Lest we have to hear Arabic
Nov. 13th, 2024 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyIt was recently Remembrance Day here in so-called Canada, and schools across the country must grapple with some inherent contradictions. Remembrance Day may have started as a whole anti-war, never again sort of vibe commemoration but as the bloody fist emerged from the velvet glove, it became a celebration of war and militarism. Canadian values, as seen in the foolhardy invasion of Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with *checks notes* the Taliban, or the brutal torture and murder of a Somali teenager, the continuous violence enacted on Indigenous peoples, or the overthrowing of a democratically elected government in Haiti, are reframed as a valiant, noble fight for peace, freedom, and security. Generations of schoolchildren must memorize and monotonously recite "In Flanders Fields." Military recruiters are frequently brought in to sell war as an exciting adventure for broke students searching for a way to pay for tuition.
At the same time, schools must grapple with a mandate to be as inclusive and inoffensive as possible, celebrating diversity and multiculturalism and definitely not causing any "harm." As many students in any given school are likely to have experienced the trauma of war firsthand, the beleaguered teachers and students forced to organize the Dreaded Remembrance Day Assembly must at least nominally talk about peace. It is especially awkward this year, as our government and corporations continue to arm a rogue state that is committing a genocide that gets livestreamed to the kids on their phones.
This leads to some weird aesthetic decisions. My favourite was when a gung-ho recruiter straight out of a 60s-era Vietnam movie talked about the noble and thrilling mission in Afghanistan (to an audience that included Afghan refugees–that was before we barred them from coming in the country), and encouraged the kids to sign up to get blown up by an IED. This speech was followed by an absolutely brutal rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine." With lyrics. You know, the lyrics that are essentially "No Gods, No Masters," but somehow less cool? That one.
This year, one Ottawa school tried its best. Sir Robert Borden High School, located in an area with a large Arab population, played "Haza Salam." You can read the English translation in that video—it's pretty general and inoffensive. And prettier, musically, than "Imagine." I bet you can guess what happened next!
That's right! Triggered by having to hear Arabic, because the entire language is antisemitic now, some of the worst people—the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the soon-to-be last democratically elected Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Poilievre. and Lisa MacLeod, an MPP who cut funding to autistic children in a decision so unpopular that she had to immediately be shuffled off elsewhere—started shrieking their lungs out. Naturally, the principal of the school, who presumably doesn't want to organize the Remembrance Day assembly by himself next year,stood behind the hardworking students and educational professi—ahahaha just kidding he totally threw them under the bus and apologized to these braying fascists. I'm fairly certain this is in violation of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board's own human rights policy, but we all know this doesn't apply to Muslims or Arabs (and especially not to Palestinians).
This kind of thing is increasingly common in schools, which have always been bastions of white supremacy but have been given tacit permission through the re-election of the Orange Man and the media coronation of our own Trumplet, Poliievre, who gets to be appointed Prime Minister without us even needing to have an election about it. The lip service to diversity and inclusion and belonging lasts only so long as it can be done away with, revealing the rot beneath. Get ready for a firehose of stories like this, as the authoritarian personalities who worm their way to the top are at last allowed to stop pretending that they think all children are equally human.
At the same time, schools must grapple with a mandate to be as inclusive and inoffensive as possible, celebrating diversity and multiculturalism and definitely not causing any "harm." As many students in any given school are likely to have experienced the trauma of war firsthand, the beleaguered teachers and students forced to organize the Dreaded Remembrance Day Assembly must at least nominally talk about peace. It is especially awkward this year, as our government and corporations continue to arm a rogue state that is committing a genocide that gets livestreamed to the kids on their phones.
This leads to some weird aesthetic decisions. My favourite was when a gung-ho recruiter straight out of a 60s-era Vietnam movie talked about the noble and thrilling mission in Afghanistan (to an audience that included Afghan refugees–that was before we barred them from coming in the country), and encouraged the kids to sign up to get blown up by an IED. This speech was followed by an absolutely brutal rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine." With lyrics. You know, the lyrics that are essentially "No Gods, No Masters," but somehow less cool? That one.
This year, one Ottawa school tried its best. Sir Robert Borden High School, located in an area with a large Arab population, played "Haza Salam." You can read the English translation in that video—it's pretty general and inoffensive. And prettier, musically, than "Imagine." I bet you can guess what happened next!
That's right! Triggered by having to hear Arabic, because the entire language is antisemitic now, some of the worst people—the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the soon-to-be last democratically elected Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Poilievre. and Lisa MacLeod, an MPP who cut funding to autistic children in a decision so unpopular that she had to immediately be shuffled off elsewhere—started shrieking their lungs out. Naturally, the principal of the school, who presumably doesn't want to organize the Remembrance Day assembly by himself next year,
This kind of thing is increasingly common in schools, which have always been bastions of white supremacy but have been given tacit permission through the re-election of the Orange Man and the media coronation of our own Trumplet, Poliievre, who gets to be appointed Prime Minister without us even needing to have an election about it. The lip service to diversity and inclusion and belonging lasts only so long as it can be done away with, revealing the rot beneath. Get ready for a firehose of stories like this, as the authoritarian personalities who worm their way to the top are at last allowed to stop pretending that they think all children are equally human.
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Date: 2024-11-14 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 03:41 am (UTC)Wait what?
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Date: 2024-11-14 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 11:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 04:54 am (UTC)I'll go back to being an anxious wreck tomorrow.
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Date: 2024-11-14 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 05:16 am (UTC)He apologized for playing a song in Arabic?
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Date: 2024-11-14 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-15 02:41 am (UTC)Or maybe it is a popular song about peace that is in all kinds of videos?
I can, however, assure you that Lisa MacLeod would object to Arabic numerals if you asked her point blank about them.
