78 Comments
User's avatar
Melissa Gold's avatar

I am a Jew. I call what Israel is doing a Holocaust and genocide.

Expand full comment
Story Ember leGaïe's avatar

And as a genocide scholar, I reject it.

I reject your framing.

I reject your dehumanization.

I reject the absence of Palestinian voices, especially Palestinian men, in your advocacy.

Because you speak of atrocities,

but you do not speak of the people who endure them.

And that silence?

That silence is complicity.

https://open.substack.com/pub/marginaliasubversiva/p/untranslated?r=3lzdaf&utm_medium=ios

Expand full comment
Lori LeClaire's avatar

Your work, your writing is powerful. Thank you for speaking the truth.

Expand full comment
Martha Jones Eberle's avatar

I can barely read this or look anymore ... but as you say, "silence is complicity."

What has struck me from the first (I mean, besides the deaths, the destruction, the purposeful famine), is that every time Israel told the Palestinians to move south or north or south again, for their SAFETY, then that is where they bombed!! They squeezed them into a smaller and smaller space, so that they could burn them more efficiently.

I will continue to help with food aid, each of us, doing one small part, and write to U.S. politicians, but i'm having trouble talking to Jews who "seem" to only side with Israel because of Oct 7.

Is the human race doomed because of our insufferable greed, religious bigotry, egotism? I trust the other animals of the world, much more than humans, as they just LIVE, procreating, playing, killing for food.

Expand full comment
Johnny Dammitson's avatar

It's quite telling that you just said "Israeli airstrikes killed at least 52 people in Gaza Monday night—including 36 Palestinians who were taking refuge in a school-turned-shelter."

So, who were the remaining 16 people that weren't taking refuge?

I think you know the answer, but are too cowardly to say so because that will destroy your narrative that this was an unprovoked attack.

Expand full comment
ken taylor's avatar

They have their plan all written down.

"However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. "

So I guess the nut religiosos made the deal with Netaynhu to put the losing Likud (only 23%) of vote was an agreement that he would follow what they still think is god's plan for them. They got a good ally in Netyanhu too cause he's unable to sleep at night until he's brought a full glass of Palestinan blood to drink.

Not trying to make light of what's happening but an Israeli woman I know who married a Palestinian man told me that many years ago during an earlier Netanyahu reign I laughed then and she got very angry.

Apparently she was not telling a joke. She told me that when she and her husband felt so uncomfortable they moved to Gaza to live. That was the last time she wrote (old days of letters on parchment). I was looking for some old writings yesterday and the gentleman assisting me found this letter postmarked from Israel and remarked.

I've been wondering how much Israeli blood he's also willing to drink.

I'm telling you the killing won't stop until some other nation(s) stop them.

Expand full comment
Raven Meyer's avatar

What am I missing? Who’s benefiting from this? Who’s profiting off of this? I hate Bibi as much as I hate Trump because they are of the same cut of cloth. It seems that it’s always been unless it affects a majority of people directly, they would rather not be bothered or even hear about it. Bibi the butcher. Lamenting doesn’t help, death of said leader does.

Expand full comment
J types words.'s avatar

"Who’s benefiting from this?" western imperialism, I believe

Expand full comment
Melissa Redman's avatar

Every picture and video that comes from there shows utter destruction and devastation.It looks like what the end of the world would look like.Their whole infrastructure is in ruins.And it just looks purposeful.It wasn't random.All of it was done on purpose.

How can someone say that kind of destruction is"self defense"?How is killing babies and children"self defense"?How is leveling entire neighborhoods and killing whole generations of families"self defense"?But this is what everything you can put hands on to read about this,is saying about what Israel is doing,"defending themselves".How the hell is this "self defense",when these people are defenseless to run,escape or fight back??

These poor people are sitting ducks,with no escape and no one to help them.And even anyone who tried to help are fired upon,just like that aid ship a few weeks ago was.Aid has been blockaded for weeks now.

I have also been hearing that the Israeli government are openly saying they want to kill everyone in Gaza,and saying that even little babies and kids there are the"enemy".What the actual hell?Why is this even okay to openly say you intend to commit genocide and no one seems to take it seriously?

No one listens and it seems that very few care.Why is it okay to just annihilate an entire race of people in front of God and everyone else and it isn't okay to say it's wrong,or even try to put a stop to it?Why??

Who will fight back for these poor people?

Expand full comment
B.Ruth. Cornwell's avatar

Now that the extermination of Gaza is so complete, Israel is experiencing the law of diminishing returns. Financially, it is no longer worth bombing because there are so few left to kill.

Expand full comment
Lee Gilliland (He/Him)'s avatar

This just absolutely breaks my heart.

Thank you for speaking up. The world needs more Qasim’s.

Expand full comment
kathia lara olivas's avatar

thank you for your writing qasim. this stuck in time of the murder count is an offensive pattern of colonizers, especially the US and the Zionists. In Chile and Argentina the US and the Zionists trained the military junta on torture techniques and surveillance, including on hiding the correct death count. Tell me why the "death count" has remained in the same place for the last two years... If the Lancet estimated that over 185,000 people were killed LAST YEAR, even that was a huge underestimate. and now, a year later, we are in a place where everything is bombed x1000 times, hospitals are completely destroyed, insane forced famine, and new weapons that obliterate people into oblivion and into shreds. the martyr count is over 500,000, and that is what we should use. Palestinians are not numbers, they are human and full of dreams, with that we should honor their lives by not hiding the true injustice they are facing,

Expand full comment
Deb M. (MN)'s avatar

Yes, this is a Holocaust, and the nation of Israel should know better than most what they are doing! Benjamin Netanyahu is a criminal who should be charged with crimes against humanity! The Hague is the home of the International Court of Justice, and it is for cases like this.

Expand full comment
Joy's avatar
May 28Edited

I must admit what is being done to the Palestinian people in Gaza keeps me up at night. I had not thought of the word “holocaust” in relation to the genocide we are watching daily, but your reasoning is clear and concise, and I concur. I am appalled by what so many Israelis have done to their fellow human beings. My heart is breaking for the Palestinians, they deserve to be able to live their lives in peace, not rounded up and murdered.

Here is my reason for writing- do you have any suggestions for what I can do to help? I’m going to rallies, I’m telling people when I have an opportunity, I have very little money but what extra I had I already donated to the ACLU. How can I help?

Expand full comment
Eugenie Myers's avatar

It is impossible to go about one's daily life with any normalcy while this kind of atrocity is going on. People have become numb to the craziness and the lack of feeling for other people. Our species seems doomed.

Expand full comment
Jan Groh's avatar

I agree. I feel like because it doesn't perfectly echo what happened in Europe yet, folks are in denial about what's happening. I.e, just because there are no gas chambers and ovens, doesn't mean we aren't steadily killing off as many people. What are we waiting for?? Hitler to pop out and say "Gotcha"? I suppose the other problem is the Zionists hiding behind a cloak of anti-semitism. Everyone is so sensitive to that - rightly so - they have weaponized it successfully to pull this off. It's sick.

Expand full comment
Thomas Cleary's avatar

The evil begins in homes and hearts ensconced in their own material comfort, too fat and lazy, too disconnected from their own souls, to even lift a finger towards their phone.

Expand full comment