2026-07-21

Here's one dimension of the patriarchy, that Western feminists are rather silent on.

That part involving brown people, on their own land.

https://mondoweiss.net/2026/07/how-israel-has-used-sexualized-violence-as-a-weapon-of-settler-colonialism-from-1948-to-today/

How Israel has used sexualized violence as a weapon of settler colonialism from 1948 to today

An extensive new Palestinian Feminist Collective report traces Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians from the 1948 Nakba to Gaza today, showing it isn't incidental abuse but a deliberate tool of ethnic cleansing and control.


Gendered violence is an inherent tool of settler colonialism and is not unique to Israel. Here in the United States, another settler colonial state, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement has highlighted the impunity surrounding the sexual assault of indigenous women on reservations where overlapping US and native criminal jurisdictions have made indigenous women particularly vulnerable to sexual assault. That it remains a significantly under-resourced and unaddressed crisis is not an accident.

Similarly, Zionist ideology, as a nation-making enterprise, necessitates the dispossession of Palestinian land and, ultimately, Palestinian elimination through juridical negation — denying their right to self determination, forced removal, containment, and/or destruction.  Sexual violence is central to that effort as it both advances ethnic cleansing ambitions and shatters the social cohesion of those Palestinians who remain.


Why? Because it's about destroying an entire culture and community of people, and that includes everyone (children, women, and men), and that's a reality that the West is incapable of acknowledging; let alone taking responsibility. 

A reminder that the rich and powerful will never really ever stop their destruction of the planet on their own.

They will either have to be stopped by the people of the planet, or they'll be stopped when the planet is no longer inhabitable for said people.

And, it makes me wonder 1) when they'll try again to foil a resistance to their actions and, 2) how long can people remain vigilant and ever alert.


On days like this ...

... I remind myself that in any hierarchical situation, there'll always be those who end up on top. And, often times, it's because they use their knowledge as a weapon, and that the hierarchy allows - or even encourages - them to do so. All of this is in pursuit of profit - not 'growth' as some like to say.

Knowing this, I'm learning to let a lot go in that I try to not take things directed at me personally; even if that's what's intended.

I have too many things in life that 1) Give me joy, and 2) I actively am pursuing. I'm not going to let things that happen in that hierarchy affect me, because I'm choosing to not allow myself to get drawn in further. I only get involved if I have a professional responsibility to do so, and leave it at that.

2026-07-15

Who has a 'right to exist, depends a lot on the who.

Especially if that 'who' is actually a 'what', and not actually a sapient person.

Case in point -> https://mondoweiss.net/2026/07/no-israel-does-not-have-a-right-to-exist-quite-the-contrary-actually/

Israel’s record is clear. It was founded on the breach of two peremptory (jus cogens) norms: the right to self-determination of the people of the land, and the rule on the non-acquisition of territory by force, as well as on the two highest crimes in international law: genocide and aggression.   

Since then, it has refused the return of refugees and their compensation, and has continuously expanded its unlawful evictions, land theft, and colonization. 

The United Nations and every major international human rights organization have concluded that the Israeli regime is guilty of apartheid and racial segregation, unlawful occupation, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. 

The regime is now on trial for genocide at the ICJ, charges that the Court has found plausible enough to issue a series of preliminary orders (all of which the regime has ignored). 

And the same Court has found the regime guilty of unlawful occupation, the forced denial of self-determination, the unlawful acquisition of territory by force, war crimes, apartheid, and racial segregation. 

And the International Criminal Court has indicted the regime’s leaders for crimes against humanity. 

For the full eighty years of its existence, the Israeli regime has held the distinction of being in breach of the highest number of UN resolutions and ICJ decisions of any country on the planet. 

Today, the regime is unlawfully occupying Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, attacking Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and beyond, and perpetrating genocide in Palestine. 

It has carried out assassinations across the region and has admitted to (indeed, bragged about) transnational terrorist attacks with booby-trapped pagers in Lebanon

Judged against the imperatives of international law, Israel is, in the strictest sense of the term, a rogue regime, illegitimate in its founding, and devoid of all legitimacy in its conduct ever since. 

To declare that such a regime has a “right to exist” is an affront to generations of its victims, to international law, and to human decency itself. And the threat that it poses extends far beyond Palestine. 

The Israeli regime is driven by a deeply racist and fundamentally violent ideology. It is armed with advanced technologies of surveillance and death, holds powerful conventional weaponry, and possesses stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. 

It has declared policies mandating the mass murder of civilians (the Dahiya Doctrine), the killing of its own citizens (the Hannibal Directive), and the potential nuclear destruction of the world (the Samson Option). 

Its spies are active in countries around the globe, and its proxies are actively engaged in corrupting governments and institutions across the West. 

Does such a regime have a “right to exist?” No. 

In fact, dismantling such a regime and its replacement with a free Palestine with equal rights for all is not only a legal requirement, but also an existential imperative for all of humanity. 


Here's one dimension of the patriarchy, that Western feminists are rather silent on.

That part involving brown people, on their own land. https://mondoweiss.net/2026/07/how-israel-has-used-sexualized-violence-as-a-weapon-of-s...