Israel just bombed a tent city full of #refugees who fled North #Gaza for #Rafah on the #IDF's orders.
Horrifying photos show families frantically rummaging through the carnage for the limbs of their family members. I won't reproduce them here, but they can be found on the bird site from @gazanotifications
They are murdering poor people trapped in a concentration camp, in the places they were told to flee for safety. They are killing impoverished, innocent, starving Palestinians, mostly under 30, with nowhere else to go.
This brutality is unparalleled in my lifetime. All studies show that Israel is in a class of its own, outdoing the Dresden bombings by a landslide. Saying this is not antisemitic: it is your duty, whoever you are.
I am #Jewish: spiritually, scholarly, and Litvak Ashkenazi. It's not antisemitic for me, OR ANY NON-JEW to say. In fact, its every human's duty to call for this bloodshed to cease IMMEDIATELY, and to even call for this genocidal Zionist occupation to be dismantled before there is any more blood shed. Nothing keeps my heart beating like my Arab and Muslim comrades speaking out against this barabarism every day. All while facing the harshest consequences of anyone! This ugliness would quite literally drive me to kill myself if I didn't know so many people who are so brave.
I have been doing activism in Palestine since 2012, both boots-on-the-ground defense of protestors, and teaching programming. These are not antisemites; my Palestinian friends are as close to me as any others. And I have had 6 students murdered in Gaza in 120 days. All the others are starving, fleeing from tent city to tent city, trying to survive the most hellish circumstances of drone democide any people have ever witnessed in the history of humanity. Thats a simple fact now.
If you are a goy and claim to support this in our name, WE WILL REMEMBER. The vast majority of #Jews outside of Israel who are under 40 years old are anti-Zionists today. All the fastest growing Jewish organizations of the past decade are anti-Zionist. And we will not forget those who cheered on a 21st century #Holocaust while evoking the memory of our family members killed by Nazi #Germany. Especially not the #Germans, who have been by far the worst inciters and supporters of genocide outside of #Israel.
19 August 1942 | A transport of 997 Jews deported from Drancy arrived at Auschwitz. After the selection 897 of them were immediately murdered in gas chambers.
One of them was Fanny Brauch from Paris.
She was 15 years old.
19 January 1902 | A Jewish artist David Olère was born in Warsaw. In 1918 he emigrated to France.
In March 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz where he was forced to work in Sonderkommando. After the war he showed the horrifying world of gas chambers in drawings & paintings.
'AND', the most powerful word in any language?
Sharon Astyk (a Jew by marriage) wrote the following rules for discussing #Israel / #Palestine / War in a FB group she administers.
"Hi Folks. I just want to set down rules for any discussion of Israel/Palestine/ProtoWWIII.
Here are the rules.
MORE THAN ONE THING CAN BE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME, INCLUDING BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY: #Jews were mass murdered over and over again and have a justifiable fear of being murdered again AND that fear has made us do horrifying things to the Palestinians over and over again that are not justified in any way.
Jews have lived in Israel for thousands of years, and have a historic claim to it AND we use religious language and assumptions that may be mythological to most. AND real Palestinian people lost their homes unfairly. More than one people can have a historic claim to the same place.
Antisemitic gaslighting is playing on infinite repeat
It is important to remember that many #Jews have dealt with #antisemitic gaslighting for years. It is isolating, traumatizing, and has pushed many of us out of friendships and activism circles. What is happening now has been going on for years, but now it has intensified and feels worse than ever.
And if a Jew tells you something is antisemitic, and your impulse is to search for some fringe Jewish source to “prove” they are wrong, don’t do it. Also don’t cite your “Jewish friends” as if that gives you authority to talk over us. Just don’t. #Antisemitism
"What I think we’re seeing among young American Jews is … that this is not a struggle of Jews against Palestinians; it’s a struggle of Jews and Palestinians and people of conscience from all around the world around a series of basic principles. The principle is that there has to be safety and freedom and decent lives for Palestinians, if there is ever going to be safety and decency and dignity for Israeli Jews, as well…."
26 August 1943 | A transport of 1,001 Jews arrived at Auschwitz from Westerbork in the German-occupied Netherlands.
After the selection made by SS doctors 188 men & 44 women were registered in the camp. The women were then transferred to the experimental sterilization station of Dr. Carl Claubeg at Auschwitz I.
The remaining 721 people were murdered in gas chambers.
16 January 1900 | German Jewish woman Edith Frank (née Holländer) was born in Aachen. Mother of Margot & Anne Frank.
Incarcerated in Auschwitz with her husband Otto and daughters on 5 September 1944. She perished in the camp on 6 January 1945, 10 days before her 45th birthday.
11 February 1916 | A German Jew, Fredy Hirsch, was born in Aachen. An athlete & teacher.
Deported to Auschwitz from the Theresienstadt ghetto on 6 September 1943. He looked after children in the family camp for Jews from Theresienstadt. He perished in the camp on 8 March 1944.
1 January 1926 | A Polish Jew, Leon Weintraub, was born in Łódź.
In Auschwitz from August 1944.
He was transferred to Groß-Rosen, Flossenbürg & Natzweiler-Struthof.
He was liberated on 23 April 1945 near Donaueschingen.
He become a doctor.
Today he turns 98.
Happy birthday!