Black Mermaids, Feminism, Israel-Palestine - REAL TALKS!

Well, can't disagree with you on that one.

It's all about finding the smart companies ig

Not trying to necessarily turn this back into the Israel-Palestine thing, but I think it's really important to add part of the issue is that Israel has a (very legit) military. Palestine does not. So the resistance you hear about in the news from Palestine is, by necessity, all terrorist actions. They don't have a legit army to fight Israel, so all they can do to fight back are organized small attacks, which our world has no better word for than terrorist actions. But that is how you fight a war against an enemies military when you do not have one yourself.

Then what people hear and see about are things like suicide bombings and those kinds of militia attacks, and in our sheltered little North American world, we think of things like 9/11. And hell, there are still people who think THAT was just a completely random, unprovoked attack because some random group of people "hate freedom". People fight back any way they can, with any means available and necessary. Even if it's not good for public relations (which is hardly your concern when you are literally fighting for your lives)

Then this is also part of the Israeli propaganda machine. "We bombed them because they did a terrorist attack! We have the right to defend ourselves!" Sometimes, this has literally been people threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, so they bombed parts of Palestine. It's not even. It's straight-up criminal. But it is still called a justified military action against aggressors.

What I'm about to say sounds like its about the Israel-Palestine thing, but its a jump-off tangent, so take it as such, not as a disagreement or criticism, as we agree on that issue. But.

I remember seeing the "I'm only 10" girl a while back. Heart-breaking stuff. I think it's important to take almost everything else with a grain of salt, since it comes from social media and social media is not objective, peer-reviewed news/facts. Like, I don't speak Arabic, or Hebrew or anything, so I have to trust all of those non-English translations. I have no source on who translated it, so its a big leap for me now to blindly trust it all 100%. I believe, based on what I have heard, read, and researched, they at the very least represent A truth, even if they happen to not be direct truths themselves. But it's important for everyone not to fall into the "I saw it on social media and thats my main source of information" on this trap. This is the slippery slope anti-vaxxers have falled into time and time again, especially since Covid.

That said, I have no doubt these things are happening, and there are members of the Israeli population who have been told lies about Palestinians and therefore believe the shit that is being spewed in this video. They likely believe Muslims are trying to take over their world, or kill them or whatever. But, unrelatedly, I think it's important for people here to understand that the anti-Palestinian propaganda hate-machine that has produced these racist people is identical to the one operating in Canada and the US now, and over the past several years. It transcends issues, from BLM, to LGBT+ issues, to basic partisan politics.

Unrelated to Palestine-Israel, but in the same vein of social media creating unfair perception, I feel reading some of the comments above about equality and feminism come from the same place of an echo-chamber of incomplete information, if not outright misinformation.

The biggest thing right now for me is the concept of "woke" and how the very effective way in which conservatives have bastardized the concept and turned it into something negative. Historically, woke was a term from the black community basically recognizing people who were aware of systemic racism. In essence, a person educated on various sociological issues, as it pertained to race relations. It was a positive concept, where race theory and race relations could be discussed in progressive and meaningful ways. But once a group of anti-black, or anti-BLM counter-activists/politicians/overt racists got ahold of it, and brought it into a negative light in mainstream vernacular, it's become something negative, something dirty. It's a vile, but clever method of rhetorical manipulation. Instead of making people dislike Black people, you make them dislike black PROGRESS by changing how people perceive what Black progress is.

Being that rhetoric and media studies was my focus in University, I've been absolutely fascinated (and appalled) by the ways in which media, rhetoric, and truth have all been flipped in recent years. People have access to more truth, but they have less ability to differentiate fact from rhetorical manipulation than ever before, and it's absolutely infuriating to watch and listen to. Echo-chambers are a real thing, and are becoming increasingly more dangerous as well. And I'm sure that is what we are seeing from the body of Israeli civilians supporting anti-Palestinian policy, just as I believe to some extent, it's the same thing we see from the conservative body of the American population trashing immigrants, BLM, etc.

And again, to be blunt, it's also the same thing my red flags go up for when I hear you talking about "feminism" as some form of unified body as well. It hasn't been that unified with cause and direction since maybe the second wave of feminism. Basically once third-wave feminism came around, the cause was so fractured and academic-based, I would argue there hasn't been anything people could objectively say, "Feminists want/say/do" anything at all about. There are branches, there are thinkers, there are theorists, but I don't believe any feminist would be happy with being lumped into umbrella statements, and very much not the ones you've mentioned in this thread.

But now we aren't inclined to reply...

What a bitch wtf