rremelin

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/this-is-exactly-what-it-looks-like

If I was an Israel supporter I’d be thinking very carefully about the things I’m posting online in the build-up to what could end up being regarded as one of history’s worst genocidal massacres. The internet doesn’t forget. What you’re tweeting today could haunt you for life.

The Israel-Palestine issue is not complicated; an apartheid regime abuses and oppresses an indigenous ethnic group who don’t have the same rights as others. The only reason anyone thinks it’s complicated is because they assume if it were simple, the news would’ve told them so.

Really Israel-Palestine is one of the easier conflicts to understand on the world stage; conflicts like Ukraine or Syria are much more complicated. It’s obvious at a glance that there’s one group in power and another group being treated very badly by that group, but because the press frames it as a complicated issue with its sympathies wildly slanted toward the apartheid regime, people assume it can’t be as simple as what it looks like at first glance.

It is, though. Israel is exactly the abusive apartheid regime it looks like on the surface. Remember this as the bodies pile up and Gaza is turned into a smoldering crater. This is exactly what it looks like.

https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1711746882198712489

Killing civilians with military explosives is not actually any more humane or civilized than killing them with firearms. They’ll cause gruesome injuries and slow, excruciating deaths by suffocation, burns and body trauma. They’re horrific weapons of mass murder.

The one and only reason you don’t see as much shock and horror in response to killing with military explosives as killing with firearms is because killing with military explosives is something you do from far away. When they show video clips of the buildings getting blown up, you’re not seeing the people being crushed to death underneath them and ripped apart in the blasts. It’s just a fun little sanitized clip of an explosion, like you’re watching an action movie or playing a video game.

It’s not actually any nicer than if the IDF were running around shooting civilians with rifles or running them through with swords, it’s just more detached, so it lets people psychologically compartmentalize away from what’s really happening.

That’s what so much perception management is about with the US and its allies these days; helping the public compartmentalize away from the horrors their side is unleashing upon the world. They do it with their propaganda, their lies by omission and their “Palestinian child walks into bullet” headlines, they do it with the uniform “unprovoked act of terror” statements by their government officials, and they do it by the actual ways in which they conduct their acts of mass murder.

It’s all about sedating the public to sleep and never startling them into a wakeful recognition of the ghastly things that are being done with the support of their government.

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1711670686031462892

Cutting off Gaza’s electricity doesn’t just hurt the civilians who live there, it greatly hampers the world’s visibility into what’s happening in there. Think how much harder it’s going to be for people in Gaza to record and upload video footage to the internet now.

And that of course entirely by design. Israel has every incentive to impede visibility into its abuses, and it always has; that’s why it has an extensive track record of targeting and threatening journalists and media outlets.

https://twitter.com/NobleQAli/status/1711832964005294485

Seeing a lot of dubiously sourced and flat-out unevidenced claims about about Hamas fighters decapitating babies and committing mass rapes that look a lot like atrocity propaganda, which as we were reminded in Ukraine is very common in wartime. Mass media employees learned in Ukraine that they can parrot any amount of atrocity propaganda during a war without any professional consequences so long as it comes from the side their government is on. Read the news very critically.

It’s important to understand how completely un-monolithic Jews are on the issue of Israel and Zionism. The fiercest and most incisive critics of Israel I follow are all Jewish. Don’t let propagandists frame this as “Jew haters vs Jews” when it’s really justice vs injustice.

https://twitter.com/CensoredMen/status/1711482078666043868

It’s not about hypocrisy. The point of highlighting the contradiction in supporting both Ukraine and Israel is to show that western imperialists do not actually stand for what they claim to stand for, and that their entire framing of where they stand in these conflicts is a lie.

Supporting one group that’s fighting a hostile occupation and opposing another that’s doing the same would only be hypocritical if your support really was based on opposing occupiers and supporting people’s right to self-determination. Supporting one group that’s full of neo-Nazis who hate Jews while supporting another in the name of protecting Jewish people would only be hypocritical if your support actually had anything to do with protecting religious minorities.

In reality the empire just supports who it supports because that’s where its interests happen to be advanced in each instance. Having Ukraine as a proxy advances US strategic interests against Russia and having Israel as a proxy advances US strategic interests against Iran and Syria. They’re not hypocritical at all; they’re perfectly consistent. They’re grabbing power and control in whatever way’s most convenient, in perfect alignment with their actual values.

