Heritage, Not Hate, You Guys

 

There were lovely peace marches today around the world only somewhat marred by counterprotests and, you know, antisemitic hate messages under the guise of liberation. I'm a simple human, so I have to ask you all: if you knew that for Israeli Jews, and for the founding statements of Hamas and as was actually dropped from the PLO platform back in the 1980s, that "from the river to the sea" actually was literally intended to mean "throw Jews into the sea because this is Arab land"--would you be shocked if many people interested in peace thought that slogan was uniquely unhelpful? Would you try to retcon it to mean something different? Can we make that statement more "All Lives Matter"-ish? 

Sure, it's got a rhyme and a good marching cadence, but would it be helpful? Would people chanting about "intifada" be helpful, or no? If it literally antagonized the people you want peace with who also have a fear of genocide? What does the chant "Palestine 48" mean to people? Why throw red paint like blood at the White House? 

See, I get that for people who have gotten deep into this conversation, anti-Zionism means a lot of different things, but Israel is as old as my dad. To me, 75 years old is old enough to have earned the right to be acknowledged. If Zionism is basically the thing where there is a Jewish state in the Middle East: here it is! There are people there! They have a government and guess what: the people know that what the Netanyahu government is doing is wrong and are protesting it. They want to acknowledge human rights and Palestinian dignity--not all Israelis are right-wing settler colonialists. Like, we can't at this point argue about Jews living there. They do. The alternative to that is a war crime. 

Here in the US, we could stand to learn not all Palestinians are scary Hamas. Some pro-Palestinian rights folks are Jews who respect all human rights because they understand not all Palestinians are Hamas.  This bullshit is like in 2015, when all the cowardly red state governors saw the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi and realized many people of Syria were trying to live somewhere else and be free and safe, and all very bravely--said no way are we letting innocent women and children find safety and freedom here. 

Republicans can be counted on to do the wrong thing about this conflict. Some want to boot out Palestinian folks with visas or whatever here because...elections? Some are going to absolutely turn away Palestinian refugees, if ever any found a way to get here. 

So anyway. I'm still wincing at the "Genocide Joe" shit because once again: foreign policy is not the thing where all the cards are face-up on the table and everything is spelled out for the little kids on Tik Tok at home. The idea that US foreign aid means that Netanyahu would respond to a public call-out because "dollars make sense" is just weird. Why would anyone think that if they understood his whole deal? And why would Biden shoot one shot and revoke foreign aid if it meant less access when there are still US nationals in Gaza he wants to bring home, as well as still having some leverage in at least mitigating the human toll in Gaza, just the way he tried for humanitarian aid and a possible humanitarian pause. He isn't flat out Netanyahu's boss by any means. 

The way people just aren't trying to do critical thinking about all this messes me up. But if people want to see their way through with less violence or find a reasonable solution to the unbearable status quo--yeah, sloganeering is just not it. Name-calling the folks trying to do the work isn't it. And not realizing the billion ways Republicans would fuck everything up way worse isn't it.