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Date: 2024-11-15 11:51 am (UTC)Very funny. ^^ The problem, obviously, isn't that so many children and teachers knowingly support Hamas. Most people (including those on the Left) wouldn't do that if you asked them directly, because hey, most people, when they think about it, kind of dislike mass murder. The problem is that Hamas propaganda is well-made and pervasive enough that it ends up being repeated in Leftist echo chambers with many of the people in question actually not realizing whose words they are parroting. (Of course, the ones organizing/supporting public memorials for someone like Yahya Sinwar, like the guys in Mississauga, don't even have that excuse. Those know exactly whom and what they are supporting. Comparing Sinwar to Nelson Mandela? REALLY?) From the position of a propaganda fan, it's actually extremely interesting to observe.
"Or maybe it is a popular song about peace that is in all kinds of videos?"
Um, no, it's definitely not. It's the kind of "song about peace" that was strategically published directly after the attack on that music festival and rather selectively pops up in the kind of videos made by people who think "peace" is the kind of thing that should be achieved by subduing and/or killing all unbelievers (including but not limited - by far - to Jews), eradicating homosexuals, and locking women up with zero rights. It's associated with a very specific (and not particularly peaceful) political position, not peace in general.
"I can, however, assure you that Lisa MacLeod would object to Arabic numerals if you asked her point blank about them."
I don't know about this Lisa MacLeod, and you may even be correct about her - racism is a thing, after all - but I assure you that even many people who are perfectly fine with Arabic music and culture in general (and, for that matter, know perfectly well where our numbers come from) would object to a Hamas hymn being played at some kind of (semi?) official event.
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Date: 2024-11-15 12:17 pm (UTC)It's the kind of "song about peace" that was strategically published directly after the attack on that music festival
Gosh I wonder what happened directly after the attack on that music festival?
I have gotten exceptionally bored about fearmongering about Hamas and Hamas supporters lurking under everyone's bed like the boogyman. I'm Hamas now. If you're not holding bake sales to raise money for Likud, you're Hamas too. I donate regularly to MSF, World Central Kitchen, and UNHCR and believe in things like "the UN, while essentially ineffectual, is a pretty nifty idea," which means according to hasbara I'm materially supporting Hamas. It's dull as shit go on about "eradicating homosexuals" and "locking up women" when all women and homosexuals in Gaza are, at best dying of famine and at most paste under the rubble of every square inch of their home being destroyed.
Look, I'm sure if there'd been YouTube in the late 40s the Irgun would be using "Shtil, di nakht iz oysgeshternt" in its propaganda, and to a non-zero degree that'd almost be understandable. Is this song in Hamas propaganda? I'm sure. I don't go looking for Hamas propaganda on YouTube and it's sort of weird that you apparently do. Is it in 100000 videos protesting the Israeli genocide in Gaza? Yep. Do you think it's more likely that the students and teachers in Ottawa are a secretly brainwashed Hamas sleeper cell or that they used it because it's a song protesting the Israeli genocide in Gaza? Something that is more relevant to kids today, many of whom share at least some cultural background with the world's largest cohort of pediatric amputees, than moaning on about "In Flanders Fields." Use your thinking skills.
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Date: 2024-11-15 12:51 pm (UTC)Again: very funny. It is, of course, entirely possible to recognize Netanyahu and his cronies for what they are (as in: the kind of fuckers who piss on international law and should not be in charge of any country) without glorifying the Hamas.
"It's dull as shit go on about "eradicating homosexuals" and "locking up women" when all women and homosexuals in Gaza are, at best dying of famine and at most paste under the rubble of every square inch of their home being destroyed."
Yes, they are. They are, unfortunately, completely fucked no matter who wins this war. However, that still doesn't justify glorifying someone like Sinwar as a fucking hero. He's not. He's just not. When guys like that talk about a "free Palestine", they only ever mean "free for heterosexual male Muslims with the right political views, but we'll subdue or murder everyone else", and I don't think it's okay to gloss that over. I know people like to have a shining hero they can side with, but sometimes, the ones in charge on both sides of a conflict are as evil as they come. Sucks for the innocent civilians. Obviously.
"I don't go looking for Hamas propaganda on YouTube and it's sort of weird that you apparently do."
You know I'm interested in any and all political propaganda, not just Nazi propaganda, right? ^^ So, no, I don't make exceptions for the Hamas. I'm actually very interested in their radicalization and recruiting mechanisms. It's excellent, from a purely technical point of view. (Also, it's not as if they're not blasting it in the very streets. Hamburg had its own public pro-Hamas demonstrations. Guess where I heard "Haza Salam" for the very first time...)
...and the context of songs matters. Let me give you an example from my own culture. Schwarzbraun ist die Haselnuss is an old German folk song whose lyrics (an English translation is under the Wikipedia link) are perfectly innocuous. (It's the kind of silly love song that wasn't even intended to be political.) It's just talking about the lyrical I and his girlfriend having the same hair color. Totally harmless. Unfortunately - much later, and coincidentally - the same color also ended up being the party color of the NSDAP, and the song in question ended up one of the main marching songs of... not-very-nice people, was heavily used in their propaganda, and will forever be associated with them.
So, imagine that song being played in public. If it's in the context of "German folk songs of the 18th century", there's probably not going to be an issue, though most German folk musicians have enough tact to not play that song in public without a proper disclaimer and historical classification. If, however, it ends up being played at a military memorial thing? HOLY FUCK. There's (rightly) going to be an uproar, and blaming that on people objecting to German-language music (rather than, you know, people objecting to blasting Nazi marching songs at an official event) would be a rather stupid excuse.
"Use your thinking skills."
I do, and I still think that taking one side in a mutually attempted genocide is... genocidal. Yep.
