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nameless animal's avatar

Disagree. People still fear speaking out on Gaza.

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Doug's avatar

No fear here. Where are the fucking hostages?

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August West's avatar

Look in the mirror.

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Doug's avatar

Is your implication that Israel is keeping hostages? You got issues, dude.

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Jim's avatar

Israel has THOUSANDS of Palestinians imprisoned, many not charged, let alone tried in anything other than kangaroo military courts. This goes back years, decades, before October 7th. So yeah, Israel is keeping hostages. If you don't know that, or think it's just fine, then you are the one with issues.

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Michael's avatar

There is really no point talking to these robots.

They want the killing to go on. It gives them goosebumps.

They are the trans activists of moral idiocy.

I'm thinking of sending Matt's article to a Gazan mom whose kids, husband, brothers, uncles and parents have all been killed by the Israelis.

I'm sure it will make her feel relieved that sanity is back.

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Doug's avatar

So predictable. Subscriber to all the usual Jew hating substacks.

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Opacus's avatar

Thanks for sharing Doug!!!

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David Cashion's avatar

Israel has a right to exist un molested by those who hate them.

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Tom High's avatar

Not as an apartheid state, it doesnтАЩt.

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Doggie Dad's avatar

The idea of the Israeli apartheid state is an ignorant myth. Nearly 20% of Israelis are Muslim and they have all the same rights as Israeli Jews, including the right to run for office, be gay without risk of punishment or death, andтАФif you are a womanтАФ wearing whatever or going wherever the fuck you want. List the Muslim countries where the inverse is true for Jews or Muslim women. Wait, I'll help you. Here's the list:

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Jim's avatar

Bullshit. Israel has ruled over everything from the River to the Sea, since 1967. Half the populace under that rule has anything from NO rights (West Bank, Gaza) to truncated rights (see the expulsions and house demolitions in East Jerusalem), to something akin to Jim Crow (the Palestinians within the Green Line). Equal rights? My ass. Can a Palestinian in Israel buy land held by the Jewish National Fund (which is huge proportion of the country)? No. How easy is it for Palestinians in Israel to get the necessary permits to build a house? Damn hard. Longtime prominent leaders of the anti-apartheid battle in South Africa, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said what they saw in the West Bank was beyond anything they'd experienced in Apartheid South Africa. You're trying to cover for an odious regime, one that has no "right" to exist. Equal rights for all, one person one vote, from the River to the Sea.

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

"Equal rights for all, one person one vote, from the River to the Sea"?

And, pray tell, how will this miracle occur? Surely not under the rule of "Palestine," whatever that might be.

Edit: I regret chiming in here, commenting on this endless bickering about that war that's becoming such a bore and inevitably fouls any political conversation, but I'll just leave the comment as it stands.

Happy New Year!

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Jake's avatar

Now ask yourself why it is that Palestinians have such a hard time accessing the means to have permanent residency in Israel. Could it be that the reason is because they have a long history of killing themselves in service of a religious tenet that presupposes that the only people that have a right to live on that land are Muslims? Could it be that there's a long history of Jews being attacked by all their neighbors including Palestine? And how many Palestinians rejoiced at 9/11, 10/7? How many families, children, women, sons; rejoiced in the streets at the killing of Jews and Americans for the better part of a half century? Damn near all of them. Your accounting of history is lopsided and it necessarily ignores the fact that if ANY of Israel's neighbors had the weaponry and technology that Israel does, Israel would have been simply a memory decades ago. Israel, if they wanted to commit "genocide" could do so in about 4 days. So abandon nuance and common sense and ignore half of history if you want to, but just be aware that you look like a zealous, window-licking, activist retard if you do so.

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Tom High's avatar

Mirror much?

YouтАЩre one тАШnuancingтАЩ genocide, you twit.

As to common sense, it means тАШfrom the commonsтАЩ. Burn witches much?

YouтАЩre the retard here, Jake Spoon.

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Jake's avatar

So I guess you're not going to ask yourself any of this. LOL.

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Stxbuck's avatar

Boom! Truth bomb!

