SankaraStone

SankaraStone OP , 8 months ago to showerthoughts in Asking Palestinians to say that Israel has a right to exist is like asking Native Americans to say the USA has a right to exist. What about Israel exists and has the right to continue to exist?

There’s definitely been admixing with other populations (including Ashkenazi Jews with Europeans), but Palestinians are Canaanite/Levantine (just like the Lebanese and Jews and Jordanians) and form a Levantine cluster. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews#Com… Meanwhile, Judaism is certainly from Israel (if the history didn’t already point to it, the archaeology of Israel does). But a large number of Jews/Israelites were expelled by the Romans in the first century CE, creating a Jewish diaspora that shows genetic evidence of admixing with local populations over 2000 years. And certainly before the modern state of Israel was created and Zionist Jewish folk started immigrating back into Israel-Palestine after 1800-1900 years, the Palestinians were there.

Jewish people were persecuted in Christian nations because Christians started blaming Jews for Christ’s death. You can see evolution of this idea from being nearly non-existent in the earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, to the newest canonical Gospel the Gospel of John. And sentiment is argued to have risen from Christian anger at the failure of other Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah and convert. All these negative stereotypes started to develop. And with the Romans destroying Jerusalem (or at least the temple in Jerusalem) and scattering Jews, you had a group of people with a strong cultural group identity that was strongly monotheistic in a strange land, that was easily to cast as the other. It’s all bullshit.

Anyways, Israel-Palestine is the home of Judaism, the descendants of Israelites, and Palestinians (who probably partially the descendants of Israelites or at least neighboring Canaanites, from whom Israelites became distinct by the development of their monidolatry and later monotheism).

Also see this 2020 paper that compares the genetics of modern people living in this region (including Jews, Palestinians, Lebanese) with Bronze Age DNA from the region: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10212583/ (got this from an earlier section in the above Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews#201…

So yeah, at least some of the ancestors of modern Palestinians were in Israel-Palestine in the Bronze Age (ie before the Babylonian Captivity).

SankaraStone OP , 8 months ago to showerthoughts in Asking Palestinians to say that Israel has a right to exist is like asking Native Americans to say the USA has a right to exist. What about Israel exists and has the right to continue to exist?

I wanted to make it a little longer to make it clearer, but I hit a title limit and the rules say the shower thought has to be in the title.

SankaraStone OP , 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to showerthoughts in Asking Palestinians to say that Israel has a right to exist is like asking Native Americans to say the USA has a right to exist. What about Israel exists and has the right to continue to exist?

I’m talking about the meaning of those statements to different different people. Take a look at this video interviewing Elisha Wiesel from the Elie Wiesel Foundation and Michal Cotier-Wunsh, Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQn5X4ra8KY

She says that Anti-zionism is Anti-semitism. To many people, Anti-Zionism is a value statement on the history of the creation of the modern Israeli state by the British, the UN, and America in the 1940s: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism I think people who hold the view that creating a the modern state of Israel as a Western colonial action (one could have simply opened up immigration to Jewish folk and ensuring that one state guaranteeing the protection and safety of Jews and declaring it the ancestral home of Israelites and the Jewish religion and Palestinians (who are also Canaanites like the Lebanese) was created, as opposed to having some asshole somewhere else draw a border (like they did in India between India and Pakistan), and unleashing the subsequent ethnic cleansing that ensued (like it did in India and Pakistan)), but don’t hold Hamas’s views that Israel and Israelis should be driven off the land (or the equivalent that Pakistan or India should be destroyed and the subcontinent reunited) can be called anti-zionist but not anti-semitic.

My point is that if we change the statement from Israel has the right to exist to Israel exists (like the US exists) and has the right to continue exist separates the folks who think the creation of Israel in its form was a historical mistake (mostly because of all the suffering that’s resulted from it) from the folks who think it and its people should be driven off the map. That statement that Israel has the right to continue to exist is something I think both Israelis and many Palestinians can agree on and can clarify what the goal of peace should be.

