lily evans-potter

"Israel is committing genocide" when Jews were the victims of the deadliest genocide ever.

"Israel is an apartheid state" when Israeli Arabs are legally given equal civil and political rights and can vote, stand for political office and have equal access to state courts and services.

"Israel is an illegal occupier" when the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Ayyubid caliphates/sultanates occupied Israel for over 500 years.

Oppression of Uyghurs by the Chinese government (G-d knows how many deaths in concentration camps): very little protest

Persecution of Rohingyas by the Tadmadaw (24K+ deaths): no protest

Genocide of Masalit, Fur, Zaghawas, Berti and Tama by the Rapid Support Forces (75–115K deaths): no protest

"Well not when *I* use it!"

In NYC.

So what I'm hearing is a bunch of antizionists want a bunch of NYC Jews to make Aliyah to their indigenous homeland of Israel?

I don't have issue with protesting this.

But these protestors weren't simply protesting the practice of decolonizing the western bank of the Jordan River. They were calling for the demise of the entire state of Israel which holds half the world's Jewish population, in effect calling for Jewish genocide and ethnic cleansing from our homeland.

But the funny part is for all their disagreement of Jews going to Israel, they chanted at a bunch of NYC Jews to "Go Back Home".

But this is really neither here nor there.

LOL at the last sentence we all know you guys omit the information as always to be eternal victims who do no wrong, thankfully many people now recognize that you guys are nowhere as innocent as the western media tries to portray you as.

Anyways here’s some awesome decolonial processes of moving poor innocent Jewish people who do no wrong to their indigenous land:

Stop right there because you just admitted both you and this "protest" are pro-genocide of the Jewish people, the rest of your post is attempting to rationalize why genociding Jews is a good thing, actually.

I just want to point this out.

There is no excuse to call for the genocide of a people. Period. The end.

Let me make this clear: You're a genocider.

Specifically you are a genocider who wants to genocide Jews because you think the Jews are evil.

We have a word for this kind of person.

The word is Nazi.

You are a Nazi, @throned-and-thorned. Simple as.

It's not "understandable" and it's not a "nuanced situation". It's antisemitic. Those who say anything along the lines of "it's nuanced" are making the world less safe for Jewish people.

"Its not antisemitic to" - it is

"Israelis made antisemitism into" - we didn't, it's what it is

If you think "children should not be allowed in this space," you HAVE TO reckon with the fact that you are now excluding parents (and very often women specifically) who don't have access to childcare. You are isolating people who are poor, or rural, or single parents, or any number of other factors that might prevent someone from having on-demand childcare. You are cutting them off from being able to exist in public. You are denying parents and children the ability to fully participate in society.

My mom spent several years only leaving the house to buy groceries or take me to school, and even then, people would still come up to her to complain TO HER FACE about how she shouldn't bring a crying toddler to Walmart. Entitled strangers would literally try and demand that my mom leave and come back without the kids.

"Why can't your husband watch them?" Because he was at work, usually working extreme amounts of overtime so we didn't get evicted, because landlords don't like it when you stop paying rent.

"Why can't you send them to daycare?" Because that costs money.

"Why can't your teenager stay home with them and babysit?" Because I also deserved to be able to leave the house for something other than school, and taking me to the grocery store was how my mom taught me to manage a household budget, shop sales, and meal plan.

"Don't bring your kid in public if you can't CONTROL them and make them stop crying!" Kids cry when they're upset, and being dragged around a store is upsetting! Don't be an asshole! Children are human beings who are still learning how the world works, and they don't have a lot of agency. You'd cry, too.

"Spank them until they learn to stop crying!" That's just straight-up child abuse, Jesus Christ.

“Actually it’s antisemitic to associate Jews with Israel”

Is it racist to associate an ethnically Japanese person with Japan???!?!? IS IT??

Would it be okay to say “I don’t hate the Japanese but I think Japan should be wiped off the map, but oh no I’m not racist because I know a few Japanese people who also hate Japan”???

