r/JewsOfConscience • u/sabbah • Sep 18 '24

Opinion Israelis Must Ask Themselves if They're Willing to Live in a Country That Lives on Blood

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205 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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Rabbi David Mivasair has a GoFundMe to help provide basis necessities for the Palestinians of Gaza. If it is within your means, this is the link:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-gaza-families-survive

Rabbi Mivasair writes:

I want to add that the need is not only for money. There is a huge need for people there to simply have someone NOT there who expresses care toward them, who listens to them, who witnesses with compassion and empathy. I think of the people who scrawled on the walls of barracks in Nazi concentration camps "if only someone on the outside knew what they are doing to us here". I want to be the people who let them know that we do care, we are listening, we are trying to help, and they can tell us what is going on in their lives.

Please consider signing this petition which calls for a ceasefire and arms embargo, started by Rabbi Brant Rosen of Tzedek Chicago.

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/not-another-bomb-sign-on-letter?source=direct_link&referrer=group-jvp-2

Excerpt:

We know that in order to achieve a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the U.S. must stop arming Israel’s war and occupation against Palestinians. That’s why we are calling for an immediate embargo on US arms to Israel. Join us in calling on presidential candidate Kamala Harris to distance herself from Biden’s disastrous policy of arming Israel’s ongoing genocide and occupation in Palestine.

Not another bomb!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

44

u/salkhan Non-Jewish Ally Sep 18 '24

Unfortunately, Gideon is the only one of the few journalists who speaks out on this issue inside Israel (in English at least).

6

u/Saul_al-Rakoun Conservadox & Marxist Sep 19 '24

Levy is one of the few people buffoonish to act like this is even an open question.

The answer is yes, and it has been yes since before the Nakba. This is what the IDF is for.

39

u/No-Description2192 Sep 18 '24

I do wish the conversation wouls catch up to reality. Are israelis willing to live in a country that lives on blood? Yes. The answer is YES. its happening. thats reality. same as americans.

now, what do we do with that acceptance?

-4

u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 18 '24

I think America at least has a choice. It has the resources to exist within its borders without bloodshed. Maybe it would have to let Puerto Rico go free or make P.R. a state, but most of its borders are not contested today.

12

u/daloypolitsey Jewish Anti-Zionist Sep 18 '24

This is completely not true. America would not exist without the genocide of indigenous people and the enslavement of black people. Also, Puerto Rico isn’t the only place colonized by the US

Every settler colony is illegitimate and must fall

-3

u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 18 '24

I think this point of view is problematic because it tends to reify indigenous people – to treat them as if they are magic. As if, only they can justly rule over specific pieces of territory, and as if (despite humanity's long history of migration and dynamism) they have magical entitlement to specific territory until the end of time. This is actually the same false doctrine on which the State of Israel is founded. I've sat down and had a conversation with a local pro-genocide Israel supporter who patiently explained the claim of Jewish indigeneity in Palestine to me.

From a political-philosophical perspective, we could speak of "peoples" who have rights to specific territories (and the pro-genocide Israeli nationalists would certainly sign up and assert rights under that framework), or we could say that earth belongs to mankind and every human being has equal rights to all of the earth's surface. I think the latter idea has more integrity as a political-philosophical concept, and offers a more hopeful future.

History is not like a VHS tape that can be re-wound. Northern Ireland was colonized under a system explicitly known as the "Ulster Plantation." Peace and a first-world standard of living were achieved without deporting either the colonizers' descendants nor their institutions. Relatively moderate reforms worked to expand civil rights. The concepts of equal citizenship and bi-nationalism played important roles.

The U.S. has at least made progress. It dismantled Jim Crow. It passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. It's sometimes two steps forward, one step back, but it is at least engaged in a process of reconciliation. The solution the State of Israel is working on is very different.

15

u/ezequielrose Sep 19 '24

No, us Natives wanting LandBack is not "magical entitlement", but it is colonizer entitlement to think that Natives can't rule since you personally want access to the land and don't want to give it up, because you feel you simply deserve it for "being human". Andrew Jackson would agree with your spiel here, not Natives.

So, what do you think will happen when Indigenous ppls get Turtle Island back?

19

u/specialistsets Non-denominational Sep 18 '24

They have never hid from this and it's not a secret. Whether viewed as defensive or offensive, it was decided when the first paramilitary groups were founded over 100 years ago.

9

u/TheThirdDumpling Sep 18 '24

Yes they are. Obviously

You know what country they are not willing to live in? An economically depressed, internationally recognized pariah state.

That's where we come in, we BDS Israel and its empire master and its cohorts of vassals (by buying no Israeli products and less and less made-in-US/UK/Germany/Canada items), and we make sure their genocidal and terrorist acts are told and recorded in history and they become a pariah state for as long as they stay in their current form.