please stop these games

Here's a live map of all the wildfires currently in Canada. There's a LOT of red and purple (out of control) on that map. I did not realize the whole fucking country was dealing with this. Given my own location, I've only heard about Ontario.

- First sentence: “It comes back in a rush, the raw stench of sewage, the groan of the diesel, sloth-like Israeli armored personnel carriers, the vans full of children driven by chalky-faced colonists, certainly not from here, probably from Brooklyn or somewhere in Russia, or maybe Britain.” This is a great way to open your book if you want to tell your readers that you don’t know a single thing about Jewish history or Israeli demography. In paragraph one, we’ve entered the book with the assumption that Israelis are guilty. The title of the first chapter is “THE OLD EVIL.” This book was published in 2025 and from the first sentence, it’s explaining a lot about the New York Times’ embrace of conspiracy theories.

- Hedges’ choppy writing style is like if Ernest Hemingway met Joseph Goebbels. The average sentence is ten words long — I’m rounding up here; a lot of them are three words — and it is painful.

- The entire first chapter is devoted to October of 2023. Hedges has determined that he’s chronicling a genocide by October 8th.

- “It was like this for Black people in the segregated South and Indigenous Americas. It was like this for Algerians under the French. It was like this in India, Ireland, and Kenya under the British. The death mask of colonialism — too often of European extraction — does not change. Nor does the godlike authority of the colonists—” okay. There’s a lot going on here. First of all, as someone who grew up in American South, I am sick and tired of white, Christian journalists from the New York Times trying to universalize the specific history of the civil rights movement for their own theoretical global salvation; they have no idea what they’re talking about and cheapen the very real and painful history of the actual American South. Second, as someone who spent years studying Irish history from the Nine Years’ War through the Troubles, it is laughable to compare any of it to American segregation, let alone the specific colonial histories of Kenya and India. Are we going to pretend that the Irish people didn’t play a role in that oppression whenever they had the opportunity? Ireland doesn’t get a pass on its participation in the British Empire in the same way that Scotland doesn’t get a pass on its participation in the British Empire: they were both happy to help in British conquest until it came to their own homelands. Ireland doesn’t belong in the same sentence as Kenya or India when it comes to colonization, and none of them belong in the same sentence as Palestine.

- Hedges is asked if he holds a Palestinian passport when entering the West Bank. He interprets this as asking if he is “contaminated.”

- “[Since October 7] Israel has detained over 9,860 Palestinians — or should I say taken hostages?” This is needlessly cruel and deeply dishonest; detainment could last a few hours at a checkpoint, or it could lead to an arrest with charges, or it could lead to a prison sentence determined by a court of law. There is no differentiation between the three, and to compare any of them to the situation of the hostages held in Gaza is mean spirited and misleading. There are grave issues with Israel’s criminal justice system, and it takes way too long to bring forward charges and go to trial, but being detained in this system even with these shortcomings is a very long way from what Hamas did to the hostages.

- “Hamas, like all resistance groups, from the African National Congress to the Irish Republican Army, is as demonized as it is misunderstood…. Hamas is not, despite what Israel and Washington say, a terrorist organization.” At least Hedges lets us know who he stands with. This is Hamas apologia all the way down. “Like most armed resistance groups, it uses terrorism as a tactic.” I didn’t realize it was possible to use terrorism as a tactic without being a terrorist organization.

- HE CALLS THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY A COLONIAL FORCE???

- According to Hedges, the protests for a ceasefire in support of the hostages fed a “lust for genocide.” Evidently wanting to prevent further bloodshed and bring your people home is genocidal. I will never stop being angry at the people who could have joined those protests and put international pressure on the Israeli government to prioritize the hostages over all else, and commit to a ceasefire. They could have saved thousands of lives, and instead they decided to waste their energy boycotting Israeli academics and peace activists. Beyond the senseless xenophobia, it’s a terrible strategy to actually improve the lives of the people living in this nightmare.

- Hedges denies the mass rapes committed on 10/7. He claims that Israel is “granted impunity from violations of international law, occupation, and genocide, because it has built a lobby with staggering financial resources and a well-oiled machine that props up politicians that support the apartheid state while aggressively funding campaigns to unseat politicians that defend Palestine.” This is just leftist QAnon.

