clear that they understand that they’re not refugees and that they posses no such right of return. Only then can something be built.
So this is what we need to say: It doesn’t matter who replaces UNRWA – but what replaces UNRWA? Reverse the equation. Legitimacy, money, aid, services will flow only to individuals who have been stricken off UNRWA’s rosters, if it still exists, and who themselves testify that they understand that they’re not refugees, that they do not possess the right of return, and they have no intention of liberating Palestine from the river to the sea.
And I want to end with one thought: October 7th should put an end to the notion of “the poor Palestinians” – the ones who constantly need aid, aid, money, support. The Palestinians are a highly capable people. October 7th required years of planning, massive investment in infrastructure, strategy, discipline, vision – a perverse vision – but vision. The Palestinians are not an incapable people. They are a people with terrible priorities.
For a century they decided to devote all their substantial capabilities not to building something for themselves, but in order to destroy the Jewish state. And as long as this is their ideology, anyone who gives them any kind of funding, aid and legitimacy is guaranteed that this will be funneled to the destruction of the Jewish state and to continued war. And if people really want peace, and really want to abide by the principles and the vision of the United Nations, reverse the equations: Support those who want to put the war behind us, not the ones who want to keep fighting that war.” — @EinatWilf
An hourlong documentary from @Uvda_tweet about 4-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, the youngest US citizen to be kidnapped by Hamas and her new life with her aunt and uncle after she was released. Her parents were murdered on Oct. 7.
Thank you to @SbironMa for the English subtitles.
An hourlong documentary from @Uvda_tweet about 4-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, the youngest US citizen to be kidnapped by Hamas and her new life with her aunt and uncle after she was released. Her parents were murdered on Oct. 7.
Thank you to @SbironMa for the English subtitles.
If you rely on mainstream press for coverage of the Gaza war, you will inevitably conclude there is no war. Just Israel bombing random people.
Hamas now says that 6K of their fighters have been killed. Israel estimates 12K. US intelligence is somewhere between 8-12K. But any news article you read will cite Hamas estimates of Palestinian casualties without mentioning militants being killed, much less how Hamas has contributed to those deaths. They also rarely mention rockets fired, the number of Israeli soldiers killed, or the number of Israelis displaced in Israel since October. All of these omissions are meant to portray this as a one-sided war and imply that Hamas, which chose to start this war and spent years building the infrastructure that made sure they could use civilians as human shields, basically doesn’t exist.
“Westplaining is when Western journalists and diplomats explain what Palestinians ‘really mean,’ despite clear statements.”
@EinatWilf describes the phenomenon on @HaimOmri's segment for @kann_news ⬇️
.@HaimOmri on Israelis and Westerners who only hear what they want to hear instead of what Palestinians are actually saying. He calls it “Westsplaining”…I’d say it’s old-fashioned Orientalism.
Subtitles by @SbironMa
@BriannaWu War is horrible, but this article reads like another tear-jerking propaganda piece against Israel. No accountability for Hamas, not even a mention, but OP freely speculates regarding Israeli snipers.
Palestinians deserve better.