HOT HOT TOPIC: ISRAEL & GAZA. AND HOT HOT RESPONSES . . . (PART 1)
My starting point is that I value respectful discussion, rather than going to anger and name-calling if there is disagreement.
And with that, it is time for me to get back to an extremely hot topic, hot each time I wrote about it - where I ended up being called names by people on both sides - the pro-Israel side and the pro-Gaza side. In fact, that’s what most hit me - the extent to which some people quickly went to anger and denigration. I vividly remember being called a zionist shill (more than once). And then there was someone who, after making a number of angry derogatory statements, ended with, Unsubscribe me! - though there is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every post that is sent out. Of course I unsubscribed that person.
Usually I don’t let denigrating and disrespectful statements remain on Substack. This time, I let them all remain - evidence of people’s responses.
Note: many people were not like this. Instead, for instance, if they disagreed, they might send a link and ask me to look at it. So they saw me as someone they could try to reach.
As usual, many people also expressed agreement, or had questions, or were uncertain. But those people are not what got me to write.
Here’s one thought I had. I do not believe that people CHOSE, after careful consideration, to respond with anger and name-calling. My sense is that these were automatic (programmed) responses to various things I said - different things triggering different people. My sense is also that people felt fully justified in making the responses they made.
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I learned a lot from the respectful comments I received. I will come to those in a further post.
I very much remember one person writing that she had woken up wondering if people ever changed their minds about Israel and Gaza.
I answered that I did not have the sense, when I got more information, of changing my mind. I remember my ex often being frustrated, claiming that I kept changing my mind. My answer, then and now, is that I do not have the sense of changing my mind, but of getting more information and taking it in. My sense is that my commitment is to the truth, human rights and freedoms, justice and our safety so we can flourish fully.
Here’s an instance where I seemingly changed my mind. I originally accepted that Islam is a religion of peace - that’s what I heard over and over. In a very early post - 2006, I believe - I wrote that Mohammed would be upset by how his religion of peace had been hijacked. One person - still a friend - answered that Mohammed would not be upset, and cited about a dozen quotes from the Quran about killing Jews wherever you find them, and so on. At my request for more quotes, he sent me perhaps another 40. I also did some research, got even more information. I had clearly been misinformed! I no longer held - I no longer hold - that Islam is a religion of peace.
But I did not, from my perspective, change my mind. I got more information.
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This time, in response to my first sendout about Israel and Gaza, I got more information. And then in response to my second sendout, I got even more information. I will deal with the new information in my next post on Israel and Gaza.
Here I will just mention one thing that has not changed. I was and continue to be for the existence of the state of Israel.
Why?
I’m for the continuing existence of Israel just as I’m for the continuing existence of Canada, the United States, Chile, Argentina, Barbados, Japan, Australia, etc.
These countries exist. Yes, many wrongs were done to many aboriginals in many of these countries by many of the newcomers. I especially remember the words of a famous American chief: “They broke every promise but one. They promised to take our land and they did.”
Quite a horror.
At the same time, when I was a young child, there was legal immigration and my parents came to Canada. I am very rooted in Canada.
It’s far from only me and my family. For centuries there has been the influx of people from many other areas of the world into Canada, the US, etc. We’ve settled, often for generations.
In Canada and some other countries, there have also been numerous financial and other settlements with aboriginals. They pay no tax, for instance!!!
It makes no sense to me to aim to undo the existence of Israel or of Canada or of Australia - or of Japan, and give Japan back to the 10,000 or so Ainu who still exist (the Ainu - the inhabitants of Japan before the arrival of the ethnic group that now inhabits most of Japan).
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Someone sent me a link to a video of a Hasidic person who does not believe Israel should exist because, according to his beliefs based on the religious texts he accepts, humans are not to create a state of Israel, only the god he believe in is to do that.
My response. Fine. That’s his belief.
As someone who does not identify with any religion, I hear his arguments but they don’t matter to me, in terms of whether Israel (or any other country) should or shouldn’t exist..
What resonates with me is that Israel exists and thrives. It has a high standard of education, for instance. Muslims in Israel are better educated, on average, than in any of the surrounding Muslim countries.
(Note: Israel also also a very high mRNA injection rate, along with the negative consequences from that.)
Anyway, for me, my starting point is that countries exist. I am not for undoing their existence.
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I am for people living well without doing violence to others. I am for putting energy into learning how to flourish ever more. I see that so much energy is often locked into hating and blaming and wanting to destroy. I am for using as much energy as possible for living full flourishing lives.
I am also for recognizing and acknowledging all that has happened. No pretending that unsavory - even horrible or horrific - parts of the past did not happen, or conversely believing that this is all that happened. To deny is very tempting, when it is a group we identify with. But we may also have been trained to stay immersed in shame.
I am not for staying locked, whether in recognition, denial, blame or shame.
That’s the core to my approach to personal development - Full Flourishing.
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I want to come to what I have learned about Israel and Gaza, and the ongoing need both for further learning and for recognizing there are many questions for which I cannot, at present, get answers.
What I have learned will be the focus of my next post on Israel and Gaza.
I got a wealth of information I am happy to pass on.
I will see the responses I get to this post.
Posted July 4, 2024
I spent decades avoiding to even think about that region as I'd always felt ever since I was a small child that Islam is oppression, darkness and horror even without any info about it, I just felt. However, I also learned about an Asheknazi lineage in my month's side when I was a 12-year-old and ever since had cherished the history and archaeology of that region, even being a staunch but eclectic pagan. Later as a young adult, in my early twenties, when I took one year of Social Sciences, I learned about the history of the 'new Christians' and their modern descendants in the Iberian Peninsula but especially in Latin America, Brazil being a special country in this respect due to its greater numbers in so many regions of this big nation.
