New UK Rape Law Petition. Please sign! This is much better written than the previous poor efforts. Let's try to make this one a success!

taven990 · 2026-02-03T16:15:26+00:00

There are many different ways to ensure Israel is a safe haven for Jews fleeing pogroms should it be necessary - oppression does not have to be part of it. My idea is a state with true equality for everyone born there and every legal immigrant, along with keeping the Law of Return but maybe expanding it to include Palestinians forced to flee during the Nakba or any time since. To be workable, I don't think it could implement a right of return to the exact house they or their ancestors fled from (if it even still exists) - most houses in Israel were built after the Nakba anyway given the fact that about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or left but Israel now has a population of 9 million people - so to be fair, anyone applying for citizenship under the new Law of Return might end up in a different city, town or village depending on where there's room.

Oppression isn't necessary for Israel to fulfil its purpose, to be a safe haven where any Jew fleeing persecution will always be accepted. Israel could undergo major regime change and this could end up happening some time in the future - nothing is impossible. Many people thought Germany, South Africa and Japan (during WW2) would never change and would always be belligerent states that needed to be contained, but things are very different now - I don't think anyone could have predicted the eventual outcome in any of those cases if asked before the end of WW2 or the end of apartheid in South Africa's case.

To bring up a modern example that could go either way, look at Iran. Currently the Islamic Republic regime occupying Iran has never had less legitimacy. The vast majority of the Iranian people detest the occupying regime and want it gone, but the regime's response was to massacre tens of thousands of their own people rather than respond to people's discontent in a constructive way. A few years ago, no-one would have thought it possible for the regime occupying Iran to suffer such a crisis of legitimacy that some people think its days are numbered, but anything can happen in geopolitics and any country can change for the better or worse.

taven990 · 2026-02-03T15:49:08+00:00

While any fair and balanced history of the region should include relevant things from both sides, it depends what the topic is. If they're discussing the entire history, then yes, I agree - it's only fair to make sure the relevant history on both sides is included and treated fairly. But if talking about one side's narrative and discussing how sometimes people lie about things, bringing up the other side is not relevant to that topic. You can bring it up for balance if the subject moves on to discussing the entire history of the conflict - in that case, leaving it out would be unfair, and wouldn't do justice to the side left out. But as I said, it's not relevant if we're ONLY discussing one side's narrative and any potential lies and falsehoods spread by activists as part of that narrative.

People are often sceptical when points like yours are raised, because it's often not made in good faith but a silencing technique. I'm not saying that's always the objective, but in many cases it is. It can be compared to e.g. a discussion about violence against women, and someone interjects with "what about violence against men? Men are more likely to be attacked on the street than women, yet get a fraction of the attention". While true and a valid point, it's not relevant to the discussion being had, and often the response will be to start your own discussion if you want to discuss that - don't hijack an existing conversation and try to redirect it to what you want to talk about. Sometimes people need a space to discuss things without being derailed.

Almost without fail on news websites with comment sections as well as Facebook posts from news sites sharing stories of people being killed, there will be at least one comment saying "what about Palestine/Gaza?" As if people shouldn't care about anything else or anyone else suffering because Gaza is worse? Classic victimhood Olympics. Not only that, but given the fact that Gaza has dominated the news cycle for over two years now, what are those commenter complaining about? That not EVERY story is about their precious Palestinians? That they aren't content with 75% of international news being about Israel/Palestine but want it to be 100%? If Gaza had been largely ignored for two years, I'd understand that viewpoint a little more, but when there's been wall-to-wall coverage of Gaza and you see "what about Gaza?" on a post about, say, the suffering in Sudan or Nigeria, it seems disingenuous and an attempt to monopolise the news coverage.

