The Tragedy Of Gaza Was Caused By People Pretending It Is Humane To Leave People Under A Bloodthirsty

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Sydney Jews decry ‘Sanction Israel’ banner hung at Great Synagogue as ‘antisemitism’

Jewish community group calls incident 'pure, unadulterated antisemitism,' antithetical to Australian life; prominent human rights lawyer den

“Let’s be clear — targeting a synagogue is pure, unadulterated antisemitism which is intended to have a chilling and intimidating effect on members of the Synagogue and the Jewish community more broadly,” the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies said in a post on X.

---- "But we're just criticizing Israel! Those Jews. Always accusing us of antisemitism"

As a historic note - the Nazis in this picture are boycotting the department store of Wilfred Israel, an ardent Zionist who played a significant role in the Kindertransport. If only they could see their ideological descendants today. They would be so proud.

Today is October 7th. One year ago today, Hamas committed a massacre, taking hundreds of hostages, committing countless rapes, and killing over a thousand people, the single greatest Jewish loss of life in one day since the Holocaust.

Today is a day of mourning, of the loss of the dead and fear for the captives, but also of mourning for the world we thought we lived in on October 6. The bodies weren't cold before our neighbors, sometimes even our friends were out in the streets and online celebrating these murders and kidnappings, calling them resistance, calling them noble, calling these murders, rapes, and kidnappings, righteous. Days before Israel responded, Hamas' supporters in the US, Europe, Australia, all around the world, were in the streets, celebrating Jewish death and Jewish pain.

I want to say that again. Days before Israel did anything in response, Hamas' supporters around the world were already in the streets. And they have stayed in the streets ever since. No matter how many people I keep seeing claiming that they're marching for peace, the simple fact that they were out there chearing before Israel responded, belies those claims.

And what I never hear a single gentile talk about, is that last year, October 7 fell on a Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah, a day of dancing, and joy, of life and celebration. It's my mother's favorite holiday. I don't know a single Jew who is going to be up to celebrating this Simchat Torah. But we will try, because we have to.

So today we are mourning. And if that makes you angry, that's your problem.

K.A. Applegate's letter to fans re: the ending the Animorphs series

Dear Animorphs Readers:

Quite a number of people seem to be annoyed by the final chapter in the Animorphs story. There are a lot of complaints that I let Rachel die. That I let Visser Three/One live. That Cassie and Jake broke up. That Tobias seems to have been reduced to unexpressed grief. That there was no grand, final fight-to-end-all-fights. That there was no happy celebration. And everyone is mad about the cliffhanger ending.

So I thought I’d respond.

Animorphs was always a war story. Wars don’t end happily. Not ever. Often relationships that were central during war, dissolve during peace. Some people who were brave and fearless in war are unable to handle peace, feel disconnected and confused. Other times people in war make the move to peace very easily. Always people die in wars. And always people are left shattered by the loss of loved ones.

That’s what happens, so that’s what I wrote. Jake and Cassie were in love during the war, and end up going their seperate ways afterward. Jake, who was so brave and capable during the war is adrift during the peace. Marco and Ax, on the other hand, move easily past the war and even manage to use their experience to good effect. Rachel dies, and Tobias will never get over it. That doesn’t by any means cover everything that happens in a war, but it’s a start.

Here’s what doesn’t happen in war: there are no wondrous, climactic battles that leave the good guys standing tall and the bad guys lying in the dirt. Life isn’t a World Wrestling Federation Smackdown. Even the people who win a war, who survive and come out the other side with the conviction that they have done something brave and necessary, don’t do a lot of celebrating. There’s very little chanting of ‘we’re number one’ among people who’ve personally experienced war.

I’m just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I’ve never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn’t going to do it at the end. I’ve spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I’ve written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To think about the right and wrong, not just the who-beat-who. And to tell you the truth I’m a little shocked that so many readers seemed to believe I’d wrap it all up with a lot of high-fiving and backslapping. Wars very often end, sad to say, just as ours did: with a nearly seamless transition to another war.

So, you don’t like the way our little fictional war came out? You don’t like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don’t like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you’ll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.

If you’re mad at me because that’s what you have to take away from Animorphs, too bad. I couldn’t have written it any other way and remained true to the respect I have always felt for Animorphs readers.

K.A. Applegate

A kid’s book series that didn’t coddle it’s readers just because they were children? How awesome is that? I think this series did an even better job than Harry Potter at showing how horrible and horrifying war is. Harry Potter still gave us that happy “everyone is married and has a family” epilogue, and we rarely (if ever) saw the characters truly dealing with nightmares or PTSD like symptoms from what they’d experienced. Animorphs showed readers how horrifying war is from the start - book 1 has Jake suffering through nightmares because of what he’d seen. Animorphs doesn’t give readers the easy “all of x group are evil” way out. The series starts off allowing readers to think Andalites = good and Yeerks = bad, but then goes on to fully pull the rug out from underneath us when we learn how Andalites treat disabled members of their society, and how horrible it is for Yeerks when they don’t have a host. Nothing about the war is comfortable for either the readers or the main characters.