At the university, in the 80s (I finished two courses on Literature with a teaching license for both and left ofther two unfinished all through that decade, one year being of Social Sciences) the usual leftist brainwashing made me think Israel massacred 'Palestinians' and that kept me away from thinking about it cause I just thought it was a mix of Islamist horror with ultra-orthodox conservatism, both of which loathe my minority, LGBTIQs.
However, when I joined the Resistance to Political Islam in mid 2009, I ran into the obvious fact that Jews in Israel also had to deal with the same problem as Hindus have had for over a thousand years to fight against. Then, at the beginning of 2010, I think it was in April or May, I learned that it was actually Islamic supremacism which had acculturated the whole MENA countries, not to mention Indonesia and Malaysia and that most of the lands in the north of Africa and the Middle East had actually been a mix of local pagans, ancient Jewish communities and the first Christians of history, starting obviously with the Jewish Holy Land, what is now Lebanon and Syria and Iraq, aka the Levant and Mesopotamia.
And I also learned that even Saudi Arabia had thriving ancient Jewish communities with the burgeoning Christians.
Here's a link to one, there might be even others we still don't know about or might even be discovered in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehc7P0MBU54
Learning about how all of that changed, I immediately understood that Jews were actually decolonizing the region from Islamic supremacists' acculturation and spiritual usurpation.
And unlike the surrounding Islamized and Arabized nations of the Levant and Mesopotamia, Israel allows Mandeans, Druze, Samaritans Christians and even Muslims and modern pagans - not to mention the eastern branch of Rom people, the Domaris - to follow their faiths, living with full rights as its citizens, up to the point of letting those Muslims have chairs in their parliament, the Knesset, from which some of them, ungrateful creeps, try to destroy the country from within, like the infamous Haneem Zoabi.
Fortunately, from the same Zoabi family, there also comes the amazing young activist Mohammed Zoabi, a gay vegetarian Muslim who almost got killed by his own family for openly declaring himself a pround Zionist! And so is his blessed mom, the amazing Sarah Zoabi, both Zionist Muslims! They even had to go into hiding for some time for that.
Most people are unaware that over 20% of Israeli citizens are non Jewish. I prefer to not call them 'Arabs' cause many are actually Levantine families who were Arabized and Islamized by the Arab invasions and later by the Ottoman Empire though some are indeed descendants of those migrants from surrounding Arabized countries to work in the Holy Land at the beginning of the 20th Century,
Then I gradually learn about farm sanctuaries, which warmed my heart being a strict vegetarian for the sake of non humans myself, the intactivists, being also a staunch defender of genital integrity as I am, pagans and progressives of all sorts. It was really wholesome to know that only in that tiny land all that diversity could bloom, despite being surrounded by the worst sort of theocratic oppression which is actually even worse than our own dark phase of western civilization in Medieval Europe could be honestly compared to, unless one is a compromized Marxist historian warping the historical facts.
And when I learned the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, were the only in the world which actually warned the civilians of the enemy people to evacuate the regions they were forced to bomb due to the terrorists using the civilian infrastructure (even hospitals, schools and mosques), with documental footage corroborating the claims, I realized that all the mental feces the pro-Islamic leftists had been brainwashing us with was just that, hideous lies.
I know humans have flaws, there being good people even among Gazans, but these have to speak in absolute anonymity or get killed by the majority of fanatics who even help the many terrorist groups there to perpetrate their crimes, and their testimonies can be heard in the animation series Whispered in Gaza. I pray for that fringe minority of truly good people there and hope they manage to survive the war the majority of monsters brought upon their people by attacking Israel even more in the tragic date of Oct 7th 2023, the worst in decades but certainly not the only one ever since the modern state was founded and neither before that foundation since massacres against Jews had been perpetrated for almos two millennia in the region, the ones with historical records such as the 1517, 1834 in Hebron and the Safed being more known, as the 1929 in Hebron (and the riots in 1922 which also ended with deaths on both sides when some Jews managed to defend themselves, unlike in the 1929, when too many got massacred).
Here is a 92-year-old hag, a muslimah obviously, bragging about how her parents murdered and looted Jews in that massacre in 1929:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNx6Z9sus1U
The massive majority indeed love to film themselves cheering at the atrocities commited against Israeli civilians and these I confess I have no commiseration whatsoever for. It's a war, one which they started and have openly cheered at every barbarity their terrorists perpetrated on Oct 7th 2023 against Israeli civilians.
By the way, I guess it was yesterday that one of those non Jewish, so-called "Arab"-Israelis, who also happened to be a Muslim supremacist, stabbed two Israeli soldiers in a mall in the country, one of the heroes dying in consequence but fortunately managing to kill the monster before that, so that he didn't get to harm any more innocents in the place.
That ungrateful creature had full citizenship and lived down the same road the soldier he killed lived in, a treacherous neighbor for sure and this should wake up people to the real threat that having such people with this murderous mindset living amongst us actually is.
These traitors to the nation which feeds them are all over the country, plotting to destroy if from within. Now it's the turn of western nations to understand what Israel has always had to cope with, the difference being pro-Islamic leftists (in the majority but also with a few right wingers joining the suicidal bunch) are aiding them to Islamize and acculturate all our nations, whether it's here in my homeland, Brazil, or in Mexico, in Australia or New Zeland,etc, etc,etc.
Right now, the Istaeli government officials have been saying unbelievable things about Palestinians, and these things have been recorded in court. Do you accept phrases like " mow the-grass" against human beings? White phosphorus weapons used by Israelis? I 2as active with Jewish Voice for peace in the US, and I receive news feeds from Mondeweiss? The testimonies of persons dissed as self-hating mean something to me. Does each legislator have s Palestinian minder? How can the imbalance of power be so overlooked?