1. The reason proper channels are important is because people take them a lot more seriously than social media (no matter how many dead people they see on the feed people keep saying they are fake). For a while I hoped against hoped that social media would be some good here but in a few months it was clear it won’t be)
2. Humans are not meant to see things like these at all and definitely not on a 24/7 cycle which is why these images are blurred when they appear on news
3. Raising awareness can be done without resorting to this as well
4. Like you said, these images usually only circulate within one’s individual bubble
5. One day, people will be against this regardless of whether these images were shared. In fact it is the title of the book by Omar El Akkad called One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
All in all, I think people arguing about raising awareness sounds somewhat similar to something similar a few years back regarding staying in the know via news. People are offended whenever they see someone who says they stopped watching the news because of the negativity, but I did something similar. Because watching the news wasn’t helping me to take action and wasn’t showing anything new to me beyond the first few headlines. If anything it causes us to get into inaction because reading the news itself can be felt as taking action or seeing the negativity (and in this case, dead bodies) can paralyse us from further action.
Lastly, I feel it is tragic that the Palestinians in their innocence thought that this will change the world’s mind which it unfortunately wouldn’t.
1. Exactly! And everyone gets caught in "why don't you feel the way I want you to feel" debates.
2. It's literally a psychological torture and brainwashing technique.
3. Yes and think about how they market the gopro footage of October 7th... you will never see it on these platforms but all the commentators in interviews and news segments refer to how horrific it is. Far more effective.
4. Which is why "raising awareness" is one of those things where you feel more heard or seen than you are. And why I'm trying to get people to focus on one message.
5. 100%
I'm old enough to remember the past 20 years of israeli massacres. This happened every single time. This time there is more social media. That's about the only difference.
We contribute to the dehumanisation of Palestinians (and Muslims by extension) when we don't protect the dignity of images.
Yes I have seen the statistics and Israel has killed at least a thousand Palestinians every year.
What is happening on social media, which people might mistake as something that only ever happened due to social media, is the culmination of the many authors and activists who have been talking about this for 75 years. It is also a result of enough Palestinians now living in the West to penetrate the discourse.
This would have gained results even without social media, the way all movements in the past did.
Jews have not spent as much time in the past 90 years sharing images of their suffering as Muslims have in the past six months of ours. This is only a slight exaggeration.
Yet the jews have strategically documented and immortalised their suffering in the right places. And continue to do so. We could even say they placed their suffering in such a way that the Palestinians can't get the same attention.
And they went to work. Building support and leverage. Putting their influence over where it matters.
Lupe Fiasco is a Muslim. The term “our people” should never be used in an exclusionary manner when speaking about Muslims after speaking about black peoples, because many black peoples are Muslim. And frankly, I’m getting tired of folks walking around acting like they do not know this.
I dont think that's a fair characterisation of what I wrote at all.
It's not a term. I was being literal, not exclusionary. I'm drawing a comparison between the sentiments expressed by the interviewer who was funnily enough exclusively talking about black people. He was not talking about Muslims or black Muslims as a people. Can that sentiment be applied to our people: Muslims? That was my point.
As for Lupe being a Muslim. He is on record denying ayahs of the Quran. I don't know if he's repented from these views but I don't feel comfortable including him in the Muslim grouping as far as this piece is concerned.
In any case, his wisdom on the matter was what I wanted to share. And his role in this piece is not of a representative of Islam but of the Black community which just happened to be the subject matter of the interview. It could have been any race or group. That was never the point.
The point is to not glorify our suffering, even if we aren't aware we're doing it.
As promised, here are my thoughts on this:
1. The reason proper channels are important is because people take them a lot more seriously than social media (no matter how many dead people they see on the feed people keep saying they are fake). For a while I hoped against hoped that social media would be some good here but in a few months it was clear it won’t be)
2. Humans are not meant to see things like these at all and definitely not on a 24/7 cycle which is why these images are blurred when they appear on news
3. Raising awareness can be done without resorting to this as well
4. Like you said, these images usually only circulate within one’s individual bubble
5. One day, people will be against this regardless of whether these images were shared. In fact it is the title of the book by Omar El Akkad called One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
All in all, I think people arguing about raising awareness sounds somewhat similar to something similar a few years back regarding staying in the know via news. People are offended whenever they see someone who says they stopped watching the news because of the negativity, but I did something similar. Because watching the news wasn’t helping me to take action and wasn’t showing anything new to me beyond the first few headlines. If anything it causes us to get into inaction because reading the news itself can be felt as taking action or seeing the negativity (and in this case, dead bodies) can paralyse us from further action.
Lastly, I feel it is tragic that the Palestinians in their innocence thought that this will change the world’s mind which it unfortunately wouldn’t.
1. Exactly! And everyone gets caught in "why don't you feel the way I want you to feel" debates.
2. It's literally a psychological torture and brainwashing technique.
3. Yes and think about how they market the gopro footage of October 7th... you will never see it on these platforms but all the commentators in interviews and news segments refer to how horrific it is. Far more effective.
4. Which is why "raising awareness" is one of those things where you feel more heard or seen than you are. And why I'm trying to get people to focus on one message.
5. 100%
I'm old enough to remember the past 20 years of israeli massacres. This happened every single time. This time there is more social media. That's about the only difference.
We contribute to the dehumanisation of Palestinians (and Muslims by extension) when we don't protect the dignity of images.
Yes I have seen the statistics and Israel has killed at least a thousand Palestinians every year.
What is happening on social media, which people might mistake as something that only ever happened due to social media, is the culmination of the many authors and activists who have been talking about this for 75 years. It is also a result of enough Palestinians now living in the West to penetrate the discourse.
This would have gained results even without social media, the way all movements in the past did.
Jews have not spent as much time in the past 90 years sharing images of their suffering as Muslims have in the past six months of ours. This is only a slight exaggeration.
Spot on.
Yet the jews have strategically documented and immortalised their suffering in the right places. And continue to do so. We could even say they placed their suffering in such a way that the Palestinians can't get the same attention.
And they went to work. Building support and leverage. Putting their influence over where it matters.
Lupe Fiasco is a Muslim. The term “our people” should never be used in an exclusionary manner when speaking about Muslims after speaking about black peoples, because many black peoples are Muslim. And frankly, I’m getting tired of folks walking around acting like they do not know this.
I dont think that's a fair characterisation of what I wrote at all.
It's not a term. I was being literal, not exclusionary. I'm drawing a comparison between the sentiments expressed by the interviewer who was funnily enough exclusively talking about black people. He was not talking about Muslims or black Muslims as a people. Can that sentiment be applied to our people: Muslims? That was my point.
As for Lupe being a Muslim. He is on record denying ayahs of the Quran. I don't know if he's repented from these views but I don't feel comfortable including him in the Muslim grouping as far as this piece is concerned.
In any case, his wisdom on the matter was what I wanted to share. And his role in this piece is not of a representative of Islam but of the Black community which just happened to be the subject matter of the interview. It could have been any race or group. That was never the point.
The point is to not glorify our suffering, even if we aren't aware we're doing it.