The other thing in that video is declaring Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American, blaming Israel for the bombing of the Gazan hospital based on early news report, as blood libel is weaponizing the label of anti-semitism against a person who I don’t believe is Anti-semetic (she’s not declaring the Jews are trying to replace us or creating space lasers or that they created covid, or engaging in millenia-old anti-semitic tropes) and is instead trying to protect her people from violence (like the folks in the video are trying to protect their people from Hamas violence), and trying to silence her and trying to silence criticism of Israel and the occupation and settlement of Palestinian land. And I think we while the evidence seems to be mounting that Hamas lied about scale of death and damage and who fired the rocket, it’s not completely crystal clear, and I think Tliab should be given more time to judge before being accused of blood libel and being an anti-semite who should be driven out of congress, eliminating one more voice that tries to bring balance to American policy to include Palestinian interests. Edit: Someone pointed out in a Majority Report clip that Israel and Biden initially claimed that Hamas beheaded babies and children. And they (I think it was a pro-Palestinian Israeli) called it blood libel too. I think it’s the fog of war, and we need to stop calling both people blood libelists, and focus instead on the reality of the situation and see what the best options are for saving lives, getting the hostages back, achieving peace, and getting justice.

We can talk about offers after. But that’s not what the post was about. It’s about creating clarifying statements that clearly define peace and what peace will be while avoiding obfuscating value statements. Not only does it make discussion easier, but it also separates people who hate the history of what Zionism has created from the true anti-semites who want to wipe Israel and Israelis off the map.

SankaraStone OP , 8 months ago to showerthoughts in Asking Palestinians to say that Israel has a right to exist is like asking Native Americans to say the USA has a right to exist. What about Israel exists and has the right to continue to exist?

Ran out of space, but there’s obviously more I could have added there. Like Palestine should exist and needs to exist as an equal.

SankaraStone , 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to world in Hundreds dead in Israel and Gaza, thousands injured after Hamas launches rockets, Israel declares war

Nah, man. If they cited all those things, or more importantly the complete stifling of Gazans’ ability to prosper or flourish today, that would be one thing. What did they cite instead? The desecration of the Al-Aqsa mosque. That is more important to them than the apartheid. Fuck Hamas. They’re accomplishing nothing more than the death of Palestinians and more suffering. And they just empowered the most right wing, unpopular government that Israel’s ever had, one that Israelis were divided against. Hamas and the Iranian regime need to be eradicated. They are hurting any chance at Palestinian freedom and equality and right to prosperity. And they’re just causing more and more every day normal Israeli/Jewish and Palestinian suffering. This Iranian regime supports the tyranny of the Syrian government over the Sunnis (and its use of chemical weapons against them), Russia’s terrorist attacks on civilians in Ukraine and the invasion of that country in general, the complete undermining of the Lebanese government by Hezbollah, and the complete overthrow of the Yemeni government by a similarly tyrannical group in Yemen. And it uses of rape and sexual violence and murder against men and women protesting the death of a woman caused by the morality police and the oppression of women by the regime.

I think the only way to accomplish either a true one state democratic nation that honors Israel-Palestine as the home of Judaism or a two state solution, is boycott and divestment (because there is no way to peacefully protest and engage in civil obedience to achieve freedom and equality (they murdered a journalist and nothing came of it) and there’s no way to win militarily). It worked with the apartheid government in South Africa, and hopefully it will work with Israel.

SankaraStone , 9 months ago to worldnews in Whole Foods argues it can ban BLM masks because the Supreme Court let a Christian business owner refuse same-sex couples

That Bill of Rights isn’t for humans. It’s for corporations.

SankaraStone , 9 months ago to memes in I’ll fight anyone who shits on Gen Z

As a person born nearly a decade after you, I pride my generation (Gen Y/millennial) as also experiencing life before computers and the internet in your home, but still developing (sort of naturally) with all that (but still remembering what it felt like to be really and truly bored). Gen Zers born after a similar gap as between me and those born later, don’t remember life before the internet or 9/11.

