Hi everybody! Welcome me back from vacation (IT WAS GREAT)!
I am happy to be home and be here with you, and wanted to share first of all this Heather Cox Richardson letter on Chuck Schumer and his speech on why we American Jews are having [Yiddish term] and [other Yiddish term]. I think it explains it really eloquently.
There’s also this Slate letter signed by Dahlia Lithwick, Joyce White Vance and others on the sexual torture that was visited on Israeli women on October 7. It is Definition Trigger Warning. If you are (and I was!) of the vague opinion that sex crime as war crime is bad but like the least of the atrocities, well. You will be disabused.
I am not going to itemize the acts of torture here. They are being denied everywhere, but you can find them.
I was disheartened on Sunday night, the last day of my vacation, to start receiving emails about our Sunday afternoon podcast. It was about Julianna Margulies and her batshit racist complaints about Black people not understanding our (Jewish) allyness — sort of like the Schumer version but stupid, racist, and shitty. I listened to the podcast, which as you know I do not do, and I feel despair. On very few topics is there an Official Wonkette Line for my writers; some of us are more hawkish, some more radical, the only real Mandatory Opinion is that you have to feed children. But I had thought we were going to leave pronouncements on Israel to basically me, the owner, publisher, and editor of Wonkette: Number one of which is I don’t care if Israel’s shitty, it is not okay to physically torture and massacre people on purpose. Not only was the purposeful torture and massacre elided in the podcast, as it has been throughout the world over the past two months, but a lot of points were made that seemed very explicitly to say that Israel had it coming. Nelson Mandela — fuuuuuuck — was invoked.
I am really sad.
My writers are smart, well-read and -educated grownups. I don’t very often censor their true opinions, and I won’t this time. But I’m sad that the conversation occurred under my name. When (most! not all!) American Jews talk about the war in Israel and Gaza, they make sure to say — and believe — that the suffering of the Palestinian people matters too. The same is not said for us. It hurts desperately.
If you thought the conversation was great and righteous, well, amen I guess. If you were offended, like I was and am, I am terribly sorry.
I’m going to leave it at that.
xoxox
Rebecca
Wonkette
Comments off.
Palestinians are suffering, Hamas are a bunch of shitheads out for power. Israelis are suffering, Bibi and Likud are a bunch of shitheads out for power.
war crimes are called war crimes because most people can agree that it's not okay to do those things regardless who does them and regardless of the circumstances.
also, it's not okay to commit war crimes as retaliation for war crimes. again, regardless who does it or under what circumstances.
I don't think that there's a solution to this that doesn't involve massive and sustained pressure from the international community (god, I hate that phrase) and I have no idea how that would even look like.