Sal Marx

Artist and #AnkylosingSpondylitis #crohns #neurodivergent Advocate. they/them
wacky cool never ordinary

[Nancy Ko @nancykorifera]

As a polyglot proficient in 10+ languages — including the difficult yet critical dialect of "admin talk" — I thought it might be helpful for me to translate the email that our university president Minouche Shafik just sent to Columbia affiliates.

Here goes:

[Alon Mizrahi @alon_mizrahi]

So why is Israel doing this? Is there anything in it for Israel but virtually global hate? Because it doesn't seems like there is.

A couple days ago I said I was going to provide an explanation why Israel has chosen to conduct itself like it has. Here it is. It's very provocative, and it's going to mess with your mind quite a bit.

I will also remind you that I am Jewish and I have the perfect right to my own opinion on Jewish affairs.
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Before I go on, and as I know many people are going to read this, make sure that you follow me. What I have to say doesn't end here. Stay connected.
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Throughout these months, I am sure you have asked yourselves why Israel is acting as if its design is to maximize the amount of hate it stands to receive from a global community of shocked and terrified people.

There have been so many occasions for this, but I'll bet last week, when IDF soldiers executed 3 Palestinian men in a hospital, it stood out to you as outrageously brazen.

That's because the IDF took special care to get it televised. They didn't confiscate cameras or servers, and didn't hack or destroyed files. It's almost as if they were acting for the cameras.

A world wide audiences got the message, and everyone was talking about Fauda, the TV series meant to portray the humane face of Israel's apartheid.

How peculiar, right? And wait, what about all those videos by soldiers of themselves joyfully blowing up stuff? And what about the naked men filmed in their humiliated hundreds?

Let me reminds you, for contrast, that in two years of Russia's was in Ukraine, not once have you seen Russian soldiers celebrating the destruction of civilian infrastructure. And you've never seen naked and humiliated Ukrainian soldiers loaded on trucks, or sitting on the ground, eyes covered.

There may have been things like that happening. We don't know. But if scenes like these actually occurred, the Russian military took special care to conceal them from us. The IDF did not. Why?
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Keep this question in mind, and let's make it ever more interesting. Let's ask: what is the justification, the reason, or cause for the existence of organizations such as AIPAC and ADL? I mean, seriously. Are American Jews in so much danger, and face so much persecution in the US, that perpetual billion-dollar operations are required to guard them from harm? Are Jews disproportionally jailed in the US? Designated victims of violent crime? Harassed by the authorities? Cannot be out on the street? Is American society that laser-focused on hating Jews? Aren't there other American communities who are more exposed to danger, harassment, poverty and crime? I mean, seriously?

And say an organization like AIPAC does have some nostalgic reason for being, what is doing pushing for wars? More specifically and currently: why are Jewish organizations in the US, alongside Israel, doing all they possibly can to place Jews at the epicenter of a possible world war?

Why are organizations that are supposed to keep Jews safe making Jewish affairs the formal declared reason for a clash and a war the could destroy civilization as we know it? Isn't it the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing? Say like a military that constantly broadcasts its own astonishing cruelty, and destroys its own image?
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We are getting closer. But one more hurdle needs to be removed for us to see the answer. Stay sharp.
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Two very obvious opposites in seeing the world: paranoia and basic trust. This is true for people, but it is just as valid for political societies. Some societies are more paranoid and some are more relaxed, but no society on earth is more paranoid than the super-mega-ultra Jewish part of the Jewish people, or wider society. There is no other group on earth the world is so contently on its feet defending.

No other society, too, decided to use trauma as the center of its identity. I know many of you, especially Americans, have come to see this as just Jewish. But it is not so (and maybe you need a Mizrahi Jew to tell you this). It is one strand of Jewish perception that derives its sense of identity from pogroms and the Holocaust. Israel and IPAC act like this is natural and the only way to be Jewish. That's nonsense.

