People Like To Pretend I Will "get Better" So They Do Not Have To Think About The Deadly Lie They Are

Someone on Reddit made the mistake of saying, "Teach me how this conflict came about" where I could see it.

Let me teach you too.

The common perception is that Jews came out of nowhere, stole Palestinian homes and kicked Palestinians out of them, and then bombed them for 75 years, until they finally rebelled in the form of Hamas invading Israel and massacring 22 towns in one day.

The historical reality is that Jews have lived there continuously for at least 3500 years.

There are areas, like Meggido iirc, with archeological evidence of continuous habitation for 7,000 years, but Jewish culture as we recognize it today didn't develop until probably halfway through that.

Ethnic Jews are the indigenous people of this area.

Indigeneity means a group was originally there, before any colonization happened, and that it has retained a cultural connection to the land. History plus culture.

That's what Jews have: even when the diaspora became larger than the number of Jews in Israel, the yearning to return to that homeland was a daily part of Jewish prayer and ritual.

The Jewish community in Israel was crushed pretty violently by the Roman Empire in 135 CE, but it was still substantial, sometimes even the majority population there, for almost a thousand years.

The 600s CE brought the advent of Islam and the Arab Empire, expanding out from Saudi Arabia into Israel and beyond. It was largely a region where Jews were second-class citizens. But it was still WAY better than the way Christian Europe treated Jews.

From the 700s-900s, the area saw repeated civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes.

Then the Crusades came, with waves of Christians making "pilgrimages to the Holy Land" and trying to conquer it from Muslims and Jews, who they slaughtered and enslaved.

Israel became pretty well depopulated after all that. It was a very rough time to live there. (And for the curious, I'm calling it Israel because that's what it had been for centuries, until the Romans erased the name and the country.)

By the 1800s, the TOTAL population of what's now Israel and Palestine had varied from 150,000 - 275,000 for centuries. It was very rural, very sparsely populated, on top of being mostly desert.

In the 1880s, Jews started buying land and moving back to their indigenous homeland. As tends to happen, immigration brought new projects and opportunities, which led to more immigration - not only from Jews, but from the Arab world as well.

Unfortunately, there was an antisemitic minority spearheaded by Amin al-Husseini. Who was very well-connected, rich, and from a politically powerful family.

Al-Husseini had enthusiastically participated in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Then the Empire fell in World War One, and the League of Nations had to figure out what to do with its land.

Mostly, if an area was essentially operating as a country (e.g. Turkey), the League of Nations let it be one. In areas that weren't ready for self-rule, it appointed France or Britain to help them get there.

In recognition of the increased Jewish population in their traditional, indigenous homeland, it declared that that homeland would again become Israel.

As in, the region was casually called Palestine because that was the lay term for "the Holy Land." It had not been a country since Israel was stamped out; only a region of a series of different empires. And the Mandate For Palestine said it was establishing "a national home of the Jewish people" there, in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

Britain was appointed to help the Arab and Jewish communities there develop systems of self-government, and then to work together to govern the region overall.

At least, that was the plan.

Al-Husseini, who was deeply antisemitic, did not like this plan.

And, extra-unfortunately, the British response to al-Husseini inciting violent anti-Jewish riots was to put him in a leadership role over Arab Palestine.

They thought it would calm him down and perhaps satisfy him.

They were very wrong.

The Washington Institute

From Torch to Tunis to El Alamein: Events 80 Years Ago Made the Modern Middle East

The second week of November 1942 has much to tell us about the region’s geopolitical centrality, its enduring political currents, and its ro

He went on to become a huge Hitler fanboy, and then a Nazi war criminal. He co-created the Muslim Brotherhood - which Hamas is part of - with fellow fascist fanboy Hassan al-Banna.

Al Arabiya English

ANALYSIS: The Nazi roots of Muslim Brotherhood

After years of causing disruption on the streets of Egypt, on 30 June 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leader Mohammed Morsi was sworn i

He got Nazi Party funding for armed Muslim Brotherhood militias to attack Jews and the Brits in the late 30s, convincing Britain to agree to limit Jewish immigration at the time when it was most desperately needed.

He started using the militias again in 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the mandated land into a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian one.

Al-Husseini wouldn't stand for a two-state solution. He was determined to tolerate no more than the subdued, small Jewish minority of second-class citizens that he remembered from his childhood.

