I find myself in a quandry. I have come to fully believe that Israeli society has crossed a point of no return. I don't know the extent to which Israel is capable of destabilizing the world. I know that as a society, we are morally bankrupt. No solution is to be found in optimistic dreams about coexistence. "Peace" is meaningless im genocide. Israeli outrage at Israel's genocide is a moot point. There is nothing Israelis can "say" that makes it right. Israel does not deserve the same place at the table as the Palestinians. Israel does not deserve a place at any table.
On the other hand, I have no other place. I am Israeli. I do not think Israel can be "disbanded". Israel is here. It is ceaselessly committing crimes against humanity as well as against human decency (not just within a legal framework, that is), debasing its neighbors, its supporters and itself. But it cannot simply be revoked. Israel must suffer the consequences of its own actions. It must be stopped and humbled. In its current supremacist form, it has no legitimacy, but I would not wish for it to disappear. More wrongs do not make a right. Right makes right. I find I must speak out in defense of this right and this good.
But what relevance do my words have? What is the point of being serially outraged? I don't feel myself entitled to be heard, certainly not in serial fashion. The genocide is being carried out in my name. What weight do my words of anger and condemnation carry? My presence confers neither comfort nor effect on the fight against genocide and ethnic cleansing. I must speak, but to what purpose? It certainly isn't redemption. There is no redemption for my society. I am not claiming its potential virtue. Human beings are never devoid of virtue, but that does not really matter now. Israel has wronged so much, taken and despoiled and killed, has paid it forward even in the Palestinian and Lebanese gene pools.
One voice should be heard right now, and that is the voice of Israel's victims. There is not a single attack on Israel that is not grounded in an Israeli attempt to uproot and destroy ar this moment. The only other voice permissible belongs to international tribunals, leaderships and institutions (with the hope that they choose to use this voice).
When I write or speak I do so from the most particular (selfish, perhaps) aspects of my existence. I feel as though I have no other choice. But I have no illusions about changing Israeli minds or even about my own virtue. My heart breaks daily still over the myriad ways in which overt genocide shapes my present and my future. This heartbreak deserves no pity or consideration. My words are gray and deflated, sad as lonely, little wrinkled balloons. That is as it should be.
I have no wish to be a strategic analyst. There are many wiser and more capable than I am. I am outraged all the time, angry and sad and shaken as a basic stance towards life. This isn't an equal and opposite reaction to actions taken by Israel. This quagmire is my life as an Israeli Jew. The desperate wish I do have is to maintain my humanity in the most literal sense, a framework that will allow me to delay my disintegration as a person. Is that enough?
🚨This short film exposes the true story of Israel's creation, entirely through the words of its own founders
For decades, Israel’s lies have been carefully designed to demonize its victims. To ensure that no matter the crimes it commits, the children it slaughters, the world remains incapable of empathy for Palestinians, or at best, treats it with the same apathy that has allowed this to go on for as long as it has
On the 78th anniversary of its creation, it's time the world knew that Israel's past is not different from the brutal present the world is finally seeing
Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's 1948 letter to the New York Times: They saw the creation of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous Muslim and Christian population as a profound injustice and moral catastrophe.
Einstein and the other signatories explicitly compared Begin’s Herut (Freedom Party), born from the Irgun, to Nazis and Fascists, warning that their ideology of racial superiority and violent ethnic nationalism posed a grave danger to the moral and political future of the new state.
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Full text of Einstein and Hannah Arendt's letter to the New York Times:
TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 2, 1948
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created State of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections and to cement political ties with Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world could condone, even by silence, the appearance of such a party in Israel.
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other fascist parties, they have been used to break strikes, and they have encouraged demoralization among labor. In their actions they have been marked by cruelty and contempt for human life.
During the recent past, they have systematically terrorized the Arab population, attacked Jewish settlements, and sabotaged the rescue of displaced Jews from Europe.
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war and had even fought off Arab bands that wanted to use it as their base. On April 9 (1948), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants — 240 men, women, and children — and kept a few of them alive to parade through the streets of Jerusalem.
Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent an apology to King Abdullah of Transjordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of it, widely publicized it, and invited foreign correspondents to view the corpses and the ravaged village.