Pogroms and the Holocaust were not all the experience of all the Jews. Many Jewish communities knew long percids of safety and prosperity. Not all Jews were victims all the time, and Jews are definitely not the only victims humanity has even known.
Personally I always found it more than a little offsetting to hear American Jews refer to their misery and victimhood constantly, in a country where millions of natives, organized in hundreds and thousands of flourishing communities, were wiped of the face of the planet. A country and culture that operated industrial scale slavery of black people for hundreds and hundreds of years, and fought not to recognize them as equal humans for centuries more.

I would never do that.

A country that has so much terrible, dehumanizing poverty and homelessness, so much pain. How come the most successful, heavily represented in all things power and money minority in this society is also its greatest victim?

I know this is the norm and this is the description of reality I should conform to, but no. It doesn't make sense.
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You can choose trauma and paranoia or trust and basic optimism as your guide in life. But the biggest Jewish organization in our lifetime chose one clear path: that of trauma, suspicion and what can be called Armageddonism. Always alert. Always someone out there to get you. Everybody hates us.

And as we're almost at the end of it, I will say the final part a little more directly. In choosing trauma and paranoia, both Israel and AIPAC found and unexpected source of false power.

Because existential fear can bring a society of people together, but it's not going to be a society many people would want to live in.

So you keep people afraid all the time, and you make sure they are feeling, or actually being, hated all the time. This is how you maintain your power over them.

And as Jewish trauma has become such a huge international political thing (again: I wouldn't do that), the incentive was always there to keep this mentality alive. To organize around it. To make sure it remains the formal doctrine of Jewish institutions. Such as AIPAC and Israel.
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So Israel and American Jewish organizations took it upon themselves to keep Jews afraid and isolated. This strategy of intentional paranoia has been working for a while, but it gradually eroded. It especially eroded in the US, as younger Jews became increasingly aware that the stories they've been told are lies, and that no one really cares about their ethnicity.

That erosion in the power of instilled exceptionalism, isolationism and existential fear poses a very serious problem for Jewish organizations built around paranoia. The Palestinians and Arabs were a wonderful solutions for this problem for a while: by keeping Palestinians oppressed and thus hostile, the old myth of antisemitism as a huge international force could be kept on life support.

But this, too, began to fade, as younger American Jews started getting more familiar with Palestinian perspectives.
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And then October 7th hit. And the right wing, nationalistic, paranoid section of the Jewish political spectrum, realized it could be translated into political gold.

This could be used to revive the old sentiments. The ghetto, the pogroms, the trains to the east. All of it. This is why Nazis were invoked so early on. Jews were once again the persecuted minority AIPAC and Netanyahu always told you they were. How wonderful for them.

But October 7th was not enough, because people would immediately put it in the context of the occupation. They would ask the eternal human question: why did this happen? What happened before?

If you're Netanyahu or AIPAC, putting Jews in the context of normal human behavior is the last thing you want. What you want is boiling rage and fear to be extensively covered in all the media and all the briefings.

Need I say I would not do that, either?
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And this is where my final point arrives. It doesn't seem like Israel is trying to be hated globally. It is actually what it's doing. It is intentionally airing its cruelty and barbarity so that it will remain closed up to the world, thus guaranteeing the continued rule of the paranoia camp.

They are doing it on purpose, for cynical political gains, out of a twisted reading of history and of human nature. Palestinians are just crash test dummies in this scenario. They count for nothing. Their deaths are used to get people angry and Israel hated, so it becomes even more paranoid.
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For the same reason, AIPAC is putting the Jewish issue at the epicenter of the lead up to WW3. They cannot not know that Jews will be called as responsible, or at least a major factor in it.

Can you imagine millions of dead Americans, destroyed cities, populations stressed into panic and despair - all because of a war Jewish organizations pushed for? How does anyone who purports to represent Jews and care for them not recoil from this scenario? Do these people have any idea at all of what they're doing?

And I am sorry for sounding this impolite an not nice: we are on the eve of a potential world war. As a Jew I am terrified.

