how to make Israeli-Palestinian conflict salad: a PowerPoint guide
when the conflict gets too complicated and you can’t distinguish between racist institutions and regular citizens, when the many variations of Zionism become too confusing, when you’re forced to recognize that Palestinian Arabs have a real significant culture that should never be erased or ignored in the shared homeland of two peoples, calm down with a refreshing salad
Mmm, delicious.
I think it needs more lemon and salt over all the wounds though. Can’t ever have enough.
where the fuck is my zaatar on this salad
Students of color are allowed to enter the classroom but never on an equal footing. When they walk in, they are subject to the same racial stereotypes and expectations that exist in the larger society. Students of color do not have the advantage of walking into a classroom as individuals; they walk in as black, brown, or red persons with all the connotations such racialization raises in the classroom. They do not walk into a classroom where the curriculum embraces their histories. They walk into a classroom where their histories and cultures are distorted, where they feel confused about their own identities, vulnerabilities, and oppressions. There is no level of liberal reforms that can alter these experiences for students of color without directly challenging the larger systems in society.
“
| — | Critical Race Theory Matters: Education and Ideology | Margaret Zamudio, Caskey Russell, Francisco Rios & Jacquelyn Bridgeman (via sinidentidades) |
When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back.” As the resistance swelled, he announced: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits”. At other times, he said the plague was “merrily” culling the population.
WTF is Zionism, bro?
wewanttobe said: do you mind explaining? i’m v. ignorant
HOW DID I MISS THIS?!
I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you!
Ok so I guess to answer your question, I’m gonna have to do a quick-and-dirty crash course on “wtf is zionism bro.”
Zionism is actually just an umbrella term for schools of thought that refer to Jewish national self-determination. While it does have roots in traditional Jewish culture and identity, it gained movement in the 19th C in Europe, when the zeitgeist of the day was nationalism and nationalist, self-deterministic movements. Europe had never been kind to to the Jews, and the Jews were treated as a racial and religious other basically all the time, so the fact that Jews were taken up in this zeitgeist is exactly 0% surprising.
Zionism as a mode for national self-determination took expression in numerous ways. One version is called Cultural Zionism, which advocates national language, culture, etc, but without the framework of a state. The (re-)revival of Hebrew (as opposed to other Judaic languages) was a Zionist project tied to this. Labour Zionism is closely tied to socialism, and focuses on workers, production, and agricultural work. It can be statist, or not statist. The Zionism that most are familiar with are variants of the dominant political strain, which called for state self-determination in the Jewish/Hebrew ethnic homeland. (And we all know where that is.)
In fact, one of the biggest criticisms of this political Zionism was that they had no conception of the fact there were people, you know, LIVING on this land they just assumed had been empty since a good chunk of Jews were ethnically cleansed from it. Which as we all know, isn’t true.
But even if you do hold to the tenant that all groups have the right to self determination, which here means (or CAN mean) that you support the right of a Jewish state to exist, that means you by necessity ALSO agree that the Palestinians have EQUAL right to a state in their homeland. By definition, this would (probably) make you a Zionist.
Religious Zionists are those who marry religious teachings/fervour with this nationalism. Some of the religious settlers are of this type. However, some religious settlers are actually anti-Zionist, because they believe that no Hebrew state should exist UNLESS it is ruled by halakha (think sharia, but for Jews.) These settlers are actually quite dangerous due to general kookiness.
Revisionist Zionists are the “Greater Israel” people that most people think of when they say “I am anti-Zionist.” (Unless they are thinking of the religious anti-Zionist settlers, because outside gentile views don’t always bother making subtle, but important distinctions.) They are often, to be frank, racist, ethno-centric, sometimes religiously motivated and generally very much right-wing. (I do not like them. Not one little bit.)