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Date: 2024-11-15 01:06 pm (UTC)Songs get used for all kinds of things. A few years ago, when Nazis were gathering and marching in Toronto to protest the existence of Muslims and immigrants, they were playing "Waving Flag" by K'naan, a Muslim immigrant. The important thing is the context here, and the use of "Haza Salam" by Hamas is irrelevant if it is also being broadly used as a pro-peace song by everyone else (including kids and teachers in Ottawa).
Anyway, if you're interested in propaganda, you'll love hasbara. No one is a better propagandist for Hamas than Israel. Not even Hamas is as good a propagandist for Hamas as Israel. They've practically convinced me—a bisexual atheist Jewish woman who'd presumably get thrown off a roof if there were any roofs left—every time they burn a kid alive on camera. Sinwar was a genuine piece of shit but they managed to make him look like a badass hero.
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Date: 2024-11-15 01:56 pm (UTC)Fair enough, and ignoring the official German government positions is always a good idea - but, unfortunately the guys chanting "Hamas! Hamas! Juden ab ins Gas!" (one of the more popular German-Hamas slogans - popular because it rhymes, you see) in the street are not nearly as rare as you seem to think. Also: yes, these chants frequently appear at demontrations that purport to be only for "calling attention to the suffering of civilians in Gaza". (You also see this kind of shit scrawled on trains, in public restrooms, etc.) I'm trusting my own ears and eyes, here, not any kind of governmental statement. These events are largely run, or - at the very least - heavily infiltrated by Hamas supporters. Which is extremely unfortunate, because I'm very pro protecting innocent civilians but anti Hamas, and I absolutely refuse to march alongside people who quite literally demand new gas chambers.
"They are not even remotely capable of doing a genocide."
...fortunately. (Though it doesn't keep them from trying.) Which doesn't make me like them any better. If terrorists don't have much power, that just makes me want to make sure they never get that power, either.
"Israel can't destroy them, of course, because every time they do a war crime it recruits more Hamas supporters"
This is an extremely interesting statement, as it implies any strike against Hamas is automatically a "war crime"... Which, as we probably both know, is not the case. In a war, there are legitimate targets, and it's at least theoretically (though, obviously, not under Netanyahu's rule: I don't think he gives a fuck about these things) possible to fight a perfectly legal war against the Hamas.
By the way: when civilians are being used as a human shield, yep, international law allows killing them under certain circumstances. It's legal when done as self-defense, unless done "disproportionately", which is the kind of wishy-washy crap that makes persecuting war crimes so difficult. (By now, it's pretty obvious that Israel's government does not care about proportionality anymore, the way things have escalated, but at the beginning of the war, that was considerably less clear.) However, using Gazan civilians as a human shield is definitely a war crime in the first place - by the Hamas. Again: this absolutely sucks if you are an innocent civilian. (Obviously.) Let's please not pretend only one side in this conflict is happily committing war crimes, okay? The Palestinians-in-charge are not innocent lambs, and they are very deliberately producing the pictures of suffering civilians to sway the international public opinion in their favor. That doesn't mean the civilians in question don't suffer (which they very obviously do), just that the culpability for causing that suffering is not all that clear-cut.
"Sinwar was a genuine piece of shit but they managed to make him look like a badass hero."
You know, I'm genuinely unsure of that. Nasty thought experiment: if I had to choose between living in an area ruled by Benjamin Netanyahu or an area ruled by Yahya Sinwar, that's a rather unpleasant choice, but I think I'd end up considering Netanyahu the lesser evil, because living with a president known as "The Butcher Of...", who brags about strangling people with his bare hands, is not really a viable alternative as far as I'm concerned. Also, when choosing between two assholes, as a woman I feel I kind of have to choose the asshole that at least considers women as (barely, but still) human, for personal safety reasons. But that's just me.
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Date: 2024-11-16 12:29 am (UTC)But seriously, do you think that the American hippies chanting "Ho ho ho, Ho Chi Minh, Viet Cong is gonna win!" during the Vietnam War (objectively the second-best chant ever) proved that the VC had a substantial presence and influence stateside?
...fortunately. (Though it doesn't keep them from trying.) Which doesn't make me like them any better. If terrorists don't have much power, that just makes me want to make sure they never get that power, either.
They're not even all that interested in the West Bank ffs.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that I don't believe Hamas has committed war crimes. Obviously it has. However, you need to update your hasbara, because the official line has moved from "Hamas are using human shields" to "there are no civilians/there are no children in Gaza." Partially, I think, because 1) it was pointed out that if there's a school shooter in the building, you don't flatten the entire school, and 2) the IDF got caught literally using human shields, repeatedly.
You know, I'm genuinely unsure of that. Nasty thought experiment: if I had to choose between living in an area ruled by Benjamin Netanyahu or an area ruled by Yahya Sinwar, that's a rather unpleasant choice, but I think I'd end up considering Netanyahu the lesser evil, because living with a president known as "The Butcher Of...", who brags about strangling people with his bare hands, is not really a viable alternative as far as I'm concerned. Also, when choosing between two assholes, as a woman I feel I kind of have to choose the asshole that at least considers women as (barely, but still) human, for personal safety reasons. But that's just me.
That's just a weird thing to say, especially since this post is about *checks* racist politicians abusing schoolchildren and teachers in Ottawa, Canada, for playing an Arabic song. But I mean. Palestinians. Can't. Choose. I am pretty sure large portions of the population in Gaza would absolutely choose living under a bastard like Netanyahu because it would mean they had returned to their traditional homeland from which they got ethnically cleansed. Also because Israel is much safer and has access to clean drinking water and doesn't currently have a famine and a polio outbreak. But they can't even choose to be in Gaza vs Israel. They couldn't choose to peacefully protest their imprisonment. They can't leave. They can't choose to surrender. They are being moved back and forth all over the place, and when they follow the orders to evacuate, they still get starved and bombed. It's such a cruel hypothetical that it's mindboggling to even bring it up.
