I just got called 'anti-Semitic' for commenting on a shared quote by JFK in the 1960s (oddly enough shortly before he was assassinated) in which he criticized Zionism, for saying that I thought it was possible that it was why he was assassinated...
The quote was later found to be fake, but nevertheless, I feel my comment was relevant in the light of the information available at the time. Even so, my suggestion was taken to be 'anti-Semitic' and 'offensive'.
'Offensive' I understand - people are 'offended' by all sorts of things all the time. Most of the time, there's an increasing reason to be offended. Sometimes, though, that reason is that they're idiots.
"Anti-Semitic"...
I shit you not.
Let's take a closer look at this issue, shall we? Firstly, do the people using it even know what anti-Semitism is?
For clarity, criticizing Zionism is not anti-Semitic. You see, where 'Semite' refers to a people or racial identity, Zionism is a political movement. Nor does 'Semite' or 'Semitic' solely describe Jewish people - 'Semites' is an obsolete term which describes an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians (1, 2). Thus, to be anti-Semitic means to be anti all these different people, not solely anti-Jewish.
I should also point out then that this term (anti-Semitism) - since post 1945 at the latest - appears to have been hijacked by Zionists to define solely those people, institutions or actions which display any form of hostility towards the Jewish people, because this is the modern way in which it is used to mean. Nobody these days appears to use 'anti-Semitic' to describe persecution or hostile acts against Arabs - or Palestinians, even though it still applies to them as well by definition. Rather, hate crimes committed against non-Jewish Semites (who more often tend to be Muslims, or sometimes also Christians or even atheists) tend to be described as "Islamophobic".
I suppose using the correct blanket term ("anti-Semitism") would probably be too confusing? Perhaps this usage is determined more by the race of the intended victim, or the motive of the perpetrator, as mostly, Arabs and Jews tend to be thought of by the sort of people who habitually commit hate crimes, as "not white". Which surprisingly enough, tends to intersect with the sort of thinking inherent to something called "revisionist Zionism" - a movement radicalized during the 1920s and which lies firmly at the heart of present-day Israel's ruling Likud party.
Don't believe me? Look it up: go ahead, just Google it. Go on, see for yourself.
Secondly, and most importantly of all, Zionism not Judaism. Many Jewish people oppose Zionism. In fact, they've openly demonstrated and protested (1, 2, 3) against it, especially recently. So what is Zionism?
Zionism is an aggressive form of nationalism which is violent and toxic, inherently racist and supremacist - and ultimately it is the driving force behind all that has unfolded in Palestine since 1948 right up until now, even from the days when Palestine was under British rule. Is it a shock that many Jewish people are also disturbed and outraged by the machinations of extremist Zionism? Are Jews criticizing Israel and denouncing Zionism then "anti-Semitic"? Of course not - and to claim that is just purely nonsensical. I trust this demonstrates the absurdity of this notion.
However, that said, it's still clear that some people claim that criticism of any kind directed against Israel and Israeli nationalism (i.e. Zionism) is 'anti-Semitic' these days. Even when levelling perfectly rational criticism against Israel for committing obvious and blatant war crimes, ranging from collective punishment, depriving civilian populations of water and electricity etc. as well as ethnic cleansing and most prominently, the literal genocide taking place in Gaza.
To compound this abject stupidity, a number of celebrities, politicians, activists and 'influencers' have recently been bullied into silence and brow-bashed with accusations of 'anti-Semitism' for calling out the state of Israel, or even just for calling for a ceasefire in Gaza - with some of them losing their jobs, contracts, sponsorships and media platforms. I shit you not. Worse still, according to this article it seems Americans no longer have the freedom to mock or criticize Israel for any reason, even in satire, parody or jest.
Even American academia - in the form of the Harvard Law Review - has stooped to covering up a genocide by banning an article from this publication, which concluded that Israel really is conducting a genocide in Gaza.
I'm surprised the individuals crying 'anti-Semitism' and wielding the term like a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer don't seem able to discern the true meaning of the term from the act of holding a COUNTRY accountable for its horrendous and questionable actions and asking them - repeatedly... To. Stop. Murdering. Children. Is this really such an unreasonable, unrealistic and outrageous request?
If looking at pictures like these don't upset you in some deep-seated way, I have no words for you. Actually, that's not true - they're in the following paragraphs.
