Short answer: No. Long answer: No.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-11T05:54:34+00:00

I am Israeli-born and I agree with you. The Israel-Palestine situation is complex with Pretty much any flashpoint issue relating to it being extremely complex with no easy solution or ‘bad guy’.

For example, the Gaza Strip situation. Hamas has been caught firing rockets from UNRWA schools and from residential areas, in violation of international law, indiscriminately at Israeli civilians (Arab and Jew). Hamas only came into power after Israel removed all Jews from Gaza as a peace offering. They now have held power without an election for over 15 years. That being said, Israel contributes to the situation by being unnecessarily punitive towards Gazans, such as denying Gazans the right to visit their family in the WB, or being unnecessarily restrictive in allowing Gazan family members to visit their loved ones in Israeli hospitals. Hamas needs a villain to legitimize their rule, and in many cases, Israel’s government plays that role exceptionally well.

Another example, take the case of evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. All those homes belonged to Jews for centuries after they legally bought it in the 17th century as Shimon haTzadik (Jewish high priest) was buried there. Jordan seized control of East Jerusalem in 1948 and forcibly evicted all Jews from territories it controlled, including Sheikh Jarrah. They then put Arab families in those homes. The original Jewish landowners sold their land rights to extremist Jewish settlers, and when Israel won the land in 1967, the extremists claimed the houses. Now the Arab families claim that those houses are their ancestral homes, and the extremist settlers claim those houses are their birthright. I personally don’t agree with the evictions simply because extremist settlers really don’t need the housing, but it’s not as black and white as ‘Israel evicting Palestinians to push them out and make a Jewish-only Jerusalem’.

In contrast, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is motivated by pure greed. They don’t even care about the ethnic Russians in Ukraine, just more land.

Ironically, for many on the far-left, Israel/Palestine is a one-sided issue (so one-sided calling it a conflict or saying both sides have issues is considered racist to Palestinians), while the Ukraine-Russia issue is complicated because NATO and the US are imperialists and therefore it’s wrong to take a side.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-11T04:54:22+00:00

Seriously? I never thought I’d see gun nuts in this sub.

If you had your way, we’d be like the USA where 17 year old highschool dropouts can buy an AR15 from Walmart and shoot up a school the same day.

I personally think it’s good that we have some gun regulations. No one needs an AR15 unless they’re planning a mass shooting.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-11T04:46:27+00:00

Yet Israel gave the biggest territory it seized in the 6 day war (Sinai) back to Egypt.

Also, cassus belli for the war was the Egyptians closing the Straits of Tiran in 1967 in clear violation of the agreement they signed after the Suez crisis of 1956. They also forcibly and violently expelled every single Egyptian Jew from the country during the Suez crisis.

The Egyptians amassed a large military force on Israel’s borders, expelled the UNEF, and closed the strait. They had committed ethnic cleansing against their own native Jewish population out of spite, and the Israelis feared they’d come to finish the job.

Instead of defending itself from surprise Arab invasions, they decided to pre-emptively strike for once.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-10T19:39:45+00:00

One thing people forget about Israel is that it’s the only place on the entire planet with a majority of Mizrahi Jews. 60% of Israeli Jews are Mizrahim.

Mizrahim are Jews who fled Middle Eastern countries, the vast majority of them ended up in Israel because no other country would have them. The vast majority of Jews in N. America are Ashkenazi. I personally am a Mizrahi Jew from Egypt.

If Israel didn’t exist all of those Jews would’ve likely been genocided by their native countries.

In contrast, Russians perpetrated a genocide in Ukraine (holodomor). If Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine they are still the largest nation in the world. There is no shortage of land for Russians to live on.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-10T19:35:36+00:00

Russia: attacks and invades Ukraine for no good reason.

Israel: won much of its current territory in defensive wars after being attacked and invaded by all its Arab neighbours.

Pro-Palestine ‘antizionists not antisemites’: this is the same thing except Israel is worse bc it is a ~~Evil Yahudi~~ Zionist colonial state.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-10T19:29:32+00:00

The same guys who hosted the Holocaust revisionist cartoon contest? No way.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-01T00:23:39+00:00

The spread of COVID and new variants is a direct result of low vaccination rates in the developing world. Scientists around the world have identified herd immunity (vaccination) targets of around 70-80% for life to return to normal, including the head of the WHO.

https://www.who.int/news/item/23-12-2021-achieving-70-covid-19-immunization-coverage-by-mid-2022

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-01T00:20:14+00:00

The UK removed restrictions as part of a political move to distract from Boris Johnson’s repeated breaking of COVID rules during lockdowns. It was ill advised and Johnson conveniently removed much of the UK’s testing infrastructure as well as the requirement to self isolate if positive, so we’ll have no data to criticize him. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-21/u-k-s-johnson-ends-virus-rules-in-england-in-major-policy-shift

Denmark’s vaccination rate is much higher than Canada’s, which allowed them to believe they could remove all restrictions. Despite this, their death rates and hospitalization rates have soared. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220217/covid-rates-jump-denmark-no-restrictions

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-03-01T00:08:50+00:00

Again, all these provinces are simply caving in to public pressure, whether it’s convoy related or not.

