I never said she deserved it, nor that it was right. We can have wider discussions that relate to the content of a post. Conversations wouldn’t go far on this platform if we were restricted to talking exactly about the subject of each post.

She is also a victim of her countrymen, to be clear.

You’ll note that I didn’t say that. I said that zionists have no right to be there. They stole Palestinian land, murdered their people, and reduced them to living in a giant open air prison from which they terrorized and bombed them. They deprive them of food water and electricity. They have done their absolute best to eradicate the Palestinian heritage and way of life. They’ve taken again and again and again. They’ve broken every single promise for coexistence. They have no right to be there.

Also, Israel isn’t even a hundred years old. Not even 80. There are original settlers still alive. Most people are second or third generation. It’s not the same as Australia, which was colonized over 200 years ago.

And I’m not proposing that all Israelis be made to leave. In my view zionists and anyone who has been actively involved in the persecution of Palestinians, or in the destruction of the Palestinian nation and heritage, should be made to leave. But I don’t think it should be up to me. It should be up to the Palestinians to determine what happens on their land. And the land that was stolen from them should be returned.

I never made any statement on the legitimacy of anyone’s identity as Jewish. Israel is a country. Israelis are citizens of that country. Jewish people are Jewish people. Israelis are not one and the same with Jewish people.

Jewish people who existed in the region prior to the nakba and the colonization of Palestine were not Israelis. They were not zionists. They coexisted with Muslims in Palestine. Israel was conceived by zionists in Europe. It was a deliberate colonization effort. It didn’t just naturally occur amongst people already living there. Europeans traveled to the region and colonized it, much the same as other Europeans did to North America, Australia, South Asia, etc.

We see all those other colonization efforts as evil and genocidal, which they were. It is much the same with colonization of Palestine. Palestinians should always have had their own nation. They have been told multiple times throughout history both before and after the nakba that they would have their own nation. Israel colonized Palestine and evicted Palestinians from their homes, stole their land from them. They didn’t immigrate to the region to coexist with Palestinians. They came to steal their land, get rid of them, and make their own state on that stolen land.

I never said it wasn’t a bad thing. Only adding context to the situation. I don’t understand what your hangup here is. The Israeli media lied about what happened to her. The Israeli military is taking tens of thousands of prisoners and doing the exact thing they accused hamas of doing to her. That’s relevant. A genocide is ongoing based on misinformation mischaracterization and selective omission of information.

The fact that she has been held hostage has been used as justification for the unlawful detainment of Palestinians. The hostages have been the central crux of all of the actions Israel has taken. It’s not that it doesn’t matter whatsoever that she was taken hostage. It’s that her being taken hostage is part of the justification for genocide of Palestinians.

When did I say anything about collective punishment for Israelis? I don’t understand how you could have gotten that from what I said.

Also, what Israel is doing in Gaza is wrong because they’re committing acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. They are a settler colonial state. Everything they have ever done in Palestine is wrong.

I can understand how it would seem that way. My partner and I both have experienced sexual violence, and we both prefer this way. Even when we talk about it out aloud, we usually say “r.” It’s not that I can’t say the word rape. In some contexts, using the actual word is warranted. It’s just a word I kind of hate. That evokes trauma and pain. People say it all the time too and it’s hard not to hear it and remember that you’ve been a victim before too. That word has a different meaning when it becomes personal, or at least in my experience it does. So I say r instead. I’m not proposing this as some kind of sweeping change across society to stop saying rape. I just prefer not to say it.

Zionists? It was zionists who colonized. They did so with the intention of creating a Jewish state.

Decolonization would be… decolonization. Return Palestinian land to the Palestinians. There are still plenty of people alive from the first Nakba. They all deserve their land back. A dissolution of the Israeli state and the creation of a new state of Palestine. Which would necessitate a total dismantling and withdrawal of the entirety of the Israeli state. An international criminal Court to prosecute all crimes against humanity that have ever been committed by the Israeli state. Redistribution of wealth from the Israeli state. How to handle things from there should be up to the new state of Palestine. They have a right to self-determination. Through mediation, but still it should be up to them. It was their land. They have the right to decide what happens with it.

I’d say at the very least the Zionists should go. The entire Israeli state is not composed of zionists. But the entirety of anyone who has ever served in the IDF or the Israeli government should at the least be sent back to the countries they or their fathers came from. Anyone who has participated in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Anyone who has murdered Palestinians. They don’t have a right to be there. But, like I said that’s just what I would think is just. It shouldn’t be up to western white people to decide. Palestinians deserve the right to choose what happens with their homes.

I would say the same thing about America or Canada, to be clear. That decolonizing them would be to return land to the Natives and allow them to form their own states and determine what happens with their land. It’s a more complex question of what they should do from there, but it was always their land and they deserve the power to say what happens with it.

And, to be clear, I’m not saying I believe this is what will happen. Merely what I’m saying ought to happen. What actual justice would look like.

It’s not somewhere else in the world. It’s being committed by the Israeli state against Palestinian detainees. That’s directly related to someone saying that the rights of the woman were being restricted in being a hostage. There are tens of thousands of Palestinian hostages. Sexual violence, torture and massive violations of human rights are rampant in Israeli detention centers.

It’s originally a tik tok thing. The word itself can be triggering to people who have suffered sexual violence. R*d is enough to understand in context without necessarily evoking a similar traumatic response.