As armed militias increasingly ran riot, the Arab middle and upper classes increasingly left. About 100,000 left the country before May 1948, when Britain was to pull out, leaving Israel and Palestine to declare their independence.

The surrounding nations didn't want war. They largely accepted the two-state solution.

But al-Husseini lobbied HARD. And by mobilizing the Muslim Brotherhood to provide "destabilizing mass demonstrations and a murderous campaign of intimidation," he got the Arab League nations to agree to invade, en masse, as soon as Britain left.

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

The Aftershock of the Nazi War against the Jews, 1947–48: Could War in the Middle East Have Been Prevented?

This article deals with the after-effects of Nazi anti-Zionist propaganda in the Arab world and the antisemitic campaign of the Mufti of Jer

Question of Palestine

UN Palestine Commission - Acts of aggression by Arab States - Memorandum from the Jewish Agency - Question of Palestine

ACTS OF AGGRESSION PROVOKED, COMMITTED AND PREPARED BY ARAB STATES  IN CONCERT WITH THE PALESTINE ARAB HIGHER COMMITTEE AGAINST T

About 600,000 Arabs fled to those countries during the ensuing war.

Jews couldn't seek refuge there; in fact, most of those countries either exiled their Jews directly, confiscating their property first, or else made Jewish life unlivable and exploited them for underpaid or slave labor for years first.

The Tower

There Was a Jewish Nakba, and It Was Even Bigger than the Palestinian One

The expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the 20th century, is all the more tragic for how little

By the time the smoke cleared and a peace treaty was signed, most of the Arab Palestinian community had fled; there was no Arab Palestinian leadership; many of the refugees' homes and businesses had left had been destroyed in the war; and Israel had been flooded with nearly a million refugees from the Arab League countries and the Holocaust - even more people than had fled the war.

That was the Nakba. The one that gets portrayed as "750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled!" in the hope that you'll assume they were expelled en masse, their beautiful intact homes all stolen.

Egypt had taken what's now the Gaza Strip in that war, and Jordan took what's now the West Bank - expelling or killing all the Jews in it first.

(Ironically, Jordan was originally supposed to be part of Israel. Britain, inexplicably, cut off what would have been 75% of its land to create Jordan.

Even more inexplicably, nobody ever talks about it. I've never seen anyone complain that Jordan was stolen from Palestinians. Possibly because Jordan is also the only country that gave Palestinian refugees full citizenship, and it's about half Palestinian now.

Israel is nearly 25% Arab Palestinians with full citizenship and equal rights, so it's not all that different -- but the fundamental difference of living in a country where the majority is Jewish, not Muslim, probably runs pretty deep.)

Anyway: that's why Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank, rather than being some contiguous chunk of land. Or being the land set aside by the U.N. in 1947.

Because Arab countries took that land in 1948, and treated them as essentially separate for 20 years.

Israel got them back, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in the next war: 1967, when Egypt committed an act of war by taking control of the waterways and barring Israel from them. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

Israel tried to give back the Gaza Strip at the same time. Egypt refused.

Palestine finally declared independence in 1988.

But Hamas formed at about the same time. Probably in response, in fact. Hamas is fundamentally opposed to peace negotiations with Israel.

Again: Hamas is part of a group founded by Nazis.

Hamas has its own charter. It explains that Jews are "the enemy," because they control the drug trade, have been behind every major war, control the media, control the United Nations, etc. Basic Nazi rhetoric.

It has gotten adept at masking that rhetoric for the West. But to friendlier audiences, its leaders have consistently said things like, "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels.  Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels."

MEMRI

Senior Hamas Official Fathi Hammad To Palestinians In Jerusalem: Buy 5-Shekel Knives And Cut Off The Heads Of The Jews

Hamas Political Bureau Member and former Minister of the Interior Fathi Hammad urged the people of Jerusalem to "cut off...

(Palestinians were outraged by this speech. Palestinians, by and large, absolutely loathe Hamas.

Newsweek

Hamas Tortured Me for Dissent. Here's What They Truly Think of Palestinians

I thought I'd left Gaza behind, yet all this time, Hamas was planning to expand its extremism and intimidation.

It's just that it's not the same to say that to locals, as it is to say it where major global powers who oppose this crap can hear you.)

Hamas has stated from the beginning that its mission is to violently destroy Israel and take over the land.

It has received $100M in military funding annually, from Iran, for several years. Because Iran has been building a network of fascist, antisemitic groups across the Middle East, in a blatant attempt to control more and more of it: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen.