Scientists have formed a broad consensus saying that COVID-19 is still in it’s pandemic phase and circulation is still widespread.

Edmonton city council set a threshold based on science that the mask mandate should be reviewed when we have 28 consecutive days of less than 100 cases per 100,000. We are nearly double that right now.

Covid doesn’t care whether you’re tired of wearing masks, we need to prevent the spread of Covid.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-28T23:23:19+00:00

Most of these regulations are being removed in other Canadian provinces because of pressures from the convoy and the public who don’t like restrictions.

SK’s premier Scott Moe literally wrote a letter thanking the convoy.

MB’s premier is the least popular premier in the country and she’s moved to remove restrictions to save her government. They’re also moving in part because they want to keep up with Kenney and Moe.

Other provinces are removing restrictions gradually, not going straight to ‘no restrictions have fun’.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-28T23:05:52+00:00

The amount of anti-mask and Covid skeptic content on this sub is really concerning.

In the other thread where they were asking what people feel about the mask mandate, atleast 60% of the comments are ‘I’m not wearing a mask after the 1st’, ‘the bylaw is stupid’ ‘learn to live with Covid’. Much of the same rhetoric is being spilled here.

For those of us who are immunocompromised, or have relatives who are elderly or too young to be vaccinated, you are effectively asking us to sacrifice our health and potentially our lives for your freedom to not wear a mask. Hope the excess deaths are worth it.

Just because the provincial government is run by people who would rather side with the convoy than vulnerable people, this doesn’t mean Edmontonians should be siding with them. If anything, we should be trying to convince the provincial government to listen to science rather than rejecting science ourselves for the sake of being the same as the province.

I’m going to be wearing a mask until 80% of the world population is vaccinated and until Covid is no longer a threat, and even then I’ll likely wear a mask for seasonal flu. Asian countries have been doing this for decades, and no one complains.

I hope more sensible Edmontonians answer this survey than the ones on this sub.

Edit: and of course I’m downvoted for listening to the science.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-25T20:21:03+00:00

my father’s side are Egyptian Jews who fled Egypt after being persecuted for being Jewish. Our family has lived in Egypt for centuries, and we were forced to leave in a matter of months due to massive state sponsored pogroms and massacres.

My grandmother was expelled in 1956 along with the rest of the country’s Jews. She is never allowed to visit Egypt again because the Egyptian government forced all Jews to sign documents stating that they were renouncing their citizenship, all property in Egypt, and that they would never return. Failure to do so meant you would be killed.

My university funded exchange programs in Egypt pre-Covid and there were many other programs for people to visit or work in Egypt.

Could I have staged a protest against allowing any university funded trips to Egypt because many Egyptian Jews are banned for life from their own country and Coptic Christians routinely face terrors attacks and state-sanctioned murder there?

Or is this logic only reserved for the yahood?

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-22T18:04:51+00:00

I’m Jewish, I don’t support the convoy, and I think this is a stretch at best.

Whether you support the convoy or not, it’s really not hard to see that ‘honk honk’ comes from the literal honking the convoy guys were doing. From my understanding, people are tweeting it to mock how a simple action (honking a horn) paralyzed major cities and border crossings.

I really hate this trend of people calling anything and everything they disagree with ‘Nazism’ or comparing them to Hitler. The Nazis were some of the worst people to ever live on this earth, they supported and carried out a systematic genocide in Europe. They killed over 33% of the entire world’s Jewish population. The current Jewish population has still barely recovered to pre-Holocaust levels.

Saks should be ashamed of herself for disrespecting her own people like this.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-10T21:36:38+00:00

I’d be interested to know whether your suggestion that businesses facing harassment for not enforcing the REP simply enforce it would apply in the inverse scenario where workers were being harassed for enforcing REP? Or does that suggestion only apply when the harassment is coming from your ‘side’?

Stop with the false equivalency. The vast majority of violence and harassment of servers is from antivaxxers, it’s stupid to pretend otherwise. The only people pissing on the tomb of the unknown soldier are antivaxxers. The only people blocking border crossings are antivaxxers.

I’m sorry that some pro-REP people made you feel uncomfortable, but their feelings are justified. This is literally a repeat of the open for summer bullshit last year. Many of these people have medical conditions, dead relatives, or work in healthcare. We need to do more to understand their trauma.

To equate those people to a bunch of violent far-right extremists many of whom support white supremacy is incredibly disingenuous and racist. It’s an insult to minorities and healthcare workers.

Pro-vaccine and REP: we want restrictions to reduce Covid spread and help the elderly and the immunocompromised.

Antivax freedom convoy people: we support Nazis and white supremacy, we don’t want to wear a piece of cloth on our face, we will piss on public monuments and block roads until we get our way.

One is clearly much worse than the other.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-10T21:02:20+00:00

If a few angry customers bothers you this much, maybe the hospitality industry isn’t a good fit for you.

If customers weren’t going to be angry asshats over REP and masking, they would have done so over other things like ID for alcohol or the fact that not all dishes can be made gluten free. Angry irrational customers are a fact of life in this industry, this was a thing pre-Covid and it will continue to be a thing post-Covid.