The last thing I want is to be blames for a world war. But the Jewish paranoia camp seems to relish the opportunity. Maybe they are sure this is how the messiah comes. I have my reservations.
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Finally, Jewish organization centered around trauma found a very welcoming and happy to help friend in American imperialists. It is so wonderful when you can market middle east invasions as battling antisemitism. Who could argue with you? In the name of defending Israel, the US can do whatever it wants. It has the perfect moral cover. It will support an actual genocide. It will go completely insane.

What they - both AIPAC and US establishments - are not including in their calculations is that a big war in the middle east can have very devastating results for both the US and Israel. In their quest for creating a Jewish psyche and a world beneficial to their paranoid vision (which America shares as a colonial power), that don't take into account that reality is a whole different business from propaganda.
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But this is why they do it, and televise and broadcast it. So that we are hated, isolated, fearful and controlled by Bibi and AIPAC forever. There's nothing that reassures those people as hate for Israel.
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Don't fight people who thrive on hate with hate. Fight them with clarity and resolve.

[Laura Miers @LauraMiers]

XBB.1.16

India: “Eyes are blood red, gooey, & glued shut. High fever, muscle aches, & non-purulent diarrhea.”

Thailand: “I had a severe sore throat & I was coughing up blood all night, until I was finally hospitalized with XBB.1.16.”

U.S.: “XBB.1.16 causes allergy symptoms.”

[@dawnmgibson.bsky.social @spooniechat.bsky.social @DawnMGibson]

A2: Unfortunately, Black Women aren't well known in the SpA space. It gets pretty lonely out there. https://t.co/AvaE71Nb47
#CreakyChats

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@vvictorman_uel hi! me!

[Talila A. Lewis, Esq. | talilalewis.bsky.social @talilalewis]

In this interview I trace a line from plantations, residential “schools”, poorhouses & zoos+circuses to modern forms of incarceration/institutionalization.

I name incarceration as eugenics & remind that incarceration is disabling by design.

https://t.co/IrSoq5mCmn

ht @truthout

[✯Vixen Valentino✯ @vixenvalentino]

@emmaogreen “The Case For Washing Hands Forever” by Emma Green

“Ignaz Semmelweis believes people should clean their hands before delivering babies, and that women shouldn’t die of preventable childbed fever.

What a fucking freak that guy was.”

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@CreakyJoints #CreakyChats this is Sisyphus 🐈❤️‍🔥

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@CreakyJoints Hi to everyone from snowy Bainbridge Island in the PNW 💙

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@BeingCharisBlog yes

[Nicole Lee Schroeder, PhD @Nicole_Lee_Sch]

I want academics to think about their complicity in access labor issues. Are you building access? For whom? Are you relying on someone to ask for access? Are you framing it as a favor? Are you unknowingly making someone feel shame/guilt? 10/10 #AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter

[Charis Hill | they/them | 🇵🇸 😷 @BeingCharisBlog]

It's literally still a pandemic

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@BeingCharisBlog Me by the 1975

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@J74wb I saw this too 98110

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@CreakyJoints A6:this pal Sisyphus!! And ice packs everyday #CreakyChats

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

A4. As a non-binary person, I often am misgendered and dead-named. Since I pass as cisgender, I often hide these identities to avoid conflict. It's so rare to find gender-affirming chronic illness specialists.

All doctors should ask for your preferred name and respect that.

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@CreakyJoints
A2) In all the messiness of being chronically sick and gender non-conforming, I've found immense power in knowing my illnesses & gender do not fit into a neat little box.

With that knowledge comes solidarity across communities.
#CreakyChats

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

@CreakyJoints so thankful for this collaboration! Big shoutout back to all the incredible patient advocates who shared their voices

[Sal Marx @salmarx11]

A1: The line is blurred between my sick identity and my gender identity. As an AFAB kid seeking a chronic pain diagnosis, I faced stigma and delay in dx -- AS was considered ONLY a 'Man's Disease.'

[CreakyJoints.org @CreakyJoints]

Q1: What does Pride mean to you in relationship to your identity or chronic condition? #CreakyChats