I wish some people understood how unhinged they really sound.

You don’t get to not be antisemitic by magically wiping Jews from Judea in your stupid little head. That’s not how this works.

Like at this point if you invest even a shred of interest in the region but don’t bother looking up the BASIC (and unbiased!) history you’re just as ignorant as an anti-vaxxer, full stop.

"it was promised to them 3000 years ago"

You are directly harming your own cause.

Refusing to acknowledge the existence of the State of Israel doesn’t materially change the reality that Israel is a sovereign nation with over ten million citizens. When leftists in the west chant “from the river to the sea” and “we don’t want no two states”, regardless of the intention, what do you think Israelis hear? What do you think a people that has faced genocide in living memory, from which our population still has not recovered, gets from that? We don’t hear it and consider your points, we hear it and remember all of the times Israel has been attacked with genocidal intent, and only survived through our own defense.

And what does this ultimately result it? It results in Israelis who no longer believe in the peace process. It results in Israelis who feel a visceral sense of fear which leads to doubling down on national security. It leads to diaspora Jews feeling unsafe in their communities and immigrating to Israel.

"This kind of rhetoric is trotted out for settler-colonial project after settler-colonial project, btw. "A land without a people, for a people without a land" was famously used by (although not originally coined by) Zionists as a snappy slogan for the settlement and colonization of Palestine. The JNF loved to use the phrase "Make The Desert Bloom" for its Tzedakah drives, infamously embodied in these little blue boxes passed around among Jewish schoolchildren:

Zionists also loved to use the phrase "The Villa in the Jungle" as a racist description of the Zionist Entity's (The "Villa") relationship with the surrounding area ("The Jungle"). These kinds of rhetoric have a violent colonial history!!!!"

awww someone wants the arab desertification to stick sooo bad and are big mad that it’s a symptom of colonialism

the people without a land is pretty anti arab I will admit, sometimes early Zionism was super bigoted

what fucking villa in the jungle? The one your nazi granpa lived in South America?

1. THE VILLA IN THE JUNGLE BULLSHIT

The phrase is said to have originated with Ehud Barak, who gave a 1996 speech as foreign minister to Jewish communal leaders in St. Louis, saying, “The dreams and aspirations of many in the Arab world have not changed. We still live in a modern and prosperous villa in the middle of the jungle, a place where different laws prevail. No hope for those who cannot defend themselves and no mercy for the weak.”

So, the phrase isn't even 30 years old yet.

But that's not really important.

There are a couple of things I think are pretty important here, though.

TL;DR: When the countries around you have consistently oppressed and slaughtered you, I think you're allowed to feel like you're defending the one place that's safe for you in the middle of a dangerous jungle.

I don't actually think that people who don't know any of the history have a right to go, "That reminds me of what some colonialist empire would say! I feel validated in my ahistorical beliefs about Jews!"

Rich white countries that controlled lots of colonies full of people of color absolutely did consistently portray "jungles" as centers of "savage," "cannibal," "uncivilized," essentially subhuman people at best.

And absolutely did then weaponize that image against the colonies they controlled. Heart Of Darkness, et cetera.

With Israel, we are not talking about white people. We're talking about people who are still consistently targeted by white supremacy all over the world.

Only about half the Jews in Israel today descend from the European diaspora.

But even if they all did? Even if every Jew there had come from Europe last week? It would still be super gross that people are pretending Jews in Europe of all places have ever been privileged.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely not the place that just killed almost half the Jews on earth! They're clearly all SUPER DUPER POWERFUL WHITE ELITES!

Get it together, you chucklefucks.

We're talking about people who are consistently portrayed as dangerous and inherently violent: immoral, greedy, baby-killing, sexually violent predators with cartoon-villain plans to control the world.

We're, especially, talking about this in the context of the Left going, "oh my god! We just discovered a previously-unknown, dangerously violent group that wants to expand to control the Middle East, maybe the world! No, of course it's not a marginalized group that we've never unpacked our unconscious bias towards. It's just the Jews. No, no, only the BAD ones!"

