Susan Benesch ☮️
@SusanBenesch
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Director @dangerousspeech project against violent hatred. Faculty associate @BKCHarvard. Devoted mama. Views my own. For DS Project, https://t.co/PrShkLyQsy
Washington, DC
Joined March 2010
12/ Words lose their meaning when you are talking to yourself. Israelis are talking to themselves. We have fully dehumanized the Palestinians. We are in full denial of the world. Our words are empty. Emptiness breeds fear. Fear fuels anger. Anger isolates. We are alone.
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11/ There is nothing gratis in the desolation that is Gaza. Israel is responsible for the Gazans' welfare. It is an occupying power and it the annihilating power. Israel is obligated not just to let aid through but to provide the aid itself. Nothing gratis whatsoever. --->
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10/ That isn't my point. For Zitun, and for official Israel, this is gratis, a perk, a win for the Gazans. When Israel lifts the starvation blockade, the aid that the Gazans get is proof of their superior deal making skills. It is a win for Hamas, this gratis aid. --->
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9/ The final word for today is "gratis" (in Hebrew, "hinam"). Zitun writes about Israeli frustration. Frustrated why? Because it is allowing the entry of aid into Gaza gratis, without it being part of a hostage deal. This is an admission that Israel has been starving Gaza. --->
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8/ In that world children have not died of starvation, nor have the inhumane conditions in the Gazan desolation helped spread the famine. The bakeries are full. Gazans, if they have money, can just buy bread. This is what is "really" happening inside Gaza. --->
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7/ In that world Israel has determined that Gazans have enough food in "bakeries" to not just prevent famine, but deny its existence. In that world Israel left Gazans with sufficient infrastructure to produce bread (Israel bombed bakeries into rubble). --->
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6/ Really, in the real world, there is famine in Gaza. For Zitun and for the IDF and Shin Bet, there is no famine and no humanitarian crisis. At worst, he says in the following sentence, "the economic situation is difficult". This can only be real in a fantasy world. --->
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5/ "According to every monitoring system used by the Israeli security establisment, there really is no famine in Gaza. The bakeries are full and no humanitarian crisis is expected". Let us consider the word "really" (in Hebrew, "be'emet") and its use and meaning. --->
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4/ The article, written by the "journalist" (another word changed utterly) Yoav Zitun, carries numerous other egregious examples. Perhaps the most offensive ones have to do with the starvation of Gaza. Writing about Jordanian aid making its way into Gaza, Zitun says: --->
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3/ "Expectations" are not pipe dreams or escapist fantasies where a country assumes it can get aways with annhiliating a territory and a people and have someone else come and clean up the mess. The Hebrew word, "tzipiyah", no longer means what I thought it does. --->
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2/ An article on https://t.co/jhHVhHZbmd, Israel's most popular news site, mentioned the "expectation that a multinational force from moderate Sunni countries will enter the Gaza strip has not materialized". Only in a parallel universe could Israel have "expected" this.
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1/ Hebrew is deserting me. Reading about Gaza in the Hebrew media, talking to people about Gaza, I see and hear words the meaning of which I used to know, but realize that this meaning has changed utterly. It is self-defeating to write about Hebrew in English, but here goes. --->
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@haaretzcom @SusanBenesch Exactly; even friends and allies can't turn a blind eye to the punishment & suffering of bystanders. This is a political and moral disaster for the state of #Israel, its standing in the world and respect for its people. The #Israeli political decision making has been appalling.
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Israel's sluggish delivery of food aid to Gaza is tantamount to torturing civilians, and it is turning even longtime friends into appalled critics. But Israel can relieve this needless suffering, without helping Hamas | Opinion | @SusanBenesch
https://t.co/fNytmBzBJy
haaretz.com
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From @SusanBenesch "In wars, people die," said one of my Israeli family members. It's true. But war doesn't require mass starvation of civilians."
haaretz.com
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"In the United States at the moment, there is, at minimum, a striking and alarming shift in the extent to which dangerous speech is used and condoned by political leaders and other influential people," @SusanBenesch told me.
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This kind of dangerous fear-mongering is on the rise in the United States. Think of the myth of the "great replacement" which claims there is a conspiracy to replace White people - a myth that prompted violence.
splcenter.org
The man who allegedly shot dead at least 10 people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket on Saturday may have been preoccupied by the so-called “great replacement” conspiracy theory. A sprawling...
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"I was stunned at how similar this rhetoric is from case to case. It’s as if there’s some horrible school that they all attend," @SusanBenesch told me.
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Twitter's Trust and Safety Council was a group of volunteers who over many years gave up their time when consulted by Twitter staff to offer advice on a wide range of online harms and safety issues. At no point was it a governing body or decision making.
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