Category Archives: בלוג

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Self-hating Jewish-Arabs, and a short AJ+ interview

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Last week I gave an interview to AJ+, in which I talked a bit about the dehumanization of Palestinians and its progress over the years in Israel, to its terminal current phase (see some more on this topic here). Below you’ll find some thoughts on the Arab-Jewish aspect of things, and how self-hate relates to them.

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One very important thing I have to say about all the videos and images of IDF soldiers mocking Palestinians and making all those displays of shaming and humiliation that we saw – mimicking Arab women crying and mourning their dead children, and showcasing their underwear like a collector of art shows their cherished items.

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If you zoom out of the “conflict” as propagandized by Israel and its wacky supporters in the West, you realize many of those IDF soldiers are actually ethnic Arabs. Their grandmothers, or grand-grandmothers, looked and sounded exactly like those mourning women they deride (do you start to get the levels of self-hate, and self-denial?).

By making such a huge deal of public humiliation of Arab stereotypes, those soldiers are really declaring to us, to the world: I have rejected all in the name of Zionism. Look at me humiliate my own sister, my own mother, my own grandmother, my own language, my own heritage, in the name of my new, fabricated identity (“Judaism as told by Zionism”). ‘

This is a major part of the psychological dynamics at play here. In recent decades, being an Arab Jew has become very popular in Israel. Everybody adores Arab food and constantly flaunts the little Arabic they know (in the form of curse words or some very short idioms).

This process is part of the cultural rehabilitation of Mizrahi Jews, who have been brutalized, sidelined, and exploited immensely by the historically Ashkenazi Israeli establishments. But this process of restoring a place for the Arab Jew on the popular Israeli stage was hysterically apolitical: you are allowed to love Arab food and Arab music, but god forbid you will love Arabs. God forbid you will see them as human, and equally.

Arabs have been reduced to representing folklore only (Mizrahi Jews, being the political idiots they always have been in Zionism, not getting that this prejudicial view deflects heavily on them, and reduces their identity to empty performance, to a depoliticized, simulated native, fake as everything else in the colonizer’s world).

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So this phenomenon of public shaming and humiliation can be seen as a cleansing ritual: young Israeli men, who would be considered Arabs if they were born in any other time in the past millennium, show the world that they are not. That they are, in fact, nothing but empty vessels filled exclusively by content created and approved by the Zionist state.

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For me, the opposite process was precipitated in this genocide. As my country and my society took on a monstrous aspect, and as the West completely failed on the most basic form of morality (dying, starving, mutilated children, for god’s sake, how can anyone fail this test?), I was left with nowhere to turn to but my Arabness. I was left with nothing but memories of the kindness and gentleness of my Jewish-Arab father, and the disestablishmentarian wit of my Oud-playing Jewish-Arab uncle, and their families, and the humanity of Palestinians and Arabs I have seen and met over the years. For me, nothing else is left.

בלוג

The West acts like a deluded psychopath

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Sometimes a psychopath gets so deluded they think they can avoid punishment not by escaping the law, but by making everyone else a psychopath as well.

This is the cultural story of this genocide, and to my knowledge, this is the first time in recorded history such a thing was ever attempted. Because this is what the US is doing right now: not only logistically making this genocide possible, but also morally and philosophically.

The US is not only trying to tell us this is not happening: it is telling us, explicitly but even more so implicitly, that this is ok and we need to accept it. Meaning: we need to embrace a psychopathic worldview and a psychopath’s persona.

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This genocide is a declaration of war on the idea that morality exists, or can be understood and experienced by normal people. America and the West are attempting to enforce a new morality: a psychopath’s morality, in which a dying baby causes absolutely no emotional reaction.

Do you think they are going to succeed? There’s no way this succeeds. It is acute megalomania, combined with paranoia, racism, and murderousness. It cannot become the norm. Human nature itself guarantees this will be rejected.

בלוג

American airdrop aid in colonial cinema production

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Some radical, fundamental things need to be said immediately about the mass murderer Joe Biden’s idea of air-dropping aid into Gaza First, it needs to be said that the genocide of Gaza is an American operation, funded and equipped by America and protected diplomatically by an automatic and unconditional veto in the UNSC. Israel is but the edge of a razor, or an axe, wielded by the US and slashing Palestinians. So why is the US wanting to aid while mass-murdering Palestinians? Here are some reasons.

