Steve Schmidt is 90% Right
Steve Schmidt posted a commentary today. I’m with 90% of this.
90% this.
I’ve got some issues with Steve’s broad brush about “elite universities” and tagging as antiSemitic everyone protesting the IDF and Bibi’s killing of over 10,000 people in collective retribution for 10/7 and that inconceivable horror which few of us can truly at a visceral, sinew bone heart cellular level understand how that resonates.
How that generational terror lands for Jews the world over. I am a practicing Buddhist. And even in that I cannot truly conceive how that feels, that terror, that grief. That pain.
I am sorry. I am so, so sorry for my Jewish brothers and sisters that are in that — daily.
I grieve with you.
Know you are loved. Always loved. By so many of us. I without the slightest hesitation would do anything to protect you. Anything.
I also grieve for the children the babas the sisters the brothers the babies the dreams and homes and shops and visions and futures of over 5 million people in Gaza and in the West Bank. 2 million of whom live in … 140 square miles. About the size of Vegas, with three times the population.
People protesting are not all antisemitic. Full stop.
How do some explain away Jews on the line in those demonstrations? How does one explain the Washington Post relegating hundreds of thousands demonstrating on this to below the fold in the Metro pages in its latest issue — buried — yet an equally righteous demonstration for Israel and solidarity with Jewish people is front page — everywhere?
It is a gaslighting, delegitimizing, bullshit tactic to divert the focus on those demonstrating against the slaughter in human fury at the deaths in Gaza and the West Bank.
Are some in those demonstrations anti Semitic? No doubt. Does one therefore paint them all with that sobriquet? That lazy slander?
It is Hasbara by proxy. And it is disingenuous. And it must stop.
Hamas has not had an “election” in 17 damn years, anyone under 35 has quite literally had no say in the affairs of their own life. They rule by terror. No ability to rise up upon turning 18 and vote those terrorist psychopaths out of of office. what they do have is over 40% unemployment and no hope, their daily lives utterly controlled by forces they cannot overcome within Gaza and across the ever shrinking borders encroaching by illegal “settlers” upon Palestinian land.
To be clear I do not blame Jews, conscripts in the IDF, Israel or Israelis — for this slaughter in the last 42 days is on Bibi and his coterie of psychopaths he used to stay in power. And no amount of staged bullshit weapons caches at a hospital or dog and pony NYT tour of a hospital can cleanse that. The IDF spokespeople have simply lost all credibility — except from the stenographers in Washington of course.
And without question, Hamas never had any to begin with. However, I would point out that heretofore the IDF accepted the Palestinian Health Ministry number of dead and wounded as did the UN and other independent international monitors as very, very accurate. Isn’t it curious that Israel and the media now ALWAYS say — “the Hamas run ….” to taint any numbers of dead and wounded human beings coming out of Gaza.
It is also utterly disingenuous and — inhuman — to discount the daily depravations and subjugation of Palestinians for decades. Which in no way excuses the murderous terrorism of Hamas and its supporters wherever they are in word or deed. So don’t you dare come at me with that. You don’t want to go there.
No honest view of what is going on in Gaza can call it anything other than collective punishment — a war crime — regardless of the fig leaf of “we are targeting Hamas commanders, base of operations (good one!), blah blah”, whatever the increasingly ridiculous “justifications” are from the IDF who reflexively just claimed — in spite of undeniable evidence to the contrary that munitions launched at a hospital were errant Palestinian rockets. And thousands of dead innocents are paying the bill to the collectors.
So much horror, so much blood, so many lives, hopes, dreams gone in an instant in Israel.
And now 42 days later — it still continues in the West Bank and Gaza.
Every day.
I would do anything to protect you in the West Bank and Gaza also if I only could from these daily horrors upon you in groves that were your family’s for generations, now unreachable yet just. Over. There.
Olives and your livelihood rotting in this harvest season and no hope of family caretaking, “settlers” on this stolen hilltop aiming upon you with the mocking grin of IDF soldiers daring you to try to harvest. Begging you to feed your children. Collectively blaming you for the actions of terrorist murdering psychopaths in Hamas. Punishing you for that.
Daily.
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It shatters and continues to shatter my heart. All of it.
The inconceivable horror of a Canadian peace activist sitting in her home on a kibbutz being butchered as much as the 5 year old being decapitated by an IDF missile leveling an entire apartment building.
For what? Was Hamas hiding in the broom closet on the fifth floor? Do you level a school and all within it to take out a school shooter? Oh that — collateral damage — we “mourn the loss of children and civilians” — Bibi. Piss off with that faux concern. They are ALL HAMAS to you and your psychopathic cabinet. Inhuman. Other. Collateral damage. For retribution without relent. A few thousand less to deal with when those kids grow up.
If they grow up.
Was the peace advocate in Israel fighting for the rights of Palestinians and a true equal civil society in Israel a threat? A Zionist who views anybody in Palestinian land as a murdering psychopath from Hamas? Not a person? Not part of the human family? Someone to kill? For what?
There are days I am utterly broken by this. Where is our humanity? Where?
I just can’t some hours. It breaks me. It breaks me for Israelis and for Palestinians. For Jews. For Palestinians.
For us. For all of us. For our one human family.
Who and what are we in this “human” family?
My Buddhist lineage teaches me that this is a part of our destiny. That suffering is a part of liberation. But this? shakes my faith in the path. How can this be part of what is liberation? So many suffering so much suffering. How can our collective heart be healed? How may we find a path forward?
And this fucker Musk is perpetuating all of it. All the hatred.
For clicks. For money. For Elon.
Steve’s points are sadly and horrifically spot on. It is also possible to both fight every day against anti Semitism AND decry the indiscriminate carpet Dresden firebombing of entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Many, many Israelis IN Israel are livid at this also.
I’ve said said for years he’s incredibly dangerous. I’ve been pooh poohed for it. Mocked and told I was a Luddite. It was never about the tech — it was always about the man.
I don’t give a damn how many cleanwashing wifi satellites he put up over Ukraine, his cars are crap and falling apart — just take a peek at the bizillions of vids out there talking about it — its not an aberration, and he has been allowed to consolidate far too much power not only in this country, but in our world and must be brought to heel.
He has a voice. And that voice is dripping with hatred and enabling it on Twitter/X and by every sycophantic article published.
Finally, and irrevocably denied further consolidation of his despotic capitalist power. He is dangerous.
Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas right now in furious defiance of this anti Semite, this despot, this megalomaniac, this union busting piece of shit.
Enough.
If you are still on Twitter/X — you own this shit. If you invest in Tesla in any way — you own this shit. And shame on you. You enable this. YOU enable this.
This anti-Semitism. And thousands of dead Israelis and Palestinians. Thousands of daily acts of anti Semitism and violence, both real and feared in this country. Everywhere. And the equivalent of two Hiroshimas on Gaza — so far.
You feed this beast. By supporting with your dollars a man who perpetuates the hate.
Which perpetuates hate for the “other” — just over there.
Looking with tears in his eyes upon his rotting olives in groves his grandfather harvested hearing the anguished cries of his hungry children and mourning the loss of his sister’s entire family from the shattered ruins of what was their home in Gaza. Brothers looking upon the smoking blood stained debris of their sister’s home in Netiv Haasara. Unsleeping others wondering when — or if — their family will ever see their daughter again now somewhere in Gaza, captive.
Shame on you.
May you look in your heart and find your … humanity.
It starts by not supporting dangerous, virulent, hate speech.
Or the richest hate merchant in the world with your money.