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Date: 2024-11-16 01:57 am (UTC)I'm genuinely curious: what, do you think, is the crucial difference? I would have thought it's a mix of emigrants (from various Arab-majority nations) and left-leaning locals in both cases.
"But seriously, do you think that the American hippies chanting "Ho ho ho, Ho Chi Minh, Viet Cong is gonna win!" during the Vietnam War (objectively the second-best chant ever) proved that the VC had a substantial presence and influence stateside?"
No, but if you showed me proof they did so at predominantly VC-financed rallys (or events sponsored by extremely close international allies of the VC, not that they did have particularly many) rather than being an unorganized rabble, I'd change that assessment very quickly. Also, yes, that's one of the most chantable (XDD) chants ever. Which one, do you think, is the best?
"I'm not sure where you got the idea that I don't believe Hamas has committed war crimes. Obviously it has."
Good, in that case we're in perfect agreement. I was in doubt because you selectively mentioned a lot of bad things that Israel did but not a single bad thing the Hamas did - that gave a kind of... skewed image.
"However, you need to update your hasbara, because the official line has moved from "Hamas are using human shields" to "there are no civilians/there are no children in Gaza.""
Lol, yeah no, I don't subscribe to propagandists who are also trying to convince me any and all criticism of Israel's government is antisemitic. XD No worries, I can recognize this shit, too.
"if there's a school shooter in the building, you don't flatten the entire school"
That's a fun allegory; I had not heard that one! :D However... If a) the school shooter doesn't merely shoot up the school itself but also the buildings around it, and b) the schoolchildren keep hiding and helping the shooter, then yeah, at some point, someone from a neighboring building will actually do their best to flatten that school if they see no other way to stop the shooter. I mean, if I lived next to a school from where some asshole kept shooting missiles into my kitchen, and lighter measures (like, say, trying to talk to the shooter or calling the police on them) don't work... I definitely would consider razing the place to the ground just to get rid of the problem. It's a not very nice but definitely very natural human reaction, I'm afraid.
"for playing an Arabic song"
...again: playing an Arabic song that's published and popularized by a terrorist organization and its international allies, for a very specific purpose. I have never heard this song in any other context. (Can you show me any evidence of the song being used as a generic "peace song" in a context that's not specifically about the Israel-Hamas war? Apart from this Canadian school incident, I mean?) The language it's in is really not the issue. The fact it's a Hamas hymn is. For most people, I'd think that would be kind of a dealbreaker when choosing a "peace song" for a public event...
"Palestinians. Can't. Choose."
I know that. They are absolutely, thoroughly, completely fucked. No doubt about that! However, I posted this thought experiment only as a reply to your statement of "Sinwar was a genuine piece of shit but they managed to make him look like a badass hero.", which seemed to imply Sinwar somehow was the better (or at least less evil) kind of guy - which is something I strongly disagree with, because it's very difficult to be a worse piece of shit than this guy. If that's not what you meant, I apologize.
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Date: 2024-11-16 02:19 am (UTC)Adult activists vs. kids in an educational environment. A state that tries to play it both ways as opposed to a state where criticism of Israel is essentially outlawed. A country that didn't do (that particular) Holocaust vs a country that did do the Holocaust (which is why I am so particularly bored with Germany thinking that it has any say over what Jews do or think, let alone appointing a German to decide what antisemitism is or isn't, or having German cops arresting Jews in the street for standing with Palestine).
No, but if you showed me proof they did so at predominantly VC-financed rallys (or events sponsored by extremely close international allies of the VC, not that they did have particularly many) rather than being an unorganized rabble, I'd change that assessment very quickly. Also, yes, that's one of the most chantable (XDD) chants ever. Which one, do you think, is the best?
Uhhh I am pretty sure that Hamas is not funding rallies in Germany or Canada or anywhere else, wtf? People are plenty pissed off enough to chant on their own.
Anyway the best chant is "Free Mumia, guilty or not, racist cops deserve to be shot."
I mean, if I lived next to a school from where some asshole kept shooting missiles into my kitchen, and lighter measures (like, say, trying to talk to the shooter or calling the police on them) don't work... I definitely would consider razing the place to the ground just to get rid of the problem. It's a not very nice but definitely very natural human reaction, I'm afraid.
There are some graphs you can look at to assess the relative levels of threat.
If we're going to go with the house metaphor, which is incredibly silly, because I think in general it's silly to go with metaphors at all when the world's largest cohort of pediatric amputees exists...if your house was given away to a random person and you were forced to live in a room in the basement, then you were locked in, and then they demolished the basement, you'd want to take revenge, yeah?
The goalpost/firehouse debate style is very distasteful to me, though. We are talking about a high school in Ottawa.
...again: playing an Arabic song that's published and popularized by a terrorist organization and its international allies, for a very specific purpose. I have never heard this song in any other context. (Can you show me any evidence of the song being used as a generic "peace song" in a context that's not specifically about the Israel-Hamas war? Apart from this Canadian school incident, I mean?) The language it's in is really not the issue. The fact it's a Hamas hymn is. For most people, I'd think that would be kind of a dealbreaker when choosing a "peace song" for a public event...
You've moved the goalposts again. It being about Palestine is not the same as being a "Hamas hymn" And yes, go on YouTube, or Spotify, and it's used by a bunch of people with varying political stripes. Maybe my algorithm is different than yours because I don't look at propaganda constantly.
Here, read the article. Lisa MacLeod's specific objection includes that it's in Arabic. It also references the YouTube context, which is the context in which any normal person in Canada (including me) would experience that song.