We're, especially, talking about people who were formally second-class citizens for 1,300+ years, across the entire Arab world.

Which subsequently ethnically cleansed over 90% of its Jews.

While every surrounding country invaded Israel.

In an attempt to "drive the Jews into the sea," and reclaim the land for Arab rule.

I'm just gonna skip to the year where Hezbollah bombed northern Israel so much that 10% of the country was depopulated and on fire.

I could, however, literally list examples all day of Israel sitting in the middle of an absolute sea of hatred toward it.

Real quick, I am just gonna add that the Houthi flag, Hezbollah, and the dictatorship of Iran all have catchphrases that center on destroying Israel. Hamas has repeatedly promised to violently destroy Israel.

The Houthi slogan, and flag, also say "Fuck the Jews." (People prefer to translate it as "curse the Jews" or "a curse to the Jews," but imho that doesn't really hold up.)

None of this. Is anything. That mirrors. European colonialism.

2. MAKE THE DESERT BLOOM

Deforestation was, in fact, due to the 1,300 years of Arab colonization.

Here is a late example from A Diary Of My Life In The Holy Land, published in 1906.

But there are PLENTY of older and bigger examples.

Early in Arab colonialism, the Ayyubid dynasty managed to destroy 5,000 hectares of the forests that used to cover Egypt.

This blatant exploitation of natural resources led to the loss of all sources of wood in the Nile Valley.

The Arabian Peninsula, the origin of 1,300+ years of colonization from Morocco to Afghanistan, has been widely deforested by grazing and logging.

Industrialization kicked it into high gear. By the 1800s, Lebanon's famous cedars (🇱🇧) were mostly still there. But they were the main forests that still remained across the entire, huge region.

The easy accessibility of this wooded area and the absence of such valuable trees in neighboring states made Lebanon especially attractive to invaders and contributed to the disappearance of its forests.

In the 1830s, Muhammad Ali was attracted by the trees of Lebanon just as his Pharaonic predecessors had been more than 4,000 years earlier.

Deforestation reached a new height during the first world war when Ottoman authorities ruthlessly used Lebanese wood for running their railways; the estimate is that, in the first three years of that war, Lebanon was stripped of 60 percent of its trees.

In the second world war, the still wooded highlands of Akkar were stripped to provide timber to build the coastal railroad.

Of the famous old Lebanon cedar which once covered over 500,000 hectares, only four very small groves now remain. Indiscriminate felling, burning, browsing of goats and sheep, combined with faulty agricultural practices, have almost completely destroyed the natural forests and degraded the soil which supported them.

Today, in the whole country which once abounded in milk and honey, only 75,000 hectares of scattered forests exist. The cedar tree, however, has been adopted as the emblem of the State of Lebanon, and it is to be hoped that the efforts now being undertaken by its government will restore large cedar forests for future generations.

You know all those posts claiming that you can tell Israelis are colonizers, not indigenous people, because they planted pine trees all over the place?

Those are the same fucking cedars. They're indigenous too.

They're not fucking Christmas trees.

There are so many more examples.

And most importantly, the lack of healthy agricultural land was a primary reason that the population of the Palestine region only ranged from 150,000 - 275,000 total people for almost a thousand years. Including what's now Jordan.

There was plenty of malaria. There was plenty of desert. There was not enough fertile land.

Nobody wanted to move there until, as so often happens, immigrants rehabilitated some of the agricultural land and created new projects and new opportunities.

3. "A LAND WITHOUT A PEOPLE" DIDN'T MEAN THERE WERE LITERALLY NO PEOPLE THERE.

The quote isn't "a land WITHOUT PEOPLE." It's "a land without A people."

As in, a land that had been largely depopulated in the Crusades, and then neglected and expired exploited throughout more centuries of Arab imperialism.

