Jacqui Lewis speaks of the carnage now occurring in Rafah:
"What if these were my children; how could I go on breathing? Then another thought comes quickly: All these children belong to all of us. As James Baldwin wrote 'The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.'”
@wdlindsy Nooooo, that is not what I meant!!! What happened in Israel is not right and I felt what is happening in Gaza seemed heartbreaking too. And it is not stopping. I hate terrorism and wars.
d'autant que les "mots" du gouvernement d'Israël ne valent plus rien ... pire, chaque fois qu'il parle le crédit de sa parole est telle qu'il va falloir inventer l'expression "donner de la dette à sa parole"
@SubtleBlade I really wish you were right, but sadly, after following Israeli impunity in the past 45 years I am kind of hesitant to celebrate this as a win.
As Lilly Greenberg Call resigns from the Biden administration due to Biden's Israeli policy, she writes,
“Nakba and Shoah, the Hebrew word for Holocaust, mean the same thing: catastrophe. I reject the premise that one people’s salvation must come at another’s destruction. I am committed to creating a world where this does not happen — and this cannot be done from within the Biden administration.”
@wdlindsy
True, but then under what past or immediate administration would it be done?
It is fine to take a moral position and quit a toxic org, but if the alternative on the table is a worse one, I am not sure what this achieves other than give personal peace.
The Spanish, Irish & Norwegian govts announced Wed that they would recognize a #Palestinian state, saying there would be no #peace in the #MiddleEast w/o it.
Israel denounced the move as giving aid to its enemy #Hamas.
The coordinated announcements are purely symbolic — but not w/o some power.
"In a carefully choreographed move that followed weeks of discussions, the Norwegian, Spanish and Irish governments have said they intend to recognise the state of Palestine. …
Perhaps most significant is how the new recognitions point to the erosion of US 'ownership' of the Israel-Palestine peace process since the period of Oslo peace talks and agreement."
@Misterhighwasted As people long oppressed by those who consider themselves lords and masters, the Irish have a longstanding penchant for taking the side of the underdog, and a fierce sense of justice as a result of their historical experience of injustice.
"On May 15th, Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff at the Department of the Interior and a political appointee of President Biden, resigned from her position in protest of the administration’s policies in Gaza. In doing so, she became the first known Jewish appointee to resign from the Biden administration over Gaza."
"She says her resignation was motivated by her Jewish values. 'I feel that I am really living in my Jewishness, in the essence of what I was raised with, by standing up for Palestinians and by demanding their freedom,' Greenberg Call tells Democracy Now…. 'I am so angry at the president that he is using my community as justification for this slaughter, making us the face of the American war machine.'”
"f you care about Palestinian lives and about the effect American policy has on those lives, you can’t just wave away the possibility of a Trump presidency. See point #1: The president has great power to affect Israeli policy, and if that president is Trump, the American government will be reinforcing the Netanyahu government’s most brutal intentions in both Gaza and the West Bank."
@jbburd I am resisting fascism and the many guises it uses to divide and conquer. I am committed to resisting fascism and to observing with Robert Reich that anyone who thinks Trump would be better on Israel and Gaza is living on another planet.
Peter Beinart offers valuable analysis of the current student protest movement and how it illustrates "the way in which one protest movement feeds into another at a time of broader protest." The Civil Rights and anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s fed the subsequent activism for LGBTQ and women's rights. And the backdrop to the current campus protests is the BLM movement and its protests.
@wdlindsy Perhaps Netanyahu and his government have lost touch with the elements of Judaism and have focused on holding onto power by selling the sweet taste of revenge to his people.
Surely the Torah does not condone revenge? Or has it been twisted by interpretation much like the Bible has been leveraged by conservative Christians for their political purposes?
@bouriquet I find the many voices speaking from within the Jewish tradition who resoundingly condemn the distortion of Jewish belief and values that Netanyahu represents compelling to listen to.
“I’m a German-Polish Jew. My last name is Wexler. …
We are told that we need a state that is based on ethnicity in the 21st century and that’s the only way Jewish people can be safe. But it is really for Britain and America and other imperialist states to have a presence in the Middle East.”
@DeeGLloyd You can find online any number of good courses in basic historiography and good reading lists in that field. You may want to start with E.H. Carr's succinct classic little book What Is History?
The #Republican-led UnitedStates House of
Representatives passed a bill on Thurs that would force President Joe #Biden to send weapons to Israel, seeking to rebuke the Democrat for delaying bomb shipments as he urges Israel to do more to protect #civilians during its war w/ #Hamas.
@Nonilex . . . seeks to wipe out militants who attacked Israel on #Oct7…. Hmmmm. How about seeks to destroy the very concept of Palestinian personhood?
The #Biden admin has concluded it is “reasonable to assess” that #Israel’s military campaign in #Gaza has violated #InternationalLaw, but has not found specific instances that would justify the withholding of #military aid, #State Dept told #Congress Fri.