Home
Artists
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register
Partychan Matrix ThePornDude
Home Artists Posts Import Register
The Offical Matrix Groupchat is online! >>CLICK HERE<<

Explaining war at the dinner table. (Patreon)

Published:
2023-10-11 01:10:22
Imported:
2023-10

Content

Hello loves.


I wrapped tonight’s webcast with a promise that I would put my phone away. I lied.

So, tonight, Ash’s art teacher texted me and said that Ash (who just turned eight) could call her if he wanted to understand why Ashlie - one of the moms at pick-up - was crying. The teacher was worried. He didn’t understand.

I knew why Ashlie was probably crying. She has family in Israel.

So tonight over dinner, we had a twenty minute lesson in war. We explained World War 2 (which he knows about) and we explained Israel, and Palestine, and fighting, and feelings. And anger. And conflict.

When we got to the end, we asked him: if you were standing in a field with all these people fighting each other and you could tell them one thing, what would you tell them?

Ash thought about this.

“I would tell them to talk it out.”

Oh, my child.

We ended the exercise with a resolution to send our bedtime good wishes to everyone in pain tonight. Good wishes to everyone who is suffering. Good wishes to everyone who has family/whānau who may be in danger.

When you are a parent living in the goddamn woods with an eight year old and you see the footage of the missiles flying and then you are just standing there, doing the dinner dishes, this is all you can goddamn do.

Send the good wishes.

Send the prayers.

And be grateful that the sky above our house tonight is full of shining stars that do not move.


X

A

Files

Comments

Christopher Werner

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B6QOhgN4x9k And we come back to Amanda's idea of radical forgiveness, because history and politics are clearly not working.

Scott Meekins

Amanda, you're developing Ash to be an incredibly considerate human being. Explaining the effects of war and conflict to children is something that all parents should do.

Anonymous

Of course we would all like to see conflict cease, no one more so than those on the ground. Sadly there is only one party in this ongoing genocide who can end the conlifct and violence, and that is Israel. If Israel ceased the besieging, bombing, and torture they have been subjecting Palestinians to for the last 75 years at least in an effort at genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonialism, the "conflict" would end tomorrow. There is nothing, however, that Palestine or Palestinians can do to end this conflict. Every attempt at drawing the world's attention, marching, protesting, carrying out hunger strikes in Israeli prisons, every effort at peaceful protest, has resulted in open fire at protesters and the escalation of murders, the use of chemical weapons against, the purposeful disablement of (even as Irael bombs or bars access to hospitals), and the forced exile of Palestinian people. These are millions of people who are trapped in an open-air prison, in the second most densely populated area in the world, who are constantly (men, women, and children) killed, bombed, shot at, dismembered, sexually assaulted, forcibly removed from their homes, homes demolished, since the Nakba of 1948 and even before. If they protest peacefully to try to end the ethnic cleansing and wholesale genocide of their people, they are violent. If they use small-scale violence to defend themselves (throwing *small rocks* at **tanks**!) they are violent. If they use coordinated violence, they are barbaric, terrorists (take note of the racism in this language). What else is a people, worn-down, exhausted, constantly fearing for their lives, watching their friends, family, and small children being murdered left and right, supposed to do? The United States throws all of its considerable power on the side of the oppressor and the settler-colonialist. The status quo of constant wholesale displacement, being driven from their homes, removed to a small area which they are physically barred from leaving, the murders of thousands of Palestinian civilians per year, are background noise. Only now that a fraction of a percent of this violence is visited on the oppressor (a far smaller death toll, against people who have the power to leave, who have the power to cut off the West Bank from power, food, and water, even as by all accounts Palestinian coalition fighters do not use the war-crime tactics of the IDF and provide hospital care for those injured) are many people speaking out. Why is violence aimed at liberation more noteworthy, more condemnable, than violence aimed at the wholesale extermination of a people so that their land may be settled? You (general 'you') might mention that these Israelis are civilians. I might mention that the hundreds of times more Palestinians who have been murdered in the past several decades (and in aggressive, rather than defensive, acts of violence) were civilians as well--but let's set that aside. I might mention that these are people who are knowingly settling a land from which they have displaced the indigenous population (which indigenous population includes Arabs, Jews, & others), but let's set that aside as well. I might also mention that the majority of the prisoners that Hamas has taken (and note that Hamas is not the only member of the coalition of Palestinian forces currently coordinating attacks) are military personnel--but let's set that aside as well. The placement of civilians at the front lines, the settling of border areas with civilians, is a tactic that Israel uses on purpose, sacrificing their own people so that any resistance undertaken by the Palestinian people may be cast as barbaric and indiscriminate. Who gets to be a "civilian" here? Who gets to be thought of as "civilized"? Whom does the civilizing mission of the settler-colonialist genocide and replacement of an indigenous population allow to be considered "civil"--that is, to be considered human? Which ideas are behind who is thought of as an acceptable target for violence, and whose deaths are perceived as tragedy?

Anonymous

This is beautifully put, a concise and irrefutable (if one were to bother to look at the situation) analysis, and I am so sad that Amanda has now and will not engage with it. She is open-minded on many things, but I suspect she is unwilling to experience the cognitive dissonance due to what I imagine is a baked-in sense that she is supposed to love Israel. I'm sorry that she only cares for yes-people and those who think Israeli suffering is the only thing that matters. I acknowledge and appreciate you.

Anonymous

50% of Gaza is children and they're going through a genocide. Ash is old enough to learn about why talking won't work. Don't be on the wrong side of history.

