the dogs^ name is Steve

Okay, sure, let's have it out. I imagine I'll pretty much piss off everyone with this.

First: the only confidence I have in my understanding of the political situation of the Middle East is that I have no fucking understanding whatsoever of the political situation in the Middle East. Sure, I've read plenty. I have friends of many many stripes. But I'm not a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect here, folks: I know enough to know how much I don't know, and how much I know is tons.

Second, you say that person is a "zionist." There are three things I find pretty annoying about this as a defense attorney. One is that the term is not defined, and the other is that there is a complete lack of evidence. The third is the implicit assumption that being a "zionist" is enough to wholeheartedly condemn anyone.

Let's tackle these one by one. And, once again, I am neither a scholar of Jewish history nor Middle Eastern history nor anything except American criminal law.

First: definition. There are many possible meanings of zionist that I see people use. One potential meaning of "zionist" seems to be "is Jewish, but fails to disavow Israel as fast and loud as I personally want them to." Sometimes the meaning of "zionist" is just "is Jewish." Sometimes it's "a Jewish person who wishes for a return to a very distant ancestral homeland." Sometimes it's "wholehearted supporter of Israel's war crimes." A lot of pointless arguing, it seems to me, is centered around someone saying they are zionist, i.e., they would like Jewish people to someday have a nice homeland where they don't feel like a strange political chunk in another country, and another person hears that they are zionist, i.e. they enjoy wholesale slaughter of civilians.

Second: No evidence. Self-explanatory. You are an anon. I don't know why I'm supposed to trust your word. I read police reports for a living and I am supposed to be able to trust them, and let me tell you how many lies they contain.

Third: the assumption of condemnation. I literally defend the human rights of sex criminals in court. I defend murderers. What we are talking about, right now, at best, is a human person expressing an opinion, however potentially damaging and offensive (depending on definition of zionism and truth of accusation). Do you think I'm gonna say that Jewish people who express an opinion are inhuman and deserve segregation from the rest of us?

Do you think I'm ever going to stop reaching out my hand to people who use violence? Do you think I'm ever going to lose the hope that someday they will lose the fear that makes them resort to violence?

Finally, now that I've spent some time listing my problems with your case, so what.

Let's use an example closer to home. I'm an American, and I do in fact believe that America is a nation and will continue to be so, and that tearing down all government to give it back to indigenous people (something that is, to be clear, to my understanding, not comparable with any kind of political situation in Israel) is not possible as things stand. And yet nobody's here interrogating me about Donald Trump and his bombing of Iran or whether I support ICE's jackbooted thuggery.

A little further from home? If I met a Russian person, my first ask would not be "Tell me in detail your thoughts on Ukraine and Putin."

And in those two examples, I myself and this hypothetical Russian person are actually members of the country in question that is doing the thing. A Jewish person who is not Israeli isn't even that.

Listen. I think there's a lot to be unpacked about how the insularity of Jewish culture and the separateness of it from the countries where it lives is both in the interest of continuing the Jewish ethnicity and in the interest of the people who want Jewish people exterminated, and how the double-pull of those two interests maintain a tension that otherwise might dissipate. I think there's something real to be analyzed about how modern anti-semitism isn't a recurrence of medieval anti-semitism but a different thing, a sign of fascist thinking.

I think there is a horrific tragedy for everyone involved that the group who was decimated beyond belief in the blackest events in human history now has a very loud and visible nation channeling their survival into rage and violence.

I think that there are lots of Arab nations around Israel that would gladly see every person in it subject to that same rage and violence, and I'm not down with that shit either.

I think the history of who colonized who and when and what pogroms did what and how violence and why are all too fucking complicated to untangle.

I think the only way truly forward for Israel and Palestine is some kind of truth and reconciliation type thing and that Israel as it stands is too scared to see all their atrocities come to light.

I was raised atheist with college professor parents, so you can bet Jewish people in academia were part of my life from an early age. I don't understand antisemitism literally at all. It's completely incomprehensible to me. I also think Arab culture is gorgeous and studied Arabic in college. I don't discount the idea that I have subconscious biases; I've done my best to unpick them, but it's lifelong work.

The whole goddamn clusterfuck is a great example of why violence begets violence begets violence. I reject the idea that One Final Ass-Kicking on anyone's part will solve any one of these problems. The only thing that ends violence is not choosing violence. And that can't happen until enough people in and out of power want the violence to stop. There. Not here. There. It can't be imposed from outside. It has to come from within.

And that's a decision -- I must add -- that I seriously could not have less to do with. White Americans should not be making any of the related decisions.

Here endeth the essay, with one final note.

And you have your staff play with their kids while you hold them in the tiny restroom as they come completely undone because they just found out that their golden boy husband is having an affair with the someone he's been doing residency with for the past three years.

He confessed that he'd rather be with the other woman but she's of a different faith and it's more important to have kids than to be happy. And no. No he will not grant her a divorce. And he will not stop seeing the other woman - because he's a man. It's his right.

TRUE story.

Also - She was NOT THE ONLY ONE to fall to pieces in our store for similar reasons.

I loath the ideology of "tradwives". It is a false doctrine preach by Patriarchy not a divine being.

It is the nature of evil to hide this way.