I don't think Sinwar was a good guy. I do think that Israel made him look better in death than he was in life, especially to people who have to collect bits of their kids in garbage bags.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-16 04:08 am (UTC)Eh... what? No, criticism of Israel is not outlawed anywhere. I'm very open about my dislike of the Israeli government, and I'm not in danger of being arrested anytime soon. Maybe it's because I don't routinely hang out with people calling for the murder of all Jews, which is illegal in Germany, which is why people routinely get arrested at "pro-Palestinian" events. If I went to the kind of rally with chants about gas chambers, I would risk being (temporarily) picked up by the police even if I wasn't chanting that stuff myself, because these things are difficult to sort out on the spot, but otherwise? Nah. Saying you dislike Netanyahu and his cronies while not standing in a screaming, genocidal mob is no risk whatsoever.
(It's like... Imagine you are in a night club, sitting at the bar while your friend to the left of you is busy dealing drugs and your friend to the right of you is busy knifing someone. The cops arrive fresh at the scene and have to sort that whole mess out. Yes, they may temporarily arrest absolutely everyone who looks like they belong to the group that made trouble, including you, although you were really just peacefully having a drink and didn't break the law in any way. Shit luck - but also not entirely unrelated to the kind of company you keep.)
"Uhhh I am pretty sure that Hamas is not funding rallies in Germany or Canada or anywhere else, wtf?"
Well, technically, most of the money is coming from Qatar and Iran (without whom Hamas wouldn't be as rich as they are - and isn't that funny, the world's richest terrorist organization deliberately letting "their" civilians starve in order to generate more propaganda pictures of suffering innocents?), but... Unfortunately, yeah. In Germany, they definitely do. The main organizations actively running "pro-Palestine" events in Germany are Palästina spricht (Palestine speaks), a club of mainly left-leaning Germans that - ironically - doesn't have many Palestinian members (but a lot of genocidal zeal to make up for that deficit), Samidoun, who I believe are also active in Canada despite attempts to ban them, and technically also got themselves banned in Germany (after handing out candy in celebration of the October 7 attacks; way to go!), but which doesn't seem to have hampered their activity significantly, and the Iranian government (though their embassy in Germany was recently closed due to a non-Palestine-related incident involving the execution of a German citizen for "corruption on Earth", which is the kind of crime islamists love to punish by death).
"if your house was given away to a random person and you were forced to live in a room in the basement, then you were locked in, and then they demolished the basement, you'd want to take revenge, yeah?"
Oh, if only the ownership of the house were as clear as that! XD It's more like "I'm now forced to live in a room in the basement of the house this random person took from me, after my parents took it from this person's parents, after THEY took it by force by shooting my grandfather in the kitchen, after...." - add a few millennia of that, and it actually becomes irrelevant who owned the damn house first, because a) no one involved in building it is still alive, and b) there was so much gratuitous violence against innocents on both sides that any moral claim to ownership becomes moot. Also, yes, I'd want revenge (and to have the whole house back), which does not necessarily mean that revenge would actually be justified.
"It being about Palestine is not the same as being a "Hamas hymn""
Well, no - and, indeed, there are plenty of songs about Palestine that are not Hamas hymns, so, if the intent was merely to choose a song that includes Arab-Canadians by having an anti-war song in their language, finding something less controversial would have been easy enough - but if it's about Palestine AND publicized by Hamas AND used as a frequent soundtrack in their stuff AND routinely played at the kind of political rally that also calls for new gas chambers... At some point, I think, if the shoe fits, it fits.
"Lisa MacLeod's specific objection includes that it's in Arabic."
Wait... The article you linked does not cite her as saying that. She's cited as claiming the service "did not follow the Royal Canadian Legion protocol and also distressed all of the Jewish students.", which may or may not be correct, but the one bringing up the language the song is in appears to be someone else. Maybe you got the wrong link?
"I do think that Israel made him look better in death than he was in life, especially to people who have to collect bits of their kids in garbage bags."
Yeah, but what was the alternative? Letting him live and keep murdering? I'm serious, here. Is there even an ethically correct way of dealing with this kind of guy? What should Israel (under a hypothetical, better government) have done about him? If an arrest isn't doable, bombing him to hell seems like a reasonable course of action to me.
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Date: 2024-11-16 01:53 pm (UTC)Honestly, this is why the context is so wildly different. Germany, quite rightly, has guilt over the Holocaust, but lacks the national maturity to interrogate the antisemitism that pervades its entire culture. So it has shifted the legal definition of antisemitism to focus on Israel instead of its own mess. Canada has a different set of laws, customs, and history, which is what makes your continual bringing up of the German context absolutely irrelevant to an Ottawa high school.
The activism context is also different, assuming you're not repeating propaganda (it sounds like some Soros-dollars conspiracy prattling to me, but I will presume good faith and that you at least believe what you're saying is true). I have been involved in pro-Palestinian activism for 25 years, longer than some adults have been alive. By virtue of the State of Israel implicating my ethnic and cultural identity into its hot mess, I have been involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict my entire life. Never once has any group I've belonged to received a single red cent from Iran or Qatar or anyone else. We can't even get a little city grant. 100% of the funding comes from broke-ass activists. It's only the right wing that gets funds from private donors and foreign governments.
Every accusation is a confession, etc.
As for Samidoun, not only is it banned here, but the one group it has operating is in Vancouver. Here is a little map that shows where Vancouver and Ottawa are located.
As for songs, I would invite you to fly to Canada, pass a police check, pass the vetting process for in-school volunteers to take on the monumental task of organizing a school assembly, and find a song that is appropriate and doesn't offend anyone. Otherwise, I assume the teachers and students know best what is appropriate to their particular context.
Wait... The article you linked does not cite her as saying that. She's cited as claiming the service "did not follow the Royal Canadian Legion protocol and also distressed all of the Jewish students.", which may or may not be correct, but the one bringing up the language the song is in appears to be someone else. Maybe you got the wrong link?
