I learned that genocide is not a vaccine that will prevent future genocides, it just, Fucking keeps happening. And that your country can go nuts, and you that you can’t do shit to stop it.

Fucking great start to the morning! Hey everybody want some tequila? I headbutt nearby wall Fuck!

I learned that the world would gleefully have another holocaust if just enough details were changed.

I get how Germans just “let it happen” as I “let it happen”

i learnt what “barbarism” truly means. Before it was just in the abstract. Now it is concrete

One lesson I took from the western student and protest movement against it is, that if possible, every group that mostly consists of newly politicized people, should be lead by Palestinians or at least by people from outside the imperial core. White western leftists can be enthusiastic about the anti-genocide cause too and can be a valuable addition to the group. But as leaders they often fall into one of two errors: taking too many risks or folding to quickly under pressure. The first is bad, because white people with citizenship have the privilege to come out of confrontations with the authorities much better, than everyone else. So they lack proper perspective. And the second is bad because it compromises our cause.

It’s a general lesson for every movement: leadership should mainly include the most affected people (just like the proletariat has to free itself). They can best judge which risk to take and which point to press.

Also book clubs are less effective in introducing Marxist-Leninist ideology/theory to a group than just showing up, helping and talking to people.

Oh and negotiations (for example with city or university authorities) need to be public and on our ground (eg in the protestors encampment). If the people you send aren’t trained negotiators, they need the support of the group or they will be pressured into needless concessions.

I learned that there are some people who will retreat ever deeper into rat’s nests of hatred and denial and self-deception before ever, ever accepting that they are on the wrong side of…everything.

That Germany learned absolutely nothing from the Holocaust and would do it again in a heartbeat

It’s amazing in a terrible way to see in real time how my country, the US, is still grandstanding as if it had any morals whatsoever while openly funding war crimes, as well as see people around me — even some who were there in the Zionist entity — genuinely act like they were the victims

I already knew this, but this has reaffirmed the reality for me more than ever. We cannot afford to condition our support for Palestine on Anti-Zionist Jews. This was something I particularly learned from Finkelstein but also generally during the Great March of Return. I appreciate anti-zionist Jews, but I’m sorry it does not matter if they oppose Israel. Frontloading protests with them conditions Palestinian humanity based on their empathy. If every single American Jew agreed with Bibi, the calculus would be the exact fucking same.

The irrational essence of Gentile anti-Semitism is inferred inductively from the irrational essence of The Holocaust. To wit. Hitler’s Final Solution uniquely lacked rationality — it was «evil for its own sake," «purposeless" mass killing; Hitler’s Final Solution marked the culmination of Gentile anti-Semitism; therefore Gentile anti-Semitism is essentially irrational. Taken apart or together, these propositions do not withstand even superficial scrutiny. 29 Politically, however, the argument is highly serviceable.

By conferring total blamelessness on Jews, the Holocaust dogma immunizes Israel and American Jewry from legitimate censure. Arab hostility, African-American hostility: they are “fundamentally not a response to any objective evaluation of Jewish action” (Goldhagen).30 Consider Wiesel on Jewish persecution: «For two thousand years … we were always threatened… For what? For no reason." On Arab hostility to Israel: “Because of who we are and what our homeland Israel represents — the heart of our lives, the dream of our dreams -when our enemies try to destroy us, they will do so by trying to destroy Israel.” On Black people’s hostility to American Jews: "The people who take their inspiration from us do not thank us but attack us. We find ourselves in a very dangerous situation. We are again the scapegoat on all sides… We helped the blacks; we always helped them… I feel sorry for blacks. There is one thing they should learn from us and that is gratitude. No people in the world knows gratitude as we do; we are forever grateful. "31 Ever chastised, ever innocent: this is the burden of being a Jew. 32

The Holocaust dogma of eternal Gentile hatred also validates the complementary Holocaust dogma of uniqueness. If The Holocaust marked the climax of a millennial Gentile hatred of the Jews, the persecution of non-Jews in The Holocaust was merely accidental and the persecution of non-Jews in history merely episodic. From every standpoint, then, Jewish suffering during The Holocaust was unique. Finally, Jewish suffering was unique because the Jews are unique. The Holocaust was unique because it was not rational. Ultimately, its impetus was a most irrational, if all-too-human, passion. The Gentile world hated Jews because of envy, jealousy: resentment. Anti-Semitism, according to Nathan and Ruth Ann Perlmutter, sprang from "gentile jealousy and resentment of the Jews’ besting Christians in the marketplace . . . large numbers of less accomplished gentiles resent smaller numbers of more accomplished Jews. "33 Albeit negatively. The Holocaust thus confirmed the chosenness of Jews. Because Jews are better, or more successful, they suffered the ire of Gentiles, who then murdered them.