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Tom High's avatar

Ah, the Muslims hate gays trope as an excuse for genocide.

Keep digging, you ignorant slut.

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Rfhirsch's avatar

You are correct: many of the majority-Muslim states do want to get rid of gays. Iran often throws them off of the roofs of buildings. That is genocide.

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Jim's avatar

Your attempt at pinkwashing is disgusting. There are gays in Gaza. You think oh-so-progressive Israel gives a damn? No. Israel is slaughtering them, along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian men, women, and children, in what is in actual fact a genocide, unlike the fantasy you project.

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Doug's avatar

Yawn

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Tom High's avatar

Yawn on, dumbass.

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Jake's avatar

Your ignorance is repugnant.

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JAE's avatar

Explain how Israel is an apartheid state? Unless you think a state keeping terrorists from killing its citizens is an apartheid state. By the way, Hamas likes what you say, youтАЩre a helpful tool for the proxies of Iran.

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Jim's avatar

Are you a hasbara troll, or just woefully ignorant of land laws in Israel? The Jewish National Fund controls over 90% of the land, for the exclusive use of Jews. That alone blows your bullshit out of the water.

"According to the new rules, all such lands, acquired by confiscating the property of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian people through the Law of Absentee Property (1950) and the Law of the StateтАЩs Property (1951) - "over 90 percent of the total area of the state" - became legally reserved only for Jews, meaning Jews anywhere in the world, and not only Jewish citizens, "forever".

In reality, 92.6 percent of the total area of the state of Israel became reserved for the exclusive use of Jews, to lease, live on, or work on. These racist stipulations also apply to Jewish privately owned land inside the state."

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/colonial-chutzpah-jewish-national-fund

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Don Reed's avatar

12/24/24: There is no explanation. There never will be. You are responding to the voice of the criminally insane, who think that their accusations alone provide the only evidence needed to prove the truth of their accusations.

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JAE's avatar

It was a facetious question, they have no answer.

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Don Reed's avatar

12/24/24: Please cancel my previous comment here; I misunderstood you. And I agree with your stance. God forbid that a country has the right to defend itself (sarcasm).

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Tom High's avatar

Plenty of search engines out there for you. Not wasting my time with someone willing to countenance apartheid and genocide just because the specifics donтАЩt line up perfectly with the more famous examples, i.e., South Africa and Germany.

Plenty of scholars agree with me. YouтАЩve got Christian fascists/nationalists and empire simps on your side.

Carry on.

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K Tucker Andersen's avatar

Shows how corrupted by what now passes as scholarship really is. Another example of why very few people any longer trust either тАЬ the expertsтАЭ or тАЬ the scienceтАЭ.

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Tom High's avatar

Broad brush simplistic painter via logical fallacy much?

Trust this - https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/another-expert-report-finds-israel?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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Jake's avatar

Oh, a fallacious argument from authority by proxy. "The people that agree with me are authoritative, thus so is my argument, which doesn't actually hinge on my own beliefs, but the regurgitation of others' beliefs." You could have just said this and saved us a lot of time.

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Tom High's avatar

All youтАЩve got is racist, empire simp argument by proxy.

IтАЩll stick with the scholars and humanitarian orgs.

Crawl back in your cave, Neanderthal boob.

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Jake's avatar

All you have is simpleton name-calling and epithets. I suggest you follow your own command.

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Tom High's avatar

CanтАЩt. IтАЩm neither Neanderthal, nor boob.

All you have is genocide and apartheid rationalization/denial.

Own it.

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David Cashion's avatar

Tom

Over and above any argument of right or wrong between Hammas and Israel how do you balance the fact that Islam gives the world 3 choices?

Convert

Slavery

Death

Have you made your choice ?

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Tom High's avatar

Choices? You mean like accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour or go to hell?

Stop trying to sidetrack the argument. ThatтАЩs a cowardly choice.

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David Cashion's avatar

Merry Christmas

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Tom High's avatar

Happy New Year.

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David Cashion's avatar

16 for 12 against.

Bet this pretty much sums up the makeup of Racket subscribers.

Wonder if that is right, left.

I considered myself right, how bout you?