Maybe you didn't read the whole thing? From Lisa MacLeod's Twitter:
Emphasis mine, weird capitalization choices hers.
Re: home ownership, this is why I don't want to get into metaphors with you, as it just spirals into absurdity. A fellow I know made a nice three-hour video on it that's a better use of your time.
Re: Sinwar, he was found in the field, fighting, through the kind of regular intelligence work that if the Israeli government were competent and the IDF hadn't been tied up brutalizing farmers in the West Bank, would have prevented the Oct. 7th attacks. The responsible thing would be not to create terrorists like this in the first place; the second most responsible thing would have been not to kill 40,000+ people to get to one guy. It was also very silly of them to publicize how they killed him, because tossing a stick at a drone with his one remaining hand looks way cooler on camera compared to having your leader bring his dirty laundry with him when he flies home to America like he's a spoiled 18-year-old college student.
When I say Israel is better at Hamas propaganda than Hamas is, I mean presumably most Palestinians wouldn't like living under Hamas. They're a very secular society, traditionally. However, if Israel bombs your kids and your parents, whatever organization is promising to fight back is going to look pretty good. Especially if they say your kids were Hamas and your parents, who work in the health ministry, are Hamas, and World Central Kitchen and MSF are Hamas, etc. The boy has cried wolf, and in fact killed so many sheep who he claims are wolves, so many times that anyone normal is going to shrug and say, "Okay, I guess wolf then."
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Date: 2024-11-16 06:42 pm (UTC)Eh... If you think Germany ignores the more locally based cultural expressions of antisemitism in favor of exclusively fighting antisemitism from outside actors, you'd be wrong. Someone waving the red-white-black swastika flag while blasting the Horst-Wessel-Lied in public is not going to go unchallenged, either... People here generally have a very low tolerance for that kind of shit. You are, obviously, correct that there's a lot of pervasive cultural antisemitism that's less obvious, and it would be kind of nice to do more about dealing with that, or at least acknowledging it - but I don't think that automatically makes it wrong to criminalize open calls to genocide and/or support for terrorists from absolutely anyone, including but not limited to foreigners whose desire to kill all Jews stems from their view on a foreign conflict. These things are not mutually exclusive.
"hanging out with the wrong crowd at a club?"
Well, yes. Maybe not the best analogy, but...
Yes, I followed those cases closely. Also, yes, the arrest of Iris Hefets was a huge police fuck-up that never should have happened. (Which is also why she was released very quickly and the charges against her dropped: she did, of course, not break any German law whatsoever.)
However, claiming that Udi Raz was arrested for "organizing a conference" is again one of those half-truths that omit relevant facts. Udi Raz did mot merely organize a pro-Palestinian "peace conference" (which is perfectly legal under German law) but invited a speaker who is banned from political activities in Germany and put him on a video message thingy. (We are talking about Salman Abu Sitta - you know, the "Nakba researcher" who praised the courage of the October 7 terrorists and all that.) This does break German law. Also, yeah, after looking at the speaker list, the German authorities did not believe the organizers anymore that the event was merely supposed to be "for peace", and, uh, I kind of see how that could have happened.
It's like... If you show video messages from known Hamas sympathizers at your "peace" conference, you are definitely a case of hanging out with the wrong crowd - at the very least. Actually, "hanging out with the wrong crowd" is the charitable interpretation, here. So, no, Udi Raz was not arrested for merely expressing sympathy with the poor suffering civilians in Gaza (which, again, is perfectly legal in Germany, no worries. As a "propaganda fan", I know the relevant laws of what counts as Volksverhetzung intimately, and "I wish those innocent people were not dying in horrible ways" is, obviously, nowhere near it - that's the kind of entirely uncontroversial statement that the majority of Germans would happily sign because, uh, people generally strongly dislike the thought of other random people dying in horrible ways), though I have no doubt that's how the respective activist scene wants to spin it.
"The activism context is also different, assuming you're not repeating propaganda (it sounds like some Soros-dollars conspiracy prattling to me, but I will presume good faith and that you at least believe what you're saying is true)."
LOL. When I see a protest march walking through the streets of Hamburg's inner city, and I look at the flags they are waving, and a significant portion of those flags are the red-and-white Samidoun flags, then yes, I will jump to the most plausible conclusion: namely, that it's indeed a Samidoun event. (I will assume that the ones who had the flags printed and handed them out to marchers used either Samidoun money or the money of a closely related Samidoun-friendly organization or government for it, because that's what I'd consider the most likely explanation, really. Considerably more likely than people who have nothing whatsoever to do with Samidoun distributing Samidoun flags as a kind of freak hobby, anyway.) Blaming this conclusion on Soros is... pretty weird, if you ask me. If someone straight-out tells the whole world how they are supporting islamist terrorists (and I believe carrying something like a Samidoun flag is a pretty efficient way of doing so. Same goes for flying the Hamas coat of arms, of course.), then yes, I'm going to a) simply believe them, and b) definitely not march with them or support them in any other way.
..."would have prevented the Oct. 7th attacks"
Yeah, probably, but so what? Responsible for a crime is still the criminal, not the one who failed to prevent it. It's not as if the visitors of some music festival are responsible in any way for a governmental security lapse. Also, of course, if there had been security like, say, the screening of visitors and anyone else in the vicinity of the event, the same people who now imply the casualties and hostages are Israel's own fault for not having sufficient protection of their civilians would otherwise have whined about Israel's "militarism" (plus, of course, "apartheid" if they had concentrated the screening efforts on Arabs in the area as the most likely suspects) if the IDF had been present. (It's a complete propagandistic no-win situation for Israel... Damned if you do, damned if you don't.)