This series ran from 1996-2001, and the characters are 13 when the war starts, and 16 when it ends. Each book is between 150 and 200 pages long, and even though there are a butt ton of books, I think everyone who enjoys YA/childrens lit should give them a shot. Though if you do, beware extreme 90s-ness. Many plot lines and jokes are extremely reliant on the time in which the books take place, so the sooner you get “if they’d had a cell phone, this wouldn’t even be a thing” out of your head, the better. Like, one of the books’ plot is that the CEO of the AOL equivalent is being targeted, and that would allow the alien invading force to control the entire internet. So yea, it’s very of it’s era. But still excellent!

Actually autistic ppl: pls refer to us as “autistic people”

NTs: people with autism

Autistic person: no

NTs: people suffering with the condition of autism

Autistic person: still no

NTs:

Hello, you may not see this but me and my older sister always get heated up about a specific word: hurt. She says it’s grammatically correct to say, for example, “that hurted” but I keep telling her that “hurt” is already in the past tense. Thus, it would be “that hurt” but she disagrees and mentions most people use “that hurted”.

As a prolific writer, please let me know your thoughts

(Also me and my sisters were not really in the best of terms but for some reason we all decided to watch Good Omens together and our relationship became really close. Thank you. )

Grammar is both prescriptive and descriptive. "Hurted" was good English grammar from the 15th to the 19th Century (just as "hurtit" still is a valid past tense in Scotland). In the 19th Century it was decided that "hurt" was the only valid past tense of "to hurt" and "hurted" fell out of fashion. If enough people use it then it will become good grammar once again.

🌈Just a reminder to be super normal about people being visibly Jewish at Pride events (or anywhere, actually). You cannot tell anything about their views on the war just by knowing that they're Jewish.

Most Jews I know are feeling extremely unsafe right now, even if they are very vocal supporters of Palestine, and if you care about inclusion, diversity, justice, and peace then it is in the interest of your own values to make them feel safe and welcomed right now too.

And before people go feral in the comments- you can both care about Palestine AND take tangible actions to make Jews know feel safe in your community. You do not have to think those sufferings are equal to address both. Frankly, Im willing to say that the stance of "But Palestine has it worse therefore Im justified in not caring about/perpetuating fear for Jews" is actually someone who is excited about what they see as a free pass to be antisemitic and you SHOULD call them out. 🌈

I haven’t yet seen a tumblr post with these resources so I am making my own and hoping it shows up in the tags. I ASK EVERYONE WHO SEES THIS TO PLEASE REBLOG THIS.

THE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT (ICWA) IS UNDER ATTACK. AND WE NEED HELP TO PROTECT IT USING THE RESOURCES BELOW.

I am not going to go into heavy detail on the bill, on its history, anything like that, the resources have a lot of information, but as a little bit of background:

It is a bill passed that forbids Native children from being adopted by non-Native families. This is for a good fucking reason, there have been historically large scoops of children taken from their Native families, at a much higher rate than white children (see the 60s scoop in Canada). These children are often abused in these homes, and their entire culture is taken from them (many end up not even knowing what tribe/nation they came from), hence the point of why they were taken in the first place (forced assimilation). Now, this does still happen through the foster care system, but this has protected in the case of adoption. It makes it that only Native families can adopt Native children.

White people hate this and have been smearing it for years (think of the whole Lexi Choctaw/Alexandria P. situation, which was so fucked how they used that little girl). Now, the state governments of Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana have taken it to the Supreme Court to be ruled unconstitutional. This case is called Haaland v. Brackeen. Because white people … really want to steal Native children. This is being heard by the court, oral arguments start WEDNESDAY. ICWA could be overturned in the matter of weeks or even days.

PLEASE USE ALL OF THESE TO PROTECT ICWA:

Petition that will involve you sending messages to your Congressional leaders through their text automated system, only available to those in the US (BUT NOTE YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A CITIZEN, OR ELIGIBLE TO VOTE TO SIGN, JUST NEED TO BE IN THE US):

https://resist.bot/petitions/PCCPGW 

Petition to send a message to President Biden and leaders at the Department of Justice, this does have a place to put in your country so seems like it may be available for those outside of the US but I am unsure (consider also donating to the Lakota People’s Law Project if you are able to):

https://action.lakotalaw.org/action/protect-icwa

Petition to be sent to the Attorney General and Secretary of the Department of the Interior, since it is through change.org it likely can be signed from outside of the US:

https://www.change.org/p/protect-the-indian-child-welfare-act

PLEASE SIGN AS MANY AS YOU ARE ABLE TO. PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU SEE THIS. PLEASE HELP US PROTECT ICWA.