Glass Galaxy Snails // Nocco Noccoo On Etsy

Glass Galaxy Snails // Nocco Noccoo on Etsy

Tintype of what appears to be a light-hearted spot of stabbing between friends, circa 1880

Israel and Palestine, History, Politics, Confirmation Bias and the Hypocritical Racist Saviourism of the Western Left

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Confirmation bias

"im doing a paper on antisemitism and it so difficult to find sources that aren't pro-isreal. They're all going on about how saying that Israel shouldn't exist is antisemitic. no how is thinking something should not exist if genocide is a part of its creation antisemitic? The Israeli state itself is antisemitic and has continuously failed to support its population of Holocaust victims.

any help on finding decent sources would be much appreciated."

When all of your references are telling you that your starting external point of reference is Antisemitic, that is because it is... You can't unpack your biases and unlearn them by searching for references that confirm your biases. Learn that your assumptions are likely bigoted and you need to learn what you don't know instead of seeking validation of what you believe.

To specifically address "saying that Israel shouldn't exist is Antisemitic", Israel DOES exist and more than 40% of all Jews live there, and no matter your opinion of its founding or the conduct of its government.... unless you intend to conquer Israel by force, and believe me it's been tried, it will not cease to exist by political pressure. So the expression that Israel shouldn't exist is tacit war mongering. There is more to be said on the topic, but that will come later.

More below the cut, very long

But Israel is an "Ethno-State" and that's bad! Isn't it?

First, at least this canard recognises Jews as an ethnic group, but the accusation of Israel as an "Ethno-State", is a deeply uncomfortable canard levelled against a Parliamentary Democracy where the third largest national political party is an Arab Party and 10 Arabs currently hold office in the Knesset. Arabs hold office, serve as judges, they Serve in the IDF as General's and Major's and make up 21% of Citizenship.

SAR-EL - Volunteers for Israel

Israel’s Highest Ranking Muslim Soldier Speaks Out - SAR-EL - Volunteers for Israel

Last week I was privileged to be at a Manchester  ((UK) Zionist Council meeting where two IDF Officers

Where Do Israeli Jews Come From, aren't they western colonisers?

No Israeli citizen and certainly not the vast majority of Jews around the world would want Jews to be a stateless people again. Particularly not the Majority of Israelis who are refugees from the Genocides, Pogroms and Expulsions against the Jewish people across the Middle East and North Africa, their children and grandchildren.

We are painfully aware that after the last century of genocides and expulsions in South West Asia Jews stand on the edge of extinction on the continent of our origin. My family had to flee the Libyan Pogroms and Partition in Pakistan under threat of forced conversion or death... Today there are no Jews in either country, you either fled or you died. Many Jewish communities and traditions that have endured for millennia would be extinct today if not for the safe haven provided by Israel.

the Guardian

The tragedy of the Yemeni Jews | Lyn Julius

Lyn Julius: The government has stood by and let jihadist gangs drive Jews out of Yemen. Now their community is on the brink of extinction

[The above article states that approximately 400 Yemenite Jews remain in Yemen, at time of writing only one remains as a Houthi prisoner.]

Importantly Jews can't colonise our own indigenous homeland, and comments on the skin colour of light skinned Jews is colourist and Antisemitic.

What do you mean Jews are indigenous people?

Jewish civilisation has conservatively at least 3000 years of archeological history in the city of Jerusalem alone, a people can't colonise their own indigenous homeland. That DOESN'T mean the people who came after us have to leave at all... Palestinian culture has been developing in the region for at least 1400 years. The promise of a Jewish state was the promise of self determination of Jews as Indigenous people displaced from our home by the colonising Roman Empire in the First century, arriving in Europe as slaves to build great works like the Coliseum and monuments to our own dispossession like the Arch of Titus.

After 2000 years confined to the ghetto, 2000 years of always waiting for the shoe to drop, we needed to come home.