  1. Management of image. The US wants to appear moral and merciful, or at least capable of deviating from the AIPAC line. So it does so mechanically, with stress on display and symbolism, as is usually the case with fake identities such as the white colonizer. It doesn’t know that to normal people this only accentuates the monstrosity, and by no means the humanity of the US.
  2. Management of consciousness. As part of an ongoing psychological warfare to weaken and confuse people, Western powers always talk from two opposing perspectives. Killing while providing aid to them is a prime example of that. You can not effectively fight what you cannot grasp.
  3. Helping Israel (to complete its genocide). By providing aid the US is mitigating mounting pressures to stop the Gaza holocaust.
  4. Sadism. The US wants Gazans to not know what to make of food air-dropped followed by bombers, or maybe even delivered at the exact same moment, by the exact same hand. This excruciating and debilitating confusion brings sadistic joy to the US, and it is also used to prime Gazans for annihilation.
  5. Strengthening the place charity has in the colonialist capitalist order. By portraying the murderer, enslaver, and exploiter as a savior through charity, capitalist colonialism, the basis for American political culture, can continue applying systemic injustice while reaping both unimaginable financial rewards and reputational benefits. Charity is a pillar of capitalist greed, corruption, and enslavement. –

    Two facts to keep in mind: A. Throughout its millennia of existence, Gaza never needed aid before Zionism (read: white capitalist colonialism). B. About half of Gazans originate from families and communities ethnically cleansed from 1948 Israel in the Nakba.

    Another aspect of just how ridiculous and divorced from reality this airdropping is:

    Gaza is a coastal city with direct access to the Mediterranean since ancient history. It is an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, and less than that from Ben Gurion airport. It is 20 kilometers away from Ashdod seaport, Israel’s largest.

    Gaza can be accessed by land and sea easily. It has dozens of entry points. It is inseparable from the history and geography of the Mediterranean region, with Alexandria, Malta, and Crete just a few hours away by ship (maybe a day).

    Airdropping aid into Gaza makes it look like an isolated, exotic, far-off island. Somewhere between the Easter Island and Antarctica, and undergoing an alien invasion, and not an insane, delirious, hazy slaughter at the hands of America’s closest bestest ally in the world, smack at the heart of civilization. This is also how you estrange a people and a struggle. Conilialist cinema, that’s what this is.

בלוג

Colonizers’ fake identities

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For purposes of this post, I will use America as an example, due to its being arguably the vastest colonial project we know, but also because I know a little bit about its history and culture.
What I say holds very much true for Israel as well, but I am sure it can be corroborated by the experiences of many other places.
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Have you ever noticed how large American founding papers loom not only in American politics and political consciousness, but also in American culture in general?
Have you ever seen a country where the national flag is so worshiped and widely displayed as part of everything, and where the national anthem is part of everyday life? Why is that?
Why do the American Constitution, the Federalist, the Declaration of Independence, the Mayflower Compact, or Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, matter so much? And, just as importantly, why does no native community on this planet have a similar set of founding papers? Why don’t they have Founding Fathers? Why do all those savages not have an appreciation for the beauty of an engineered myth?
Well, they actually don’t. Because native communities and native people never had to fabricate a collective identity. For natives, it is very simple and natural to know who they are. Their sense of collective self is absorbed from family and community, language and landscape. It flows and forms completely naturally.
Natives don’t need to be formally and repeatedly explained who they are, but colonizers always do. To use familiar philosophical language, I’d say that native identity is posteriori in nature, whereas colonizer identity is a prior.
Natives know who they are based on common, shared, commutative experience, expressed more in dress, music, food, and art than in dialectic arguments. Colonizers know who they are, if they ever do (and they don’t. they can’t), because they have been told such and such values represent them. See the difference?
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But this is only the beginning. Because if you organize a community around intellectual fabrications it may sound nice in founding papers, but in reality, your people will feel hollow. Engineered identity to identity is a picture of lunch to actual burger and fries.
You will need emotional content to fill the void. But where will you get it from? Oh, miraculously, providence provided your vacant lands with some natives you can hate for being the (again, serendipitously) the exact opposite of your fabricated sense of identity. Mission accomplished.
You will never see a community of people more filled with hatred as colonizers feel toward the people they colonized, and you will never see a culture as premised on the negation of other people as a colonizer culture.
That’s because colonizer cultures have no positive meaning of their own. Their only meaning is denial and negation of native values and characteristics, true of misrepresented. 
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But this, too, is not enough. Because, for colonizers, eventually the very existence of a native community, with its natural, non-intellectual, but psychologically nourishing sense of collective self, becomes an unbearable phenomenon.
If you’re a colonizer, a native community mirrors back to you your own contradictions and vacantness, and just how unnatural and forced your culture is. So you have to kill it. You have to make native, indigenous identities extinct. 
This is why America, which really is, at its core, little more than the marketing of marketing as essence, fights and hates native communities all around the world so much, This is why it was friends with Aparthid, and an immediate ally to Australia and Canada, and why it destroyed Hawaii’s indigenous identity.
This is also a major part of why America supports Israel so much. If your identity, your mission in life, is to replace native, indigenous identity with an intellectualized marketing simulation of it, this job cannot be partial, or its absurdity will be exposed. If you are America, if you are a colonizer superpower, you have to irradicate authenticity completely and forever.
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It is a whole different subject of its own, but this uncontrollable impulse to eradicate nativity and authenticity, also beautifully explains the corporatization of the economy, and the deliberate, meticulous destruction of small, mom-and-pop stores and businesses: everything that has real identity must be destroyed for colonialism to fulfill its mission.
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America’s renewed international aggression can be seen, per my theory, as a reflexive reaction to a perceived threat. A double one: first because Americans themselves have begun to tire and question their fabricated contradictory self (singing ‘democracy’ while invading half the planet), and, second, because native identities, the global south, which should have been gone by now, looks more energized than ever. And this scares made-up America to death.
Blog, בלוג