- He maintains that Israelis struck Al Shifa hospital in 2023, against all proof to the contrary and the humiliation the NYT suffered when it became clear it had lied. How does he know it happened? Fauda. “Israel has a whole unit of Israeli Jewish undercover agents trained to pose as Palestinians and secretly operate among Palestinians… [they] produced a highly popular TV series about such people in Gaza called Fauda. You’d have to be beyond credulous to think that Israel couldn’t and wouldn’t rig up a call like this just to fool us.” I confess that I’ve never seen Fauda, but if we’re using TV shows to explain reality I think we may as well pack up and go home.

- As with most antizionist writers, Hedges uses selective citations. Individuals recounting events are cited normally; conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world are not cited at all, because they can’t be. He uses a breadcrumb-style citation method favoring Al Jazeera and Electronic Intifada, making smaller claims that have sources to lead to a grand conclusion akin to Jewish Space Lasers or Mossad Spy Pigeons. His claim that AIPAC is controlling US policy is backed by the facts that an Arkansas Republican senator who opposed Israel was not reelected, and that Cori Bush lost her primary in Missouri — I organized for that election, and Missourians had much more relevant problems than Israel (I believe decreasing gun violence, improving the abysmal department of transportation, expanding trans healthcare, and access to abortion were the main talking points). Anyway, these two politicians losing their elections are cited as proof that Israel is controlling America.

- “Imagine if China was doing this, if Iran was doing this?” He quotes Al Jazeera on AIPAC. HELLO? HELLO? ARE WE SERIOUSLY LISTENING TO QATARI STATE MEDIA ABOUT QUESTIONABLE FOREIGN LOBBYING?? China and Qatar far surpass Israel in lobbying the American government; this is absurd. We don’t have to “imagine” anything; they’re doing it.

- “The genocide in Gaza is the culmination of the process. It is not an act. The genocide is the predictable denouement of Israel’s Settler-Colonial project. It is coded within the DNA of the Israeli apartheid states it is where Israel had to end up.” I’ve never understood this argument — ‘our theoretical framework claims that under certain theoretical circumstances, theoretical governments will inevitably make specific theoretical policy decisions.’ It’s a lovely framework, but history doesn’t work that way. Nothing is inevitable and politics is never predictable; there is no a+b=c when it comes to history. If someone is telling you they’ve cracked the code to the way history unfolds, they’re either woefully misled or lying to you on purpose. This is the way conspiracy theories spread. I hate to say it, but a lot of the frameworks used in modern sociology are only a step away from conspiracy theory themselves. There is no “one size fits all” answer to human questions.

- Here we go with our Western universalism: “The genocide says something about not only Israel, but about us, about Western civilization, about who we are as a people, where we came from and what defines us. It says that all our vaunted morality and respect for human rights is a lie.”

- Hodges makes a list of all the modern perils — climate change, racism, genocide, dehumanization, the wretched of the earth in the global south, and conclude that “one day we will all be Palestinians.” No. No. We will not all universalize into a narrow nationalism in the hope that a total victory over the Jews will be the salvation of humanity. That’s already been tried, several times, and it didn’t end well for anyone.

- Golda Meir explaining that in the 1920s, Jews and Arabs alike were considered Palestinians without there being a distinct national divide, or a Palestinian national identity, is seen as “an erasure which requires an egregious act of historical amnesia” and also a “politicide of the Palestinian people.” It’s actually Hedges who embarrassingly fails to understand the history here. His refusal to see Israelis as human beings renders this book unreadable. I see this Golda Meir quote misinterpreted a lot, and it’s only possible to do that if you don’t bother reading the rest of what she said. It is true that the concept of a definitive Palestinian land was a Christian idea, more than a Muslim one; under the Ottomans, they considered Palestine to be the corridor of land from Jerusalem to Jaffa. It’s also true that until the Nebi Musa riots of 1920, started by Hajj Amin to distract from his corruption, it was assumed by most Muslim Arabs that they would become a part of greater Syria when the British Mandate ended, and thus saw themselves as Syrian nationalists rather than Palestinian nationalists. It was violence against Jews, first in 1920 and then in 1929, that began to form a separate Palestinian national identity. I also find it interesting that Christian Arabs played a huge role in the larger pan-Arab nationalism, as a way to separate themselves from the Dhimmi; as pan-Arabism has fallen and political Islam has risen, Arab Christians have seen themselves driven out of their lands in the same way Mizrachi Jews were in the 20th century.

