Commander Salamander

Israel was founded as a state for a specific ethnicity, the Jews.

It has never officially annexed Gaza and West Bank specifically because doing so would increase the Palestinian population of Israel. This is also why Israelis, even Liberal ones, find the idea of a one state solution abhorrent, because they'll be a minority.

The "Nation State Bill" declares Israel to be a nation for the Jewish people. Imagine if a country with a significant minority like the US or Australia declared that the nation was meant for White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Would this be racist?

Palestinians can not get Israeli citizenship even if they can provide proof of having lived in Israel in living memory. People point out countries like Polands "citizenship by decent" law but Poland doesn't only do so for ethnic Poles. A descendant of Jewish or German Polish citizens has the same rights as a descendant of Polish citizens.

On the other hand, Jews with 0 known ancestry in Israel (including converts who have very little ties to the "imagined Jewish people") have the right to move to Israel.

"Arab Israelis" can not pass their citizenship onto their spouse or children if their spouse is from Gaza/West Bank. This has led to Palestinians born in Israel to an Israeli parent and with an Israeli spouse and children being deported. If they were Jewish that would not occur. These are legal discriminations based solely on whether you are Jewish or not.

A Palestinian born in West Bank does not have the right to Israeli citizenship. A Jewish settler in West Bank does have those rights. They live in the same territory, under the same government but the sole difference in their rights is their ethnicity.

This is not even really discussing the occupation of West Bank and the de facto occupation of Gaza but these facts are already far more radical than any other supremacist state on earth. Not Sri Lanka (which gave Indian Tamils citizenship in 2004), not Myanmar, not India, Malaysia or Bhutan. Definitionally, not the pseudo-ethnostates of Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini.

@khoesib do you want to just stop fucking lying?

1) about 25% of Israeli citizens are not Jewish. A huge chunk of that group is Arab, with smaller minorities like the Druze who are quite literally killed for existing in other Middle Eastern countries.

2) being "a state for the Jewish people" means it is a state that accounts for the needs of an indigenous group that was forced into diaspora 2000 years ago and has never found safety since. It does not say "for only the Jewish people." One might consider, however, that Palestinian leadership has stated that "from water to water, Palestine will be Arab" when asked about the presence of Jews in the region.

3) it's never officially annexed the West Bank or Gaza because it's at least mostly trying to follow the intentions set out in the partition plan of 1947, you fucking asparagus spear. You may notice that in 1947, Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt annexed Gaza. When Israel retook both in the Six Days War, they said "we will defend ourselves if you push us. Do you get the picture? Here's your land back" and Egypt and Jordan said "FUCK NO." That's how the existence of Palestine even happened. Israel could have just taken the land. It didn't. It's even come to the table multiple times and said "here's a proposal for a two-state solution" and it's been Palestine, every time, that's said no. Hell, Yasser Arafat actually led Israel down the garden path all the way to "yes, we'll sign, let's set it for this date" and then just didn't show up. It has nothing to do with being a minority. Although I have to say, the fact that Palestinians keep killing Jews for existing is definitely not helping their case.

4) Palestinians can in fact become Israeli citizens. Here's an article about some specific history of Palestinians rejecting Israeli citizenship. Now if you're not from Jerusalem the process is a lengthy pain in the ass. But that's not exclusive to either Israel or Palestinians. Countries that allow noncitizens to become citizens--unlike, for example, Qatar, where all four of your grandparents had to be citizens in order for you to become a citizen--tend to want to be sure you're serious and also that you're not a secret axe murderer or spy.

5) we all have ancestry in Israel, you fucking walnut. There are even genetic studies about this. As for converts, allow me to remind you that Judaism is an ETHNORELIGION. Converts are basically marrying into a family.

I can't even handle more of this Gish gallop right now. "More radical than any other supremacist country on earth" first of all it's not a supremacist country SECOND OF ALL QATAR, WHICH FUNDS THE SHITTY AL-JAZEERA ARTICLES YOU GET THIS SHIT FROM, IS RIGHT THERE.

1) South Africa had a population that 75% non-white, Rhodesia had a 95% non-white population, Sri Lanka has a population that is 15% Tamil, Myanmar a population that is 6% - 10% Muslim. This doesn't change the fact that these were and are racial ethnostates because ethnostates can be diverse. What matters is the laws that pertain to these ethnicities. The Druze are Arabs btw and they still get their homes destroyed by the Israeli government, despite them being the "privilged minority" of the settler colony.

2) No matter how you justify it, because thats what this is, a flimsy justification, an ethnostate is an ethnostate. If the AfD called for a "Deutschstaat" or if Reform called for a state for "indigenous" ethnic Britons, we would recognise this as ethnonationalism and exclusionary dogwhistling. Could we get a quote from someone who used this version. A specific Palestinian leader mayhaps?

3) God, cool it with the cringe tumblr insults. "Asparagus spear?". "Yes we're just trying to keep to 1948 partition plan, please ignore all of the territorial expansions made since then, I promise you I will make some excuse about how Israel deserved that land because of right of conquest o algo. Please also ignore the occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights". Accepting the two state solutions offered by Israel is akin to Black South Africans accepting the Homelands/Bantustans as legitimate nations which only reactionaries, collaborators and traitors did.