This is my war

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For me, what is going on in Gaza, and around it in other countries, is an actual war.

A war not only to save the lives of whoever we can in Gaza, which is our sacred duty to our fellow human beings.

A war not of bullets and bombs that I don’t have, don’t want to ever have and hate with all my being, but a war of ideas, a cultural war, an existential battle for my humanity, and humanity’s humanity.

A war against those who try to force us to not care, and not show it if we do.

For me this is war not only because my name, my heritage, the history of my family and my people, everything that I ever came to view as beautiful and sweet in my childhood, my humanity, my Judaism, all have been hijacked and weaponized for an ideology and message of brutality, violence, and hatred I could never accept in a billion trillion years.

For me as a living, thinking, writing human, this is a war of huge, cataclysmic consequence: if I lose – if we lose – then all is lost. Then no child, no mother, no father, no brother, no sister, will ever be safe. Ever. I will not betray all those people by not showing up for this war of ideas, even though they will never know me. I love them and I care for them just the same (I don’t need any god for this. This is me).

For me this is war because I could not live with myself in a world where this is legitimate, lawful, acceptable. Could you? Could you live with yourself in a nice comfortable house when a few streets away, or thousands of miles away, children are being killed in their hundreds every day? Could you? Then what are you?

For me, and for you, too, whether you get it or not, and definitely regardless of your being Palestinian or not, this is an actual, real, existential struggle.

I would advise anyone reading this: don’t get ever distracted or confused. Don’t ask “What can I do?”. Find what to do. Connect with other people. Join a movement (there is one close to you that you have never heard of, because the system was designed to separate. There is one. I promise you. Find it. Join it).

Shout louder. Go protest and take other people to protest who may never have gone without you. Be stronger and more resolute every single day. This is not a far-off, one-off war. This is home for all of us. This is our future and what it will look like.

For me, and I don’t really care how anybody else sees it, this is a war of values, of culture, and philosophy, a war that will have unimaginable consequences for the rest of our lives. We all need to be brave and show up.

No one is allowed to turn their gaze from a dying child, no matter how much pressure is applied to them. If you do this, if you look away, you will not be the owner of your gaze afterward. You will not own your own eyes. You will spend the rest of your days looking at the world through the eyes of a robot, or a slave, and you will know it.

For me, this is what this is about.

Blog, בלוג

3 tactics they use in their psychological warfare against us

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Many times during this genocide I heard and read people saying they’re feeling like they’re going crazy.

I know many of you feel this way, but I nonetheless want to congratulate you on displaying great courage and conviction. And I will tell you why: because in the past few months, you have been mostly successfully withstanding a psychological warfare campaign of a massive, massive scale.

