Echoes

But now that people are using legit criticisms against Abdul El-Sayed based on his contradictory claims of M4A when his wife doesn't accept Medicare, his unclear stance as a licensed physician, his hidden source of income on his tax returns, his tone deaf noun, verb, AlPAC messaging that ignore issues that Michigan voters actually care about, and his general disparaging of Democrats which includes calling Barack Obama the wrong choice for President in 2012, those same leftists want to cry is amphobia, when the criticisms have nothing to do with his religion.

Funny I thought leftists were done with "identity politics".

Right? They spent the entire Texas primary decrying "identity politics" but the minute someone points out that the same guy behind Graham Platner is also behind Abdul El-Sayed's campaign and maybe he needs some vetting, it's a "dog whistle" because he's Muslim.

Idk girl, when I took the tree surgeon license exam, there were more than one or two questions, so I think it might be more complicated than that.

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, who is Congress’ most senior Jewish member, did not vote but told The Hill last month that it was “poorly drafted.” He added that it would have unintended consequences such as eliminating funding for U.S. Embassy operations in the country or for peace-building initiatives traditionally supported with U.S. aid.

Clark, the minority whip, had similar misgivings to Nadler, calling it “overly broad.” Nonetheless, she wrote earlier on Wednesday that she would be voting yes — “not because I agree with the entirety of the amendment, or the GOP’s cynical motivations for its consideration, but because I believe we must change course.”

So it was a vibes-based/stunt message vote then, Katherine?

that it was never about gaza. not really.

if it was about gaza. if gaza was so terrible. if i truly believed my actions had consequences, that people in power might listen to me.

fuck. i'd do anything to have even the slightest chance of stopping it. i'd demand the hostages go back, because sure, it's probably all a lie. sure, it's probably just an excuse. but what if it isn't?

what if I could have stopped a genocide, and I didn't, because I was so convinced it was a bluff? that they wouldn't stop when the hostages were returned? how would I be able to live with myself, knowing that?

(and is the return of the hostages really so horrible on its own?)

if it was about gaza (if it was about human suffering it wouldn't have focused on gaza. two million people is a lot but it's not so much, there are eight billion people in the world, in the first six months of 2025 more children starved to death in one state of nigeria, than people starved to death in two years of the gaza war). if it was about the well-being of gazans. then I'd beg and plead for a ceasefire. for a pause. then I'd demand that there be some sort of asylum program, and wouldn't reject out of hand Israel's (alleged) proposal to transfer the population, because sure, it's not good. it's awful.

But when your choice is leaving behind your life, or facing genocide--well, Jews are experts in that choice. you leave. you say goodbye and you hope to one day come back and you get the hell out. if you care about the risk of genocide, you don't beg america to close ellis island. if you care about the risk of genocide, you don't plead for the st. louis to be sent back simply because you refuse to bow. because in a genocide, there aren't easy choices. yeah, these people are being forced out of their homes. yeah, it's unfair. yeah, it's awful.

do you want to negotiate with the genociders? no. no, you really, really, don't. you hate it. you grit your teeth and you do your best to save as many people as you can and you go home and you wash your hands and you feel so very very guilty and you worry about the people you couldn't save and the agreements you're getting into and god you hate this life. but. at the end of the day. you'll have saved lives.

what does it say about them, that they value martyrs more than mothers? value propaganda more than peace? that to avoid the taint of working with who they may genuinely believe to be genociders, they will take the risk of condemning two million people to death?

the haavara agreement sucked. it was terrible. but. at the end of the day, it saved jewish lives. at the end of the day, jews that would have been killed, weren't. and what's your reputation, in comparison to that? what could possibly be worth giving it up? some imagined moral purity?

"Well, after 75 years of how the Palestinians have been treated, can you blame them for the 7/10 attack?"

And the response that I've been itching to give to that...

"So, you're saying that the Nakba was acceptable back in 1948? Because after 1000+ years of mistreatment by Muslim Arabs, including multiple massacres and ethnic cleansing in living memory, that means that the Jews were justified with the Nakba--indeed, they were restrained, because they could have easily done so much worse, and the Palestinians Arabs hadn't had any mistreatment yet at the hands of the Jews. There was a clear side who had been the victims (the Jews) and a clear side who had been the victimizers for over a thousand years, as the Muslims been the ones doing the mistreatment to the Jews. If you're saying that 75 years of marginalization justifies mass rape and murder, then the Israelis in 1948 would have been justified in killing every single proto-Palestinian Arab by that same metric.

"No? That's different? How? How is it different? Explain to me how it's different without using the word 'colonizer', because a vast number of the Jews who lived there were unquestionably native and had never been living elsewhere. Sure, they were just a portion of the Jewish population as a whole, but so are the Palestinian militants. Would someone whose family had been butchered in the 1929 Hebron Massacre not be justified in taking out their hate on other Arabs? Because that's the standard you're promoting now. How is it different?

"On what ethical grounds is it okay to say that the Palestinians deserve to get to rape and murder for 75 years of marginalization, and yet that the Jews simply displacing them but allowing them to continue living, sparing their lives after 1200+ years of brutal suppression... that act is somehow the most horrendous and monstrous act in the entire history of mankind, as some Pro-Palestinian activists have explicitly said?"

Operation Solomon • Jewish Museum London

Ethiopian Jews being airlifted from Addis Ababa to Israel on May 24, 1991, as part of Operation Solomon. This covert operation involved 34 jumbo jets of the Israeli air force, hundreds of soldiers and the evacuation of 14,200 Jews. It was prompted by the worsening political situation in Ethiopia under the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.

A Jewish community was first established in Ethiopia sometime after the destruction of the First Temple in around 587 BCE. The origin of the Ethiopian Jews is unclear though most believe that they are the descendants of King Solomon and Queen Sheba. Throughout its history, the community has been referred to by numerous names like ‘’Falasha’’ which means ‘’stranger’’ which shows how their Christian neighbours viewed them as strangers in their land and ‘’Beta Israel’’ which literally means ‘’house of Israel’’. This name shows the community’s own deep connection to the Torah and their faith.

Of course the ideal should be a world without prisons. In a perfect utopian future, we would have no need for cages because we would have successfully dismantled the root causes of crime, poverty, and harm. But this smug, dismissive refusal to engage with the grittiest realities of human behavior helps absolutely nothing and actively works against her goals.

It treats a foundational question of public safety as a tiresome "gotcha" rather than a deeply legitimate human concern.

When activists retreat into pure idealism and dismiss the public's valid fears about violent crime as unworthy of a response, they don't look visionary. They look condescending, elitist, and entirely disconnected from the reality of human nature.

So I read the rest of this comic and more of her work.

The underlying logic of this deflection relies on a false dichotomy - the idea that if you dare to ask how an abolitionist world handles a rapist or a murderer, you must be a blanket defender of mass incarceration.

Over here in reality, you can fully recognize that our current justice system is deeply flawed, broken, and failing survivors, while still demanding to know what replaces the physical containment of dangerous individuals.

To frame a question about immediate physical safety as a structural roadblock is an intellectual bait-and-switch. It assumes that anyone asking for a practical plan just "doesn't get it," when in reality they just want to know how you plan to keep their loved ones safe.

The comics series "Who's Left" is garbage.

Here's how it dismisses people who lived through the communist (authoritarian) regimes of the 20gh century: by calling them old and xenophobic.

And here's how it defends those regimes:

Speaking as a lifelong left-leaning liberal: this is tankie bullshit and it deserves your contempt.

— 8/4/2020 10:48 PM