Have these people no humanity in them? Is all they can think about - abstract philosophical bullshit, political doctrine, lines on a map, or fucking dollar signs? Then they want to rail against efforts to stop these senseless wasteful murders and terrorize people acting as society's conscience with misapplied politically incendiary catch-phrases like "anti-Semitic" and "pro-terrorist"?! What the fuck is wrong with them?
Well, for starters, they're fucking ignorant.
They don't know what 'anti-Semitic' means, for one thing, and that's a fucking fact.
Yes, that's the fifth time I've used the 'f' word in this article so far, and you know what? I don't care - it feels good. It's a release. Do you know why? Because expletives are honest, they're sincere and they convey emotion - and you know what? It fits this scenario. It's appropriate. It fucking fits it to a messy, bloody, murderous T.
Reacting to legitimate, qualified and reasonable criticism by shouting "you're just anti-Semitic!" is baseline bloody dog-whistling populism unworthy of any enlightened libertarian, humanitarian-centered government or its representatives. It cheapens the true horrific meaning of anti-Semitism - in all its past and present contexts, complete with gas chambers, ghettos, identifying marks and tattoos and petty apartheid laws to isolate and exclude people from society, and dehumanizing speech in the media and from religious platforms. It creates circumstances in which nobody dares criticize or call out those committing monstrous deeds for fear of being labeled 'anti-Semitic' - whilst Israel goes on to literally bomb residential areas (1, 2), schools (1, 2), hospitals (1, 2, 3) and fucking ambulances (1, 2) full of civilians - and do so with utterly shocking contempt for human life, apparent impunity, without consequence - and all while continuing to play the victim on the world stage.
It's fucking nauseating. It makes me fucking sick.
And you know what? The history of all this shit that's going on right now, is out there, it's been out there all along, going largely unnoticed - all we need to do is look it up. But instead we just sit and swallow all the bullshit propaganda being shoveled into the mainstream media, sourced from a country where the state controls the media and its narrative outlook, so we can all believe the immaculate lie that this all started on October 7, 2023 when Hamas brutally attacked Israel, "out of the blue" and "completely unprovoked" - while we as passengers have been riding along on the coat-tails of Western powers (even in the third world) all this time - and should automatically side with Israel - inserting us all right smack in the middle of a fucking generational blood feud, because... well, either Israel literally owns and occupies the Judeo-Christian-Muslim Holy Land and "we're a Christian country", or because the US has vital strategic national "assets" and "interests" in Israel - and, oh yes, because the most aggressive, warlike and genocidal country in the Middle East has nukes... the very same nukes that warmongering butcher, the Israeli PM Netanyahu, threatened to use on Gaza just last week!
Who the ever-loving fuck thought that giving Israel nuclear bombs was a great idea? Well, played, 'murica - that's really gonna end well!
In actual fact, this all-encompassing globally disruptive shit-show and bonfire of inhumanities did not start on October 7, 2023 with Hamas, it started in 1948 with the Nakba - the violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, and the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations, as well as the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories and persecution and displacement of Palestinians throughout the region. Who did all that? I wonder.
They call it "the Israel-Hamas War", but the idea of this being a "war" is just plain absurd. It's downright ludicrous. The audacity of calling it that belies the dynamics of the situation. A war - an actual war - is fought between two formal military entities, with rules and conventions and an option to surrender or show clemency, or even to include a ceasefire. Instead, in Gaza, you have thousands of displaced, starving, injured civilians getting relentlessly pounded by Israeli artillery and aerial bombardments. In case the IDF didn't get the memo, civilians are NON-COMBATANTS. This, it should be abundantly clear by now, is NOT a war - it's a total indiscriminate, wholesale slaughter - a fucking genocide - and every member of the IDF participating in this bloodbath has lost the right to call themselves a "soldier".
Genocide is a PROCESS. It's something that has a beginning and an end, and it has numerous characteristics and stages in-between, and you can read about them here. And in case you've been wondering, Gaza is an open-air prison camp with a city inside of it. And for a month and a half, Israel has been bombing it - every single day. They even bombed a fucking refugee camp inside of it, apparently because some high-up in Hamas happened to be there for some obscure reason. Israel blithely claims Hamas uses civilians as "human shields" - but even knowing that that doesn't stop them from blowing up hundreds of said "human shields" anyway - as long as they get their target. In case you need it spelled out for you - this is yet another war crime which Israel doesn't even try to obfuscate.
That said, while the USA (1, 2), Britain (1, 2, 3) and numerous other Western powers (they do so like that term, don't they?) definitely had a hand in how all this came to be during the last century or so, the bulk of the blame still has to go where it is due. After all, it's not the US, UK or EU who are squeezing the triggers or dropping the bombs in Gaza, is it?
