you added a rainbow?

[X]

It's like watching friends who you've seen be silly and have deep talks work jobs to the point of stress where they are incoherent and respond to messages like legit 6 days later and not in a rude way but genuinely they don't have the mental capacity to do shit anymore

Working jobs and paying bills shouldn't take everything out of people to the extent it really does

A young French tourist approaches an Israeli policeman looking for directions. The policeman doesn’t know the way, and so he enlists the help of his Palestinian prisoner from the back of the van. Bound and with a blindfold over his eyes, the Palestinian offers three clear ways for her to get to Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher. There are two ways to read the scene. Both reveal the political anger brewing just below the droll surface of the gag. The first is simply that the Palestinian knows this land so well that he can give you directions while blindfolded. While the Israeli cop has no idea where to go. He is a foreigner here too. He may have political and military authority, but he is not truly of this land, while his prisoner is.

The second interpretation is the indictment of the apolitical audience member. We can visit Israel as tourists (or visit this film as a sort of cinematic tourist) gaze at the wonderful architecture, eat the food, enjoy the beaches and the lovely weather, all while turning a blind eye to the near century of racist exploitation, disenfranchisement, and genocide occurring right in front of us. It'd be all too obvious if we’d bother to simply engage beyond our own immediate pleasure and convenience.

Both of these interpretations are effective. Both are true. But the tourist is the one who allows this continue indefinitely. She witnesses injustice and chooses comfort.

After being starved and imprisoned in blockade for months, 120,000 indigenous Armenians in Artsakh just faced mass deportation and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Azerbaijan, aided by their brother country Turkey and supplied military aid by a third genocidal country, Israel. Noting that in case my American friends think this is a small regional conflict-- guess who funds Israel?

Artsakh will be dissolved on January 1st, 2024 and for the first time in 3,000 years, it will be void of Armenians. Hard to put the pain into words. Turkey and Azerbaijan will not stop here, as pan-turkic doctrine claims all of Armenia as theirs. Armenian existence threatens the fabric of Azeri (and Turkish) national identity so it is no surprise they want to annihlate us again.

With the violent occupation of Artsakh, our ancient holy sites will be desecrated and our history rewritten while major news outlets will find pretty words for genocide like "conflict" or "war". No one will punish Azerbaijan's war crimes, no one will remember white phosphorous rain on our homes. And the perpetrators will continue to live a lie.

I think denial is a fragile basis for any relationship, to a person or to a land. What is built on a foundation of denial will break under enough tension, after enough time. I believe we'll be back someday.