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I just wanted to share this article about Palestine's right to revolt and why it is important that we support it. It also has sources embedded in the text that debunk misinformation about them and Hamas. I implore everyone to read it and spread this information around.

A pro-Palestine Jew on tiktok asked those of us who were raised pro-Israel, what got us to change our minds on Palestine. I made a video to answer (with my voice, not my face), and a few people watched it and found some value in it. I'm putting this here too. I communicate through text better than voice.

So I feel repetitive for saying this at this point, but I grew up in the West Bank settlements. I wrote this post to give an example of the extent to which Palestinians are dehumanized there.

Where I live now, I meet Palestinians in day to day life. Israeli Arab citizens living their lives. In the West Bank, it was nothing like that. Over there, I only saw them through the electric fence, and the hostility between us and Palestinians was tangible.

When you're a child being brought into the situation, you don't experience the context, you don't experience the history, you don't know why they're hostile to you. You just feel "these people hate me, they don't want me to exist." And that bubble was my reality. So when I was taught in school that everything we did was in self defense, that our military is special and uniquely ethical because it's the only defensive military in the world - that made sense to me. It slotted neatly into the reality I knew.

One of the first things to burst the bubble for me was when I spoke to an old Israeli man and he was talking about his trauma from battle. I don't remember what he said, but it hit me wrong. It conflicted with the history as I understood it. So I was a bit desperate to make it make sense again, and I said, "But everything we did was in self defense, right?"

He kinda looked at me, couldn't understand at all why I was upset, and he went, "We destroyed whole villages. Of course we did. It was war, that's what you do."

And that casual "of course" stuck with me. I had to look into it more.

I couldn't look at more accurate history, and not at accounts by Palestinians, I was too primed against these sources to trust them. The community I grew up in had an anti-intellectual element to it where scholars weren't trusted about things like this.

So what really solidified this for me, was seeing Palestinian culture.

Because part of the story that Israel tells us to justify everything, is that Palestinians are not a distinct group of people, they're just Arabs. They belong to the nations around us. They insist on being here because they want to deny us a homeland. The Palestinian identity exists to hurt us. This, because the idea of displacing them and taking over their lands doesn't sound like stealing, if this was never theirs and they're only pretending because they want to deprive us.

But then foods, dances, clothing, embroidery, the Palestinian dialect. These things are history. They don't pop into existence just because you hate Jews and they're trying to move here. How gorgeous is the Palestinian thobe? How stunning is tatreez in general? And when I saw specific patterns belonging to different regions of Palestine?

All of these painted for me a rich shared life of a group of people, and countered the narrative that the Palestininian identity was fabricated to hurt us. It taught me that, whatever we call them, whatever they call themselves, they have a history in this land, they have a right to it, they have a connection to it that we can't override with our own.

I started having conversations with leftist friends. Confronting the fact that the borders of the occupied territories are arbitrary and every Israeli city was taken from them. In one of those conversations, I was encouraged to rethink how I imagine peace.

This also goes back to schooling. Because they drilled into us, we're the ones who want peace, they're the ones who keep fighting, they're just so dedicated to death and killing and they won't leave us alone.

In high school, we had a stadium event with a speaker who was telling us about a person who defected from Hamas, converted to Christianity and became a Shin Bet agent. Pretty sure you can read this in the book "Son of Hamas." A lot of my friends read the book, I didn't read it, I only know what I was told in that lecture. I guess they couldn't risk us missing out on the indoctrination if we chose not to read it.

One of the things they told us was how he thought, we've been fighting with them for so long, Israelis must have a culture around the glorification of violence. And he looked for that in music. He looked for songs about war. And for a while he just couldn't find any, but when he did, he translated it more fully, and he found out the song was about an end to wars. And this, according to the story as I was told it, was one of the things that convinced him. If you know know the current trending Israeli "war anthem," you know this flimsy reasoning doesn't work.

Back then, my friend encouraged me to think more critically about how we as Israelis envision peace, as the absence of resistance. And how self-centered it is. They can be suffering under our occupation, but as long as it doesn't reach us, that's called peace. So of course we want it and they don't.

Unless we're willing to work to change the situation entirely, our calls for peace are just "please stop fighting back against the harm we cause you."