- We quote Rashid Khalidi: “the surest way to eradicate a people’s right to their land is to deny their historical connection to it.” Oh, I’m sure, Rashid Khalidi. That would explain his endorsement of Nur Masalha, who goes so far as to say that the ancient Kingdom of Israel has no historical relation to the land, calls Maimonides an Arab, and promotes Khazar theory. One of my greatest frustrations with this history is that Israeli historians will go out of their way to criticize their history and the actions taken by their leaders, and Palestinian historians will rewrite history to make it look like they’ve never made any mistakes. If you can’t look your mistakes in the face, you’ll never learn.

- According to Hedges, Israel is the “modern face of Nero, who illuminated his opulent garden parties by burning to death captives tied to stakes” and the Western world is “Nero’s guests.” And the West better be careful, because “those who were once Nero’s guests, soon became his victims.” We’re back to leftist QAnon.

- Aaron Bushnell “died for our sins.” I wish I were making this up.

- Hedges ends the book at a Columbia encampment. He calls the university’s (frankly understated) response to the intentional destruction of its library and the kidnapping of its janitors “a system of totalitarianism.” Online backlash to the encampments is presented with the same gravity as the war in Gaza. If Hedges genuinely thinks there’s a comparison to be made here, he is only worthy of derision.

Body Horror: Things that cannot happen in real life. EX: The Thing, stomach mouths, eyes on hands, etc

Gore: Fresh injuries, often severe. EX: Severed leg, gutspill, deep gashes, etc

NEITHER: Healed injuries and burns, congenital differences, missing appendages, etc. If I could theoretically go to the store and see that character browsing the isles- It isn't body horror or gore. That's just a person. *AND the amount of people that tag, not just fictional characters, but real human beings as body horror is staggering. Its not solely a fandom issue, ableism and bigotry against anyone that looks sufficiently "different" is prevalent in real life and has devastating consequences.

Self harm scars are not body horror.

Pregnant people are not body horror.

Burn scars are not body horror, that includes chemical burn scars.

Prosthetics are not body horror.

NOT having prosthetics is also not body horror.

There is no disability aid that is body horror.

Congenital differences + disabilities are not body horror.

AND acquired differences + disabilities are also not body horror.

Real people are not body horror.

Washington Post is paywalling the article but it looks like Taylor Farms — a consumer bagged salad brand that also supplies produce to grocers and fast food chains like Taco Bell, Walmart, McDonald's, Chipotle, Burger King, KFC, and Meijer —may be at least one of the sources of the current cyclosporiasis outbreak.

Growing up, my dad was a cop. Which meant we often had other cops at the house. One of those cops had worked in Chicago for many years. He would sit at our table and drop the N-word.

I watched my parents just let this happen over and over, having been raised that we do not use that word and that it is not an acceptable word for anyone to use.

I finally got tired of hearing it one night and after the guy had left, asked my mother: "Hey, why is it he can sit here and say that word when I know you know it's wrong?"

My mother said, "Oh, well, he was a cop in Chicago for a long time, so has a different experience with the word."

Me: "But it's wrong. You have always told me it was wrong. Why do you allow this man to sit in our house and use a word you hate?"

My mother said, "Look, he had a hard time in Chicago, which is why he's here now. It's fine."

Me: "No, it's not."

I also asked my dad, who didn't try to sugarcoat it and basically said, "He's a nice guy and a friend, so I am basically just giving him a pass."