There is also something called “post-Zionist” which believes that [political] Zionism, as a cause or ideology, was fulfilled the moment the state of Israel was created, and that therefore, Zionism as an ideology has reached it’s end. Therefore, the task is now addressing all the myriad issues in the region, such as resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a just, humane way, shoring up human rights, correcting human rights abuses, creating social equality, and the like. Post-Zionism is actually a different type of political movement, and questions some of what’s considered Zionism’s “sacred cows,” but I thought it would bear mentioning here, though I cannot do it justice in this brief space.
There’s more, but this should give you the idea that the idea of Hebrew self-determination is an idea that can be taken in many different directions. In none of these iterations (even the Revisionist one!) is it somehow necessary to support the state’s actions all the way, all the time.
So, you can be Zionist
be for a Palestinian state, or a two-state solution
and be against actions taken by the Israeli government
or against the existence of a state altogether, or even anti-Israel
You can be an anti-racist and a Zionist
You can be pro-Palestine and a Zionist. (again, depending on which definition or iteration you adhere to.)
[You can also, sadly, be a racist ethnocentric religious crazy promoting apartheid and be a Zionist. (If you do this, you are NOT MY FRIEND.)]
Because Zionism comes in many more flavours than just “crazy.”
if there is one thing radicals/progressives/liberals have failed to get right in the new age
its the notion of boycotts
you wanna know why the bus boycotts of the civil rights movement were so successful?
because an alternative black run transportation system was created for those who couldn’t walk to work or whatever they had to go
they didn’t just tell people “oh the bus enforces racist policies so don’t take it and FUCK if you can’t get to work on time or where you need to be!”
they said “hey you’re paying to get on the bus and not even being given a seat let alone being ejected if a white passenger needs your seat. here’s a potentially better alternative where you pay to sit down and get to where you need to go”
all this “boycott Target, Walmart, Monsanto owned companies” comes from a notion of boycott located in the politic of privileged white people
and that’s why they are largely unsuccessful
its why Obama just gave Monsanto the green light to commit even more fuckery to your food
its the reason why cooperation are considered people
its the reason why Walmart is allowed to usurp safety and labor regulations in their factories, and underpay their American workers
because you say “don’t spend your money there” and that’s the end of the story
you expect people to locate their survival in a politic of “abstaining from unethical choices”
and then from there those unethical choices are somehow supposed to magically disappear. when really only a small percentage of people are able to boycott so many things
there wouldn’t be a movement located around the “99%” if 99% of people could really afford to stop shopping at the unethical places and stop buying the unethical brands
good luck with your hocus pocus activist logic
Don’t fool yourself. English isn’t inherently superior, or easier to learn, or more sonically pleasing. Its international usage comes from forceful assimilation and legacy of colonialistic injection. It isn’t a deed that one should take pride in.
“
| — | my uncle left this comment on his friend’s Facebook status, a white British man who was bragging about how easy it is to be a native English speaker when trekking to different nations. (via maarnayeri) |
From 2003 when I walked through hospital wards and saw children dying of shrapnel wounds from the ‘precision’ missile strikes, to 2013 walking through different hospitals 10 years later seeing babies die of mysterious birth defects, it’s clear that [Iraqi] children have been the greatest victim of this war, …the young ones are dying and suffering from wounds of a war they never saw. We’ve really let the children down, in dramatic ways that will have long-term implications.
“
| — | Donna Mulhearn, via Kelley B. Vlahos’ recent article, “Iraq’s Generation Hell.” (via letterstomycountry) |
I remember when buzzfeed was just something I did in college around 2AM.
“
| — |
“Haha, ha. ha.” - the 94,000 federal prisoners and 240,000 state-confined inmates being held for drug offenses. (via ilyagerner) Making culturally relevant lifestyle jokes to occasionally appease crowds while simultaneously backing laws that obstruct the same lifestyle he once lived through and likely agreed with. What selling out to high bidding does to man. (via ikenbot) |
Ten Reasons To Despise Thatcher
1) The woman whose anti-Trade Union policies reduced the power of collectivism to zero, and who decimated the employment rights of working class people everywhere. As a result, employers were legally permitted to replace proper meaningful jobs and apprenticeships, and exploit workers on perverted government schemes, paying them just £25 pounds per week in the process. Right-wing, extremist social and economic policy, espoused by the likes of Friedrich Hayek & Milton Friedman was to become the order of the day, and at it’s peak, over 3.6 million people would be out of work and on the dole.