"The responsible thing would be not to create terrorists like this in the first place"
Weeeell... If you one-sidedly want to blame Israel on the existence of Hamas, and completely ignore - for example - the outside financial and military support for the greatest possible destabilizers of the region, sure... I'd say the creation of Hamas is much more complex than "well, Israel does bad things, so of course the victims of that would turn to fanatical islamism to solve their problems and the Hamas is the natural result". I mean, initially they were just a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, so... Definitely much more than a "local thing" that evolved purely from the outrage of local civilians, no matter how they like to pretend they are just that.
You kind of keep ignoring that the Hamas is one of the world's richest terrorist groups, and, well... When in doubt whose interests are really being fought for, I'm a huge fan of follow-the-money. The Hamas leaders are not billionaires because of the support of displaced civilians who lost their family homes in the Nakba: those guys definitely have a motive to be seriously disgruntled - I'd be - but they lack the money and resources to build anything like Hamas. (The average civilian in Gaza, after all, has pressing issues like, say, food and shelter, and can't afford to donate a cache of weapons to their favorite terrorist group even if they a) wanted to, and b) were able to somehow set up a contact with international arms dealers despite living in a place that's cut off from international travel. I mean... That's just not plausible.)
Also, the fact that Iran massively supports them despite belonging to a different branch of islam shows pretty clearly that this is not about solidarity with "brothers in faith" (after all, Sunnites and Shiites happily kill each other basically everywhere else because they mutually consider each other unbelievers: the absolute majority of islamist terrorism hits not Jews or Christians, but other Muslims!) but really about maximizing the unrest in the region. Iran, of course, has its own geopolitical interests, and those don't necessarily coincide with the interests of Palestinians. I suspect their stance is more like "let those Palestinian guys do the dirty work of wiping Israel off the map or at least seriously weaken it and have their people die in droves while doing so instead of ours - we'll take control when they are done". (This is, of course, a nightmare scenario for civilians in Gaza. Iran has exactly zero reason or motivation to keep them alive. They. Are. Fucked.)
Assholes like Sinwar are, of course, always going to exist. Also, yes, Israel's government consistently pissing on international law is going to create more candidates. However, the decision to give the absolute worst of those guys a shit ton of money, weapons, and one of the best propaganda networks in human history, so they can successfully terrorize everyone around them (including, of course, the very people they claim to fight for - not least because a lot of their extra income, beyond the clever investment of what they got from Iran and Qatar, is the stealing of charity money that was supposed to be aid for those civilians in need) while cultivating the public image of a smol-bean group of innocent victims fighting an infinitely more powerful (and, of course, inherently evil) enemy that keeps attacking them with no reason whatsoever? That's not on Israel...
"the second most responsible thing would have been not to kill 40,000+ people to get to one guy"
...while I agree that it would indeed have been more responsible to avoid killing all these people (understatement!), no, I don't think getting to one guy was the whole objective, there. One of the goals, maybe, but definitely not the whole motivator. I think they wanted to deal a blow to the whole organization, not just one specific leader.
"It was also very silly of them to publicize how they killed him"
Agreed. From a publicity point of view, that was plain stupid! They need better propaganda specialists. Can't Soros afford quality personnel? XD
"presumably most Palestinians wouldn't like living under Hamas"
I'm not entirely sure, because sometimes people decide to do really stupid things - after all, you'd also think that, presumably, most US Americans, especially the less wealthy ones, would not like living under Trump (again), and yet... - but, yeah, most Palestinians would not enjoy the results of getting a Hamas government, that's for sure. It's not as if islamism-in-charge worked out well for anyone, anywhere, ever. Decidedly unpleasant, and it's hard to imagine a majority of Palestinians wishing for that shit. Doesn't necessarily mean Hamas wouldn't win an election if there miraculously were one. (The leopards-eating-faces meme exists for a reason.)
"However, if Israel bombs your kids and your parents, whatever organization is promising to fight back is going to look pretty good."
Saying Hamas is "fighting back" is fascinating, considering how the escalation is hardly one-sided aggression by Israel. You'd think an organization of billionaires who consistently refuse any kind of more-or-less peaceful solution, escalate ongoing conflicts by deliberate attacks on civilians, and subsequently keep food and water from the people they claim to be fighting for, would be less popular with the people in question, but there you go. YES, if I had nothing to do with that provocation of October 7 but my family were suffering (or dead) from the fallout, and I had no idea why these foreign unbelievers are throwing bombs at my family (because the ones responsible for my education tell me they just randomly do these evil things because they are possessed by Satan), I'd consider supporting these fuckers, myself. I understand the emotion behind it. Doesn't mean the decision is correct in any way (not least because of incomplete information), but... Yeah. I definitely see how it's happening.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-16 07:22 pm (UTC)wait for it
A high school in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
I know you really struggle with metaphor, but I am saying you sound like the people who blame Soros for funding everything, not that you are saying that Soros is responsible for funding everything.
Samidoun is not active on Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Iran does not fund pro-Palestinian movements in Canada. Nor does Qatar. It's literally Jewish retirees and Palestinian students Venmoing each other $10 for photocopying based on who can scrape it together. Ask me how I know. (Don't. As I said, I've been involved in this issue basically my entire life, and I'm so incredibly tired of being goysplained to about it.)
As for strange bedfellows, realistically how do you think this is going to end? Either Israel massacres every Palestinian and paves over Gaza, which is the current plan, and will lead to regional escalation for absolutely understandable reasons, or it's going to have to negotiate
with
whoever
is
in charge.
How do you think Hamas was moved from "murder all the Jews" to "oppose Zionism" in its charter? (I realize that in Germany these two statements legally mean the same thing; in much of the rest of the world, they do not, and the German definition of antisemitism includes many and historically most Jews.) Through bombing? Or through actual diplomacy dialogue? You may not like them, and I don't like them, but if you claim to be for peace, something like Raz's conference actually sounds like a good start.