And then dad reminded me that he'd gotten his fellow officers to stop using so many racial slurs on the clock, and he'd done sit ins for civil rights, and I just sort of stared at him waiting to see the cognitive problem with all this, and nope, nothing. Dad liked the guy. The guy used the n-word regularly. Dad saw that as a price worth paying. I stopped being in the room when the guy came over.

On this occasion, as someone who used to volunteer for the Jerusalem Open House (the gay community center) let me offer you a bit of info about our country's LGBTQ history (and correct some anti-Israel distortions).

This is Chaim (Herman) Cohen.

He was born in Germany in 1911, and came to Israel in 1930, to study torah at a yeshiva here. Inspired by his Jewish studies, he decided to turn to the study of law, returning to Germany for that goal and to get married. In 1933, with the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, he decided to move to Israel permanently. In that sense, he's considered a refugee and Holocaust survivor. His younger brother Leo was murdered by the Nazis.

In 1950, he was appointed Israel's attorney general. In this role, he came across an anti-sodomy law passed by the British Mandate in 1936 (which prohibited all oral and anal sex, including between two men), and which the State of Israel automatically inherited once it was founded in 1948 (source in Hebrew). First he wanted to cancel it, but his jurisdiction fell short of that. As it was within his authority to instruct the Israeli police and state prosecution to ignore it, he did so in 1953. He explained his instruction:

"I thought it was my duty not to uphold a law, which I saw as immoral. [...] And if you should ask, in what is the immorality of the law prohibiting intercourse between men, I will reply to you that such a law against any consenting and private contact between adults contradicts the freedom of man over his own body, and depriving this freedom is a grave infringement against one of the basic human rights."

For comparison's sake, in March 1952, Alan Turing (who saved countless lives for the UK and the allies during WWII) was brought to trial for homosexual consensual private acts, was convicted, and his security clearance was revoked.

In 1978, a special committee of the Knesset (Israel's parliament) recommended several changes to laws addressing various sexual acts, including a recommendation to cancel this anti-sodomy law. In 1980, Israel's first right wing government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, accepted the committee's recommendations with a corresponding bill (which eventually didn't pass). The bill was presented a second time in 1986, and was passed into law in 1988, decriminalizing same-sex intercourse in Israel (source in Hebrew).

For comparison's sake, in 1990, there were still over 110 jurisdictions in the world criminalizing homosexuality in the world. In the 2020's, RIGHT NOW, there are over 60 that still do.

This is Dr. Doron Maizel (may his memory be a blessing) on the left, with his partner Adir Steiner.

Doron was an army doctor. He was married to a woman with whom he had 3 daughters, before coming out to her in the late 1970's, getting a divorce and eventually openly moving in with his partner Adir. They were together since 1983. Being open about his sexual orientation meant that while Doron was allowed to serve, the same notion that gay men are a security threat (which was applied to Alan Turing), and therefore can't be allowed to serve in top/secret posts in the army, was to stop the promotion that he was about to get. Doron went to visit Ariel Sharon (at the time, Israel's right wing Security Minister, who's in charge of the army) in the latter's private home. IDK what was said in that meeting, but after that, Adir underwent the security check that all partners of a high ranking army officer do, and then Doron got his promotion. When Doron passed away in 1991 from cancer, Adir demanded to be and was recognized as an army widower. Doron's official army commemoration page states, "Left behind a mother, three daughters, a brother and a boyfriend."

Here's Adir with Doron's picture during a 2012 interview:

In 1993, the army order that were meant to prevent Doron and other gay soldiers from serving in certain posts was officially canceled. In 1999, a soldier born as male asked to serve as a woman, because that's what she actually was (this would have made this soldier's service shorter, and in that sense "cost" the army). The request was accepted, and since then, trans soldiers serve in the gender they identify with.

The story of Israel's LGBTQ rights isn't only glitter and fairies. Just like I can talk about a lot of progress that the state made in equalizing our rights in many domains (because I have), I could also talk about the rights we still don't have (because I've done that, too). The situation here isn't perfect (though as far as I'm aware, it isn't anywhere in the world, there are at least a few rights denied to the queer community in every country I know of). But when I look at our history, I feel like Israel isn't just one of the more queer-friendly countries in the world, it was also at certain moments at the very forefront of the struggle to recognizing queer people as deserving of equal treatment.

