Kindred Spirits: The Bipartisan Love Affair With a Mass Murderer

by damagecollateral

People are giving condolences for Lindsey Graham, if you can believe it. People like Trump, like Mark Levin—you know, awful ones, and it makes sense, right? Birds of a feather mourn each other—especially when they’re covered in the same blood, or however that saying goes.

But wait—Democrat Amy Klobuchar had something to say, too. Say what, Amy?

“Even in his sixties, he would get off a plane in a foreign land with a twinkle in his eye and look at me as if to say, ‘Can you believe we are actually here and doing this?'” … “I will miss him.“

I know the feeling, Amy. I still miss Stalin myself. I mean, who doesn’t?

Cory Booker, the other AIPAC Shakur, was not to be outdone. His secretion came in the form of a video:

“I will miss my perhaps most unexpected friend in the Senate and someone with whom I got some good things done.”

Look, it’s a normal human impulse to miss your baby-killing homie when he dies, okay? Seriously, what kind of person would Cory be not to miss him? Sheesh.

Adam Schiff? You had a jaw wag, too?

“Though we did not often agree, Senator Graham was never disagreeable.“

Never? As in, not once? What would have made him disagreeable to you, Adam? Heck, even I am disagreeable sometimes. Ok—most of the time.

I guess if Graham were a pro-Palestine advocate…

And no—I’m not surprised. It was the Democratic establishment, after all, that gave us the Gaza Holocaust, remember? It was Dems like Blinken and Sullivan and those conspicuously Black outpatients vetoing ceasefires at the UN. Good times.

So no, it’s not surprising. Not one bit.

But let’s take a step back and ponder the ghoulishness here. Really live it for a minute. These Dems know for a fact that Missile Slut Graham was at least an open advocate for—if not responsible for—the deaths of countless people, possibly millions of human beings. Put yourself in the place of a father in Fallujah or a mother in Gaza who lost all their loved ones and their home. Think of the kind of person, the caliber of Homo sapiens, who would give condolences for the person who took away your everything and had no regrets about it.

Take it a step further: consider the fact that Lisping Lethal Lindsey was, for almost certain, going to be the reason why many more innocent people would have died had he lived. Wrap your head around the fact that anyone could be sad that he was stopped before he could bring said death upon others. Let it declare itself in your mind just as it is: they are sad that the life of a perpetual killer—who they know would have killed many more people had he lived—ended. If I’m wrong, please correct me.

And they went out of their way to publicly mourn him! Who forced you to do it, Democrats? Who would have been mad at you for not speaking? Whatever happened to your golden god of silence? Remember? It’s the thing you’re used to doing when it comes to Gaza. Your votes kill Palestinians every single day and you’re silent about it every single day. Can’t you extend the same superpower of shutting the f*ck up to the death of a literal murder fetishist?

But let’s also ponder the tribalism. The degree of it. Graham is one of ours, so he gets to kill children and be missed when he croaks. Palestinians? Afghans? Why, they’re complicated. Like, they dress differently, darn it. Also, they don’t drink. They’re this other tribe, you see, but Lindsey looked like us, he hung out around us, he spoke like us, so it follows naturally that we can mourn the death of an unrepentant mass murderer. 

Seriously, try to let your mind sink into it for a minute. Try to justify it to yourself, if you can.

I ask in the name of all the life God has breathed: What in the actual f*ck is wrong with these Democrats?

Ponder the dehumanization. Would Warren have tweeted kind words about Graham had it been one of her family members killed by him? Not in a million years, and she knows it. But it wasn’t one of her kin. It was other people whose lives aren’t as important. Yes, that’s the simple, naked truth, and let’s not conceal any part of it with analytical embellishments. Ponder it, because we need to understand the kind of people we’re dealing with here.

Ponder the heartlessness. Ponder how the deletion of millions of human lives is such a footnote of a footnote, such a neutrino that it doesn’t even get a mention. Not one word in all the elegies. Think how it becomes pure casual happenstance for politicians to snuff out other people’s souls that, to them, it stops registering. It’s not a thing. It’s nothing. No meter beeps. What people? What moms? What crayon-holding 8-year old girls? What doting grandpas? What memories? What joy? What childhoods? What homes?

But, perhaps above all, ponder the deceit. The deceit of a party that branded itself as the champion of human rights. Ponder the conniving nature of such individuals. The Machiavellianism, the coldness of cunning, the lengths their manipulative ways would go to. The sheer perniciousness of using the mask of kindness as a weapon to enable the macabre.

