Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Top ten most popular arguments used to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza:
1. You hate Jews!
2. You love terrorists!
3. But October 7!
4. Hamas would cut your head off you stupid leftist!
5. It’s kind of good to kill Muslims actually.
6. THEY DECAPITATED BABIES
7. THEY COOKED A BABY
8. Israel is killing babies in self-defense.
9. It’s actually very complicated, both sides are bad, objective morality does not exist, all things are exactly the same as all other things, the universe is made of lukewarm gray mush.
10. Hahaha nuke the Arab vermin!
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Saying “from the river to the sea” is genocide, but actually committing genocide is not genocide. Genocide is more of a feeling that you feel inside. Like everything else in the universe, it’s about you and how your personal feelings feel.
If ethnic cleansing and mass killing don’t make your feelings feel uncomfortable, then it’s not genocide. If someone saying they want all Palestinians to be free in their homeland makes your feelings feel uncomfortable, it’s genocide. That’s how the world works.
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You want to know how morally bankrupt Democrats are? Democrats are so morally bankrupt that right now they are angrier at people who say they refuse to vote for Biden because of his support for the Gaza massacre than they are at Biden for supporting the Gaza massacre.
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Biden could end this with one phone call. With. One. Phone call. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or ignorant. This mass slaughter is happening because Washington wants it to happen.
When Israel completely cut off Gaza’s communications last month, Washington called and ordered them to restore it, and connections were immediately restored. It’s always been this way; in 1982 Israel’s assault on Lebanon was halted with a phone call from President Reagan.
They can end this assault just as easily. Don’t let the White House frame itself as a passive witness to this butchery.
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Both Zionists and far-right Jew haters want you to believe all this killing is about Jews and Judaism when it’s really about land. It’s one group wanting all the land that an indigenous population was living on. We’ve seen this exact same script played out many times with non-Jews as the perpetrators.
It’s the exact same script, and it’s not even an entirely different cast. Like so many other problems, this one was started by the British.
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It’s such an insult to everyone’s intelligence to talk about the mass displacement in Gaza like it’s a temporary arrangement. As though Israel has a history of allowing Palestinians to return to land they’ve driven them out of.
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Atoning for the holocaust by backing a genocide. Atoning for Nazism by supporting ethnic cleansing. Atoning for fascism by silencing the critics of state power. Atoning for the racist murderousness of the past by facilitating the racist murderousness of the present.
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Ignore their words and watch their actions. If you mentally mute the narratives and verbiage about how Washington wants peace and a two-state solution, and look solely at concrete actions, it just looks like the US helping Israel murder and oppress Palestinians for generations.
Ignore their words and watch their actions is sound advice for any time you feel like someone’s manipulating you, by the way. It applies as much to interpersonal relationships as it does to empires.
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Featured image via Rawpixel (US government image).
Caitlin Johnstone 