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Kate Cahill's avatar

An interesting point. glad there is a place for both to voice their opinions!

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David Cashion's avatar

Yes

Most stacks I read are echo chambers.

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Sera's avatar

Israel has lost whatever rights it had to cross its borders with any of its neighbors. Israel is a rogue state, its leaders wanted for war crimes, and its legacy to be that of a genocide against the rightful owners of its occupied land.

No country has right to exterminate a people, destroy its hospitals, Universities, and all infrastructure, (no matter who they pretend is hiding in them). I ashamed of the human race, though of course Mark Twain got there long before me.

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Rfhirsch's avatar

Israel is the one country in the Middle East where all people are free. They have a large Muslim population. They value women's rights. They protect gays.

Iran is indeed trying to exterminate the people in Israel.

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Roy V's avatar

Wow! With that kind of looney logic, I bet you have a lot of subscribers on substack.

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Tom High's avatar

YouтАЩre the one with logic issues here.

Get some sense - https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

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Sera's avatar

Thanks, thatтАЩs at interesting site.

Of course, the comment of Roi 5th was irrelevant as I wasnтАЩt using logic at all, but citing facts. I believe all my facts were defensible. Cheers.

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I remember the 70s's avatar

You should speak out right now, since you raised it. Plenty of people speak on Gaza, so actually it had nothing to do with these issues.

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RAO's avatar

Yeah, I'm not finding people afraid to speak out on Gaza. Just set foot on a college campus. Far too few say this is an incredibly complex, historical situation requiring people to think more and emote less.

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nameless animal's avatar

I *work* on a college campus and people are terrified of speaking about it

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rtj's avatar

I work on a college campus too, one in the thick of it. Something that I have noticed is that a fair amount of the protesters don't seem affiliated with the college community at all. Seem to be some randos with Palestinian flags or keffeyas blowing into and out of campus on the subway.

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nameless animal's avatar

Plenty of college students have found the courage to speak out. Others have been arrested, others suppressed and suspended from their universities.

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publius_x's avatar

For breaking and entering, vandalism, harassment and assault. Not for тАЬspeaking outтАЭ

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Tom High's avatar

lol!

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rtj's avatar

There were a lot suspended from the universities here, not allowed to graduate if suspended, kicked out of campus housing. But there are a fair amount of unaffiliated chancers from around the city who join in.

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nameless animal's avatar

Yeah, it's called freedom of speech

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JAE's avatar

Well find your spine and have the courage to speak out about it. IтАЩm almost certain itтАЩll be misinformed nonsense regarding Israel, but do stop whining and complaining. Make your voice heard, but do so knowing youтАЩre serving Hamas, because you are.

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Tom High's avatar

Serving Hamas? Is that like serving Putin?

You Zionist apologists are a hoot!

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JAE's avatar

Truth is truth, itтАЩs serving Hamas, and yes itтАЩs like serving Putin, only worse.

You can call me a Zionist apologist all day long, couldnтАЩt care less. Glad you find it a hoot, because Hamas sympathizers are far from humorous.

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MG's avatar

What college campus is that?

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Kate Cahill's avatar

and people are afraid to speak about it amongst themselves!

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RAO's avatar

Professors, maybe. (Though Glenn Loury has taken plenty of heat for his sympathy for Gaza and his criticism of Israel, but he's close to retirement, so...)

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JAE's avatar

Glenn Loury has lost his way, listening to the likes of the grifter and race baiter Coates amply demonstrates it.

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Slightly Lucid's avatar

I am being doxxed, stalked, and professionally threatened for relatively mild posts about Gaza. I am VERY afraid, not for me, but for the people who work for me. I know for sure that you are underestimating this.

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Bobby Lime's avatar

What are your posts about? Whose side do you take? I find it hard to believe that pro Israeli people are imposing this terror. If terror is bring imposed, everything I've read and seen in the last fourteen months leads me to believe it's coming from the enemies of Israel.

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Slightly Lucid's avatar

I am sorry if you find it hard to believe.

