Compost Mentis

My first encounter with Israelis was when I was backpacking through South America in my twenties, and I remember being shocked by how consistently awful they all were. I guess after their mandatory military service they tend to go traveling for a bit, and whenever I'd run into them they were reliably some of the nastiest people I'd ever encountered. They weren't ever nasty to me, though. I am a white westerner, and I never had a problem with them. They were nasty to the impoverished brown-skinned people who were hosting us. They were obnoxious and bullying toward local guides, they'd leave the place in a mess, and they were always trying to screw over the locals for a better deal or extra meals or favors. One time they tricked a hostel into putting up a sign in Hebrew for other Israeli backpackers which said ugly things about our hosts (they told the hostel owner it was a great review), which I only know because they were laughing hysterically about it and told me. They consistently treated the people who were looking after us like they were much lesser than us. Their pushiness and entitlement were just unbelievable. It was a very educational experience for me. I knew the Palestinians were being treated unfairly because my father had told me so, but I also had a great love of Jews and Jewish culture. I had visited Auschwitz and Dachau and Anne Frank's house in my travels, and I remember having some romantic ideas about kibbutzim. This was my first time directly encountering the reality that there is something unhealthy about Israeli society. Not Jews or Jewish culture, but Jewish Israelis. Now I see evidence of this on my news feed every day, in the IDF soldiers prancing around in the undergarments of dead and displaced Palestinian women, in the AI translations of Hebrew tweets, in the polls which show widespread Israeli approval for the atrocities in Gaza, in Israeli TikTok videos mocking the suffering of the Palestinians, in the Israelis showing up in my comments justifying the worst things in the world in the most depraved ways imaginable. My encounters with Israelis in South America were an early taste of ugly things to come. Everything I glimpsed then I've been seeing online over the past year. I keep thinking about those obnoxious pricks I met all those years ago, and about how they didn't know at the time that they were giving me very useful information for me to make use of in the future. When Israel supporters tell you to shut up about Gaza until you've been to Israel and met Israelis, just ignore them. Don't go to Israel; you're a westerner, they'll be nice to you. Go to one of the tourist spots in the global south that Israelis like to visit, one with lots of brown-skinned people who've been colonized by the west, and watch how they treat people there. That will show you what Israelis are really like.

It's time public school teachers got a raise.

Another ICC/ICJ submission for the Feb 29th aid site massacre by Occupation Forces. Operational Security is an alien term for the IDF. They literally leaked drone footage of a massacre the day it happened. Not even surprised anymore… brace yourself for apologists and zealots in the comments section.

🚨BREAKING: The government of the Belgian region of Wallonia cancelled two arms exports licenses to the zionist entity, citing the International Court of Justice's ruling. The cancelled gunpowder contracts, which were granted to PB Clermont in early 2023, had been set to arrive at the occupied port of Asdod. Four days ago, Belgium summoned the zionist ambassador after a Belgian development agency building in Gaza City was bombed by the IOF. Belgium has also refused to suspend UNRWA funding, and its major trade unions have refused arms exports to the zionist entity since the end of October. Liège, a city in the Wallonia region, also suspended ties with the zionist entity in October.