4) So I read the article and in the thing you cited it shows that despite increasing desire to become Israeli citizens from the Palestinian population of Jerusalem between 2014 and 2017, out of 4,000 applications, 84 were approved, 161 were rejected and the rest were pending. So your evidence that "Oh no Palestinians can get citizenship" is that if you're a Palestinian, specifically from a part of Palestine that has been fully annexed and is administered by Israel, you can legally apply for citizenship but you're two times more likely to be rejected than accepted, if you even get a reply within 4 years?

In comparison, the Sri Lankan government granted citizenship to all Indian Tamils, a population that was brought to the country by the British, in 2004 and did so without any caveats. This was in the midst of a very bloody conflict with the Tamils in the north that culminated in a genocide at Mullivaikkal in 2009. You're telling me Israel can't do what a much poorer ethnostate could do during a far bloodier insurgency against the organisation that invented suicide bombing? (Big up the Tamil Tigers though)

Furthermore, as you kind of avoided, West Bankers and Gazans can not become citizens as shown by the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law: “The law, passed July 31, 2003 prohibits Palestinian spouses from obtaining citizenship, permanent residency and temporary residency status in Israel by marriage to an Israeli citizen, a process referred to as “family reunification.” The provision also applies to children from the territories (West Bank and Gaza) who wish to live with an Israeli Arab parent”.

Any ethnostate facing an insurgency could use this claim of "We need to exclude people from citizenship because they share the same ethnicity as the group we are fighting against". It's not a refutation of discrimination, it's a justification for it.

Qatar is an evil country and if it or any of the fellow Kafala states is your base line you are doing pretty poorly to be quite honest. But I would ask, where did you get the idea you need for grandparents to be a citizen of Qatar? All information online points to needing only a Qatari father. Furthermore, it's not like Qatar gives citizenships away to all Arabs or even coethnics. There are stateless Bedouin groups in all the gulf states who are some of the primary victims of their states oppressive mechanisms.

5) So when you convert your DNA magically changes and transforms you into a Levantine? But a person from West Bank whose family have lived in the region for millenia and has far more "local ancestry" is an invader? The logic of the Zionist mind is most impressive.

No, wanting to see the night sky isn't a twee retvrn to ghibli-ass take. It's not a matter of some anprim impulse to dismantle industrial society for ~nature aesthetics~, it's an extremely visible symptom of environmental degradation that gets downplayed because the externality seems trivial to most people: "Oh no, the night sky, what ever will we do without it."

But it actively disrupts light-sensitive circadian rhythms in plants and wildlife, which disrupts foraging patterns, reproductive and hibernation cycles, and contributes to wildlife population declines. It's not the major contributor to those declines, but it's an additional point of stress in an ecosystem already stressed by climate change and other forms of industrial pollution. And so much of it is wholly unnecessary.

I don't think people realize how far-reaching the problem is, either. That light isn't just confined to the places people use. You don't escape it by just taking the bus to the edge of town. That light carries, in some cases for hundreds of kilometers. Death Valley has some of the darkest skies in the US, and yet, the dome of light above Las Vegas is visible on the horizon over 250 km away! Anywhere within 50 km of a major urban center, just about anywhere in the world, never gets darker than a night under a full moon.

And this is very much a recent problem too. Before the switchover to LEDs, it was relatively expensive to light places. That meant actually accounting for the energy use and making sure it was being used where it was needed. That light was also warm-colored, so it didn't travel as far. With the decreased cost of lighting, it became standard to light places like daytime whenever they might be needed. Lighting didn't get safer, it just got more thoughtless.

The reason you see astronomy-types sounding the alarm most loudly is because they're the ones who have been seeing the full effects of light pollution and its encroachment on dark skies. It's a hobby for me too, but it's partly because I am a night owl who grew up in a small town with nothing else to do. I used to be able to clearly see the Milky Way horizon to horizon when I grew up in the mid-00s. The last time I visited about five years ago, I could only see it overhead. The population has fallen by like 10%, but the skies are brighter. I can tell when the college decided to leave the football stadium lights overnight. I can tell where the car dealerships that added overnight display lights are. I can even see when trucks with the fuckass LED light bars are coming over a hill from 5 km away.

Altair currently cannot pay the expenses for her service dog after having to spend all his funds on euthanising their sisters service dog who developed stage 3 kidney disease after she was murdered in her apartment. their etsy was also recently suspended. please help them through this tough time by donating and sharing

GOFUNDME

Imagine that as an already-too-disabled-to-work trans woman in an actual sundown town.

Imagine you lose Medicaid and SNAP since you aren't working or considered Disabled Enough not to.

Imagine watching debt pile up while you have no choice but to use credit cards to get through.

Imagine not being able to reliably get to appointments because your car is too expensive to fix up and your city has no transit (hence, the bike in the first place!!).

Imagine seeing your partner who works full-time as a student struggle to support you while you feel overwhelming guilt that you can't do anything about it.

Please donate and share if you can. Anything helps.

as always, it and its partner are homeless and disabled trans women living purely off donations from tumblr as they keep terminating us both every single day, and we still badly need support as we're going to be fully on the streets of seattle again in less than a month. please keep reblogging this aid post, and its paypal is here.

please, if you know anyone in seattle or anywhere nearby, ask for help? or help us? we dont want to be on the streets fully again, we're not ready.

as always, it and its partner are homeless and disabled trans women living purely off donations from tumblr as they keep terminating us both every single day, and we still badly need support as we're going to be fully on the streets of seattle again in less than a month. please keep reblogging this aid post, and its paypal is here.

please, if you know anyone in seattle or anywhere nearby, ask for help? or help us? we dont want to be on the streets fully again, we're not ready.