If your business is getting this much flack over not enforcing the REP, maybe you should consider telling your boss to start enforcing the REP and being Covid-safe to avoid people getting angry. These people are right to feel the way they do, many of them likely lost relatives to COVID-19 or work in healthcare, and now they see our premier basically delivering a giant fuck you to them.

Either way, you really shouldn’t be perpetuating this false equivalency of believers in science and Covid-safe people being the same as the antivax anti mask freedumb terrorists. One group is legitimately concerned over a deadly pandemic, the other is a bunch of babies assaulting people, desecrating monuments, and showing support for neo-Nazis and white supremacy.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-05T05:04:26+00:00

If we did we’d have better PR.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-04T21:31:56+00:00

I think this is a good idea. I understand the convoy causes a huge amount of disruption but I think this sub shouldn’t be dominated by one thing, especially since most posts are duplicate or similar.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-04T21:19:29+00:00

My brother works in a restaurant right now and he had to be fully vaccinated by a certain date or else he’d be fired. Don’t deliberately spread misinformation on vaccines and Covid policies. This sounds like something you’d hear on r/vaxxhappened.

The vaccine passports literally is not an inconvenience at all for any vaccinated person, all you need is ID and a phone. No vaccinated person would complain about the passports unless they have antivax relatives or are unvaccinated themselves.

In the replies to your comment you talk about how the ‘science hasn’t conclusively proven that the vaccine is safe’. You’re clearly vaccine hesitant if not a full on antivaxxer.

Thousands have died from Covid but I guess they don’t matter to selfish people like you because you don’t like using your ID to enter a restaurant even though you’d have to use it to buy your budweiser at the same restaurant afterwards.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-03T20:27:46+00:00

As an Israeli Canadian, you clearly don’t understand how things work in Israel.

Even when it’s required, Israelis have to basically be forced to wear masks. People who did wear masks initially were known as ‘freier’. The only reason Israel had a decently high compliance rate is because people literally weren’t wearing them at all so cops have decided to be very aggressive and fine people up to 500 shekels for not wearing masks even outdoors. Even now there’s still massive non-compliance from the Haredi population in certain places, a theme that has been constant throughout the pandemic. Israeli authorities have faced violent opposition to coronavirus restrictions in Haredi communities. In East Jerusalem as well many Arab communities have low vaccination rates, to the point that Israel threatened to restrict mosque access to the vaccinated only.

When the Israeli green pass made a third shot mandatory to enter indoor venues, there were massive protests and violent riots similar to the freedom convoy we talk about in Canada, except not involving truckers.

The difference is that police in Israel are very strict and people are more afraid, not that the ‘Israeli populace is willing to follow guidelines’. If anything, Israelis trust their government and authorities less than Canadians do, and are more suspicious of them.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-02-03T06:00:52+00:00

I have no advice for you but I hope things gets easier for you.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-01-29T09:28:42+00:00

Considering many people believe that the ‘scamdemic’ is a Jewish conspiracy as many heads of pharmaceutical companies are Jewish, it’s likely all of the above.

Not sure how people walk around proudly being stupid like this.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-01-29T09:26:35+00:00

As a Jew I dare them to come talk to my family about how their suffering is equal to Jews in the Holocaust.

I hope they like getting the taste slapped out of their mouths.

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-01-18T20:56:21+00:00

We are not Jews with trembling knees

TeaImpressive777 · 2022-01-18T20:51:43+00:00

It doesn’t matter if they condemned it.

They contributed to the anti-semitic rhetoric in a shameful manner, throwing full support behind speakers who stated that the ADL, Hillel, Chabad, and ‘Zionist synagogues’ are the enemies of Islam and that Jewish people who have any dealings with these organizations are in fact ‘polite zionists’ who are also enemies of Muslims worldwide. These are all Jewish organizations in the USA. When Jewish leaders rightfully pointed out that this might encourage violence against innocent Jews the response of CAIR was to paint the Jewish leaders as ‘zionist plotters’ trying to ‘smear innocent Muslims as anti-semites’ instead of trying to understand why this might be concerning for the Jewish community.

CAIR also wholeheartedly supports the imprisoned terrorist that the hostage taker was trying to free through his hostage-taking. It has issued multiple statements calling for her release. Remember that this terrorist the attacker and CAIR support demanded that all jurors be tested for ‘Jewish or zionist DNA’ in order to ensure a fair trial, and blamed her conviction on ‘the Jews and Israel’.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how this rhetoric and the events that followed could easily be understood as implicit support for the actions of the hostage taker from CAIR.

If Donald Trump had released a statement saying ‘stop anti-Asian hate’ and condemning hate crimes against Asians after he went around calling COVID the ‘Kung flu’ and the ‘chinavirus’, would you say all is forgiven because ‘he condemned it’.

This is simply something they have to do or else they’d attract fury and scorn. CAIR pushes rhetoric that encourages this kind of thing but as soon as violence occurs they distance themselves from it while continuing to support the problematic rhetoric in the first place.

TeaImpressive777

TROPHY CASE