I called this a genocide 9 months ago. I have been being harassed ever since. Which is nothing compared to the people who have lost jobs, been called blood libelists, self hating jews, anti semites, etc. If you havenтАЩt witnessed this it is because you have preferred not to.

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Mike's avatar

Obviously you shouldn't be harassed, doxxed, etc., nor should your employment be threatened. The world needs voices on all sides.

That said, perhaps if you familiarized yourself with the definition of "genocide" before glibly tossing it around, you might receive less push-back from those who ARE familiar with what the term means.

Preach on with whatever you wanna say. I mean that sincerely, and I'd fight for your right to do so.

But don't be surprised when people disagree.

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Mike's avatar

Oh, well if the EXPERTS say it is, I guess we've all seriously misunderstood the English language.

Guess it's time to go back to elementary school, dictionaries, and all that old-fashioned book-larnin' stuff now.

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Mike's avatar

As if I give a shit what the International Criminal Court says?

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reel life's avatar

I agree. And the Arab population of Gaza has actually increased in the last year. Not much of a genocide.

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Lorna Paisley's avatar

You need to do some serious research. You cam start with "If America Knew"

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nameless animal's avatar

S.L., I find myself in a similar boat, and it's disturbing that so many of the Taibbi readers are oblivious, or pretend to be oblivious, to the ongoing genocide. I started following Taibbi closely a couple of years ago and I do not understand why he has not written at all about the genocide.

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Rfhirsch's avatar

I think most of the readers here understand how Iran is seeking genocide of the Jewish people. It is indeed ongoing and has been since the 1980s. "The river to the sea" is the slogan for the genocide Iran and its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, et al.) are attempting.

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Tom High's avatar

Nah, that would be Likud. But nice try.

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BookWench's avatar

I oppose all US foreign aid, & I have different views than you do on Israel & Gaza, but Matt Taibbi is under no obligation to cover every issue in the world.

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publius_x's avatar

Perhaps itтАЩs not so much about тАЬspeaking outтАЭ but rather using hyperbole when you do.

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BookWench's avatar

Not all journalists need to cover all the same issues.

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JAE's avatar

Because people throw тАЬgenocideтАЭ around who have no clue what it actually means. They parrot anti Israel rhetoric from those who hate Jews, and without question.

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Bobby Lime's avatar

S.L., genocide is an organized effort to kill a people off. This is war, but it isn't genocide.

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JAE's avatar

No fear here. Israel has to defend itself against terrorism, they are fighting the war for all of us.

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Jim's avatar

Israel IS the terrorist. Genocidal, sociopathic political entity. Not fighting a war for me, or the vast majority of the world's population. Put Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in Hugo Boss uniforms, they'd fit right in with the SS. And it's them who show the real face of Israel. You support that, you're a lost soul.

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JAE's avatar

Yeah, yeah. But the fact remains if Palestinians laid down their weapons there would be peace. if Israel laid down its weapons they would all be dead. Murderers got to murder. Israelis are not beheading innocents nor ramming cars into markets filled with children. Islamists are.

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Jim's avatar

You have this upside down. Israel's foundation, and entire existence, is dripping in blood, theft, and expulsion - all openly expressed in the words and writings of Herzl, Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders. Their goal has ALWAYS been the elimination of Palestinians within the expansive territory claimed by the Zionists, some more insane than others (like all the way to the Euphrates.) There was a recent piece in Haaretz revealing the discussions among Israeli leaders, going back decades, not just from the Likudniks, but from the supposedly more "progressive, nicer" Labor leadership, of the tactics and methods to be employed to drive the Palestinians off their land. If that meant killing them, eh, just one choice among many. If you think Palestinians ceasing resistance to their own elimination will bring peace, you surely mean only the peace of the grave. Would you have advocated the same for the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto? When Palestinians organized peaceful protests or civil disobedience campaigns, Israel responded by breaking bones (Rabin's demand) and sniping unarmed participants (the March of Return in Gaza) BDS gets denounced as "anti-Semitic." So, pray tell, how are Palestinians supposed to gain equal rights in their own land, when the whole Zionist project is based on displacing and eliminating Palestinians? Here, spend five minutes listening to an Israeli historian discuss what Israel is doing to Gaza right now, and clear you head of the nonsensical propaganda that Israel is "defending itself":