I am not talking about trolls and bots and the obvious complicity of mass media. I am talking about something entirely different: a well-planned, well-executed, and heavily budgeted campaign by US and Israeli organs of government responsible entirely for fooling great numbers of people into believing all kinds of nonsense (and not believing the simple truth).

This may sound shady (not to the radicals among us: they’re aware), but I’ll tell you that in Israel “Management of Consciousness” is a formal activity and department of the IDF. And I guarantee you the US is no different.

Throughout this campaign, I have been noticing certain tactics traditionally used by Israel for “management of consciousness” being employed by American representatives (the Europeans are usually just useful idiots: no one needs to even lie to them smartly. And I’m talking about the “leaders”).

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I am by no means saying you have not been lied to before as Americans (or as citizens of another country). But I bet many of you feel you have never been lied to this blatantly, this brazenly, to an actually, and quite vividly, disorienting effect.

So I’m going to very briefly run through 3 such tactics, and then tell you why they’re using them (nothing is ever coincidental about how power speaks). I promise you it’s going to make a lot of sense. And you’re going to recognize them immediately.

Tactic #1: denying what you know is true, and they know you know they know is true (or seriously claiming what they know you know is a lie). Examples: we did not, or are not attacking, so and so hospital, while people are there filming themselves being bombarded. Also: The IDF claims only militants were targeted in X incident when you’re looking at images of dead women and children.

This can be called: lying to your face. repeatedly, even though it is obvious to all involved they’re doing it, and you’re seeing it.

Tactic #2: claiming, or doing, two things that are mutually exclusive. Examples: claiming to care about people and providing the means to kill them. Talking about the importance of aid while not using any kind of public message to warn Israel it cannot withhold it. Talking about values and democracy while defending and justifying a genocide. There are a million examples of this, I’m sure you’ll come up with plenty more.

Tactic #3: saying things like “we’ll investigate”, “we’ll look into it”, or “we’re waiting for confirmation”. Two brothers shot by a sniper a month ago? A man waving a white flag shot in front of a camera? 3 Israeli hostages killed by IDF while waving white flags? A command center under a hospital? 100 People killed in one attack? 400? Who remembers? And by the way: we’re still looking into it.

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Now if you’ll notice, these 3 tactics have one very prominent element in common. Because these 3 tactics are used not to convince you of one reality or another. They are not trying to tell Israel is either good or bad, or that civilians die unjustifiably or not. This is not the point of all this, and this is why it feels like a break from previous itterations of political deceit.

The real purpose of these tactics is not to convince or dissuade you of anything in particular. They are meant to destabilize you psychologically.

This is the disorientation I was referring to earlier. It is not coincidental, it is the desired effect of this strategy. Yes, it is strategic.

This is what you do when you want a population confused and disarmed from any psychological certainty, which is the basis for all political motivation and action. Because if you don’t know what’s happening, and are not sure what your government does or stands for, what are you going to fight? And how will you convince others to join you?

They have been doing it to Israelis for decades: always talking from both sides of their mouth at the same time, saying what everybody watching knows is a complete lie, and saying they’ll investigate when it is clear there is never any intention behind it.

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By always maintaining two opposites in your consciousness, they are always giving you false hope, and always denying it, thus slowly breaking you (after 100 instances of this you stop hoping, and after 200 you forget hope ever lived in you).

By always providing a grain of simulated recognition of your fears, they’re letting you think that maybe you’re heard and maybe not everything is a lie, but only to disappoint you a minute later. And again. Then again.

My brothers and sisters, it is intentional. They are not sloppy or confused, but very methodical. Nothing of the messages we’ve been fed, especially the clear lies and contradictions, is not coincidentak. There is a very distinct logic to this madness.

This is the very, very short and condensed version of what they’re trying to do to us psychologically, which is really to disintegrate us not only as a society but as individuals as well.

The trick to resisting this strategy is to always trust your instincts (because you are good and they work beautifully) and to always remember that they are using duplicity intentionally, strategically, to destabilize you. So your answer is, as always, clarity and resolve.

