I, unlike Aziraphale, am in full possession of my flaming sword today. Ah, sweet, sweet Aziraphale.
And I am qualmless in using it. I am also qualmless in using qualmless even though spellcheck insists it is not a word.
Well it is now.
Can’t say I’m winning friends but hopefully I’m influencing people as I continue to hack away at the now apparently completely false narrative that spread like wildfire yesterday, that Israel supposedly allegedly bombed a hospital and killed at least 500 people.
Now it’s been confirmed from Pentagon intel that the strike came from within Gaza itself. And yet news outlets have yet to retract their false stories.
And they are sticking to the “at least 500 dead” number provided by Hamas “authorities,” though like the accusations of an attack by Israel, there is no actual confirmation of that estimate. Think about it. Hamas knew it hit the hospital with its own rocket, and yet vehemently accused Israel of doing what it knew it did
Whether anyone was actually hurt, we don’t know. If they were, Hamas, and and not Israel, is to blame.
And I’ve seen people say that doesn’t matter.
Well, let me tell you, it absolutely does.
By the time the full truth comes out, if it ever comes out, people will have gotten exactly what they want, a cozy way to spread antisemitism while indignantly pretending it’s not antisemitism because they said so.
If you are not a member of a marginalized group, you have no idea what it is like to see people you chat with and make jokes with putting guidelines and limits on your humanity. You have no idea what it is like to never be an individual but part of a whole.
Because you are one of the people who creates and enforces those boundaries. You have relatives who create and enforce those boundaries. You participate in conversations to create and enforce those boundaries.
I warned you, flaming sword.
I am tired of holding my tongue, of nodding politely because I know that self-defense ends in ostracization. I know that there is a thirst to see people like me as the real oppressors so that every single atrocity against us is validated, warranted, our own fault.
People dive headfirst into propaganda and then pretend it doesn’t matter that they did, the motivations don’t matter but they do. There are but 16 million Jews in the world and a whole lot of hundreds of millions to spend their energy hating us. So few Jews probably most people in the world haven’t met more than one Jewish person if they’ve met any.
So imagine what it looks like from a small huddle in the big, wide world that is always hungering to believe the worst of you, hungering to legitimize the harm that has been and the harm to come.
And that’s Wednesday.
A Bit to Read 
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