Adela Amiga

strong opinions loosely held.

[Adela Amiga @aamigab]

Estamos de pasada en esta tierra y a veces se nos olvida.

[Adela Amiga @aamigab]

No se puede vivir con este tráfico

[Joe Roberts @Joe_Roberts01]

When this is all over, how do we go back to living with all these people who have made their antisemitism abundantly clear?

It’s not normal. None of this is normal.

[Dalia Grinberg @DaliaGrinberg_]

Orgullosamente sionista. Para mí, nunca será un insulto.

Sionismo: movimiento político que defiende un Estado para el pueblo judío en la tierra de Israel.

[Adela Amiga @aamigab]

This 💔💔💔

[Michael Dickson @michaeldickson]

Released Israeli hostages: the Hamas vehicle taking us out of captivity was barraged with stones thrown by Gazans, we thought we might be being driven out to be executed.

[ד״ר עינת וילף Dr. Einat Wilf @EinatWilf]

In a better world, on October 8, the UN Secretary General, the head of the International Red Cross and other luminaries would have stationed themselves on the Egyptian border with Gaza demanding the full, immediate and unconditional release of all the kidnapped hostages, insisting that Israel owes absolutely nothing to Hamas for the release of children, mothers, the elderly, and civilians because there is no world in which such acts are OK. Israel is forced to negotiate with the twisted leaders of Hamas for our children only because so many people in official and non official positions of power failed to do their job and normalized the idea that kidnapping children from their beds and keeping them as bargaining chips is somehow a legitimate act that leads to negotiations rather than to stringent condemnation and global ostracism.

[Heidi Bachram @HeidiBachram]

The Hamas hostages being released are children and mothers kidnapped during their brutal massacre of civilians.

The prisoners Israel is swapping them for are those who have tried to kill.

Innocents for the guilty.

That’s all you need to know about this conflict.

[Aviva Klompas @AvivaKlompas]

The Palestinians who will be released in the hostage deal are terrorists who were tried and convicted in court.

The Israelis who will be freed are civilians who were ripped from their homes by Hamas terrorists.

Don’t for a second believe this is an even swap.

[Adela Amiga @aamigab]

Se me rompe el corazón por la niñez de este mundo. Hoy vi a unas niñas Israelíes de no más de 8 años en la alberca. ¿Quieren saber a qué jugaban? Estaba cada una actuando cómo se defendería si la intentaban secuestrar como a los niños que se llevaron a Gaza.

[Yoni Leviatan @songsofyoni]

It’s been six weeks since we woke up on October 7 and never went back to sleep. That’s what the world doesn’t get.

For six weeks straight, the only thing playing on Israel’s main television channels has been stories about the missing and eulogies of the dead interspersed with news about the IDF fumigating Gaza. All we have thought about every waking hour is getting our people back, avenging those we can’t and ensuring a Hamas-free Middle East forever.

Since October 7 this country has been on a war footing 24/7 with a level of determination the world has never seen. It’s the same determination that explains why thousands of years later we’re still here after everyone else’s ancestors joined the rollcall of civilizations with a beginning and an end.

We’re still writing our history in @Israel because it keeps getting stronger. Last time this happened, we were dependent on the goodwill of strangers and nations. Most of us learned for good that this is folly.

Now we have our own tanks, our own fighter jets, our own air defenses and our own fighters to ensure #NeverAgain is enforced with an iron fist, figuratively and literally.

While some take to the streets to call for our elimination, we take food to our soldiers who are eliminating our enemies.

While some harass our youth on college campuses, we flex our institutional muscles and get them removed from our sights.

While some take down posters of our kidnapped children in a pathetic display of self-loathing, we get them fired from their jobs and put the faces of our hostages on billboards.

That is what the world doesn’t get – Israel is a nation of lions fighting for its cubs. None of your manufactured venom borne of deep-seated antisemitism comes close to matching our fire and fury in this moment.

The difference between us and them is that we don’t channel our fury into raping and torturing young girls before we burn their families alive. We know how to channel our fury to ensure the security of our people.

But it’s important to emphasize – we have so much fury, we truly don’t give the smallest of shits about anyone else's.

We want our people back. We want Hamas gone. We want Gaza denazified.

Those are the conditions for a ceasefire. There are no other terms. If you want a ceasefire – that’s what you should work for.

[Adela Amiga @aamigab]

@EllaTravelsLove People are fucking crazy. It feels like we’re living in the upside down

[Yoni Leviatan @songsofyoni]

Two predictions about this war that have not played out so far:

1. Everyone said a ground op into Gaza would greatly increase the casualties on both sides, but the opposite has happened – far less innocent Gazans have died from ground forces in the last few days than they did when the air force was busy preparing the battlefield.

Most of the people dying now are Hamas.