Blog, בלוג

Toxic masculinity and the genocide: the case of Ben Shapiro (and the beloved and much missed Rachel Corrie)

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We should be talking more about how big of a role toxic masculinity plays in this genocide, and how much it sets the scene for a clash between two very distinct types of masculinity.
For brief background: Rachel Corrie was an American peace and social activist, a sweet, lovely young woman in her 20s’ who developed a special interest in the plight of Palestinians. In March of 2003, as the IDF was demolishing homes in Rafah (the occupation is a never-ending loop of destruction and despair), Rachel Corrie was there, protesting. She was run over by an Israeli bulldozer. 
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Ben Shapiro, on the other hand, is your hyperverbal cousin reciting his Bar Mitzvah speech at 1.75x speed 5 hours straight without stopping once for air or to ask you if you’re still conscious on your way to a family vacation.
Unimportant and uninteresting, he still demonstrates what is expected of him as a speaker for the oh-so-tough-and-masculine American right. In 2011 he tweeted

That miserable tweet resurfaced some 10 days ago (early February 2024), and when he was asked if he regretted it, he said no. Rachel Corrie was still on his list of history’s greatest idiots. What a man, now, do you see? So cavalier. So careless. Dead activist! LOL.

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This is one of the most prominent marks of toxic masculinity: the delight it takes in the death and destruction of “others”, especially women and children, who are mocked and hated for their vulnerability.

So much of the right-wing response has been similar to this, and become totally mainstream. “This is the price of war”, or “this is war”, “those are not innocent women and children”, “they shouldn’t have done October 7th”, “collateral damage”, “Hamas can just surrender”all used to convey absolute indifference, or actually taking pride in knowing how much it hurts you, and other people.

Like a sociopath, but with an added penchant for gloating, toxic masculinity guides its believers to deal death, torture, and destruction without once letting a muscle move in your facial expression.

It is all clinical and devoid of feelings as part of the performance.

Contrast this kind of masculinity with what we’ve seen on the Palestinian side: men in flip-flops rescuing people from under the rubble; Motaz and Wael (and many others) reporting tearing and sobbing, soft as children.

Men weeping with their dead child in their hand, and other men doing the world’s most blood-curdling job: telling them to stop and give up their child so they can be buried.

Not one gym bro have you seen in all the pictures of captured Gazans. Not one macho man. No tattoos. Only men sitting on the ground, or standing, with complete disregard for perceived masculine performance.

Men whose masculinity is grounded in family and community. Vulnerable to a painful degree, but not once trying to mask it. They just stand or sit there. They just are.

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What we really need as a human society is a model of a soft and loving man, a gentle man, who loves and respects everything and everyone. A man who cries when exposed to someone else’s pain and humiliation. We don’t need that dubious, destructive wannabe-viking clown of the suburbs who treats life as a video game, the type that calls for more women and children to be killed with his two legs missing because of a former colonial war.

And if you just want to understand how vacant, nonsensical and fragile the toxic man is, try and tell him that his fresh dead soldiers just joined your list of history’s greatest idiots. Oh no, you can’t. In our backwards culture you can only come out with a mild reprimand after saying that about a young woman who died trying to protect vulnerable people. Oh the hilarity.

בלוג

The lie of ‘we’re doing it to prevent another october 7th’

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Something needs to be said about the obvious lie that is Israel’s premise, or formal reason for this genocidal campaign, that is “making sure that October 7th does not happen again”.

On a simple military level, if Israel wanted to make sure October 7th does not happen again, it could place 10,000, 20,000, or 30,000 soldiers on its border with the Gaza Strip, and make that kind of attack happening again impossible.

In that case, Israel could take Hamas leaders to an international court and charge them with war crimes. It could alson lead in good faith with the international community and the Arab world to initiate a deep reform in the way the Gaza strip is governed.

Had Israel chosen to do that, it would also have to, without question, be willing to discuss Palestinian independence and statehood; but this, too, should have been addressed humanly, and justly, generations ago. And it is inevitable.

If Israel had chosen to use October 7th as a means to push for reform in Palestinians resistance and governance, it would definitely have a case that may not be fully justified in the eyes of devout Palestinian freedom fighters, but it would make enough sense to gain traction with many people in Palestine, in the Middle East and internationally.

But Israel chose instead a path of vindictiveness and annihilation; to drown blood in much more blood, misery in a hundredfold misery. Choosing this path, Israel lost the last of the hearts and minds that were still even partially open to hear it.

It displays cruelty beyond measure. It makes any discussion on the supposed barbarism of Hamas a joke. If killing innocent people, children especially, is an obscene crime, which it is, then it is an obscene crime in all circumstances, and not just when convenient for US allies, who now will never shake off the image of heartless, moral-free colonizers.