The colonisation of the Jewish people and our homeland also isn't a one note affair. The Sassanians, and the Crusaders, the British Empire, The Ottoman Empire, The Mamluks, and pivotal to the current discussion The Arabs... Arab Colonisation of MENA/SWANA is uncontroversially the historical record... They are the majority population across MENA because of their centuries of privileged social and economic placement in society even among Muslims. Pan-Arabism is Arab Supremacism.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Early Muslim conquests - Wikipedia

Morrocco speaks Arabic because of Arab Colonisation, Ctesiphon was renamed Baghdad by Arab Colonisers, the subjugation of pre-colonial religion and culture such as Jews, Zoroastrians, Shabaks, Assyrians, the continuing collusion between ME states to deny the Kurdish people a state.

Recognising Arabs as colonisers doesn't mean demanding they be expelled, nor does it make anti-arab violence acceptable... But it is necessary if you intend to understand the historic social power dynamics of MENA social issues.

If Jews are indigenous and Arabs are colonisers... What does that make Palestinians?

People, it makes them human people who are seeking a state of their own and should have one post haste. Most people agree on this, I hope we agree on this..

Didn't Israel kill lots of people to be established?

People often have a habit of using their intuition rather than research to learn about current and historical circumstances. This leads to the exaggeration or minimisation of events by those who don't understand.

This isn't to say that violence wasn't present in the founding of the State of Israel, because it was, but in all of the wars Israel has ever been involved in, the combined death toll has never even come close to one million let alone the millions, even the Nakba which was a human tragedy worthy of recognition forever had a Death toll of 15,000...

It is worth remembering that the Nakba took place against the backdrop of invasion by the Arab league (including Palestinian Arabs) of the newly declared State of Israel within these borders as defined by the United Nations...

On the day of the expiry of the British mandate for Palestine the forces of the Arab League (Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Palestinian Holy War Army) invaded, and the Israelis/IDF counter attacked... And somehow even without any allies were not only successful in defence but the victor. This was the second refusal to accept an Arab majority state, this time that rejection came as war.

But Palestinians still deserve a state!

Palestinians absolutely deserve a state, historical rejection of the peace option at one time or another by any party in a conflict is no reason not to establish peace now. This is something we can hopefully agree on, the endless cycle of violence and retribution is neither desirable nor sustainable... and to that end in 1994 the Palestinian National Authority was Established as a Part of the Oslo Accords, which is a multi stage state building project agreed between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the State of Israel, which immediately formalised the recognition internationally as an institution in principle of the Palestinian State as declared by The Palestinian Liberation Organisation in 1988.

The eventual state borders of the Palestinian State would be the Territories of the West Bank and Gaza which came under Israeli Administration during the 1967 6 Day War, and which the kingdom of Jordan and Egypt refused to accept return of due to the expense of security in the region.

Regions of Palestinian National Authority Civil and Military Administration were established in the West Bank during stage 1. (Areas the Palestinian National Authority were supposed to be expanded each decade assuming the continuing stability of the PA) During stage 2 in 2005 those areas were expanded and the Palestinian National Authority assumed Civil Administration over most of the remaining West Bank except for Israeli majority settlements. Also as Part of Stage 2 Israel forcibly repatriated all Israelis living in Gaza and passed Civil and Military Administration to the Palestinian National Authority.

en.m.wikipedia.org

West Bank areas in the Oslo II Accord - Wikipedia

Unfortunately 2 years later Hamas seceded Gaza in its entirety in a coup and suspended democracy to establish an Islamist Autocracy in opposition to the Fatah dominated Palestinian National Authority and all attempts at reintegration have failed stalling the Palestinian Nation Building project.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Battle of Gaza (2007) - Wikipedia

Throwing a wrench in the "is able to preserve stability and territorial integrity" thing.

Ok, that's interesting, but wasn't the country already Palestine before?

At no point in history until the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority has there been self government of Palestinians by Palestinians. Even the name "Filistin" was a colloquial one in the Ottoman period. Under Ottoman rule the area of Israel and Palestine was made up of many feudal estates with a non-palestinian aristocracy.

Once again, this doesn't mean that Palestinians shouldn't have a self governing state now, today. But Jews should also have self government because.... we are indigenous to the Region, and second we have seen ourselves be betrayed by our neighbours too many times to not hold our defence in our own hands. In Europe, Africa, and Asia we have seen the repeated attempts to destroy us completely.

If you deduct the population of Israel the combined Jewish population of all three continents is less than 2 million, because you killed us.

