ostraniene

as a general rule, socioeconomic conflict doesn't come from people not communicating well enough or misunderstanding each other, it comes from conflicting interests over real resources. generally wars are not fought for ideology but for land, water, oil, etc. however, ideology does often form around these things, and of course miscommunication can exacerbate these issues, which can often give the false impression that wars are being fought "over nothing" or are purely ideological, rather than about the resource distribution a given ideology represents

‘With its blind hatred, its habitual criminality, and its boundless brutality, which has become ingrained in its nature, the Israeli enemy committed a series of massacres today against innocent civilians. It targeted civilian areas in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the capital, Sidon, southern Lebanon, and the Bekaa Valley with dozens of brutal airstrikes, leaving hundreds of martyrs and wounded, including children, women, and the elderly.

This barbaric aggression, which at every stage constitutes war crimes and acts of genocide by targeting crowded civilian areas, markets, and shops during peak hours, is nothing but a desperate attempt to take revenge on civilians after all attempts to break and subdue this proud people have failed. Our honorable people and the sons of this land have proven that the brutality of the aggression has only increased their steadfastness, resilience, and adherence to the path of resistance, no matter the immense sacrifices they have made.

This unbridled aggression is a clear expression of the enemy's frustration after its resounding failure to achieve any of its objectives and plans on various fronts. It reveals its vulnerability to defeat, its inability to alter the equations imposed by the steadfastness of the Iranian and Lebanese peoples, and reflects the state of collapse, confusion, and disarray plaguing this beleaguered entity and its defeated army, battered by the blows of the resistance fighters.

We affirm that the blood of the martyrs and the wounded will not be shed in vain. Today's massacres, like all acts of aggression and brutal crimes, underscore our natural and legal right to resist the occupation and respond to its aggression. They will only strengthen our resolve to resist and confront the enemy, to deter its aggression, and to defend our people and our homeland, protecting our security in the face of this ongoing aggression.’

theres a post going around showing the website of the synagogue that got attacked recently, pointing out that a big part of the synagogues activity (and revenue probably) was just. being an open funding hub for the IDF and Kibbutzim.

and… yeah. im afraid, as conspiratorial as it sounds, basically every brick-and-mortar jewish institution in the world is not just zionist, but systematically and regularly purges anti-zionism from within itself.

Where i used to live about a year ago, I and about a dozen other people were harassed over a period of weeks and eventually asked to stop attending services by our synagogue’s administrators (including the rabbi) for being anti-zionist. this past Yom Kippur, i went to the evening service IN A CHURCH, with a full sanctuary of other people, because all of them had been alienated from the “real” congregations in the same way.

its easy to see why this is so. zionists are the only ones with any funding. they get the support of empire, and so naturally have bigger budgets for buildings and payrolls and movie sets and so forth. furthermore, a core part of the project involves systematically cutting off anyone who isn’t on board. and so we get the situation we’re in now, where Judaism has a cavernous class divide running down the middle of it. rich jews are no less depraved than rich gentiles, and just like their cousins, they ~just so happen~ to be the only ones who get the chance to talk in front of cameras.

because its not just personal wealth. Jewish law itself has been changed variously since 1948 to account for the state of Israel. for example, one can only be ordained as a rabbi if they study in israel; qualifications from schools in the diaspora aren’t enough, and are viewed as pretendism regardless of the candidate’s level of understanding. also, as an extra catch, the length of the program required to become a rabbi just so happens to mean that you qualify for mandatory service before you can be ordained.

if a rabbi’s ordination is officially recognized, and they aren’t so ultra-orthodox that nobody speaks anything other than Yiddish, then you can be all but certain that they served in the IDF for at least 2 years.

its not just that anti-zionism isn’t necessarily antisemitism. its that the thing we refer to as “the state of israel” is quite literally nothing more than an orphan crushing machine with a star of david painted hastily on the side of it.

its completely unremarkable pretend democracy. a random but not arbitrary collection of people who decide how power is exercised. they have no more right to so much as turn a light switch than any other government, secular or religious. they’re liars. they are claiming to represent jewish interests when they are unilaterally working against those interests on purpose to make more money than they have already.

and the ugly fact of the matter is that most of us have fallen for it. ideology aside, the majority of jews live in the state of Israel. the majority of jews have been raised in an echo chamber thats kept closed by hundreds of billions of dollars a year. on the one hand, the only way to liberate Palestine is to pop that bubble. but on the other, this bubble is doomed to pop eventually one way or the other, the question being one of the scale of the consequences.

im certain of that because we have literally tried this whole “Jewish State” thing before. twice. it failed. catastrophically. both times. in almost identical ways. for almost identical reasons. which were recorded meticulously in this little thing called the Torah, as well as oceans of critical scholarship. reasons which have been showing themselves VERY clearly in the zionist project since it started.

i don’t want to overshadow Palestinians, because this is altogether far more abstract than an ongoing genocide. but the simple fact of that matter is that Judaism, at this very moment, is quite literally being reborn. however long our story winds up being, the chapter we’re in is changing quite drastically and quite rapidly.

the blood from this will never leave our hands. if every American is at least a little responsible for empire, then yeah. every Israeli, and so the voting majority of the Jewish people, is responsible for the genocide of Palestinians.

so no, i find i dont care that however many people died on October 7th. palestinians aren’t dangerous to me or my community, because the zionists pushed us all away. no, i dont really care that Iran is bombing Tel-Aviv. its actually called Yaffo, and is a city i have never had any ambition of living in, because the zionists pushed me away. and, as horrible as it is, no, i dont really care that a guy crashed his car into a synagogue. i wouldn’t have died because the zionists wouldn’t have let me in the door begin with.

do i think synagogues should be attacked? i think synagogues should stop being funding hubs for genocide. my community, the one I and others were forced to build in the wilderness, is still at risk of attacks from antisemites, but not from Palestinians trying to stop their genocide. a genocide which we are actively prevented from being complicit in most of the time. and i already know that asking nicely isn’t enough.

mutual aid means no hierarchy between givers and receivers

a new mutual aid org, Bridge of Solidarity, has been established in the gaza strip by 17 year old poet yazan mohammed in response to the exploitative practices conducted by some charities and encouraged by the existing charity-based model of fundraising for gaza. according to BoS: "the western attention economy and pity economy plays a large role in who lives or dies in gaza." essentially, people need to make themselves marketable in order to receive lifesaving aid; people who are not marketable die. yazan himself wrote about the damage this can do to one's self image, which you can read here.

after trying for a year to respect his own privacy, my friend siraj was also pressured into posting images of his son's emaciated body in order to gain sympathy from westerners.

we cannot keep forcing people to do this anymore.

here's a declaration of their values from bridge of solidarity's most recent post:

Our organization is against the Western gaze. We refuse to humiliate people. We refuse to force people to take photos. We refuse to force people to take photos with our flyer or logo. People will receive aid freely without being forced to pose. We will respect people's privacy completely. Our principles include autonomy, dignity, sovereignty, mutual respect, and mutual aid.

this org will prioritize giving aid to people without phones or social media, who do not speak english, and who do not have outside support or living parents. these are the people who are not palatable to westerners but who deserve to live with as much dignity as everyone else

as of five days ago, BoS are working on a water truck delivery