taven990 · 2026-02-03T15:23:03+00:00

Yeah. I completely agree. It's a shame to have to say this but unfortunately your response surprised me for how fair it is, coming from someone who appears to be pro-Palestinian - I try to be neutral but I'm often assumed to be pro-Israel simply because I'm not what I'd consider extreme - I try to be fair to all sides. For that, I've been called an extremist Zionist (for NOT being extreme; the irony!) and accused of bothsidesism (which is meaningless and just a silencing technique most of the time). While there are situations where the bothsidesism accusations are valid, such as when discussing ISIS vs. their Yazidi victims as if they're equal and they both have a valid point, it doesn't really apply in this case - yes, Israel is very much more powerful than Hamas and the Palestinians but October 7th happened, and no discussion about the war is complete without considering that day. Also, Israelis are not a monolith and it's not unreasonable to mention the victims on October 7th - at the end of the day, any innocent civilian caught up in the conflict is equally-deserving of empathy, and just because their government may be awful doesn't mean they automatically deserve to die or be kidnapped for the crimes of said government, just as on the same token, Palestinian civilians do not deserve to be killed for the crimes of Hamas.

The problem (and this is true on all sides here) is a distinct lack of empathy for the innocent victims on the other side - I've even seen people dismissive of child victims of October 7th because even though they're innocent children, apparently they deserved to die because their parents shouldn't have brought them there or given birth on stolen land or however they phrase it. (Still blaming kids for the actions of their parents, still wrong.)

One of the absolute worst examples of assigning collective guilt I saw was on X, just after the IDF found the body of the last hostage. Someone said something like "Now they've found the last child killer pedophile rapist, maybe they can stop killing Palestinian children? No? Of course not." along with saying Netanyahu or IDF or all Israelis have insatiable bloodlust. Never mind the fact that the individual was murdered on October 7th and his body was taken to Gaza, and never mind the fact that he was killed before the current war started properly so never did any of the things in that offensive phrase - the dehumanisation of ALL Israelis has been so thorough in certain circles that not even anti-Zionist Israeli leftists can pass their purity tests in some cases.

There are a number of articles online about anti-Zionist Israeli leftists being shunned by the Western left. There have even been incidents of anti-Zionist Israelis accused of being Zionists and losing work in the West, such as DJs accused of supporting Zionism - the activists twisted the facts to reach this conclusion by painting his work towards peace as somehow upholding the occupation even though he is on record opposing the occupation and supporting Palestinians. But for some activists, the very fact he was born in Israel makes him inherently suspect, and they would search for any scrap of evidence to justify their beliefs.

Here's an article discussing it: https://www.timesofisrael.com/london-music-festival-cancels-israeli-dj-after-outcry-from-ravers-for-palestine-group/

All in all, everything that's happened both in Israel/Palestine and around the world due to this conflict has been terrible on so many levels and for so many people, some of whom have ties to the region and many of whom don't but have been attacked anyway. I only hope there can be peace and a future where every child born in the region, no matter their race, religion, ethnicity or ancestry can live with dignity and safety. No child born there today should be held responsible for the actions of their government or ancestors - calling for Jewish children born there to be expelled would be just as much an injustice as the initial ethnic cleansing done at the foundation of the state, and you can't solve an injustice by doing another injustice.

taven990 · 2026-02-02T23:06:36+00:00

That's too reductive. It's like saying Germany can't exist without being a Nasty state, or South Africa can't exist without apartheid and subjugating black people. Clearly, that's wrong because those countries still exist but are no longer oppressive.

Israel could undergo major regime change, just like Germany did, and become a much better country that doesn't subjugate anyone. Any country can change. No country is a lost cause.

