January Fieldnotes (ु*´З`)ू

Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence.

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

The Garden In The Rue Cortot At Montmartre (1876) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

i watched Kill Bill vol. 1 earlier

“Just as the bones, flesh, intestines and blood vessels are enclosed in a skin that makes the sight of man endurable, so the agitations and passions of the soul are enveloped in vanity: it is the skin of the soul.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 82

What Myrcella Baratheon would wear

(Ziad Nakad, Fall 2019)

October 29th

I've noticed that zionists, especially Israelis see themselves as perpetual victims and are thus blind to whatever privileges they have in reality and the harm they cause or are capable of causing. They've created this narrative where the persecution of jewish people throughout history can be linked to criticism of the modern state of Israel, causing them to invoke the plight of their ancestors in 1800s Russia or feudal Europe or whatever.

To illustrate, I've seen a comment from a jewish zionist which compared the destruction of Gaza to the ten plagues of Egypt in the Exodus. The OP mentioned the concept of "Midah k’neged Midah" or "an eye for an eye", implying that like the Egyptians from the Exodus, Gazans brought their suffering on themselves for attacking the jewish people like how the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. They also said that such chaos and that the Torah states the Israelites celebrated Seder while the Egyptian firstborn were dying.

It brought me to mind an article I read sometime ago about how Purim can be used to teach people to reflect on their privilege, how rather than automatically seeing themselves as the good guys of the story Esther and Mordechai they should question what they have in common with the bad guys as people in positions of power and privilege. So maybe, jewish Israelis should reflect on what they have in common with the "bad guys" of the Torah.

Zionism has created this nationalist narrative where the ancient Israelites from biblical stories and history are the same as jewish people today, with Israeli jews being their modern direct descendants, so the idea that Israelis can be the oppressors and gentile Palestinians the oppressed becomes an unthinkable notion. But if you let go of identity politics you'll see that in reality, the modern state of Israel is built on jewish supremacy and dehumanizing Palestinians as "the other".

During slavery, enslaved black people saw their struggles and yearning for freedom in the Israelites in the Exodus, and Pharao as their slave masters. Palestinians have suffered nearly 8 decades of occupation, being forcibly displaced, massacred, having their homes stolen and being terrorized with impunity. They would not the Egyptians in the Exodus metaphor.

@stoptheantisemitism

@autistic-ben-tennyson

A Favorite Custom by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1909)