A region called Palestine, in a larger area called Syria, in a much larger Ottoman Empire.

A place that had small numbers of indigenous Bedouin and Jews, and in which everyone else belonged to a larger Arab world.

It didn't have A People that could be expected to say, "excuse us, this is our national home! What do you Jews mean by moving here?!"

(At least, not without a much deeper understanding of the politics involved than anybody had yet.)

Jews were already the majority in Jerusalem, even though they lived in abject poverty. They were already large parts of the populations of Tiberias and Safed. It wasn't that ridiculous to think that diaspora Jews could safely return in larger numbers.

This is literally History Channel stuff.

The phrase “A land without a people for a people without a land,” was not coined by a Jew, was never widely propagated by Zionists, and was not intended by the Victorian-era Christians who did use it to imply that Palestine was empty.

It meant, quite specifically, that in the nineteenth century there was no self-identified Palestinian people in the land that would become Israel.

Again, note the singular "people." There wasn't a Palestinian national identity.

A Scots Presbyterian in a frock coat, the Rev. Dr. Alexander Keith, who was sent to the Holy Land by the Church of Scotland on an 1839 fact-finding mission. His task: to determine whether the land was ready for the Jews to return (he thought that it was.)

Keith published a book describing his trip and urging Christians to help the Jews, “a people without a country,” return to Israel, “a country without a people.”

An unsigned review of Keith’s book immediately put the phrase into the familiar “land without a people” wording.

Keith and the other Christians who used the phrase perceived the Holy Land as being the homeland of the Jews in the way that Greece was the homeland of the Greeks, and Scotland was the land of the Scots.

They did not perceive the Arabs who lived in Palestinian as having a separate Palestinian ethnic or national identity, rather, they saw them as part of a larger Arab people. In this they were correct. The idea of a Palestinian people would not be proposed by Arab intellectuals until the twentieth century.

This is an understatement.

There's a reason that the leadership of Jewish Palestine was called the Jewish Agency, and the leadership of Arab Palestine was called the Arab Higher Committee.

Specifically, there's a reason neither of them called themselves the Palestine Anything At All.

It was the name of a poorly-defined, larger region that included half of Lebanon, usually Syria, and sometimes Jordan.

It wasn't the name of a cohesive culture or ethnic group.

There's a reason that in 1939, after Britain issued the White Paper caving in to the Arab Higher Committee's demands, the AHC rejected it.

(The reason was that it didn't give Amin al-Husseini power to rule over the whole place.

The rest of the AHC was apparently unaware of how strong his fascism was; they were quite surprised when he didn't embrace the White Paper immediately.)

Why am I suddenly talking about some random "white paper?"

Because there's especially a reason that the Arab Higher Committee's response sounded like this:

In paragraph 10 of the White Paper, the British Government state that “the objective of His Majesty's Government is the establishment within ten years of an independent Palestine State in such treaty relations with the United Kingdom…”

The Arab Higher Committee expresses its appreciation for this declaration but regrets to find that the declaration, taken as a whole, does not in fact ensure independence, since it makes its realization subject to Jewish participation in the Independent State.

Let's just. Take one second to reflect upon this absolute gibberish.

This dude (a rich fascist Hitler fanboy) and his various cronies, said NAAAHHH to the British offer of:

Rejecting the Peel Commission's recommendation to partition the land into an Arab country and a Jewish country.

Instead, creating an Arab country that would contain an independent Jewish homeland somehow.

Outlawing land purchases by Jews in 95% of Palestine.

Essentially ending Jewish immigration to Palestine. In 1939.

Let's remember here that tons of countries had attended the Evian Conference in 1938, and agreed that somebody really, really needed to step up and take Jewish refugees. Before the Nazis killed them.

And then every single country except Haiti refused to take any more Jews.

So, you know, since the League of Nations, in recognition of Jewish indigeneity, said Jews should be allowed to move to post-Ottoman-Empire Palestine, have equal rights, and collaborate with the Arabs on the federal government.... Britain COULD have said, "They are allowed to flee to Palestine."