The territory people are referring to as historically Palestine right now is the British Mandate for Palestine, which included the area East of the Jordan River where the Kingdom of Jordan was established by British Partition.

What is being done to advance Palestinian National Liberation?

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation have made multiple attempts at political normalisation with Hamas, as have the Israeli government... In the hope of reuniting the Palestinian National Authority administered territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately with both authorities, Hamas and their affiliates like Palestinian Islamic Jihad use talks as an opportunity to re-arm, regroup, and relocate personnel and equipment. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation were in the closing stages of political normalisation talks, and Israel were in the midst of a (permanent) ceasefire and disarmament discussions at the time of the Simchat Torah Pogrom (Oct 7)

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We are in the present day from here on.... Things get complicated and messy-er from here, say goodbye to neat sections.

The attack on October 7 was a betrayal of West Bank Palestinians as well, and attacks by Hamas affiliates like Palestinian Islamic Jihad in areas of the West Bank where Israel is treaty obligated to act as security guarantor has been spun by people in the west who don't understand the treaty arrangements as an invasion of Palestinian Territories.

timesofisrael.com

Palestinian, Arab officials urge Hamas to disarm before it is destroyed – report

Terror group said warned by various figures of influence that it will not survive the Israeli offensive, and should prevent further destruct

Continued in reblog

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Livia Marin: 'Broken Things' (2023)

I think you're right, and want to draw specific attention to the "I"m a good person" part of your analysis.

I have written about this before (very long post here--not necessary to read and contains trigger tags, but I'm adding it for completionism), but a really important part of leftist antisemitism is the calming of a baseline insecurity about their own moral value.

For some stuff I didn't discuss in that linked essay: a lot of USian cultural Christianity is defined not by Puritanism, but by a misinterpretation of Calvinism.

Calvinism has an entire theological framework, but the most important part is that no one on Earth can ever know if they are part of the elect who go to heaven or one of the many people who go to hell. While many flavors of Christianity provide reassurance that the individual won't go to hell thanks to baptism, ritual, conversion, prayers, etc., Calvinism denies all of these reassurances. This was supposed to redirect people from obsessively worrying about hell. Culturally it had the opposite effect.

The brainworms in the center of the skull of every USian are, basically, the question: "Am I a good (enough) person?"

Being a Good Person is conditional--after all, you might pretend to be a Good Person all your life only to not be part of The Elect, and hence you were faking the whole time. Being a Bad Person is permanent and earns you eternal condemnation. Being around Bad People greatly increases the chance of you being a Bad Person, because you cannot save Bad People. They were bound to hell before they were ever born. You must therefore root out all the Bad People to prove that you are Good.

While many leftists pay lip service to ideas of restorative justice, forgiveness, and psychological healing from religious trauma, they don't mean a word of it. They just say that because that's what Good People would say, and more than any political goal, they want everyone to think they are Good People. This allays the baseline anxiety of whether or not they are going to go to hell--whether that is a literal hell, or for the skeptics, the dread that after they die, everyone will find out all those little shitty things they've done throughout their lives which will retroactively make them Bad People and cancel out their Good People status forevermore.

Antisemitism is portrayed as a right-wing problem by leftists because Bad People are antisemites, and to be associated with Bad People means they're not The Elite Good People, and the very thought of that is more frightening than the thought of death.

If admitting you made a mistake is worse than dying, then of course, you'll do and say anything at all to avoid admission, including, as we've seen in several violent cases, dying.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice this but it IS super weird to see so many leftists

get told they're being rampantly antisemitic

fact check (which is a good instict!)

realize they've been hitting Antisemite Bingo with every post they make

...and instead of going "oh shit, I didn't realize it was that baked into all of society, I really need to listen to more Jews about this and do better not to perpetuate hatred towards them"

they go "well, I do all of this, and I'm a good person, so those filthy Jews Zionists must secretly control the media!"

It's especially weird when they know better than to do this to any other minority, but somehow when it's Jews it's acceptible as long as you call them Zionists before hate-criming them.

This is probably why the denial is so high, though. They HAVE to believe leftist antisemitism isn't a problem, because if they believe it's a problem then THEY are the problem, and that interferes with their mental image of themselves as Righteous Revolutionaries.