Anonymous

If you cannot see why people are upset that you have centered the current Israeli victims, then let me try and pose it this way. The Israeli government has manipulated Palestinians and Hamas into this happening. ///The Israeli government has the power to stop this, and because they have the power they also hold the responsibility./// When you center only the Israeli victims without making it clear that you understand that this is the fault of the Israeli government then people will rightfully get upset. You did this by only mentioning the Israeli victims and not acknowledging or talking about the Palestinian ones (even as the Israeli government commits war crimes against the civilians of Gaza by putting another total blockade against them). Especially when it appears in this case that they had warning, and they should have known something was about to happen. To further explain how it is the Israeli's governments fault: You put people in the largest open air prison in the world. for generations. You continually steal more and more land, and kill more and more of their people. You cut them ALL off from supplies and power and water when some of them retaliate. Which is against international law. You fund Hamas back in day to help destabilize the PLO. They gain strength, and are more radical and so it gives you the excuse to now bomb hospitals, schools, and other places with lots of civilians and children. It forces Palestinians who might want another way to work with them at times because it might be the only way you can help your people. You intentionally bomb homes but give them a lovely courtesy call though telling them they have one minute to get out of their home before it is bombed. You jail their children. You have intense surveillance of everything, but don't do anything when there is no way not to know something is being planned, also because another country literally warns you. You know why you ignore it? Because if they kill your citizens, you can use that as an excuse to further your genocidal plans as the rest of the world does fucking nothing and continues to fund you. You and the world blame all Palestinians for voting them in even though nearly half of the Palestinian population in occupied Palestine is under 18 and there hasn't been an election in 15+ years. If you want to show outrage and compassion for the Israeli victims, that makes sense. What is happening to all of the people being killed is despicable and there is nothing wrong with talking about that. But you need to talk about both sides when you have the platform you have. And you need to understand and be clear that the Israeli government is has created this situation and is putting up their own people as collateral so that they can continue their apartheid genocidal plan without anyone else stepping in.

Christina C.
>>119622299

This sounds like a great explanation until one realizes that the modern radicalizing of Jihad offensive warfare exists within factions of Islam outside of any geopolitical context, wherein the killing of innocents is justified to for conversion. While it's true Israel has a responsibility to their own standard of morality, to international law regarding the ruled of engagement and the general standard of not taking innocent human life, maiming bodies, and smothering human rights (all things, much like the US, they routinely fail at often times intentionally) your explanation lacks full context. The name Hama gave this attack is Al Aqsa Flood. The ultimate mission is a broad holy war and has little to do with Gaza at all when you look at all of history. Therefore, it's wise for all of us to stop lecturing each other on a topic majority (if not all) of us know very very very very little about.

Christina C.
>>119615995

Oops looks like you dropped the Ash For President button the welcome committee gives every member of this community. That's okay just ask around about why we wear them and why telling other people especially kids how they should live is really not our thing.

Christopher Werner

I read this several times. I don't see where Amanda took a side other than 1. for Ash, and 2. for peace. I'm afraid several people stopped reading at the words "family in Israel." Reading is as important as listening, and both more important than talking.

Michael Murphy

Okay, let's take a step back, here, and go deep, really deep, to the heart of the matter: Do any of the three religions here (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) actually have a right to claim the land of Canaan/Judah/Judea/Philistia/Palestine/Israel on a religious basis? What IS that basis? and if we say something to the effect of, "God made a covenant with us as His Chosen people," then you can't have all three religions claiming they're the one and only true path all at the same time. Only one can be true... unless none of them are...? Which brings us to another question: Could it be the case that a covenant could be broken permanently? Or, alternately, could the terms and conditions expire and/or the statute of limitations run out? But if, getting back to Jews, for a minute, could we say that it's just been put on hold, and even though we've gotten the land back, and political control back, we haven't gotten the Covenant back because we just haven't earned it yet, because, among other things, the Israelis have not yet reestablished the Temple and Priestly Class. I'm not saying that's what it would take, I'm just positing this broader philosophical quandary. And please, I'm not a troll, I'm just an American Jew who's deeply troubled about the possibility of Israel collapsing from within and without.

Lana Lundi Claire

The reaction to what happened is terrifying. I am petrified of weighing in. In the name of self preservation, I do not. I do not feel safe. I only hope to see the brave few people speak up, and I thank them when they do. There is quite a bit more happening than the popular talking points get across.

Lana Lundi Claire
>>119638845

Honestly, as another American Jew who feels deeply for all people in this region (and who is deeply disturbed by the west's fixation with this one piece of land that is roughly the size of New Jersey at the expense of pretty much all other places in the world) it doesn't matter. The world was divvied up at the ends of WWI and WWII. New countries and territories were drawn onto maps worldwide, sometimes tested by later wars and sometimes not. Israel is one of many. And it fought its own wars to firmly establish its existence. There are other people not so far away who did not get their own ethnically based borders. The Kurds are split across countries in the Middle East with no home base. The west and the Middle East do not seem to particularly care about their heartbreaking plight. And from one Jew to another, I think we both know why. I wrote quite a bit more than this that goes into the finer details really needed to even begin to broach the topics of Israel and Palestine. It was too much to post as a response to your post, and I honestly don't feel entirely safe going into it all. This isn't the right place. Thanks for your consideration, and take care

Michael Murphy

Look, I'm sorry I even "went there". I'm trying to go much, much deeper than any news outlet would allow, and even then, it's just backfiring. I'm therefore deleting my previous posts not because I don't believe or stand by what I said, but just out of fear for my safety if, upon it staying up here permanently, someone would eventually weaponize it against me. I know you guys are safe, but you just never know, so I hope you understand.