Sunday, November 5: Anatomy of a Coward
Obama took a break from doing nothing to weigh in on our collective complicity
I’m not much of an estimator when it comes to crowd sizes, but a few hundred thousand protesters showed up to our nation’s capital yesterday, calling for an immediate ceasefire. The outrage at the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza is global and larger than any anti-war movement in decades.
Pick a spot on a world map and you’ll see that, overwhelmingly, the people are standing with Palestine. Berlin showed out for Palestine, despite the best efforts of the oppressive German government to criminalize their protests. The people of France showed out for Palestine too (although their bozo politicians can still choke). Over a million people protested in Indonesia. Even in the belly of the beast itself, thousands of Israelis protested yesterday outside Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem calling on him to resign for his handling of the genocide.
But millions in the streets alone won’t stop the genocide. We’ve passed the point of civil disobedience and calling the offices of elected officials. Now is the time for disobedience that is less civil and more disruptive, now is the time for elected officials to understand that their jobs and their livelihoods hinge on their political decisions. If you’re interested in learning or implementing new tactics, reach out and let me know, I’ve got a million ideas, and most (some) of them are legal!
Meanwhile, former president Obama descended from his throne of societal absence to criticize “Tik Tok activism” and to try and spread the genocidal blame evenly amongst all of us watching. The man thought it necessary to jump on a podcast to say "everyone is to blame so no one is to blame", some classic responsibility evasion. Sadly, the criticism doesn’t quite fit considering only one of us signed a $38 BILLION arms deal with an apartheid state (hint: it wasn’t you or me).
The linked portion of Obama’s interview is, politely, just over three minutes of unfiltered word salad. Not a single sentence that really means anything. Useless rhetoric from a useless, spineless man. He wades into the classic rhetoric of how “complex” the situation is and how “you can’t speak the truth” using social media. But this logic falls apart pretty quickly when we recognize that millions of people have had their eyes opened in the past month to the atrocities regularly committed by the Israeli regime. If NBC and CNN and the New York Times and Fox News and whatever other mainstream outlet refuses to broadcast or publicize the Palestinian narrative, of course people will turn to journalists on the ground. But this clown Obama has a lengthy track record of dismissing the youth activists often at the front lines of protests. No methods of protest or activism are appropriate enough for him, so with all due disrespect, he can crawl back into his hidey-hole and emerge to drop his year-end playlist like every other year.
Anyone more offended by Palestinian calls for freedom between the river and the sea than they are offended by Israel’s actual genocidal policies and practices of apartheid can not be taken seriously. These morons will try to convince you that wiping out entire Palestinian families and bloodlines isn't genocide, but somehow it’s genocide to say "from the river to the sea". They’ll cry about how any other slogan or phrase would be more polite, or less offensive, or less threatening, but the oppressor will always think of the rights and freedom of the oppressed as their suffering. Any change to the status quo of Palestinian extermination is considered a threat to zionists.
For anyone still on the fence about whether or not the phrase is antisemitic, how about “from the river to the sea, let’s agree to disagree”?
Side Items
Pakistani Expulsion: A new anti-migrant crackdown in Pakistan has targeted all undocumented or unregistered foreigners. But this policy mostly affects Afghans, who make up the bulk of migrants in Pakistan. Pakistani officials have warned that anyone in the country illegally faces arrest and deportation, but UN agencies say there are more than 2 million undocumented Afghans in Pakistan. Many of these people have been in Pakistan for decades and consider it the only home they’ve ever known
Displacement in DRC: The UN says ~6.9 million people are now internally displaced within the Democratic Republic of Congo because of escalating violence. What’s the root of this violence, you might ask? Western imperialism relying on draining natural resources from over-exploited nations in the global south. Tale as old as time