Instead, Britain caved in to three years of bombings and shootings against Brits, Jews, and Arabs who supported coexistence.

And said, "okay, okay, we're not allowing any more Jews until we leave, at which point the Arab majority can decide whether to take any."

And not only did Amin al-Husseini reject it, and not only did Britain implement it all anyway,

But his reasons for rejecting it led with, "It's not an independent Arab state if Jews get to participate in it."

And he really, really meant it when he said that was the problem:

Sub-paragraph (2) of paragraph 10 of the White Paper continues by saying that “the independent State should be one in which Arabs and Jews share Government in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded.”

Paragraph 8 of the White Paper states, inter alia, that “It should be a State in which the two peoples in Palestine, Arabs and Jews, share authority in Government in such a way that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded.”

Paragraph 9 provides that “The establishment of an independent State and the complete relinquishment of Mandatory control in Palestine [i.e. Britain leaving] would require such relations between the Arabs and the Jews as would make good government possible.”

And here's the thing.

As far as I can tell, EVERYBODY who opposes Israel existing says Israel is A Classic Example Of Settler-Colonialist Imperialism.

Everybody claims to be Looking At It Through A Post-Colonial/Anti-Colonial Lens.

The narrative every. single. time is that Britain colonized Palestine with European Jews in order to seize some power in the Middle East.

(Except for the extra-wild cases in which people claim that "Zionists invaded in 1948 to kill everyone and steal their homes.")

But you can't look at it through an anti-colonial lens if you don't realize that an entire empire had just fallen.

You can't claim anti-imperialism if you aren't aware that this land had been colonized 1,300 years earlier, and had been part of a huge empire until World War One.

If you don't understand what happens when empires fall, you don't understand what was happening under the Mandate.

For 1,300 years, Jews had been dhimmis.

Under the Pact of Umar, Jews and Christians:

were not allowed to participate in government.

They couldn't be judges.

They couldn't testify in their own defense.

They couldn't ride horses; only donkeys or mules, which are lower than horses.

They couldn't build homes taller than the local Muslim homes.

They couldn't build new churches or synagogues, and they couldn't repair existing ones.

They had to dress differently, so that they couldn't "pass" and be given equal rights.

And more, depending on the ruler at the time.

That's what it meant to be a dhimmi.

This obviously benefited the privileged upper class enormously. Full control over laws, over government, over the courts, for example.

And then there's just the jarring psychological impact of having people you thought were far below you, for your whole history, and suddenly being told to treat them as equals.

That's how we got the Ku Klux Klan, here in the US.

Palestine had had a little foreshadowing of the fallout of this, just a century earlier.

Egypt had briefly taken over Palestine. The taxes were exorbitant, but they did legislate something more like equality for Jews.

This was ultimately Bad For The Jews.

The Peasant's Revolt against high taxes began to force Egypt out. And also, along the way, there were horrific pogroms against the Jews.

Not because they had anything to do with any of it. Just a sort of, "you MUST be on his side! He gave you some rights! We're gonna kill you and steal and burn all your stuff!"

Just a casual "remember your fucking place."

This is the exact same atmosphere that led to multiple even gorier pogroms in 1920. And 1929.

In Hebron, in Jerusalem, anywhere there were a lot of Jews in one place.

Even in the late 1940s, when Amin al-Husseini and the rest of the Arab Higher Committee - the leadership of Arab Palestine, as opposed to the leadership of Jewish Palestine - lobbied the Arab League countries to invade and "free" Palestine from the Jews, they weren't calling for the freedom of "Palestinians."

They were explicitly calling for Arab League countries to invade, to Keep Palestine Arab.

All of the rhetoric from those countries was explicitly along those lines.

Not only in (and after) the 1940s. But all the way back to 1937, when the Peel Commission recommended partitioning the land into a 90% Arab state and a 55% Jewish state.