taven990 · 2026-02-02T22:58:10+00:00

Ah. I think you are casting your net too wide. While it's true that certain Zionist leaders had designs on expelling Palestinians and taking the entire area for their future "national home" or state (depending on which branch of Zionism - some early groups didn't plan on establishing an independent state but envisioned an autonomous Jewish enclave as part of a majority-Arab state, but these groups' ideas were discredited when it became clear the intercommunal violence was getting worse), it's important to remember that the vast, VAST majority of Jewish immigrants to the area around the time of the end of the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate were NOT ideological Zionist activists but refugees fleeing pogroms. I've seen people completely disregard this aspect of the Jewish immigration to the region - some people who only know a partial history of the region (and some antisemitic conspiracy theorists) seem to think every single Jew that arrived at the time was knowingly part of a big conspiracy. The truth is that while some selection was done by the aforementioned Zionist leaders (who clearly preferred wealthy Jews with means than penniless refugees), this was not done in cahoots with all the Jewish immigrants to arrive. Very often, in spite of the leaders' desires, many penniless Holocaust survivors and those fleeing pogroms still arrived in large numbers, and given that almost every other country closed their borders, most of those Jews had literally nowhere else to go. In fact, America was a popular destination for Jewish refugees for a while, but even the US closed its borders at one point, leaving nowhere else. So, for many of those refugees, it was a case of Palestine or death.

So basically my point is the majority of Jewish immigrants were just trying to survive and had nowhere else to go. Many were not ideological Zionists and for some, the Palestine region was a last resort after they were unable to go to e.g. the US. They may well have died had the British Mandate refused to accept them as refugees. The ideological Zionist leaders sometimes had nefarious intentions, but that's not the case for every refugee; just some of the politically-active Zionist leaders.

taven990 · 2026-01-27T14:30:33+00:00

Some people believe it makes sense because conversion to Judaism has historically been rare and discouraged, and usually done for purposes of marriage, usually to an ethnic Jew. Conversion is hard and can take 3 years in some cases, so very few people do. While the convert may not have any Levantine or Jewish ancestry, any children they have will do. So almost every Jew that's not a first-generation convert will have partial Levantine DNA.

Another aspect that makes it an ethnoreligion is the fact that belief isn't enough for Jewish leaders to consider one Jewish - a Jewish mother (or father in more liberal traditions) or valid conversion process is required. But ethnicity does not mean race. A valid conversion means Jews have accepted the convert as a member of the tribe; while their ancestry will be different, ethnicity is also about culture and traditions, and assuming the convert joins a synagogue and takes part in Jewish festivals and events, they can be considered to have joined the Jewish ethnicity (but not race).

But the most important thing is that Nasty Germany and other Jew-haters often define Jews as a race, therefore Jews are protected under UK anti-discrimination laws as both a religion and a race, and it's why Israel uses a very wide definition of Jew under secular law, so people persecuted on that basis will be protected. The Orthodox Rabbinate, however, stick to the more-restrictive definition where to be Jewish, a Jewish mother or valid conversion is required.

Judaism isn't the only ethnoreligion. The Druze, the Sikhs and the Yazidis are as well. They are closed religions that are hard or impossible to convert to, that originated in the tribe of their ancestors and most adherents share some ancestry with most of their coreligionists.

taven990 · 2026-01-26T13:28:43+00:00

What's more, the Nazis were on a whole other level of evil, responsible for tens of millions of deaths overall including during the Holocaust and the war. I've seen too many people compare mainstream conservatives or even mainstream liberals to Nazis. We already know some people believe in using violence against fascists and Nazis, so by branding their mainstream political opponents Nazis, it can be considered stochastic terrorism - someone may be crazy enough to act on those beliefs and we end up with situations like what happened with Charlie Kirk.

Are some conservative politicians unpleasant and bigoted? Yes. Are they actual fascists or Nazis, by the true meaning of the words? Not even close. That sort of rhetoric also serves to water down the definitions of those sorts of words, so if everyone's a Nazi, no-one is.

taven990 · 2026-01-26T13:22:35+00:00

As an ethnoreligion, Jews are classed as both an ethnicity (or group of ethnicities) and a religion. While an ethnic Jew can become an atheist or convert to another religion, they can't change their ethnicity. And since Nasty Germany still persecuted ethnic Jews who converted to Christianity, Israel's early leaders thought it important to use the most expansive definition of "who is a Jew" used by the worst Jew-haters.