Iran has been run by a very far-right, deeply antisemitic dictatorship for decades now, which pretty openly wants to take down both Israel and the U.S.

Last year, Iran increased Hamas's funding to $350M.

The "proof of concept" invasion of Israel that Hamas pulled off on October 7th more than justifies a much bigger investment.

Hamas has publicly stated its intention to attack "again and again and again," until Israel has been violently destroyed.

That is how this conflict came about.

A Nazi group seized power in Gaza in 2007 by violently kicking the Palestinian government out, and began running it as a dictatorship, using it to build money and power in preparations for exactly this.

And people find it shockingly easy to believe its own hype about being "the Palestinian resistance."

As well as its propaganda that Israel is not actually targeting Hamas: it's just using a literal Nazi invasion and massacre as an excuse to randomly commit genocide of the fraction of Palestine it physically left 20 years ago.

Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have been protesting HAMAS throughout the war.

Combaticons

Honestly, I’d doubt Starscream knew or cared what alt modes the Combaticons had in their old forms before he built them new bodies.

So I’d kinda like to see fanart go crazy with their cybertronian alt modes, since we don’t need to care about brand unity.

Heck they might not have even had the same names, I feel the whole “rebuilt get a new name” is a sadly lost part of transformers culture these days.

And heck Starscream probably named them.

I also wonder if they had larger group of members, and how they’d react knowing Starscream blew up the rest when he destroyed the other cabinets.

[ I imagine there are still other cellblocks of prisoners dismantled since Starscream only blew up one. Scary thought.]

Greetings bugs and worms!

This comic is a little different than what I usually do but I worked real hard on it—Maybe I'll make more infographic stuff in the future this ended up being fun. Hope you learned something new :)

If you are still curious and want to learn more about OCD, you can visit the International OCD Foundation's website. I also recommend this amazing TED ED video "Starving The Monster", which was my first introduction to the disorder and this video by John Green about his own experience with OCD.

The IOCDF's website can also help you find support groups, therapy, and has lots of online guides and resources as well if you or a loved one is struggling with the disorder. It is very comprehensive!

Reblog to teach your followers about OCD

(But also not reblogging doesn't make you evil, silly goose)

I swear we used to be able to think critically about random GoFundMe asks

It used to be understood that if someone using a throwaway blog suddenly starts messaging a bunch of accounts to beg for money, they were most likely a scammer.

Now suddenly there are fucking swarms of throwaway bots relentlessly shilling GoFundMe campaigns to anyone who even so much as breathes in the direction of a trending tag or post, yet the mere suggestion that any of these could be a scam will immediately get you yelled at by self-righteous strangers.

What changed?

I think, from my opinion at least, what differentiates Earthspark from other Transformers shows (more specifically recent installations is) that it took risks and even though its messages may not have been conveyed across to its fullest potential, the intention and direction are still fairly evident and less harmful in comparison to other Transformers media

Earthspark manages to balance darker themes fairly well, whilst not forgetting its primary audience are children. There are both subtle and blatant dark themes throughout the show, there is a lot of exploration regarding one's identity which is more notable (but not exclusive) to the Terran Nightshade

It makes an honest attempt to be inclusive and while it may feel a bit stunted and awkward at times, it achieved its purpose despite what may be awkward handling— I find it odd how beloved Knockout is, despite the fact that he is an offensive gay stereotype (and not really handled well as a character in general) but the scene of Nightshade, an explicit non-binary character, saving Sam in ‘Home’ is apparently too awkward and regarded viewed as good but not enough in terms of representation?

EarthSpark has Black Filipino protagonists! There is casual representation with Mo's hair bonnet and the Filipino cuisine they eat; Alex speaks tagalog at times (although I think I do recall someone on here pointing out that the dialect he used isn't accurate to his geographic hometown in the Philippines?) and there is a whole episode where he teaches Bumblebee his culture as they hunt for the WakWak! I love when Transformers and humans teach each other about their culture, it both humanizes the Transformers reiterating that they are not emotionless robots AND it gives minorities a platform to be represented in a popular franchise

Despite the fact that the Malto children seem to be almost forcibly matured by the narrative and struggling to cope with the fear and anxiety of having their family torn apart, something that BIPOC people are at a higher likelihood of experience in the real world, it doesn't forget that at the end of the day they're all children. I quite enjoy Mo as a character and her emotional maturity, she offers her older brother wisdom and emotional comfort constantly; and when her safety is at risk her younger Terran siblings ensure that they take on a protector role due to the ultimate difference that poses threat to that of a human child and a Transformer child— because the Terrans are CHILDREN!