And if Israel had chosen a more humane, pragmatic, wise, way of making sure October 7th never happens again, by now all of its abductees would have been home with their families, and Israeli society, too, would have started healing, instead of losing more young men and risking an utterly devastating regional war.

And it would not be this hated globally, and not charged with genocide, and in no need to use a humongous lobby to censor and silence critics, and destroy its image further.

This was never about “making sure October 7th never happens again”. This was, and is, about wounded egos and a pathetic and destructive show of dominance – especially despicable where defenseless, occupied civilians are concerned, and where children and babies die in their thousands. Israel’s choice does not make it safer or better in any way. It is a stupid, sadistic, and infantile approach to life, based on perceived grandeur, not on actual care for anyone, Arab or Jew, Palestinian or Israeli.


And one last thought: if you love someone, you don’t entangle their image in perpetuity in genocide. This Israeli regime must be hating Jews as well, for doing that.

בלוג

The life of (my) life, soul of my soul

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I have been calling my daughter what translates from Hebrew as “the life of life” or “love of love” for some years now; this is a modern, Israeli take of an Arabic use of language.

I grew up in a very Zionist place and time. But I was lucky enough to grow up among Mizrahi, Arab Jews; both my father and my beloved uncle spoke Arabic as their first language, and the two, childhood friends, married two sisters, my mom and aunt, born in Morocco to Jewish parents.

Arab music was part of the soundtrack of my childhood, and from a young age I knew the names and would recognize the voices of legends such as Farid al-Atrash, Abdel Halim Hafez, Warda, Umm Kulthum, Fairuz and others.

My father would also take me to work occasionally (he was an aluminum worker in construction), and his teammate Isaa, a Palestinian from Nazareth, was a family friend’ really, as were all his teammates. We all knew him and loved and welcomed him whoever we met.

I never forgot how, one cold winter morning, when I tagged along with my father on a work day, Issa’s wife made us coffee and tea, accompanied by sweet, delicious sugar powder-covered cookies, as they wouldn’t let us just pick Issa up and go (I certainly can’t speak for all Arabs homes but I know enough to say with confidence that you don’t just pass through an Arab home: you sit and have coffee and eat something and have some small talk. Arabs Jews are also similar in that regard).

Like many 2nd and 3rd generation Mizrahi Jews, I can’t speak Arabic, but I pick up quite a lot of it, and the musicality of the language always sounds a little like home to me. Fortunate to have been around Arabs, Jews and just Arabs, from a young age, I was never intimidated by anything Arab. On the contrary: I grew immensely fond of the gentleness, the warmth of heart, the humor, and the special sweetness of an Arab street, store or home.

In later years, I was lamenting the forced disconnect between me and my Arab roots created by Israel’s paranoid mentality. Like many other Arab Jews of my generation, I was not an Arab anymore, but not really an Israeli as well (to this day I am not sure what being Israeli means, really, apart from a negation of Jewish experiences and denial of current realities).

Israeli, just like American or English, connotes whiteness. And white we Mizrahi Jews are not, nor will we ever be. Unlike many Mizrahi Jews, I refused to become an empty shell, filled only with the ideological content of the state: A de-Arabized Arab Jew. That I wouldn’t be. I chose to be free instead.

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When I heard of the way Khaled, Reem’s grandfather, called her, and how similar it was to the way I call my daughter, and when I see the suffering, wounds, burns, pain and death of Gaza’s children, the memory and consciousness of me and my roots, both known and simply genetic, springs to life immediately, undeniable and bare.

These kids are not foreign or alien to me. They are me and mine, too. I feel their pain and fear, I understand the terms of endearment and the farewells of their grief-stricken parents, even as I really understand but a few words here and there. My soul understands Arabic is the way I’d put it.

Zionism’s message of fear, hate and suspicion towards Arabs and Palestinians is totally and forever lost on me, and I consider it a personal triumph. I will never hate Arab people. And I ache the terrible dehumanization of Arab people, societies and communities that have so much beauty, gentleness and love in them. The world will know the truth. I am sure of that, and I will do whatever I can to help bring this day about, which is why I write this.

(And that’s me and my daughter)

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(This text was my real inaugural Twitter post in English)

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דווקא המדינה היהודית האחת

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התגובה הראשונית שלכםן לתמונה שבחרתי עבור הפוסט הזה תהיה: אבל זה לא הוגן שככה הוא מציג אותנו. זה לא מייצג אותנו. לא בחרנו בזה. זו לא אשמתנו.