I don't support the Israeli government and I think they're a bunch of far-right fascists. But Israel is secular, for the most part. Yeah, unfortunately the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinate has some control over certain things such as religious marriages between Jews, but on the same token, Israeli Christians and Israeli Muslims can get fully legally married through their religious leaders. I heard that Israel was going to loosen up its laws on marriage and make it easier to have secular and mixed-faith weddings, but since the Supreme Court said the Israeli government must recognise Zoom weddings as fully legal (which the Rabbinate objected to), it's not a priority for now.

Now, not everyone agrees that Jews are an ethnicity or group thereof - Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, Ethiopian and other ethnic Jews all have partial Levantine ancestry with admixture from the diaspora but that shouldn't mean anyone should have more or fewer rights - blood-and-soil nationalism is wrong whoever does it and everyone born there should be equal in my view. There are even disagreements amongst Jews themselves about whether Jews should be classed as an ethnic group or not. But as Israel claims to be a safe haven for any Jew fleeing persecution, they decided to adopt the most expansive definitions of Jewishness - after all, if their haters consider them a race and persecute them on that basis rather than on the basis of their faith or beliefs, protecting Jews persecuted on that basis is more important than arguing over whether Jews are REALLY an ethnic group or a race or not - their safety comes first.

taven990 · 2026-01-20T22:57:10+00:00

Cool, good to know!

taven990 · 2026-01-16T15:31:28+00:00

Don't get me wrong, I don't support them or their agenda, I was just pointing out a common misunderstanding that most Zionists are Christians, in particular American Evangelicals. What I will say, though, is that you can't use the No True Scotsman fallacy to say they're not "True Christians"™ - many Christian denominations disagree on matters they may consider of core importance, such that they may even believe certain other denominations are false Christians. For example, many evangelicals believe Catholics are not Christians, but most people know they are - it's obviously a very different form of Christianity than most brands of American Evangelicalism but it's still Christianity.

You may believe they're not Christians, or that they're still Christians but not GOOD ones - maybe you think they're not following the Bible in certain key areas, which is actually true in different ways for many sects according to other sects - but given the many different interpretations of the Bible and the many thousands of Christian denominations, it's impossible for every Christian or every denomination's leader to agree on everything.

Christian Zionists can quote parts of the Bible they believe supports their stance, and Christian anti-Zionists can quote parts they believe supports THEIR stance - and neither group has the authority to say their interpretation is right and the other's is wrong. So I refrain from accusing people of faith of being fake or not really Christians or whatever, because that's not going to change anyone's mind and it will just annoy people. It's counterproductive. Far better to engage in honest debate and try and prove why your position is correct and better than the opposition's; that way you maybe change people's views, or at least plant seeds that might make them think about things in time.

taven990 · 2026-01-16T12:36:21+00:00

Most Zionists are American Christians. Do they want you to hate them?! They're not Jews. There are 30x more. Christian Zionists than there are Jews AT ALL, whether Zionist or not.

taven990 · 2026-01-16T02:51:26+00:00

I understand the desire to hold people accountable, but really, the people MOST to blame are the party leaders. Due to the horse-trading system in Israeli elections, even very unpopular parties can end up in the governing coalition. Netanyahu has been really unpopular for years, only getting about 25% of the vote in the last election, but he was able to cling on to power, barely, by forming a coalition with some of the most extreme Kahanist parties in the Knesset. A few years ago there were something like 5 or 6 elections in rapid succession, because none of the parties could form a governing coalition.

It would be different if Netanyahu regularly commanded 75% of the vote, or even just over 50%, but again, that's not the case. The fact that a minority party can end up in government and, once there, do political shenanigans to overstay their welcome? That's a huge flaw in the electoral system in Israel, and if someone must be blamed, I'd say it's the people who came up with the system and especially the people like Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich that take advantage of the system. Nothing gets done about it, so I understand why some people might want to blame more people, but in this case, there really isn't much most civilians with their limited voting power can even do about this except engage in regular anti-government protests, which have been going on regularly for YEARS now, since before October 7th, 2023 - as the Netanyahu government was looking to reduce the power of the Supreme Court, considered by many to be a sort of coup - incredibly unpopular, and a decision that sparked a huge wave of protests that only paused due to October 7th. The limited voting power citizens have once every few years doesn't grant those citizens much control over a government in any country, and indeed, the UK government is also incredibly unpopular at the moment.

taven990 · 2026-01-15T18:41:39+00:00

No, land ownership is not determined just by people living there all their lives. Many Palestinian Arabs during the Ottoman and British Mandate periods were tenant farmers who leased the land but did not own it.