https://www.youtube.com/live/geDykj0xR0M

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JAE's avatar

You are spreading the propaganda of the Iranians and its proxy terrorists. If Israel had wanted to kill all Palestinians they would have done it by now and easily. If your nonsense were true how is it the population of Palestine has grown and grown? Do tell us what the Palestinians have done with all the aid money sent to them? DonтАЩt bother, we know. They built sophisticated tunnels and weaponry to murder their Jewish neighbors and use their own women and children as shields in war. You need to stop believing the lies of terrorists. No one is claiming Israel is not culpable in some of this horror, but at least what they do is in response to being attacked and in self defense.

By the way, I lived in the Arab Middle East for ten years, I have many Arab associates and friends. The raw hatred for Jews is palpable in many of them, not all, but many. And that hatred is engendered in their children from the cradle. There is a poisonous jealousy for the continued survival and thriving of Jews even in the face of insurmountable odds, like being surrounded on all sides by murderous enemies.

IтАЩd suggest you stop being so damn blinkered and anti semitic, but IтАЩm quite sure it would fall on deaf ears.

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Jake's avatar

Oh look, another Johnny come Lately activist that selectively chooses what atrocities to assign blame to which groups while ignoring half of history. Shocking.

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Jim's avatar
Dec 27Edited

Excuse me, asshole, but how do you know how long I've been speaking out against US/Israeli displacement and slaughter of Palestinians? Odds are I'm older than you are - and I've been active to some degree on this score for more than half a century. You ignore - worse yet, you obviously support it - the ongoing genocide that all the world sees, and throw ad hom attacks at those who refuse to look away.

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JAE's avatar

And yet you are still flagrantly ignorant and on the wrong side of history.

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An independent observer's avatar

Trying to explain to antisemites that Jews are good normal people is a waste of time. It will not calm their animal hatred. Nothing will.

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Jim's avatar

Trying to describe the actions of Israelis as those of "good normal people" is beyond ridiculous. Those of us (many of us Jewish, by the way, so take your antisemitism canard and stuff it) who oppose this ongoing genocide are opposing the POLICY of a rogue state. We do so as citizens of the primary backer of that genocide.

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Jake's avatar

What do you have to say about the Muslims that rape and kill citizens in the countries in which they are immigrants? What do you have to say about the Muslims that drive cars into crowds in Germany? Europe is REPLETE with examples of Muslim acts of terror that MUSLIMS say are in service of their religion as stated in the Koran. What do you say to the Shiite and Sunni Muslims that have their own genocidal aims against one another and have been offing each other in record numbers for time in memorial in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, etc. You throw around these words "genocidal" and "sociopathic" as if they don't and have never applied to the demographic that YOU and other half-measure zealots defined as a victimhood class. Your hypocrisy is blatant.

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Jim's avatar

I'm not throwing around words. What Israel is doing in Gaza is genocidal, by definition. It has been recognized as such by human rights organizations around the world. The real death toll by now is likely in the hundreds of thousands, and may well approach a million by the time Israel decides to stop. All this is being done in my name (as a Jew), and is fully supported (armed, financed, provided diplomatic cover) by the country of which I am a citizen, the United Staes of America. My responsibility, on both those counts, is to do what I can to stop this industrial scale slaughter. You point your fingers here, there, and everywhere else except at those who are committing this genocide. Not some other, hypothetical one. And ask yourself why it is that Israel, fully backed by the United States, is so intent on overthrowing any and all of the secular governments in the region, in favor of nutcase headchoppers such as those now nominally in charge of Syria, who five seconds ago were (rightfully) described as terrorists. Why did Jake Sullivan tell Hillary Clinton that "Al Qaeda is on our side" in Syria?

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Rick Merlotti's avatar

And Syria, Lebanon, Russia etc

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Mike Stone's avatar

Really? They DO IT ALL THE TIME!!!

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Kate Cahill's avatar

and, in my workplace, I would be vilified if I spoke out about the trans crisis!

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