Soon after their perusal of the White Paper, the Arab States... decided that they could not advise the Arabs of Palestine to co-operate on that basis.

Officials from the Arab League countries and the Arab Higher Committee held a conference about it, and released these:

Political resolutions

1. Palestine is an integral part of the Arab countries.

2. Palestine must not be divided nor must a Jewish state be created therein. Attempts to do either or both these things shall be resisted.

3. The Act of Mandate and the Balfour Declaration must be abrogated and be replaced by a treaty between the Arabs and Great Britain on the Iraqian model.

4. Jewish immigration must be stopped and sales of land to others than Arabs must be forbidden by law.

5. The resolutions of the congress shall be communicated to the League of Nations and other interested parties.

Economic resolutions

1. A boycott to be instituted against all Jewish goods and activities. Observance of this boycott shall be considered to be the national duty of every Arab.

2. The boycott shall extend to British goods and activities in the event of the British government's persisting in its political enmity towards the Arabs. [By continuing to insist on equality.] Appeal to be made to Islamic countries to join in such a boycott.

3. Any Arab who sells his land to the Jews is to be considered a malefactor to the Arab nation and will merit its hatred and reprisals.

4. Encouragement shall be given to inter-Arab trade.

Propaganda resolutions

1. A central propaganda office shall be established with branch offices in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other Arab countries. Propaganda offices shall also be created in London and Geneva.

2. A full account of the struggle of the Palestine Arabs shall be printed and widely circulated.

3. There shall be a general intensification of propagandist activities to further pan-Arabism.

The entire fucking thing has been about the end of an empire. About the rage of losing privilege. About the fight to regain it.

Actual Nazi War Criminal Amin al-Husseini probably explains it best:

It is the fact that Palestine has been Arab in population, language, culture, customs, traditions and history for at least 1300 years,

because its actual settler-colonialism was so effective, and so long-lived, that Westerners easily assume this is the indigenous culture.

Especially those of us whose history is much shorter.

It appears that the British government has ignored the fact that Palestine has been an Arab country for more than one thousand three hundred years; and that, moreover, this country was the part which completed the Arab territory.

They took it more than 1,300 years ago. It was a meaningful, historic conquest. It should be theirs to rule forever.

They thought that helping the Brits, and being promised Arab independence, meant independence from the Ottoman Empire's Turkish centre of control. That it meant a return to independent pan-Arab control across the whole region.

They didn't understand it meant this self-determination crap! Who even does that?!

So, no.

The core problem here is not that Britain was secretly populating the land with "white people" to get some kind of power. Nor is it that anybody thought nobody lived there. Nor is it that Jews somehow did a settler-colonialism by buying land in the Ottoman fucking Empire for forty years until it ate shit. Nor has Importing Jews ever been a way to gain power in any region on earth.

I live in California.

Last month, I saw a bunch of stickers on lamp posts that said "Not Your Dhimmi" in Arabic and English. They have a tiny "@gabedraws" in one corner (his Instagram) and a "#IraqisInPajamas" in another.

Iraqis In Pajamas is apparently a Seattle-based riot grrl group.

Again, I live two states south of there.

This ought to be an incredibly niche sticker. How many people here even know what dhimmi means?? Of those few people, how many would be angry at this sticker? Zero?

Who on earth, in California, not only recognizes this term, but would rip the stickers off and replace them with ones that say "No Fuel For Genocide"??

What possesses someone to make the statement, "Yes, you SHOULD be dhimmis, AND/BECAUSE you're committing genocide... for oil somehow"??

(I did Google it. There's some kind of incredibly strained argument that there's oil in the West Bank and maybe under the Mediterranean, and therefore Israel is... at war in Gaza?

Honestly though, people will claim ANY war is somehow for oil. Or at least any war in West Asia, because the only thing they know about the entire area is "oil.")

They weren't just ripping down everything they saw in order to center their own message. Because these equally obscure ones are still untouched.