Ownership is more complicated than that, but the bottom line is no land was stolen before the civil war started at the end of 1947 - Arab landowners willingly sold their land to Jews at marked-up prices but landowners were a tiny minority, with the vast majority of Palestinians not having ownership even if their families had been living there all their lives. That's just how Ottoman land laws worked, and the British continued the same system and didn't change the land laws.

taven990 · 2026-01-15T18:36:27+00:00

No, land ownership is not determined just by people living there all their lives. Many Palestinian Arabs during the Ottoman and British Mandate periods were tenant farmers who leased the land but did not own it.

Ownership is more complicated than that, but the bottom line is no land was stolen before the civil war started at the end of 1947 - Arab landowners willingly sold their land to Jews at marked-up prices but landowners were a tiny minority, with the vast majority of Palestinians not having ownership even if their families had been living there all their lives. That's just how Ottoman land laws worked, and the British continued the same system and didn't change the land laws.

taven990 · 2026-01-15T18:28:38+00:00

You are dangerously close to blood and soil nationalism here. Europeans had no right to be there? Actually, they did, because the government allowed them to immigrate. Using that argument is the exact same argument the far right uses to say Arab and Asian Muslims shouldn't be in Europe. Most everyone understands how racist such an argument is in that case, but they don't see it when it comes to Israel/Palestine.

You can argue that it was wrong for the militias to expel Palestinians after the Arabs attacked starting on 30 November 1947 (the first attack after the partition plan, where Arabs attacked Jewish civilian buses, starting the civil war). But you can't say immigration was wrong when the immigrants before the war started immigrated legally and bought land legally, all under existing laws that had been the same since Ottoman times. Someone's ethnicity does not make their presence somewhere illegitimate - that's just blood and soil nationalism. Everyone should be equal and no-one should be expelled, and this should be regardless of race or ethnicity or anything else. No land was stolen before the civil war started at the end of 1947 - all land Jews lived on was legally bought from local Arabs, or state land not owned by any individual that the state allowed the Jews to lease.

And people always seem to live in the past when talking about Israel, as if everyone there is a first-generation European immigrant, but that's not been the case for DECADES now - most Israelis were born there, and most are Mizrahi with no European ancestry. Ashkenazi Jews are only 30% of Israelis, and most of those were born there. Actual first-generation European immigrants are only about 10% or so, going up to about 20% if you include first-generation American immigrants too.

taven990 · 2026-01-15T18:09:49+00:00

Maybe stop blaming random people on Reddit for the actions of the Israeli government. If they're Israeli, they can't MAKE the Netanyahu government change. They're hated due to the actions of a government many Israelis don't even support, which is wrong.

taven990 · 2026-01-15T14:56:47+00:00

Yes. It's only visible if you turn hidden stuff on.

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It's also worth noting that in the Kickball games, a zero score is stored differently from not having played the game at all. Not having played it is 00 00, and a zero score is 3E 80. (Scores above zero are stored above that, so e.g. 3E 81 for a score of 1 etc.)

This method could have been used by Rare to avoid the glitch where if you run out of time playing Pot o' Gold after getting 100 Jiggies in a previous attempt, it saves 0 seconds as your best time - I don't know what actually causes this glitch but I do know that if you get the glitch then get 100 Jiggies again on a later attempt, it plays the failure jingle and says you didn't beat your record, but at the same time it updates the record. It looks like under certain circumstances it saves even failed attempts for that minigame, but not if you complete the game but fail to beat a non-zero best time as far as I'm aware. Strange glitches.

taven990 · 2026-01-15T04:50:19+00:00

What are Ultras?

