Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.
The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.
The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.
Ok gotta talk about it.
As a Jewish historian, I fucking hate Israel in ways most probably will never be able to comprehend. I'm going to try and explain it anyways. The central creation myth of Israel is that it is Jewish, and then consequently, that Israel is a part of Jewishness. Its easy to simply state this is false, but fully comprehending this and putting it into practice in thought and deed seems rare to me.
The evil at the heart of this violence predates the recent acceleration of genocide. Israel is a colony, and more than that, an antisemitic fraud itself. After WW2, when Israel was being founded, the Jews of Europe generally did not wave goodbye to their neighbors and head to the promised land. Many were expelled from their homes. Zionism itself, as an action, was a false choice at the time. A mere excuse to place an ally in the middle east, and an excuse to complete the expulsion and destruction of the European Jew. The Zionist Jew is more than complicit in this, they actively seek the destruction and assimilation of all other Jews.
Many fail to realize, and largely because of Israel, that Jews are not inherently white, Ashkenazi, European-descended people. Our faith and culture has an immense variety that is spread all across the globe. Jewishness, in population and volume of culture, exists more so outside of Israel than within it. Israel is for a very specific kind of Jew. The kind that lets Yiddish die, that attaches themselves to European things, that makes themselves and their practices as white as possible.
And they have the nerve, the fucking belligerent GALL, to frame themselves as the necessary saviors of our people. To the Zionist, questioning Israel is to question Jewishness itself. They bake adoration for the colonial machine into their very prayers, and push them on us even as children. To *not* oppress, to *not* kill, to *not* genocide, is to invite death. This is the core of fascistic thought, of course. "Kill them before they kill us." And they KNOW this too, they really do. The truth of that irony does not matter, because as is true for all fascists, the truth itself does not matter to them. They wanted this, they wanted this even before the British saw it in their best interest to give them the land. Any excuse to RETVRN, as the neo-nazis say of Rome, or the German Empire, or whatever the fuck stupid country they want to poorly animate the corpse of. Some select Zionists even *sided with the fucking Nazis* in agreement they should abandon Europe to colonize Palestine. (Haavara Agreement)
My people have proved time and time and time again you don't need a nation state to have an enduring culture. We have protected ourselves for thousands of years without the help of these spiteful, doom-saying maniacs. I was going to post something like this on Passover, but that would be hypocritical. The state of Israel doesn't actually have shit to do with Jewishness. שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְה Vi tsu derleb ikh im shoyn tsu bagrobn. [my best translation] Hear Israel (beginning of a prayer in Hebrew) I should outlive him long enough to bury him. (an old Yiddish curse)
Free Palestine. Donate what you can, they need it right now.
The protests at Emory university in Atlanta have been met with the most violent police brutality by far. Students have been tased, tear gassed shot with rubber bullets and THEY WILL NOT STOP because they are courageous Beings with a heart to match and the common people will not accept anything less than a Free Palestine 🙏🍉
Les Miserables is a wildly popular popular musical and I adore it,vico but I have always suspected that a large portion of its fans do not hold its values when it comes to people who are in the present rather than in the distant past. (I have thoughts about ways that the musical distracts from Victor Hugo's message, but I'll save that for later.)
I would guess many of the people who currently support violently shutting down students who are protesting injustice in the world are fans of the musical about students taking far more extreme measures because of the injustice they see.
I think it would be brilliant for students to sing "Do You Hear the People Sing?" at their encampments, especially the reprise which gives me such feelings I can't express.
Do you hear the people sing? Lost in the valley of the night It is the music of a people Who are climbing to the light For the wretched of the earth There is a flame that never dies Even the darkest night will end And the sun will rise.
They will live again in freedom In the garden of the Lord We will walk behind the plowshare We will put away the sword The chain will be broken And all men will have their reward!
Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade Is there a world you long to see? Do you hear the people sing? Say, do you hear the distant drums? It is the future that we bring When tomorrow comes! Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing Say, do you hear the distant drums? It is the future that we bring When tomorrow comes! Tomorrow comes! Tomorrow comes!
WITCH HEAD NEBULA * IC 2118 (also known as Witch Head Nebula due to its shape) is an extremely faint reflection nebula believed to be an ancient supernova remnant or gas cloud illuminated by nearby supergiant star Rigel in the constellation of Orion. It lies in the Orion constellation, about 900 light-years from Earth. The nature of the dust particles, reflecting blue light better than red, is a factor in giving the Witch Head its blue color. Radio observations show substantial carbon monoxide emission throughout parts of IC 2118, an indicator of the presence of molecular clouds and star formation in the nebula. In fact candidates for pre-main sequence stars and some classic T-Tauri stars have been found deep within the nebula. The molecular clouds of IC 2118 are probably juxtaposed to the outer boundaries of the vast Orion-Eridanus bubble, a giant supershell of molecular hydrogen blown by the high mass stars of the Orion OB1 association. As the supershell expands into the interstellar medium, favorable circumstances for star formation occur. IC 2118 is located in one such area. The wind blown appearance and cometary shape of the bright reflection nebula is highly suggestive of a strong association with the high mass luminous stars of Orion OB1. The fact that the heads of the cometary clouds of IC2118 point northeast towards the association is strong support of that relationship.. Credit to Pablo Carlos Budassi.
Just reading about all the Eurovision happenings rn
new billie eilish album got me feeling like i’m laying peacefully under a weighted blanket and also like i’ve just been shot in the chest with a shotgun
Wissam Hamada, the mother of Hind Rajab, whose legacy continues to inspire movements worldwide, despite her tragic passing expresses her profound grief mixed with pride as her daughter's name now resonates at institutions like Columbia University. She calls on the world to continue protesting so that children like Hind could be spared what Hind had gone through.
[eye.on.palestine]
I really feel like not enough has been said about this:
Ana Clara Benevides died because Taylor Swift and her team decided to ban personal water bottles at the concert during a heat wave and did not make provisions for an alternate free water source. The water available to buy at the concert was not effectively distributed and many people in the crowd of 60,000 found themselves unable to access it. Many other people also suffered from the heat and poor concert management.
Read the whole goddamn page if you have the time. What an absolute clusterfuck. Ana Clara Benevides was a VIP ticket holder. I have a friend who bought the same kind of ticket and the price is…..fucking exorbitant. That a fan could pay so much, and still lose her life due to gross incompetence, is a testament to the greed and power abuse that’s going on here. It’s also a pretty powerful statement about the effects of climate change and uh. The private jets aren’t fucking helping. Despite her incredible wealth, Taylor Swift did not offer any financial assistance with the funeral. Her fans did. Taylor Swift’s greed and rapacious appetite for fame are the only things that outweigh her spectacular perpetual victim complex. I am beyond sick of her shit.