2) The woman who massively widened the already obscene gap between the rich and the poor, as her supporters in big business, the newly privatised utilities, and the arms and defence industries made billions. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the word ‘underclass’ entered the public vocabulary for the first time. For millions of people, Thatcherism represented nothing more than crippling unemployment, homelessness, poverty, crime, drug abuse and hopelessness. For the elite Thatcherism represented an opportunity for the rich to get even richer by asset-stripping the country, as the orgy of greed that was Deregulation, was spun to look like something that the nation should be proud of, rather than the obscene, carpet-bagging, feeding frenzy that it actually was.
3) The woman who actively promoted selfishness, and disdain for those less able, with her infamous ‘no such thing as society’ mercenary attitude, and who almost worshipped greed and opportunism as virtues. On 23rd September 1987, she told journalist Douglas Keay: “People say ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me’, and so they are casting their problems onto society, and who is society ? There is no such thing ! There are individual men and women, and no government can do anything except through people. People must look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves”. Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, sink or swim, and I’m alright Jack - the very essence of Thatcherism, and her cold-hearted, wicked, vindictive, self-serving policies. Despite having no mandate to govern in Scotland, where she was rejected at the ballot box three times; three times she returned her illegitimate administration to power. And for eleven and a half years, her despotic, vindictive and spiteful policies were imposed upon the working class peoples who openly and democratically rejected her. Hell hath no fury like a dictator scorned, and she was to exact an awful toll for such rejection. People who drew strength from their working communities, were to have those communities erased before their very eyes. The weeds would relentlessly grow, where for centuries there was working life.
4) The woman whose atrocious employment policies favoured those who kept her in power, at the expense of the working class people who actually generated the wealth. During her reign 250,000 people in Scotland lost their jobs as coal mines closed and industrial giants such as Ravenscraig Steel Plant were shut. A highly skilled industrial workforce, was annihilated at the stroke of a pen. Heavy industry, at the time was inefficient, heavily subsidised, and in need of modernisation. Instead of operating on the patient, Thatcher switched the life support system off. The subsidies could be used as tax breaks elsewhere, to reward those middle and upper classes, who kept her in power. Secure, full-time employment in manufacturing, engineering, and heavy industry was replaced with low paid casual, temporary contract work in the call centre, fast food, and service sectors. In the process, worker’s rights were eroded to almost zero. An almost fanatical anti-Europeanism ensured that it would be many, many more years before Britain entered parity with the rest of the European Union on worker’s rights and minimum wage levels. In many cases, parity is still a long way off.
5) The woman who led a campaign demanding that General Augusto Pinochet be set free, after he was detained in the UK under an international arrest warrant from Spain, who were seeking his extradition to face charges of war crimes. The vile dictator, was directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of workers, socialists and other political opponents; presided over mass executions, torture and rape; and was openly described by his evil admirer, as ‘a bastion of democracy’ and the man ‘who brought democracy to Chile’.
6) The woman who called mass-murdering dictator Suharto ‘one of our very best and most valuable friends’. Suharto, with the full backing of obscene capitalists like Thatcher, waded to power through rivers of blood, as more than a million people were slaughtered and the whole population was held in fear of their lives for over 30 years. In the genocide that decimated East Timor, Suharto’s gestapo, known as Kopassus, gunned down innocent men, women, and children with British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns, fired from British-supplied Tactica ‘riot control’ vehicles and received military training in counter-terrorism techniques from the British SAS. Such were the levels of premeditated violence meted out by the Kopassus in East Timor, the elite Special Air Service Regiment of the Australian special forces ceased training with them.