Here’s the thing—I didn’t want to have to ponder any of that. I didn’t want to realize that level of dark, that low of a stoop. I was happy living in my ignorant bliss. I didn’t want any of this; it was shoved into my being. They forced me to see them for what they are in spite of me. They grabbed my face, peeled my eyelids open, and looked me in the eye as they metamorphosed into something I wish I could ever unsee.

I can’t unsee. I can’t unrealize.

These people have to go. Humanity cannot move forward with them planted in our collective back like a dagger. We can’t have a Capitol made of murderers and the mourners of murderers. This can’t be the best we can get.

The Settler-Colonialism Two-Step: Khanna’s Dance With Zionism

by damagecollateral

Look, I’ll give credit where it’s due. When Ro Khanna calls Gaza a genocide—which he did, co-sponsoring Rashida Tlaib’s resolution in 2025 that officially recognized Israel’s actions as genocidal—he’s saying something real 1. When he went to the West Bank and got blockaded by armed settlers with American-made M4s, he did what every congressperson should do: see the occupation through Palestinian eyes, not the usual wine-and-dine tour where they kiss the Western Wall and come home to write a glowing op-ed 2.

Khanna’s team got surrounded by masked men with rifles. The IDF statement disputes the details—they say troops “dispersed the Israeli civilians” while Khanna says the soldiers sided with the settlers 3. But here’s the thing: even the IDF’s version admits armed settlers blocked a sitting congressman, kicked tires, cursed at them, laughed at them, and the army had to clear the road 3. That’s a horror show, and Khanna was right to call it out.

But here’s where the sincerity check bounces off the wall.

After over a hundred years of Palestinian dispossession—from the Nakba in 1948 to the systematic destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages—the time for incremental politics is OVER. 4 Khanna wants credit for being “the good one.” The progressive who says the right things but stops short of the finish line.

The BDS Problem

Let’s talk about the big one. Khanna has never supported BDS 5. In fact, he told the Jewish News of Northern California that he’s “unequivocally, since Day 1, condemned ‘globalize the intifada'” and voted to condemn “from the river to the sea” 6.

If you’re not calling for BDS in 2026, you’re a complete fraud. Sorry, not sorry. Any state that does what Israel’s been doing for decades would be sanctioned, and BDS is the only nonviolent tool Palestinians have asked the world to use. It’s the actual, Palestinian-led movement for justice. Khanna opposing it while calling himself a progressive is like saying you support civil rights but you’re against sit-ins.

The Zionism Two-Step

This is where it gets genuinely absurd. Khanna told J. Weekly in October 2025 that he supports Zionism—”self-determination for the Jewish people” and the “right for Israel to exist” 7. He said it’s antisemitic to oppose a Jewish state. Meanwhile, he’s co-sponsoring genocide resolutions and calling for Palestinian statehood 1.

Being pro-Palestine while insisting on the right of a colony built on stealing their land to exist is an oxymoron. It doesn’t fool anyone anymore.

The Two-State Nonsense

If you still advocate for the two-state solution in 2026, please stop talking about Palestine. Your base has moved on. The two-state solution has been a coffin for Palestinian rights for decades. It’s what they wheel out when they want to sound reasonable while the settlements expand—and by the way, the IDF’s own numbers show 700,000 Jews living in settlements illegal under international law 8.

Khanna says he supports a two-state solution but not “Greater Israel” 7. What does that mean in practice? It means more negotiations, more incrementalism, more Palestinian suffering while everyone waits for a “viable state” that’s been made geographically impossible by settlement blocs.

If you’re not calling for the right of all Palestinians to return to all of historic Palestine, for the right of all Palestinians to have full equality with all Israelis, you’re just another Joe Biden with a brown face.

The Politics of Convenience

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: being pro-Palestine is now politically smart for Democrats. It’s not political uranium like it used to be; it’s a political treasure trove. The base has shifted. Polls show 58% of Democrats think the U.S. is “too supportive” of Israel 9. Khanna is eyeing a 2028 presidential run 10. Of course he’s going to climb on the backs of Palestinians to get to higher office.

TrackAIPAC endorsed him after he signed their PEACE Pledge 11. Cute. But what does that actually mean? The group even admitted they only gave him a label saying “We encourage this representative to continue improving their legislative record” 11. Compare that to AOC, who has a green card and a positive label. Khanna is halfway there, but he won’t take the full step.