In a brief aside, Novick muses «what would talk of the Holocaust be like in America" if Elie Wiesel were not its “principal interpreter” ?34 The answer is not difficult to find: Before June 1967 the universalist message of concentration camp survivor Bruno Bettelheim resonated among American Jews. After the June war, Bettelheim was shunted aside in favor of Wiesel. Wiesel’s prominence is a function of his Ideological utility. Uniqueness of Jewish suffering/uniqueness of the Jews, ever-guilty Gentiles/ever-innocent Jews, unconditional defense of Israel/unconditional defense of Jewish interests: Elie Wiesel is The Holocaust.

This is from Finkelstein’s paper of the same name, not the book though parts are carried over directly.

The handicapping of anti-genocide activism in an attempt to not be cammed antisemitic is a problem. I get that optics are important, but what have good optics actually accomplished materially for Palestinians? Nothing by more slaughter.

That Palestinians are some of the strongest people on this earth

I learned how deep zionism runs in my liberal family. They bought the israeli lie that antizionism means antisemitism, and supporting israel no matter what is necessary to prevent another Holocaust. This has torn apart jewish families around the world including my own. It makes me unbearably sad that my family backs the genocide of my friends and the bravest people in the world, and settler colonialism.

This country will happily willfully accept the most horrific atrocities ever as long as they get a sense of holding “teh left” at bay. There is no redeeming qualities of this country worth fighting for. This is the “Rome is Burning” days of the Empire.

The motto of the country should be changed to “EMPATHY IS THE PROFIT KILLER”

They spat on, beat, criminalized the fire fighters. They took away and criminalized any fire fighting equipment. So there’s no point pissing on a blazing inferno because you can line up every fuckwad in Epstien’s Black book and these fucking idiots will elect the worst of them every time. Worse - there seems to be an endless sea of Epstien fuckwads and sociopaths with trillions behind them. There is no point other than to save my money, sanity, and look for a way off this sinking ship.

The institutions can not be reformed. They like it this way. A revolution is needed and it will not happen in my life time. We tried. It isn’t worth it any more. Best bet for myself is to find an affordable tropical place that won’t try to kill my gay ass and enjoy what litter sanity and time I have left.

I learned that “international law” is a joke and that liberals believe in nothing

The genocide unearthed a lot of information I was unaware of from before oct 7, but that’s like background. The genocide itself,… , I learned I lack any kind of theory to explain zionazi attitudes, and the generally racist genocidal sentiment on displau from average israelis, and even more heinous from their soldiers. I just,… I wish I knew how to think about it, because it floors me emotionally. How can people be such bastards? I learned what modern ordinance does when dropped on a bunch of tents. I know the sound a distraught father make carrying lifeless child. I know how to recognize shock. I’ve had to learn how to process my own emotion differently, because I’ve become such a raw nerve I have to keep myself from crying several times a day. I know it’s just part of my political consciousness process, but my God why does letting yourself give a damn have to hurt so fucking bad? The strength and trauma coming from Palestinians is just,… too much for me to process.

I learned how evil western media is willing to be.

The Iraq War and the 2008–2009 Gaza bombings triggered in me a deep personal epiphany that led me to believe for the last 15 years that genocide (somewhere in the MENA region) was absolutely a likely possibility, even as I transitioned from a liberal to a commie that political epiphany never changed

I never articulated this belief out loud because for the longest time I wondered whether I was being a paranoid morbid cynic, turns out I wasn’t, some vindication huh

The scale and viciousness of the brutality did catch me off guard, but even then I can’t really say any of this has genuinely surprised me, in retrospect I now realize I had spent a decade and a half semi-consciously bracing for this reality and tracing back in many ways is the reason I became a communist in the first place