The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party. Within the Jewish community they have attempted to institute a reign of terror, have beaten up Jews who opposed them, and have, by gangster methods, terrorized the population.
It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world could condone, even by silence, the appearance of such a party in Israel.
The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a warning to the American people concerning a danger to be found in the Freedom Party in Israel, a danger to which the leadership of Menachem Begin gives the greatest emphasis.
(Signed):
Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook, Rabbi Jessurun Cardozo, Irma Lindheim, and 22 other Jewish scholars, writers, and public figures.
(Published December 4, 1948, in The New York Times.)
"Tel Aviv is witnessing rare civil disobedience. A group of Israeli refuseniks are burning their draft papers on the main street. The reason for refusal: 'We will not kill children in Palestine and Lebanon.' The penalty: military prison. But they insist on going to prison rather than enlisting."
Dutch crew member of the Gaza humanitarian flotilla, Jesse, recently detained in Israel’s Ktziot prison, returned home today and said her “heart broke not once, but a hundred times” over what she witnessed inside the Israeli prison.
She recounted one message scrawled in Arabic on a prison cell wall that stayed with her:
“If the world knew what was going on here, the world wouldn’t just cry with tears, but with blood.”
https://t.co/pDHSOYG0ZK
“At least 15 cases of sexual assaults, including rape. Shot with rubber bullets at close range. Tens of people’s bones broken,” organizers of the Global SumudFlotilla posted on the Telegram social media app.
“While the world’s eye is trained on the suffering of our participants, we cannot emphasize enough that this is a mere glimpse of the brutality Israel imposes daily on Palestinian hostages.”
When a family member attempted to cross a barrier to embrace their loved ones, the Ertzaintza (Basque autonomous police) suddenly and shockingly responded with violence.
What should have been a moment of relief and familial comfort was interrupted by even more brutality.
A video shows Israeli settler terrorists beating a Palestinian man with clubs in front of his home and nearly killing him in southern Hebron in the West Bank.
No arrests have been made because this terror is state-backed.
The Swedish torch was invented by Finns and it became known in Europe during the 1600s. Compared to a campfire, it is more compact, and therefore several small heat sources can be distributed over an area
[📹 marusya.shiklina]
⚡️BREAKING:
The New York Times obtained autopsy reports for 14 of the 15 people killed in the March 23 Israeli attack on an ambulance and fire truck in Gaza.
The reports show that most victims—paramedics and rescue workers—were killed by gunshots to the head, chest, or back. Four were shot directly in the head [executed]. Others had shrapnel wounds. Despite wearing medical uniforms and traveling in marked vehicles with sirens, they were shot multiple times at close range.
Israel initially lied about the crime committed then later took responsibility once the lies were exposed. The 15 victims included 14 rescue workers and a UN employee. Israeli soldiers buried the bodies in a mass grave and crushed and buried the ambulances, fire truck, and UN vehicle.
Ustedes me secuestraron en altamar. En la cárcel me separaron del grupo, me metieron a un contenedor, me esposaron, botaron al piso y me golpearon por más de tres horas hasta causarme una conmoción cerebral.
Esos son sus valores, estas fotos sólo son propaganda
Yet another striking illustration of just how ideologically rigid the West has become compared to what we used to be.
This was the obituary The Economist published for Mao in 1976 - at the height of the Cold War.
Read this part:
"In the final reckoning Mao must be accepted as one of history's great achievers: for devising a peasant-centred revolutionary strategy which enabled China's Communist party to seize power, against Marx's prescriptions, from bases in the countryside; for directing the transformation of China from a feudal society wracked by war and bled by corruption, into a unified egalitarian state where nobody starves; and for reviving national pride and confidence so that China could, in Mao's words, 'stand up' among the great power."
Show this text to any Economist "journalists" today - without telling them it's from their own paper - and they'd reply: surely it's "CCP propaganda" 😏
Yes, incredible as it may sound, there used to be a time when Western journalists could assess a geopolitical rival honestly and respectfully without being accused of being a traitor. And this honesty was in no small part a key factor why the West won the Cold War.
Today we call honest assessment "propaganda," and we harass, smear, and blacklist people for it. And we're puzzled why the West is in steep decline.
Truth matters.