And while the poor old United Nations has already lost 101 of its personnel in Gaza since October 7 - due to Israeli fire, its pleas for a ceasefire have fallen on deaf ears. International relief efforts - and initiatives to force Israel to declare a ceasefire appear to move at a faltering, glacial pace. Nobody, it seems will intervene against Israel as it rampages across Gaza like a common schoolyard bully who has bigger, older brothers hanging around keeping an eye on things just in case little bro needs a hand if one of the kids on the sidelines dares to intervene on Gaza's behalf.
All the UN seems able to do is release impotent press releases about how shocked they are at what's going on in Gaza, and how powerless they are to do anything to stop it - while taking pointless votes between member nations - not on whether to intervene or force a ceasefire, but just to ask Israel to stop bombing civilians - as if they would even bother to read it.
The UN is being criticized as 'anti-Semitic' - the fucking United Nations!
It's fucking insane. It's completely mental.
This brings me to:
The Complete & Utter Failure Of The United Nations - yes, you read that right.
If anything, the UN has been proven to be utterly useless without the backing of the USA. Had the UN's humanitarian interests in Gaza been in line with the USA's, there's no question that everything the UN requested or suggested would've been accomplished, arranged and catered for - but because this time, their interests did NOT align, this awful situation continues like the very worst case of deadlock and stalemate I've ever seen.
They might as well rename the UN to something like "the Global Humanitarian Aid Organization", because that's all they really are - if anything, Israel's unrestricted, unrepentant, unceasing rampage in Gaza has killed the illusion that the UN could EVER be a true democratic global leadership body outright - and it's every bit as dead as those 13,000+ notches on Israel's belt. It has so completely failed in its mandate - just as its predecessor, the League of Nations, did in 1939.
So here we are. The people of the world - not their governments, not their leaders and politicians who are so adept at outmaneuvering each other that they probably come fitted with jet thrusters tucked under their Armani coat flaps - sit and watch as literally every violation of international law, laws governing warfare and conventions of common sense or decency possible, unfold like a corpse-flower - while none of them lifts a finger to stop it. It's surreal.
The only Western powers who even venture to say anything critical of Israel, do so to score propaganda points against their old Cold War opponents, literally have no human rights reputations themselves, and have no intention of actually getting involved in this matter with anything more substantial than words.
Meanwhile, in the space of one and a half months, more than 13,000 people have died for nothing. The Palestinians call them "martyrs", because that's how they've been taught to think - and believe me, they hate the Israeli's as much as the Israeli's hate them. The only difference is, the Palestinians have reason. The only reason the Israeli's have, is that they want Palestine all to themselves, because they believe it's theirs - and those 'dirty' Palestinians happen to be on it. Indoctrination has become reinforced and generational on both sides - there's no denying that. It doesn't excuse any of this, nor does it justify it.
For decades, I've believed that the Middle East represents a powder-keg that could (and probably will) lead to another world war, just like the Balkans did WW1. And once again, all the pieces are in place - but it seems the "powers" are reluctant to go to a full-scale war over a paltry 2 million people trapped and getting obliterated in Gaza by their biggest ally in the Middle East. This overwhelming case of tacit complicity and detached voyeurism is the best example of political convenience I've ever seen.
Why worry about it? In another month, perhaps two, there probably won't even be more than a few thousand Palestinians left in Gaza, and they should be easy enough to "resettle" somewhere outside of Israel - which will include what used to be Gaza. New Israeli settlements will bloom there, after the IDF's armored bulldozers finish doing the work they've already begun, of course.
And human beings think they're higher beings than animals? Yes, they really do - especially the religious ones, funny enough. Can animals create art? Music? Well, yes actually - there are animals that can draw, paint, sing and even play music, but that's a discussion for another day. As for killing, animals, like humans, are very good at it. But that's a simplified statement. Animals kill yes, they mostly kill for food. They sometimes kill for sport, or curiosity, or pleasure - and yes, I know this because I've watched cats eviscerate a few unlucky bugs, mice and birds, simply by playing with them until they fall apart. I've also watched countless nature documentaries in my lifetime - but no matter how brutal or cruel we may think nature can be - the stark, glaring, ugly and soul-shattering truth is that animals still don't commit genocide - and not simply because they just don't have the means to do so. To do that actually takes something more than just intellect to accomplish - it takes something the vast majority of animals simply do not have - an unfortunate and uncomfortable amount of senseless hate and evil.