PTSD and trauma are touched on in EarthSpark, Hashtag's autonomy is violated by Dr Meridian and uses her body to cause harm towards her siblings and damage her environment; he used her body to prove his point that Transformers are dangerous and cannot integrate with society and Hashtag suffers from flashbacks of the experience. Despite the fact that the situation between the two is not expanded on, it is clear that Megatron has hurt Starscream in the past— Hashtag (even though she has no reason to believe Starscream because Megatron IS her mom's friend and kind towards her, "therefore he can't possible have done that") immediately believes Starscream when she confronts the latter's poor treatment towards others. She opens up about her own traumatic experience with Dr Meridian and while the situation may not be the same, she was trying to establish a common ground in the fact that they're both victims

Grimlock from his time at the bot brawls and also from having been mind-controlled by Dr Meridian blatantly suffers PTSD and is triggered several times throughout the respective episode and ineffectively copes by pushing it down. It is a dangerous thing for a Transformer to be mind-controlled, let alone a fire-breathing dinobot; fortunately Jawbreaker realising that he pushed Grimlock too far steps in and manages to calm the panicked dinobot down, assuring him that he is more than just a rampaging dinobot and there is more to Grimlock than meets the eye

EarthSpark gives us a lot in terms of themes and season one was incredibly ambitious, frankly I don't think many of the other previous Transformers shows could've handled it better than EarthSpark. I don't think that EarthSpark is without fault, on the contrary I have a few grievances with it but my issue is that people (perhaps without even realising it) are showing clear bias when they critique EarthSpark. Honestly, I do think that if the protagonists were a white family that people wouldn't mind that they're so central to the story— to be honest, that aggravates me a lot because the point of EarthSpark is that the humans have a central part in the story, it's literally about Earth born Transformers who are created a pair of siblings and adopted into their family. Criticising it centering around family and the respective human family members goes against the entire point of the show...

One of the more common critiques I have seen and I do agree to an extent, is EarthSpark's pacing. However, I absolutely think that its pacing though rushed still manages to deliver a great story that went out of its way to include difficult topics to portray— as opposed to Transformers: Prime and Transformers: Cyberverse. There is no amount of analysis and meta posts that I could read that would convince me that the pacing of those two shows were better than EarthSpark thus far, OR effectively and satisfactorily wrapped up the themes, character arcs and plotlines

It just seems that EarthSpark is taking a lot more criticism at a way earlier stage compared to other previous Transformers shows and that makes me sad because people are treating it as though its shortcomings are genuinely harmful but dismiss the previous harmful depictions in the Transformers franchise... I admire the risks and narrative choices that EarthSpark has undertaken so far and I hope it only improves from here on out, to give it that opportunity the show must continue and be given a chance to fulfil its vision

Woah, woah, woah, I agree with many of the things you bring up here, but if you're going to send me a ginormous essay, could you post it on your own blog, please? Plenty of your points are well thought-out and could stand to be there own posts, and I know I've answered long asks before, but this is way too long for me to respond to everything easily. Two or three of these points would be enough for one ask, so that's all I'm going to comment on:

-The criticism about Alex Malto defining a word wrong is definitely something that should be brought up, and I'm glad people have. I think the issue isn't necessarily the language he speaks, but that he defines "lolo" as a Tagalog word when he'd probably say it's a Bisaya word since he grew up in Bohol? I do wonder if there could be something more to his history that may explain this, especially since given his background he's probably had to switch to Tagalog and English a lot, or if there's something about his family we don't know yet. I don't have the knowledge or background to speak on this though. Also, part of me is a little glad discussing the language politics is even on the table at all for this franchise after like... how TFA handled South Asian representation, which it sounds like you were thinking as well lol

-I'm not sure if you're quoting somebody, but Hashtag (and the rest of the Maltos) ABSOLUTELY had reason to believe Megatron was abusive! Did they not go to that war memorial and hear him talking about how he's done horrible things? Don't the Malto parents often mention how he's been trying to change—the kids all know he's done harm! And Starscream even pointed out how hypocritical it is to think Megatron wouldn't leave people behind when he's locking up his former followers—even kids could get that point! Plus, the show is almost certainly trying to make the point that people who say they've been hurt should be believed and the first impulse shouldn't be to try to convince them it's not true. That's a good message for kids!