Just as important, far less @IDF soldiers have died than anyone expected, notwithstanding the tragic few we’ve already lost. They've also been able to safely evacuate 200,000 more Gazans from the northern strip – Gazans that Hamas was shooting at in order to get them to stay and die as human shields.

The slow and steady strategy seems to be working well for everyone (except Hamas).

Again, this is only true at this point, but the larger point is Americans forgot that Gaza isn’t Fallujah while Europeans forgot that Israelis aren’t blithering cowards.

All of which goes to show why @Israel should continue to ignore the naysayers and stick to the business of eradicating Hamas, haters be damned.

2. Everyone said Israel would ruin its ties with the Arab world, but not a single friendly Arab country has chosen to do so.

In fact, Saudi Arabia said it intends to continue pursuing relations with Israel. It also called for the hostages to be released at the Arab League/OIC summit this weekend.

Additionally, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco, Mauritania, Djibouti and Saudi Arabia all voted against a proposal that wanted to: cut ties, disrupt oil supplies to Israel and its allies, prevent the transfer of US equipment to Israel from bases in Arab countries, prevent flights to and from Israel using Arab countries’ air space, and form a joint mission to put pressure on Western nations for a ceasefire.

Numerous Arab countries rejected all of that.

Just as we should reject all of the NGOs, government quacks, armchair quarterbacks and keyboard commandos who don’t know the first thing about how to survive in the Middle East.

[Dumisani Washington @DumisaniTemsgen]

Imagine a terrorist holding your child hostage, and everyone attacking you for trying to get your child back.

[ד״ר עינת וילף Dr. Einat Wilf @EinatWilf]

A history of ceasefires
Or “Why Jews aren’t allowed to win?”
(Part 1, part 2 in the first comment)

The recent calls for a cease fire as soon as Israel has started to make operational gains in Gaza has a century long history. The general pattern is as follows: when Jewish or Israeli forces are losing to Arab violence, the response by outside powers is to cave into Arab demands, but when Jewish forces or Israel are winning, the response is to move as quickly as possible to a ceasefire followed by actions that seek to undo whatever military or territorial gains Israel has made.

The two major waves of wanton Arab violence and massacres against the Jews of the Yishuv (the pre state years) took place in in 1929 and 1936-39 (in the context of the Arab Revolt). The response by Britain was to betray the mandate with which it was entrusted by the League of Nations to help the Jewish people “reconstitute their national home in the country”. The mandate was based on the recognition “given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” (before the name “Palestine” was hijacked by the Arabs, it was clearly understood by the international community and Jews themselves to refer to the geographical area that was home to the historical land of Israel, which is why saying “recognition given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” made perfect sense in the early 20th century).

Under the terms of the Mandate Britain was entrusted with “facilitating Jewish immigration”, but when Arab massacres and violence in 1929 and 1936-39 demanded that Jewish immigration cease (so no, Rashida Tlaib, your ancestors did not provide a “safe haven” to Jews, they actually did everything, unfortunately very effectively, to ensure Jews did not have their safe haven), Britain caved in and issued two key white papers in 1930 and 1939 that backtracked the terms of the Mandate and heavily restricted Jewish immigration at the most critical moment in Jewish history. (It is not sufficiently appreciated the extent to which Arab violence and British betrayal sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jews to genocide in Europe).

In March 1948, following months of Arab violence triggered by the November 1947 UNGA partition proposal of the land into Jewish and Arab states) the forces of the Yishuv were losing to Arab violence. It is at this moment that rather than stand by the Jews, the US and Britain considered reversing their support for Jewish statehood and independence and began to plan a “trusteeship” to replace the mandate. Understanding what was at stake, in April 1948 the Yishuv went on the offensive and secured the emerging Jewish state against the Arab onslaught. (BTW, if the Israeli Palestinian conflict were ever just that, a conflict between the Jews and Arabs of the land, that conflict was over in April 1948).

But this was unacceptable to the Arabs, and so, when the British left in May 1948, multiple Arab armies and forces invaded from all directions in an effort to undo the newly independent Jewish state. After months of fighting Israel emerged standing (with Jordan annexing the territory known since as the West Bank and Egypt militarily controlling the part that became known as the Gaza Strip). Still, none of Israel’s neighbors were willing to make peace with it and agree on the final borders. So the outside powers facilitated the negotiations of cease-fire/armistice agreements, the message being - the war against the Jewish state is not over, merely paused.