אם אתן יכולים להתגבר על התגובה הראשונית הזו ולהמשיך לקרוא, אהלן וסהלן. אם לא לא. הכל בסדר. לא צריך לטרוח להסביר לי שיש רוע, או רשע, בלתי נמנע, או מתחייב. גם אין טעם להבהיר לי שאני לא מכאן, או לא של כאן: גדלתי כאן והתחנכתי כאן, נשמתי את אותו אוויר כמוכם ואפילו הלכתי לאותו צבא, ושני אחי הצעירים טמונים באדמה הזאת, לצד סבי וסבתותי.

מותר לשנוא אותי. אבל אני של כאן, ומכאן, וככה זה כבר יישאר תמיד, אפילו לכשאעזוב את כאן לתמיד. כך רצה המקרה.

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כיוון שיש בעולם, למרות הכחשתם הנצחית והחוזרת של כל מני מפרידי הפרדות ומבדילי הבדלים, דבר שנקרא אדם, ומכיוון שיש דברים, למרות הסתייגויותיהם של מפלספי התפלסופויות, שהאדם יודע, כדאי וחשוב לפעמים לדבר על האדם ועל מה שהיא יודעת.

כדאי במיוחד לדבר כך בנסיבות שבהן מקובל לחשוב, ונדרש מאיתנו לחשוב, שהן פרטיקולריות עד אימה. יוצאות דופן עד כדי כך, רוצה לומר,  כי אנחנו יודעים, כי אנחנו אדם, שאין באמת נסיבות כאלה. אנחנו יודעים שחומר החיים הוא אחד, והאדם הוא אחד (אם אתם לא מסכימים שהאדם הוא אחד וחומר החיים הוא אחד, אנא בידקו ואימרו לי מי היו הרעים ומי הטובים במאבק בין הרומאים לשבטים ההונים במאה החמישית לפני הספירה או בין המונגולים לסין במאה ה13 לספירה).

יודעים, אני אומר, ומתעקש על כך: ההכרה הזו היא יסוד המצפון והמוסר בעולם, ואם היא לא הייתה לא היה בעולם אפילו רעיון של מוסר או מצפון. אם יש בבני האדם כיתות והיררכיות, אין צורך או טעם במוסר, וממילא לא היינו שומעים מעולם על רעיון שנובע מחיפוש מוסרי, ולא היו לנו יסוריי מצפון, וסבלו של הזולת לא היה מכאיב לנו.

כל זה לא נכון: סבלו של הזולת מכאיב לנו, המצפון שלנו מייסר אותנו על מעשים רעים שעשינו, ובלי הסבר מוסרי אנחנו לא יכולים לחיות ולתפקד.

אין צורך להוכיח פילוסופית את קיומם של מצפון ומוסר בעולם: כל אחד ואחת מאיתנו יודעים זאת בגופם ובנפשם.

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בכל מדינות העולם, יש רק מדינה יהודית אחת. בכל עמי העולם יש רק אחד שטוען בעקביות עליונות מוסרית על, בערך, כל שאר האנושות. בכל מדינות העולם יש רק אחת שהוקמה מתוך עולם טיעונים שמתבסס על צדק, כלומר תיקון עוול מוסרי.

מכל חבלי עולם יש רק אחד ששחרורו מקולוניאליזם לא החזיר אותו לידי תושביו על האדמה באותו זמן, ובמאות השנים שקדמו לו. על חבל הארץ הזה הוקמה מדינת ישראל, בגיבוי הקהילה הבינלאומית, מתוך הזדקקות לעולם טיעונים מוסרי.

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מכל המדינות בעולם, אני לא יודע אם יש עוד אחת, ואני נוטה לחשוב שאין עוד אחת, שבה הנקודה המוסרית לא רק תמה והתייתרה לגמרי, אלא עצם אזכורה מזכה את המאזכרים בשנאת הכלל ובהוקעה מחיקו של הקולקטיב. זה ישראלי. זו ישראל.

אני באמת לא יודע אם יש עוד מדינה בעולם שבה האמירה “ככה לא עושים לבני אדם” היא אמירה רדיקלית, קיצונית, מסכסכת ומפלגת, בוטה, פושעת נגד רוח העם. אמירה חסרת אחיזה בציבוריות, נלעגת ומבוזה, אמירה של טיפשים, תלושים, הזויים, משוגעים, מנותקים.