I think one of the worst Optimus takes I see is when people try to make him evil in ways that don't make sense. Like idk someone claiming that IDW Optimus justifies war crimes because of The Greater Good when he literally doesn't and is in fact quite aware of when he does morally dubious things or is responsible/complicit in bad things happening.

It just annoys me because there are interesting ways to make Optimus problematic or to see him as problematic but no one can do it without making Optimus OOC or they do it in a really boring way.

Mostly it feels like it stems from an inability (or refusal?) to believe that morally good individuals can be responsible for bad things happening on a wider scale. Or even that a good intentioned person can cause harm on an individual level. It feels as if people have to make Optimus OOC "evil" (as in dumb, ignorant, committing crimes, not caring about others' well being) because they can't grasp the idea that he can be simultaneously good and bad at the same time. Or they have this idea that only bad people do bad things and if someone ever does bad things it must make them a bad person.

I don't know. No one ever seems to have this problem with other characters in Transformers so I think it's just a byproduct of people projecting their personal/political issues onto Optimus lmao

Do you ever think of silly stuff like what if G1 Megatron was suddenly replaced by Prime Megatron?

Just starting with the size difference, for example. G1 Megs is 6m/19'8", Prime Megs is 10.5m/34'5". And he's not boxy!

Yes, yes I do. G1 level of Megatron antics in TFP would be just. Downright lovely, like here take this short man who has the wildest of schemes.

Oh things won't go well on the g1 with TFP Meggsie, he would be a damn force on the battlefield if he chooses to be. Or, conversely, he straight up just adopts the g1 decepticons because I say so and actually runs this army well (... Well comparatively well.) and chooses not to fight the g1 autobots because they seem to practically spawn in and it would be a slaughter.

They're so little🥰

I can't lie, I find it very odd that posts cautioning people against donating to individual* campaigns and promoting the idea of supporting mutual aid efforts and community kitchens in Gaza can rack up 10k+ notes--while a post promoting a community kitchen (that I can personally vouch for) struggles to get 1k notes, and has barely pulled in a couple hundred dollars over the past week.

I actively try to avoid using guilting tactics in fundraising, but this is weird to me. It's like people are using these posts as an excuse not to do things they already didn't want to do anyway, rather than actually taking their recommendations on board...

*In my experience, these campaigns often support large extended families + their neighbours

Chuffed

Mawasi Al-Qarara Mutual Aid Project

This campaign is a mutual aid initiative involving myself, my friends Mohammad Abu-Alwan and his two brothers in Palestine, and Shakhya Scri

MAQMAP is a community kitchen aiming to support families in the Mawasi Al-Qarara area.

After the release of the mini series, I've started to slip back into my dormant Zootopia hyperfixation, and boy let me tell you, it's one of THE HARDEST fandoms to find content that interests me.

Why?

Because 97% of it is just Judy Hopps/Nick Wilde shipping. All of it. Fanart, fanfics, it's just the shipping.

What drew me to Zootopia was the worldbuilding aspect and the animals who live in that world. Just... this entire city filled with so many different species that was architecturally designed to fit ALL OF THEM no matter what climate they're from or size they are. That just fascinated me!

Yet all the fanfics don't really explore all that. I can count the number of fanfics I've read about regular people on one hand. There's the one about the therapy sessions for the animals who got affected by the Savage Predator crisis, the one about the tiger and the rabbit single mom who had several chance encounters and became friends, and........ actually, that's it.

I dunno, I guess I'd rather read about a mouse being roommates with an elephant or something, how would that work? What are their lives like? Or maybe I just want to read something about the struggles of the leopard who runs a small cosy coffee shop having to compete with the Snarlbucks across the street (yes, that is the canon name for Starbucks in the Zootopia universe. That's another part of the worldbuilding I like, all the brands have animal pun names and I find it unreasonably hilarious) Or maybe an animal moving to one of the districts that is NOT a climate they can comfortably live in and having to make do with it, all because they put the needs of their best friend (aka an animal that does live in the climate they moved into) above their own.

Just simple slice of life stuff.

I have this entire slice of life fanfic idea in my brain that I'll probably never get around to writing that has pretty much zero canon characters in it at all. It has an entire cast of OCs just because I liked daydreaming about how the regular citizens of Zootopia of all shapes and sizes live their lives.