Friday 13 October 2023

Shades of Grey: the saga of Israel and Palestine

 I grew up watching South Africans fight for their freedom. They did some shit; burning people with tires in the middle of the street because they were identified as snitches is just one example. On the other hand, the Boers were busy beating people to death, right on TV because they dared to protest. They massacred students in that very famous massacre the year I was born. They detained people, from Nelson to Winnie to that Jewish guy you can watch in Live to Lead on Netflix. He lost his leg in a bombing in Malawi and when he woke up, he was terrified that the Boers had him. When he was told he was still with Frelimo but he lost his leg, he was relieved.

Can you even imagine the alternative if the loss of a leg fills you with relief?

The West called the South African freedom fighters, terrorists. Nelson Mandela was only removed from a terrorist watchlist in '94 or thereabouts when he was already the president of South Africa. It was only after the South African embassy in London was literally under siege (and it became less profitable to support it) that the beginning of dismantling apartheid in South Africa began. Now they all want to pretend that they were always huge supporters of Nelson Mandela and the ANC.

The narrative is the narrative until it's not.

That's why it's important not to wait for other people to tell you what to think. You must seek your own information and make up your own mind. 

The dichotomy of black and white, good and evil, is what trips people up I think. People think that if you fight back, using the same tactics as your oppressor, then you're not just as bad, you're worse than them. It's you, you're the problem, it's you.

Guys, it's all shades of grey. The meek might one day inherit the earth but they generally do not survive oppression or brutality.

They never give you alternatives for what you can do to mitigate this oppression - have you noticed? Every alternative is wrong. 

We've seen this with Black Lives Matter too. 

When it comes to Palestine though, there seems to be an extra layer of dgaf that happens. People are dead-eyed in the face of gruesome pictures of Palestinian children, shot, bombed, beaten, brutalized in every way imaginable. Somehow, it's all fine. 

It's all okay. 

It's antisemitism if you protest. It means you hate Jews. You want Jews to be killed. 

Jews are the victims. Don't you see that?

Hitler killed six million Jews a century ago. How many Palestinians have Jews killed?

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.

I don't know how this is going to be resolved, but what I see is the Israeli government acting in bad faith. I see that they are the oppressors. And if there is to be any hope for humanity, we must all stand against this.

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