(Part 2 in the first comment)

[Todd Richman @toddrichman]

Reminder that @israel left Gaza almost 20 years ago (by the way from 1948-1967 Egypt controlled it). Reminder that Gaza was left with an amazing intact agriculture system that was destroyed by Gazans. Reminder that instead of building power plants, water filtration systems, tourist industry, and much more, it was spent on tunnels, weapons, hate and making the Hamas leadership rich. Reminder that Gaza has a border with Egypt and that hundreds of Palestinians left this “open air prison” to travel around the world, visit overseas relatives, seek medical care. Reminder that many Israelies were part of building industrial parks for both Israelies and Palestinians from Gaza to work together create an atmosphere of peace and hope. Reminder that on October 6th, 20,000-30,000 Gazans were entering Israel each day to work support their families and that number was about to be increased.
Reminder that on October 7th Hamas attacked Israel and violated a current ceasefire (7th, 8th or 9th time they have done this by the way). Reminder that Hamas murdered 1,400 innocent people. Reminder that they raped, tortured, beheaded, and burned people alive. Reminder that over 200 Israelis have been kidnapped and are held hostage. Reminder that the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. You want a ceasefire? Bring the hostages home, demand that Hamas should surrender, and finally come to the conclusion that @israel is not going anywhere.

[Adela Amiga @aamigab]

We are living in the upside down. Iran just became chair of a human rights council at the UN.

[ד״ר עינת וילף Dr. Einat Wilf @EinatWilf]

Why are there even places called “refugee camps” in Gaza? And why are two thirds of the people living in Gaza, who were born there and lived there their entire lives, called “refugees” from a war that ended more than seven decades ago? The answers to these question unlock the core of the conflict. Here they are (Part 1; Part 2 in the first comment):

1.The 20th century has been marked by a transition from empires to states. We begin the 20th century when much of the world is divided between empires. We end it when much of the world is divided between states. When lucky, those states were based on the self determination of a people who share a common history, language, ethnicity, background religion and connection to a territory. (Zionism emerged in this context based on the idea of self determination for the Jewish people in the only territory to which they were ever connected as a people). When unlucky those new states were artificially created by receding empires drawing boundaries, forcing different peoples to share one state, leading almost always to civil war, dictatorship, or both. This transition has been bloody. It involved two world wars and numerous regional and civil wars. In the bloody process of empires receding and new states emerging to replace them, tens of millions of people were displaced, fleeing across newly created borders, typically to new countries with an ethnic makeup similar to their own. This was true of Hindus and Muslim, Ukrainians, Poles and Germans, Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks and Arabs and Jews. This was not unique.

2.What was unique is that one group only of refugees from that time and those wars were allowed to maintain themselves as endless refugees in anticipation of one day winning a war they had lost. Those were the Arab refugees from the war of 1948, later to be known as Palestinians. All other refugee groups, except the Palestinians, were presented with a clear message: “it’s tough, it’s tragic, move on”. There was a clear understanding that in the most fundamental sense there is no going back - not in place and not in time (thus, there was no such thing as “a right of return”). To seek to go back would mean endless war. And so the message was forward looking and future facing. Tens of millions of refugees and displaced persons, among them millions of Jews, would build new lives in the new countries to which they fled.

3.Except Palestinians. The war that the Arabs of the land and the surrounding countries waged to prevent a Jewish state from emerging and gaining independence failed to achieve its goals. Despite the violent onslaught of 1947-49, Israel emerged as a sovereign state. But the Arabs of the land, sustained by broader Arab support, refused to accept this outcome. They proceeded to undo it through a variety of means, including repeated wars, economic boycotts, international condemnations and a complete refusal of the refugees themselves to be settled, as it would effectively mean accepting that the war was over.

https://t.co/NY8E4ecoBH that end of keeping the war of 1948 alive until its goal of undoing the Jewish state could be achieved, a temporary agency established to resettle the refugees - UNRWA (initially called REWA, but the Arabs insisted on the letters UN so that it would appear to enjoy international legitimacy) - was hijacked by the Arab refugees. As a result of this hijacking UNRWA effectively became a Palestinian entity devoted singularly to sustaining and stoking the idea that uniquely among the world’s refugees, Palestinians don’t need to move on and can keep insisting on “return”, both in space and in time, to a time when there was no Israel. UNRWA thus became the mechanism by which the Jewish people alone were denied the right to to consider their hard won self-determination and sovereign statehood as a done deal.

(Part 2 continues in the first comment:)

[Jordyn @JordynTilchen]

To those who wrongfully accuse Israel of genocide:

Have you considered that those allegations are lobbed at Israel because it’s the *ultimate* crime against humanity, and that by accusing Israel of doing the absolute worst thing one group can do to another, every other crime that is committed *against* Israel — including and especially crimes committed by *literal* terrorists — can be justified?

Have you considered that you fell for it, and that a terror organization has you in the palm of their hand? Have you considered that you wanted to believe the worst in Israel and the Jewish people because you’ve been conditioned to be antisemitic for 4,000 years?

You’re idiots. All of you.

[Adela Amiga @aamigab]

While the protesters in the US Senate claim to be “progressive” and “anti-war”, their “blood-stained” hands are nothing but a call for violence against Israelis and Jews.

[Adela Amiga @aamigab]

I just want to sit in the corner and cry. 💔

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

When it becomes politically correct to call for the death of Jews, it becomes politically correct to kill them too.