SankaraStone , 9 months ago to memes in I’ll fight anyone who shits on Gen Z

Nah, speaking as a Gen Y/millennial, we’re the failed generation. You guys and the folks after you are the hope. Many of us graduated into the Great Recession and then went through the pandemic. You guys are graduating into a much better economy, but some unprecedented hurdles (in recent times) like climate change. You guys are the hope and future. The difference between Gen Y and Gen Z is like the difference between the folks who came of age in the Great Depression vs. the generation that came of age in and around WWII (the Greatest Generation). I just hope we leave a hopeful world for my gen alpha nephew for when he comes of age.

SankaraStone , 11 months ago to politics in Yale professor: Biden's economy most successful since FDR's New Deal

And before people say that it didn’t need to be shut down, they ignore that the hospitals were overwhelmed and could have been even more overwhelmed if we didn’t have mask mandates and/or lock downs. People were being denied health care because the hospitals had no space.

SankaraStone , 11 months ago to politics in Yale professor: Biden's economy most successful since FDR's New Deal

The clip said that that this is the best economic intervention since the New Deal. I’d argue with the trillions we’ve spent, it’s probably greater. We prevented a Great economic collapse.

SankaraStone , 11 months ago to politics in Yale professor: Biden's economy most successful since FDR's New Deal

What? The New Deal was hardly successful at getting us out of the Depression? It took World War II. Most of FDR’s presidency was over the Great Depression (he didn’t cause it). That’s hardly a successful economy.

The best Economic years of America were Eisenhower-Kennedy-LBJ followed by 6 or so years of Clinton. We might be finally getting back to Clinton good, but we’ll see.

Ok, just saw the clip. The blurb is misquoting the guy. He’s saying Biden’s had the best economic intervention since the New Deal. I’d argue that Biden’s covid relief and infrastructure and climate bills are the best Economic intervention by the elected Federal government since WWII and better than the New Deal.

SankaraStone , 11 months ago to technology in Twitter is now X as the little blue bird disappears

Nope, it’s pronounced dix. Learn some french, sheesh.

SankaraStone OP , 11 months ago to newcommunities in Two new communities on Lemmy.world geared towards starting collective movements and organizing collective action: !movement and !organize

I wrote a reply to this when I should have been focused on real life deadlines, and Lemmy with its server issues lost it. : (

But I think your question gets at the heart of the question of how these platforms can be used to organize action. Will get back to you some time this week when things have calmed down.

SankaraStone OP , 11 months ago to technology in In light of articles all over Lemmy about Google pushing ManifestV3 onto Chrome and the majority of web users, isn't that an antitrust violation?

Ok, guys I’m going to try to organize some community action about all of this over on the community I made on !organize. Specifically in this thread, I’d like to work on actions like crafting the letter we’d to send to the FTC as well as the letters we’re going to send to the EFF and Louis Rossmann. If you’re interested in collaborating on all this or just following the action, please join the community and keep up with the thread. I’m considering creating a sister Discord or Matrix. And it would anathema to the cause to use Google Docs to collaborate on writing this e-mail, but I figure we can use OnlyOffice (www.onlyoffice.com) or Etherpad (etherpad.org) instead.

Are you guys in?

SankaraStone OP , 11 months ago to newcommunities in Two new communities on Lemmy.world geared towards starting collective movements and organizing collective action: !movement and !organize

I want them to be a place where we can pull together like minded individuals of Lemmy and perhaps the Fediverse/ActivityPub together about a cause we care about and want to create a movement for. I figure c/movement will be were you can gather those folks c/organize is where you can have discussions and organize to take action. Perhaps there should be an associated matrix or discord channel for the second one.

I’d like both communities to be community owned and community-led. So on big decisions and deciding the guidelines, I’d like the community to call the shots while mods would do the heavy lifting of enforcing those guidelines and organizing things to where the community’s voice can be heard (so for example, after having a discussion about guidelines, consolidating all of that into some sort of vote if there needed to be one on finally voting in the new guidelines).

And the thing is we all have jobs, classes, family or something else entirely having claims to our attention and time, but we shouldn’t give up or give in. Let’s still figure out a way to persevere.