Not only do we commit heinous acts of all kinds from our lofty position as rulers of this world, but we also ignore these when they don't affect us personally, excuse or justify our complicity in them, evade responsibility and accountability for them - even defend them and their alleged necessity. We callously defend the indefensible. We've even invented entire religions - called "world religions" because they've become so popular, so bloated and obscene, dripping with bile, unfulfilled good intentions and guilt and subterfuge and the stench of self-delusion - around our guilt. We created them as ways to deal with the crippling amount of sheer, heart-rending guilt and shame that grips us in our more lucid moments when we sit in the quiet too afraid to close our eyes, wondering what the fuck did we do?
Our leaders today have got to be the most horrifically conscienceless, soulless beings on the entire planet, the way they move and terminate people like little lifeless plastic pieces on a chessboard, and nowhere more is the adulterated obscenity of our staged, flawed and fraudulent democratic systems evident than when these people comfortably retire afterwards, being rewarded and honored and celebrated without ever answering for any of the misery they caused or the blood they spilt while in office.
Misinformation is the mainstay of the world they built and we have to live in, regulated by misdirection and governed by manipulation. Let's look at an example: Public protests - even those including Jewish protesters - protesting Israeli and Zionist aggression and demanding peace and a ceasefire in Gaza have been repeatedly slandered and deliberately miscast as "anti-Semitic", by populist right-wing politicians all over the world, who portray them as "pro-Hamas" and "supporting terrorism". Just last week, groups of right wing thugs turned up to counter-protest a pro-Palestinian protest of over 300,000 people - and ended up clashing with police instead. Representatives of the right wing Tory government blamed the violence on the pro-Palestine protestors, naturally, and not the people who turned up because they answered their week-long stochastic incitements to violence.
The prevailing narrative is that "Israel are the good guys" and "Palestinians are likely to be terrorists or terrorist sympathizers" and therefore "deserve to die". Consequently, so too does "anyone standing up to defend them, or criticize our best buddy, Israel".
The prevailing narrative is that "Israel has the right to defend itself" - by dropping over 25,000 tons of bombs on a densely populated enclosed area the size of 365 square km, containing 2.3 million people with no place to hide or escape to.
The prevailing narrative says, "we support Ukraine's right to independence and right to be free of Russian aggression" in the throes of a full-scale Russian invasion of its neighboring country - but in a complete turnaround, the very same governments inexplicably take the totally opposite view entirely and side with Israeli aggression.
Sorry, that shit doesn't fly with me - I wasn't born yesterday.
You don't get to slaughter more than 13,000 people (including thousands of children, with many more irreversibly maimed, traumatized and displaced) in a relentless six week campaign of merciless bombardment AFTER inflicting 75 years of oppression, dispossession and apartheid upon them, and then blithely sit there on the international stage pretending it's all in 'self-defense', and to play the fucking victim.
To do so is insulting and offensive and appalling. It's downright fucking evil - that's what it is. That this has been allowed to happen at all is an affront to civilization even just as a concept so earth-shatteringly profound that if I had a time machine, I'd go back to ancient Mesopotamia and tell the people building the first cities not to bother, and to just give it up and go back to live in the caves. That this abomination has happened under the supposed watch of modern so-called civilization is a fucking outrage. It has made a mockery of every underpinning of civilization including justice, of conventions of war, international law, and worst of all, it is a damning indictment of humanity as a species which claims to be intelligent, sentient, and actually thinks of itself as "civilized" - and better than Neanderthals, whose brain capacities exceeded ours by some considerable quantity - and in spite of that, as far as we can tell today, didn't actually make war, or commit genocide.
The frightening part of all this is that many of the countries presiding over this unfettered display of outright fucking barbarism actually believe themselves to be "civilized". The sickening reality of that incongruity is so disjointed, tragicomic and fucking outlandish and bizarre, it makes me feel physically ill.
If there are any aliens passing through this part of space at all - and if they've been keeping up with our current events, they probably have a new reason to lock their doors or take a different route - because humans are a warlike, capricious, disingenuous, duplicitous, territorial, dangerous species given to irrational hatred, debilitating fear and willful ignorance, violence and shocking cruelty - coupled with an astonishing capacity for denial, self-absolution, entitlement and narcissism.