Which is maybe the most instinctual reason for my fury at the form of the Israel's demonization using the false notion of "pink washing." It is DERANGED to think Chaim Cohen, in 1953, gave his pro-gay instruction in relation to an occupation that Israel wasn't being blamed of until after the Six Day War in 1967, and which didn't gain attention from the regular people (as opposed to foreign politicians, who didn't give a shit about Israel's record on gay rights) until the Derben Conference in 2000. Not to mention how the idea that having a good gay rights record is something a country can brag about is probably even younger than that conference.

The pink washing accusation is de-humanizing. It suggests that it can't be that Israelis simply have a set of values which happens to align with the west's when it comes to the gay community (or women's rights, or ecological awareness, or freedom of speech, or any of the other positives Israel has, which position it high in the Freedom Index, and which anti-Israel activists label "washing" with one color or another). No, the history of these fields in the Jewish state is all about what non-Jews will say about us! It's like you can't fathom that we have an existence of our own, and minds of our own, and desires and wants and struggles of our own, and not everything is centered about what you think of us.

And the source of this self-centered thinking seems to connect with an inability to accept the Jewish state as anything other than the ultimate evil. Because Israel has to be the supervillain of the story, then it can't have a single positive. Everything about it has to be black, otherwise that challenges the black and white narrative that's been developed to demonize the Jewish state. So if it is revealed that there's any domain in which Israel is actually doing good things, reflecting a respect for human rights or a closeness to the values that the anti-Israel crowd claims to uphold, then it must be just a cover up for how Israel treats the Palestinians.

Essentially, the pink/purple/green/whatever washing accusations are as insane and antisemitic, just like claiming that Jews have won so many Nobel Prizes (a reflection of how much our people have benefited humanity) to distract the world from all the non-Jewish kids we kill to use their blood to bake Passover matzos.

But it's actually worse. Because in the process of demonizing Israel, Israeli Arab and Palestinian queers get thrown under the bus, too. As a gay activist, I'm familiar with so many gay and trans Israeli Arabs who get to have a good life thanks to Israel's good gay rights record, who are aware that if the anti-Israel crowd is successful in de-legitimizing and destroying this state, they're fucked as well. I know a lot of gay and trans Palestinians, who only catch a break when they come to the Jerusalem Open House, or generally to Israel, the only place where they can be themselves safely. I know so many queer Palestinians who are scared for their lives because of the violent intolerance of their own families, society and governments. And all the western countries from which the anti-Israel people come from refuse them entry as refugees persecuted for their sexual orientation (yes, I have gay Palestinian friends who have tried, only to be turned down by country after country, no matter how "liberal" or "pro-Palestinian" they officially claim to be).

Meanwhile, gay Palestinians can get temporary asylum in Israel (please don't tell me it's "pink washing" again, when no one from the anti-Israel crowd will even acknowledge this fact) if they fear for their lives, it's just not a proper solution, because just like Palestinian terrorists can get into Israel, carry out an attack and murder innocent civilians, Palestinian homophobes can get inside as well, and murder the queer people who had fled here.

And just to make reality a tad more complex, you know how for the anti-Israel crowd, the worst of the worst of Israeli society, are the religious ("Fanatic! Extremist! Violent!") settlers? I know of more than one case where those religious settlers are the ones who are helping gay Palestinians, but here's one that made it into the Israeli news.

Life is just not black and white, human nature is complex, Israel is a country where human beings are more than just their stance on the conflict and whether foreigners agree with it or not, and the "pink washing accusation" black and white washes all our colors away, trying to reduce us into caricatures that fit into their simplistic, reductive narrative, so they can go on playing "white/western/outsider savior" to the "poor Palestinians" without actually caring about many of the poorest, most marginalized ones.

This vid isn't a representation of all gay Israeli Arabs, but it's def a voice you will not see acknowledged on the anti-Israel side:

Happy Pride to everyone seeing us, all of us, Israelis and Palestinians, queer and straight, with all of our humanity and complexity!

Turns out you can roll a 7 on a d6