In this video, Shlomo Yitzchak shares how he changed his mind. His story is much more interesting than mine, and he's much more eloquent telling it. He mentions how he was taught to fear Palestinians. An automatic thought, "If I go with you, you'll kill me." I was taught this too. I was taught that, if I'm in a taxi, I should be looking at the driver's name. And if that name is Arab, I should watch the road and the route he's taking, to be prepared in case he wants to take me somewhere to kill me. Just a random person trying to work. For years it stayed a habit, I'd automatically look at the driver's name. Even after knowing that I want to align myself with liberation, justice, and equality. It was a process of unlearning.

On October, not long after the current escalation of violence, I had to take a taxi again. A Jewish driver stopped and told me he'll take me, "so an Arab doesn't get you." Israeli Jews are so comfortable saying things like this to each other. My neighbors discussed a Palestinian employee, with one saying "We should tell him not to come anymore, that we want to hire a Jew." The second answered, "No, he'll say it's discrimination," like it would be so ridiculous of him. And the first just shrugged, "So we don't have to tell him why." They didn't go through with it, but they were so casual about this conversation.

In the Torah, we're told to treat those who are foreign to us well, because we know what it's like to be the foreigner. Fighting back against oppression is the natural human thing to do. We know it because we lived it. And as soon as I looked at things from this angle, it wasn't really a choice of what to support.

Here's a website where Palestine GoFundMes are vetted and shared that you can send out to people. The url is gazafunds.com

Easy to use and simple. Just share the site whenever someone asks for GFMs for Palestine.

my estimation is that the reason the calls for global strike tomorrow (dec 11th) seem uncoordinated is because they're coming from inside palestine and were shared by palestinians inside palestine instead of being organized independently by each country. they seem most focused within the west bank and jordan.

however, we've seen a lot of people worldwide take up this call and several organizers within the US and other countries do it in their own way. one of the primary asks is to just disrupt the global market. if you can't call in sick and must go to work, then don't use your credit card tomorrow. some have said don't log into facebook and instagram—sure. that too. if you can participate in protests after work instead, do that. if you are not an essential worker, if you can shut down a store, and bookstore, if you have a small business, make sure to let people know you are not working because you are striking for palestine. if you're a student and you can, don't go to class. if you're a teacher and you can, call in sick. if you have exams (as many do) you can just refrain from buying anything, join a protest after, or share the boycott news. one student not showing up may not do much—three students not showing up reminds people that there's a strike. talking about it, even if you won't participate in it, helps. talking about it, even just to say "oh there's supposed to be a strike today" helps.

it is a flexible form of disruption. the priority is disrupting businesses and the flow of commerce, so more than not going to work, not using your credit card is far more important.

consider this a trial run in disruption on behalf of those inside palestine. yes bigger and more organized global strikes that can coordinate with local groups are needed. but small chain reactions like this also create disruption, increase pressure, and remind people that the genocide is on-going. they also build up to bigger and more sustained strikes.

The Israeli occupation has killed more than 154 Palestinians since the ceasefire began, violating all agreements and commitments. The bodies of the martyrs pile up, homes are destroyed over their inhabitants, and massacres continue relentlessly. Yet, the media remains silent, as if our lives are unworthy of being told, as if our blood is nothing more than numbers lost in the flood of news

But what if a single Israeli were killed? Headlines would ignite, condemnations would pour in, and the world would mourn the loss. Meanwhile, we are slaughtered daily, entire families are erased, our homes are mercilessly bombed, and the skies rain fire upon our children and mothers

We ask for nothing but the right to live, yet it is stolen from us with brutal force. Under this suffocating siege, soaring prices, and the blockade of crossings, we are in desperate need of your support

Stand with us in this time of hardship. Every contribution can save a life, and every voice can help the world hear our suffering. Do not leave us alone in the face of this injustice

Donate here, your donation, whatever it is, makes a difference

Some misc art from 2024

more under the cut so this doesn't clog up any tl's too much

Some additional Valentines things

I've been wondering if the photo IDs I add are any good since I don't really have a person to ask about them. If there's anything I can improve on with them please say so!

There are still hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Gaza

Spoilers for a later part of 8:11 chapter 1

Don't you just hate it when you try to have a moment to wash all the grime off and your guardian angel says it's hell time? Truly a relatable issue