When a deranged psychopath goes on a killing spree for 20 years and murders a few dozen innocent victims, people make such an outcry that they get arrested, put on trial and chucked into a dungeon, ofttimes given the electric chair or gas chamber - but when it comes to larger-scale crimes involving hundreds, thousands and millions of victims - such as those committed by countries and governments, the alleged 'leader' of the so-called 'Free World' stands there on camera before the entire world and says he supports the criminal's right to 'self-defense' because it doesn't suit their agenda for the Middle East to do otherwise. Too bad about all those kids that got blown to bits - but they're the bad guys, didn't you get the memo?
The real victims of the ongoing monstrous farce unfolding in Palestine, right - the ONLY real victims in this Machiavellian-scale epic fucking tragedy - are the Gazan and Palestinian people, whose cries for help went mostly unheard on the international stage for an outrageous 75 YEARS while the sycophantic leaders of the West closed ranks around Israel and sanitized their public image while passing on narcissistic honeyed fairytales of being the world's only, biggest victim, and refined and distilled that honey-flavored load of toxic bullshit to their respective electorates.
The rest - such as Israelis killed or kidnapped by Hamas, are nothing less than the dire consequences of Israel's dark oppression and orchestrated international efforts to allow it to continue - and like all consequences of this type, they stain the hands of the leaders of nations, armies and organizations red with the blood of innocents - and every drop of blood spilt on their watch, or at their behest, or as collateral, will stain them indelibly for all time.
...For all the difference any of that will make.
We know there are no courts for people such as these, no - there is no justice for the likes of them at all. Justice is for the poor and powerless, as we well know.
The failure of the United Nations to act in accordance with its mandated purposes, and with no sign that the International Court of Human Justice will even become involved in this matter, or to put perpetrators on trial, emphasizes that they do not expect to answer for their heinous crimes. Only those who lose wars ever do, just as the victors of wars get to write or rewrite history as they see fit. There is no justice beyond this life to hope for either, because there are no gods, no deities to sit in judgment of crimes or to weigh sins, real or imaginary, and to deliver divine punishment. To believe that there could even be such a thing, while maimed innocents cry covered in the blood of their mothers, is simply unconscionable. To pretend that such a god would be anything other than impotent, indifferent, complicit or cruel, would be nothing short of delusional, if not outright fucking malicious and narcissistic. So, at the end of the day, these fiends will never, ever truly be held accountable.
There is literally a bigger chance that Donald Trump will spend the rest of his life in jail than Benjamin Netanyahu standing trial for his crimes against humanity at the Hague, and I don't even care to wager on the former because to allow a former POTUS to serve jail time - for any reason - would be to create a precedent that would give the powers that be, night terrors.
However, like all things, one day these monsters will die - and while this will make the planet a trifle less contaminated by their evil, the universe will proceed as it will, utterly and completely indifferent to that fact, oblivious to victims or perpetrators, or to the perpetual insanity taking place on a small, insignificant, remote speck of a planet upon which the fleeting, presently dominant, violent ape species rages about, thumping its chest, proclaiming itself "the pinnacle and center of Everything".
However, in spite of all the saber-rattling, ass-covering and threatening, theater, shadow-play and name-calling by our supposedly democratically elected leaders and their denial of and doubling-down to support a genocide, something has definitely changed since October 7, 2023. Yes, a wave of change has swept around the world, a spark of awareness was carried around it by the speed of the modern internet, delivered by instant news access and instant news reporting. What has changed is that many people - especially in so-called Western countries - have at last seen the truth, and now we can finally discern the lie. And it's something we can never forget. It's something we must never allow the world to forget - as we slowly bring about certain change.
We now see the masks our leaders wear - covered with broad insincere smiles, for what they are - betrayal, deceit, untrustworthiness, perpetual malice.
The mask that Israel has worn all these years as the perpetual victim has been ripped away at last, and now it's desperately hiding its true face behind blood-stained hands. You see, if the Zionists were to see that face in a mirror, reflected back at them, they would realize that they have become the exact thing which the establishment of the state of Israel was supposed to protect them against. The worst part of that revelation is, they may actually celebrate it as an accomplishment.
To close, in case I haven't already made that clear yet, I am most certainly not anti-Semitic in any way, shape or form, under either the original definition or the modern interpretation.
I am however unashamedly anti-Zionist, proudly and vehemently anti war, emphatically anti-nationalist - and absolutely, unwaveringly anti-genocide.
Lastly, I am also quite sick and tired of this miserable, demented planet and of humanity as a whole, so if any passing UFO would like to pick me up and take me away to somewhere nice and quiet to live out the rest of my days, that would be great.
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2023.
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