To be a hypocrite is no great evil in and of itself; we’re all a bit hypocritical in some ways. What absolutely is a great evil is inflicting violence and destruction throughout the world in order to pursue planetary hegemony while lying about your reasons for doing so.

That’s why we highlight the contradictions. Not to show that the empire and its supporters are hypocrites, but to show the far greater evils hidden behind those contradictions.

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Mission Statement In a democracy, the ultimate responsibility for a nation’s actions rests with its citizens. The top rung of government – the entity with the ultimate power of governance – is the asserted will of the people. Therefore, in any democracy, it is essential that its citizens be fully and accurately informed. In the United States, currently the most powerful nation on earth, it is even more essential that its citizens receive complete and undistorted information on topics of importance, so that they may wield their extraordinary power with wisdom and intelligence. Unfortunately, such information is not always forthcoming. The mission of If Americans Knew is to inform and educate the American public on issues of major significance that are unreported, underreported, or misreported in the American media. It is our belief that when Americans know the facts on a subject, they will, in the final analysis, act in accordance with morality, justice, and the best interests of their nation, and of the world. With insufficient information, or distorted information, they may do the precise opposite. It is the mission of If Americans Knew to ensure that this does not happen – that the information on which Americans base their actions is complete, accurate, and undistorted by conscious or unconscious bias, by lies of either commission or omission, or by pressures exerted by powerful special interest groups. It is our goal to supply the information essential to those responsible for the actions of the strongest nation on earth – the American people. Please help! Our Principles We believe all people are endowed with inalienable human rights regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or nationality. We believe in justice, fairness, and compassion and in treating all human beings with respect, empathy, and in the manner in which we would wish to be treated. Disseminating Our Information Our materials and information are available to all. We feel it is essential that these facts be learned by every possible person. The positions of If Americans Knew are represented in our statements and writings alone, and the views of those who distribute our materials, articles, or interviews do not necessarily represent those of If Americans Knew. Action Focus #1 Israel is the largest recipient of US. aid in the entire world. It receives more aid than that given to all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, put together. Israel receives over $10 million dollars per day from the United States, and there is evidence that the total cost to American taxpayers is closer to $15 million a day. Yet this information is almost never printed in American newspapers. Coverage of the Middle East in general, and of Israel in particular, virtually never reports this enormous American connection with this region. Empowered by American money, Israel is occupying land that does not belong to it, is breaking numerous international laws and conventions of which it is a signatory, and is promulgating policies of brutality that have been condemned by the United Nations, the European Union, the National Council of Churches, Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, and numerous other international bodies. This truth is also rarely reported. Through the money and weaponry provided by the United States, Israel is imposing an ethnically discriminatory nation on land that was previously multicultural. There is ethnic and religious discrimination inherent in its national identity, and a doctrine of the supremacy of one group over all others permeates its political, financial, and military policies. This also is virtually never reported. There are a variety of organizations and individuals in Israel who are protesting their government’s policies, and who are working strenuously and courageously on behalf of human rights and justice. It is their intent to create a just and fair nation with equal rights for all its citizens. They are refusing to serve in the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and are actively trying to prevent Palestinian homes from being bulldozed. These actions are also not covered in the American media. American support of the Israeli government is against our national interest on every level: It places us at war with populations whose desperate plight we are helping to create, and who, quite correctly, place the responsibility for their sufferings on us. It makes us an accomplice to war crimes and an accessory to oppression. This also is not reported. In analyzing the American media, we are increasingly discovering a cover-up of appalling proportions. Israel is being protected, the news about Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general is being distorted, and the American public is being manipulated. We believe strongly that if Americans knew the truth about Israel and Palestine — about the massive amount of our tax money that is being given away to Israel, and about the human costs of Israel’s American-financed militarism — they would demand an immediate re-thinking of our policies in this region. It is the goal of If Americans Knew to inform the American public accurately about this area. Most of all, it is to inform Americans about our enormous, and too often invisible, personal connection to it. Americans, through our blank check to Israel, are empowering the worst elements of Israeli society, and undermining those working for a just, peaceful, and nondiscriminatory nation. We are driving the violence in this region. We can stop it. Please help!