אני לא יודע אם יש עוד מרחב פוליטי שהחליט החלטה מודעת וגורפת שנסיבות קיומו הייחודיות מהוות פטור כולל ונצחי מכל שיקול מוסרי והומני. אני לא יכול לקבוע קטגורית שאין עוד מרחב כזה, אבל אני לא מכיר עוד דבר כזה בעולם.

במילים של חיוב, ולא של שלילה, מדינת ישראל מפנה כלפי תושביה היהודיים מכבש לחצים בלתי פוסק כדי שיכרתו מנפשם ותודעתם את מושגי החמלה, הרחמים, ההתחשבות, ושיעקרו משכלם את ההבנה האנושית המובנית, הברורה מאליה, הכרוכה לבלתי הפרד בהוויה האנושית, שהבחירה המוסרית היא הבחירה הקונסטרוקטיבית והחכמה בכל הנסיבות.

אני לא יודע אם יש עוד חברה בעולם שהחליטה, למפרע ובכל הנסיבות, שאין מה לעשות מלבד להרוג, לפצוע, לחבול, לענות, לגרש. זו לא החלטה שבאה מהניתוח האינטלקטואלי; אנחנו יצורים רגשיים לפני הכל. זו החלטה שבאה מעולמות הרגש. להפסיק להרגיש, זה צו הישראליות. לקטוע ולגדוע את איברי החישה שלנו את העולם, את האדם, את עצמנו.

שמתם לב כמה קטוע וקטום השיח הרגשי בישראל בכל הסוגיות? כמה תקוע, שבלוני ונכשל בלחדור את השכבות החיצוניות של המוסכמה המקובלת?

הרי יש אדם, ואנחנו בני אדם, ומשהו בנו יודע כמה מטומטמים אנחנו נשמעים.

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ישראל החליטה שאין לה מה לעשות מלבד להרוג, לפצוע, לחבול, לגרש, לענות. אין לה מה לעשות. וכל כך אין לה מה לעשות שהיא לא מתעסקת בזה יותר. השאלה איפה החומוס הכי טעים יותר חשובה ומעניינת לישראלים מהשאלה כמה ילדים מתו בשמי היום, או כמה אנשים הפכו לחסרי בית. ואולי להגיד יותר חשובה ומעניינת זה לא נכון, כי שאלה שהיא לא חשובה בכלל לא צריכה להיות מוצבת בהשוואה מול שאלה שיש לה חשיבות כלשהי.

היא גם החליטה לא לשאול את עצמה אם זה אכן נכון, ומה צריך לעשות כדי לא לחיות חיים כאלה: הרי זה גם אינטרס קיומי, לא? איזה טעם יש בחיים של סדיזם ואלימות? איזו משמעות יש לחיים כאלה? איזו “הגשמה” יש בהם? הגשמה של מה? של הכחשה כל כך חריפה של יסודות הקיום שהיא שוללת את האנושיות של עצמנו בעיניו של הזולת?

האם אפשר לבנות חברה בת קיימא על יסודות של התכחשות גורפת ועמוקה ליסוד כל כך אוניברסלי בנפש האדם?

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ישראל בוחרת להאמין שיש לה הצדקה אוטומטית לאקטים אינסופיים של רוע מחריד; הצדקה כל כך שקופה, מובנת מאליה ובלתי ניתנת לערעור שהיא מייתרת את עצם הדיון באקט זה או אחר, ורואה בו התרסה, או אקט של שנאה כלפיה ובחירה בצד של “האוייב”, שבמלחמה הזו כבר באופן רשמי וגלוי הפך להיות כל אישה וכל ילד, כל אחד, כל אדם.

דווקא המדינה היהודית האחת, זו שהוקמה על ידי קבוצה שהתגאתה בסגולותיה המוסריות העודפות, זו שנוצרה מתוך הסכמה בינלאומית כדי לתקן, כביכול, עוול מוסרי היסטורי, החליטה, כולה, בראש אחד, שאין לה שום צורך ושימוש בעולם מושגים כזה. זו הרי המשמעות של “אין מה לעשות”, “אז מה אתה רוצה שנעשה” ו”מה אתה מציע”. שהיא מתעבת אותו תיעוב יוקד ורואה בו שנאת יהודים.

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אני יודע שישראל משקרת כי אני אדם.