Married out of college, 4 kids, he spent 15 years building up his career while she took care of the house and the kids. When he was earning $600k a year suddenly he started to pull away - she wasn't as pretty anymore, the kids were loud, the house was a mess... She wasn't good enough anymore. He got himself a flat. He got her me and my precedessors to help with the kids. No, they can't divorce, that would make him pay her money for the kids and he didn't like that. Every once in a while a bill would be unpaid. My weekly checks would bounce. We lived in a $1,5mil house around DC and our gas or water was turned off more than once.

Somehow he was always out of money.

By accident she learned from a friend of a friend that he was actually seeing a young lady lawyer for a few years now. It wasn't her, it wasn't lost interest. He was just a piece of shit.

Thankfully, she had family that took no shit and they stood behind her and borrowed her money for lawyers to force the divorce now that she had proof of him cheating. She's spent tens of thousands to get there while he was resisting every step of the way - because without divorce he wouldn't have to pay her alimony, he could just throw scraps whenever he wanted and still pretend to be a good dad.

She's spent tens of thousands and two years to free herself from this man, and when she could finally go to work (thank fuck she finished college) she was earning $25k a year.

She only managed to get away with the support of her parents and family. Through the au-pair grapevine I've known other families like that. Too many. Lady down the street tried to commit suicide when same happened to her - she was from Taiwan and had no support to get free. And people around scorned her for being "dramatic" - women who held on to their places with their fingertips talked shit about her, because their own husbands would never...! Right?

This? Is why conservatives want to take away no-fault divorce--because if some dude says no to a divorce and you don't have any (IRON-TIGHT) evidence of cheating? Then you're stuck in that situation and he doesn't have to pay a drop toward you and your kids. He can go get a flat, fuck his mistress, and you will starve with your kids until you can get some kind of proof of him cheating and a judge who likes you.

Now imagine all of this horror movie shit, AND you can't open a bank account without this piece of shit opening it with you. That was what women dealt with until about the 70s when we were finally allowed to open bank accounts with a man's signature.

That is what conservatives and fundies want to take you back to. When this shit was just the fucking norm.

There are old white guys still alive who remember who damn nice it was when a woman couldn't open a bank account without a man's signature and his dad could go live a double life with a mistress with zero repercussions and oh how they slather and drool for those times. And how they have waxed poetic about these halcyon days to their desperate daddy-issues sons now eager to please and without the social skills or emotional maturity to understand the fucked up nature of it all.

Surgeries require having a designated person to look after you. Many injuries require driving to somewhere like an emergency room which can be hard to do if you are the one injured. If you're home with the flu, it's hard to tell when it's bad enough to go to the hospital without another person checking on you. And if you pass out it requires another person to find you like that to get medical aid.

Single women also tend to build networks in a way that single men do not, so they get the benefits of relationships in other ways.

They don't have to be like this. They choose to be assholes.

Back in the 2000s, I was a Johnny Depp fan. (Before you come for me: I was sixteen and he was in his rehabilitated phase.) At the time his kids were little, and he didn't want them having to deal with being Johnny Depp's Kids. A fair and valid concern, I think.

So he basically made a deal with the paparazzi: I won't go nuts over your cameras as long as you don't photograph my kids. Try to snap my kids, and all bets are off.

And if you go back through photos of him from the 00s, you can count on your fingers how many times one of the kids is in said photos, and you can never see their faces. It's always either the backs of their heads or like, he's in front and you can just see a little leg walking alongside him. I had a Johnny Depp phase the way some teenagers have an Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift phase and I had no idea what his daughter looked like until she was almost an adult. He set a boundary, the paparazzi said "that seems reasonable," and they both got what they wanted.

Paparazzi could choose to limit themselves to red carpets, benefits, and--on the "sketchy but not completely abominable" side--stuff like "oh hey, check it out, Nick Jonas got peeped in line at this hot new club." They actively choose not to make that decision. Princess Diana died because they don't make that decision. Justin Bieber hit a kid with his car trying to get away from them because they don't make that decision.

It follows a bank clerk who wakes up one day, and is arrested/prosecuted for a crime, but he is never told what he did wrong, and the police just keep moving the goal posts and coming up with new ways in which he is guilty.

*looks straight into the camera like I'm on the office*

THAT IS THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING A JEW. OMG. The fact that reddit and other discussions are fuckin allergic to acknowledging Kafka's jewishness.

Take, for example, these three famous Jews: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kirk Douglas, and Danny Kaye. Excerpts from their Wikipedia pages are below.

Notice: "of Jewish ancestry," "embraced his Jewish heritage," "born... to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants." Jewish, but not directly Jewish.

Compare now to right wing bigots Ben Shapiro, Laura Loomer, and Jacob Wohl. See if you can spot it.

"Is Jewish." "Is Jewish." "Is Jewish."

Aha. Ahaha. Ahahahahahah I wonder how long this has actually been going on for? Certainly before 10/7.

"You're free to edit as you wish, inconsistencies don't mean some big antisemitic plot you make it out to be" And there's thousands of editors collaborating in an organized fashion to manipulate edits on thousands of pages of 'the internet encyclopedia' with 'democratic editing' when it's purely a numbers game

Archive link

https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-editors-hijacked-the-israel-palestine-narrative