I would never blame the victims of Oct. 7th for their own murders, but I do blame the structure of the state that uses kibbutzim as a buffer zone. I blame the fact that the majority of the vaunted IDF were terrorizing Palestinian farmers in the West Bank rather than, I don't know, providing security for the kids doing molly at a rave beside the wall of an open-air prison.
Anyway, I'm also not here to defund Hamas, but at least some of the Qatar funding came from...which country again? One that wanted to undermine Fatah for some reason?
. (It's a complete propagandistic no-win situation for Israel... Damned if you do, damned if you don't.)
That's such a strange and silly thing to say. Israel's entire image of itself is based on tough-guy militarism. Screening visitors through a metal detector, while it would have done nothing to save a single life, is exactly the kind of security theatre that Israel and its backers wank off about and use to sell to police forces around the world.
Anyway, you've successfully derailed the conversation, which is about a high school in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I blame myself for allowing it to go this far. I politely ask you to disengage from it.
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Date: 2024-11-14 06:13 am (UTC)Speaking of which, I was listening to a podcast where a Gazan was bemoaning that since the beginning of the war, he had done his donkey a disservice by naming him Netanyahu.
I'm thinking about the organizing committee, not feeling like they could commemorate War as if nothing was resonating with a significant part of the student body, while trying to avoid making waves in the white supremacist Canadian context, decided to nod to the current tragedy by choosing the most anodyne Arabic song possible. Unfortunately, for the hasbaric hear, every Arabic word sounds like "shoah".
no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 11:45 am (UTC)I actually feel really hard for the organizing committee. It is so hard to get students to do things at all, and the kind of students you get on something like this will be very motivated and feel things very deeply, and this is no doubt awful for them and the teacher.
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Date: 2024-11-14 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-15 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2024-11-14 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-15 12:24 am (UTC)In the provinces where it’s not a holiday (see above), yes. Education is a provincial responsibility in Canada.
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Date: 2024-11-15 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-15 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-16 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-19 09:05 pm (UTC)A specifically provincial item is: "Municipalities". They are not otherwise addressed in the constitution, so they are effectively a Provincially administered matter, and have very little legal standing of their own. If the province decided to dissolve the City of Toronto tomorrow and turn each of the wards into communes, there's nothing that a court would do to overturn that.
In theory, education is a provincial matter, but the federal government has been transfering money to the provincial governments to support the burden of health (a shared responsibility) and education costs. Every 5 years there's a big First Ministers conference (Premiers and the Prime Minister) where the Premiers try to extract from transfer money from the federal government, and the federal government tries to get the provinces to actually spend that extra money on the services they are intended for, instead of immediately transform it into a provincial tax cut (something that infamously happened in the mid-2000s when Jean Charest did exactly that just before an election).
no subject
Date: 2024-11-14 08:25 pm (UTC)Let's take Remembrance Day. As long as I can remember, it's been a federal holiday (but not an across-the-board provincial one).. That's controversial both for those who choose to commemorate it and those who consider it hogwash (or something less polite). Those wishing to pause and remember the sacrifices made in wartime say "Why should we get a holiday when for so many people it's just a day to go Christmas shopping (after 12:30 PM of course). OR they say, "Thank goodness we are not at work so we can attend or participate in a ceremony, either at the cenotaph or at our children's school.' Those who think it's all bullshit may either say it shouldn't be a day off and that we should instead celebrate a different day - maybe International Women's Day or Halloween or whatever - or else they say we should definitely all get the day off because hey, we already get far less vacation time than folks in more progressive countries so let's not look a gift horse in the mouth!
As far as the singing of the Arabic song at Sir Robert Borden goes, there was one trustee (who's also a family physician) who objected very vociferously to it and I think she was definitely in the wrong here. And yet, I fully understand where she was coming from, knowing the threats she's had to her personal safety and that of her family from many different factions: not just the antisemitic ones but also threats from anti-vaxxers and folks who think that LGBTQ folk have no right to exist. She held mass jabbapaloozas (basically big COVID vaccination street parties outside her office), two of which I attended, and at which T-shirts were sold to raise funds for a women's shelter (interestingly enough a predominantly Muslim one). As a trustee, she has been a strong advocate for retaining masks in the classroom and for ensuring inclusivity particularly with regards the rights of gay and trans kids. As you can probably tell, I greatly admire her, even though I disagree with some of her views and actions.
Without wanting to wade into the horrific situation in Gaza here. I will just recommend a book I read recently about the situation. It's called The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians don't want to know about each other. It's written jointly by Raja G. Khouri (an Arab) and Jeffrey J. Wilkinson (a Jew). It's not a long book but it's well-organized and discusses in plain language the historical roots of the Israeli-Palestinian situation and how it came to this, without taking sides or resorting to inflammatory polemic.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-15 02:49 am (UTC)We have a similar trustee here but fortunately she's not in charge of people's actual health. And she eventually caved on the mask/clean air thing—I find most abled people do.
I actually think it's a good idea to have a day to commemorate victims of war. But I don't think we should lie to children about the purpose of war or the things our army has done. Also, for each hour spent in an assembly, two hours should be spent in an assembly commemorating the number of people who die of disease during and after wars.
That book sounds good but I'm kind of burned out on reading histories when there's so much terrible shit going on now.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-15 04:27 am (UTC)So what?? You're really stretching things super long here.
> Without wanting to wade into the horrific situation in Gaza here.
Well you just fucking did, didn't you.
> I will just recommend a book
Sabs could run circles around every goyim who reads this journal and half of the Jews reading it regarding Israel/Palestine. She's been involved in Palestine freedom activism for longer than your erecticle tissues knew what they existed for. So you can take your intro level israel/palestine book and rub it against said tissues until it's rendered unreadable. How fucking INSULTING of you.