7) The woman who ruthlessly and brutally ordered the sinking of the General Belgrano, to undermine impending peace talks and enter the Falklands War, to boost her flagging ratings at home. After being tracked for nearly 36 hours by the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror, the Belgrano was was sunk by three torpedoes on May 2nd, 1982, despite being well outside a 200-mile exclusion zone, and heading in the opposite direction from the Falklands. Nothing short of wanton pre-meditated mass murder, in order to facilitate a political goal, and cynically attempt to regenerate flagging ratings. War is VERY good for business, and Thatcher viciously and ruthlessly capitalised on this premise. If a few thousand Argentinian men need be needlessly slaughtered in the process, then so be it. The working classes did have some uses though, and to sustain her war for ratings, 258 British soldiers were sacrificed as cannon fodder. Sueing the British Government at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in July 2000, human rights lawyer Teresa Moya Dominguez, representing the families of the 323 murdered sailors, stated : “It is now the right moment in history for this. What we want fundamentally, is for the sinking of the General Belgrano to be recognized as a war crime.”
8) The woman who allowed ten young men to starve themselves to death, by refusing to acknowledge the fact that they were imprisoned for their political beliefs, and for actions related to the political situation in Ireland. By trying to have them classed as common criminals - a tag no political prisoner has ever worn - she signed their death warrants. She did so freely, maliciously, willingly, and without afterthought, despite there being numerous opportunities to resolve the situation by alternative means. Before their lingering and painful deaths, for over four years the hunger-strikers were systematically, routinely and repeatedly brutalised, beaten, tortured, molested, and abused by hired sectarian thugs, who as agents of the British state security apparatus in Ireland, positively revelled in their role as Thatcher’s paid frontline thugs.
9) The woman who routinely used state-sponsored terrorism to assassinate Republican activists in Ireland (and other soveriegn territory), and who unilaterally acted as judge, jury, and executioner by covertly re-introducing the death penalty for those who dared to oppose British imperialism on Irish soil. The mere trivialities of due process were discarded, the law was circumvented, the military was used to police the nation, and summary execution was proscribed for anyone suspected of being a Republican. Events in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, in the early hours of the 12th October 1984, were to demonstrate to Thatcher, just how deep resentment towards her in Ireland ran. She would subsequently require protection from armed guards, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for the rest of her wretched life.
10) Despite not wishing to blame the parent for the sins of the child - her bastard reprobate offspring. Mark Thatcher, a human scum-bucket arms dealer, who used his mother’s insidious connections to line his pockets, and who also financed a failed coup de tat in Equatoreal Guinea. Along with British upper class mercenaries Simon Mann and Nick Du Toit, Thatcher attempted to overthrow President Mbasogo, intent on seizing the country’s vast natural oil and gas reserves. If successful, the coup would have installed opposition leader Severo Moto as the new President, in return for preferential oil rights to corporations affiliated to those involved with the coup. Greed, corruption and the conquest of power - the very ethos of the wicked old bastard, whose demise the world should raise a glass to. And that’s before we get onto her pontificating obnoxious bastard of a daughter.
Hate is not an emotion I generally subscibe to, due to it’s internicine destructiveness, but I can honestly and quite easily say that I hate, and have all of my thinking life, hated the vile entity that is and was Margaret Thatcher, with every single fibre of my being. She is singularly, the most hated person, I have ever expressed that particular emotion for, in my entire living memory, and most likely ever will be. Let us pray to God, we never see her likes again. Nov 28th 1990 was a joyous day for many, as the tear-faced old witch was stabbed in the back by her own kind, and she rode out of Downing St for the last time. Eleven and a half years of despotism were at an end. The Tories weren’t out – but at least old bastardface was.
Fuck You Thatcher. I genuinely hope you rot in Hell.
Taken directly from my friends facebook page, but I felt the need to share it here on Tumblr as there is some confusion over all the Thatcher hate today.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, right, is confronted by Code Pink member Desiree Fairooz, her hands painted red, as she arrived to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, on October 24, 2007, before the House Foreign Relations Committee hearing regarding US policy in the Middle East, where she spoke about Iraq, Iran, and the Israel Palestinian conflict. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