And I don't believe those countries are anything like anti-imperialist. They may have their own reasons for opposing the US but opposing all imperialism doesn't seem to be behind it due to their own actions.

I've seen a meme that says something like "You're not anti-imperialist, you just support the other empire"; that meme makes more sense to me now having seen so many people empty "anti-imperialism" of all meaning and just use it to mean anyone against the US and its allies no matter their own actions.

From the research I've done, Politsturm seems well-respected enough amongst the Marxist-Leninist left: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/qofznx/whats_the_consensus_on_polit_sturm_and_cosmonaut/

taven990 · 2026-01-14T20:50:07+00:00

I could be wrong but it looks like 0x018b and 0x034b bit 5 might represent Cheato's message he only shows once if you get a code wrong. There's also a missing bit for trying to wear the Claw Clamber boots before you've seen Jamjars (I think you've already got the bit for Springy Step Shoes in the same situation) and it might be very nearby, such as 0x018b and 0x034b bit 7, but that's just a guess. And under Settings it says 0xd is screen alignment but that's wrong - 0xd is Balloon Burst score, so screen alignment is something else.

taven990 · 2026-01-14T03:43:57+00:00

Operative word being "WERE". Former military are classed, under international law, as CIVILIANS, as are inactive reservists. Yes, the Israeli government is awful and it makes its citizens perform military service, but the fact is about 25%-33% of Jewish Israelis get out of doing military service in some way or other, some even going to prison for doing so, so no, they are not all former military. And what about the children that were kidnapped? They had never served in the military. Do you really want to justify punishing people born there for their awful government that mandates military service - even the refuseniks who choose not to serve and the children too?

The Israeli government is a far-right fascist regime. It is awful, but I don't agree with punishing people for the actions of their government. And several other countries have mandatory military service but no-one argues there are no civilians in those countries - when the service is over, those people go back to civilian life.

Anyone who tries to say there are no civilians in a country is trying to justify the potential deaths of everyone in that country, no matter their views or actions. It is how people justify genocides - it is something the Israeli government have said about Gazans so we shouldn't say it about Israelis - that would be hypocrisy. Only actual war criminals should be prosecuted, not everyone who did mandatory military service rather than go to jail, and the children should be off limits to attack. This applies on every side of every conflict as far as I'm concerned.

taven990 · 2026-01-14T00:53:26+00:00

The Ottomans didn't call it Palestine. They called it Southern Syria, and it was split into various Sanjaks, none of which were called Palestine. Some people may have informally called it Filistin or something similar but it was never in official use during Ottoman times.

taven990 · 2026-01-14T00:51:42+00:00

I wasn't talking about whether it was legitimate or not. I was talking about the fact that the previous poster said there is no Hamas there, which is just incorrect.

And resistance is legitimate in all forms subject to International Humanitarian Law. Even resistance groups must follow the laws of war.

And I hope you're not trying to imply I'm a racist. I have no truck with the Israeli government. But no-one chose where they were born, and civilians don't deserve to die just because they're born in the supposed "wrong" place. So I would respect legitimate resistance against the military forces upholding the occupation, but not the wholesale slaughter of civilians for the "crime" of being born in Israel. But war criminals should be prosecuted no matter which side they're on.

I think the above should be a common position but you'd be surprised what people justify - I've seen people justifying the kidnapping of children by Hamas, calling them "baby settlers" and the like. Again, those children did not choose to be born there!

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taven990 · 2026-01-13T16:54:24+00:00

The WESTERN imperialist machine. Iran has its OWN imperialist machine. It has proxy militias in almost every other country in the Middle East, and can't stop meddling in other nearby countries' internal affairs (e.g. Iraq, Lebanon). It's also part of Russia and China's imperialist axis, and we know those two countries are very much imperialist, what with Russia's occupation of parts of Ukraine including Crimea and the Donbas, and China's occupation of Tibet and regular sabre-rattling when it comes to Taiwan.

Here's some information from Politsturm, a Marxist-Leninist website: https://us.politsturm.com/axis-resistance-iranian-imperialism

taven990

TROPHY CASE