The Bottom Line

I appreciate Khanna’s words. I appreciate that he went to the West Bank and saw the reality. But words and trips don’t mean a damn thing if you’re not willing to call for complete and actual justice for Palestinians.

That means supporting BDS. That means rejecting Zionism as a settler-colonial project. That means calling for the right of return. That means scrapping the two-state fantasy.

If you’re not there, you’re not going to stop Palestinian suffering. You’re just another politician using their pain to get a promotion. And the Palestinians have had enough of that.

Sources & References

1. Khanna co-sponsored H.Res. 789 (2025) recognizing Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. Congress.gov

2. Khanna describes West Bank trip in +972 Magazine interview, July 2026: “This is what every member should see.”

3. IDF statement to The Jerusalem Post, July 10, 2026: “IDF forces arrived, dispersed the Israeli civilians, and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way.” Khanna’s account via CNN: “Settlers detained us; the IDF sided with them.” Jerusalem Post

4. UNRWA data on Palestinian refugees: ~5.9 million registered refugees (2025). Nakba & ongoing dispossession documented by B’Tselem and Al-Haq.

5. Khanna statement to Jewish News of Northern California, June 2025: “I’ve never supported BDS.” J. Weekly

6. Khanna voted in favor of H.Res. 765 (2025) condemning the phrase “from the river to the sea.” Congress.gov

7. Khanna interview with J. Weekly, October 2025: “I support Zionism — self-determination for the Jewish people.” J. Weekly

8. Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (2025) reports 700,000+ settlers in West Bank. International Court of Justice (2024) advisory opinion: settlements illegal under international law.

9. Pew Research Center (June 2026): “58% of Democrats say U.S. is too supportive of Israel.”

10.Politico (March 2026): “Khanna is actively building infrastructure for a potential 2028 presidential run.”

11. TrackAIPAC PEACE Pledge & Khanna endorsement, July 2026. Label: “We encourage this representative to continue improving their legislative record.” TrackAIPAC

All URLs accessed July 2026. The views expressed are solely those of the author.

The Performance of Regret: How Liberals Will Mourn Palestine the Way They Mourn the Natives: When It’s Far Too Late

by damagecollateral
Oh regret. Sweet, sweet regret

So PBS, in its annual ritual of self-flagellation-by-parenthesis, decided to slip a little historical footnote into the Fourth of July programming. You know the one: “By the way, those democratic ideals you’re celebrating? Yeah, the Iroquois kind of had that whole federalism thing going first.” And sure, fine. Credit where it’s due. Historical accuracy isn’t the enemy here.

But here’s what’s really going on, and it’s the kind of thing that would make a lesser journalist’s head spin. PBS—and by extension the entire liberal establishment—isn’t actually sorry about what happened to the Natives. They’re not sorry in any way that costs anything. They’re sorry the way a man who ran over your dog is sorry—while he’s already backing over the cat.

Because here’s the logic they want you to swallow: We regret the genocide. We would have stopped it. We would have lived as equals. We would never have forced them into shrinking enclaves, destroyed their buffalo, burned their crops. But—and this is the crucial part—it’s too late now. What’s done is done. Tragic. Anyway, pass the potato salad.

This is the liberal get-out-of-jail-free card. You can express unlimited remorse for the past as long as you don’t have to do a single thing in the present. It’s a theology of convenient grief—a sort of moral insurance policy that costs exactly nothing and yields maximum self-congratulation.

But what if there were a situation, unfolding right this very minute, funded by your tax dollars, shielded by your diplomatic might, where exactly the same thing is happening? What if there was a native population being systematically stripped of land, crammed into walled enclaves, denied the right to return to homes that are now occupied by people who showed up seventy-eight years ago with guns and a divine deed? What if—and stay with me here—what if the United States could, at this very moment, prove that it actually learned something? That it wasn’t just blowing historical smoke up its own rear end?

That situation is called Palestine.

And the silence from the very people who weep into their handkerchiefs over Wounded Knee is deafening.

If the regret were real, you would see a single demand: right of return. Full citizenship. Equal rights for everyone from the river to the sea. You would see sanctions. You would see the aid spigot—the billions of dollars we’ve funneled to Israel every year since Truman was in office—turned completely off. You would see Americans finally acknowledging that we created this monster, we armed it, we gave it diplomatic cover at the UN, we could have stopped the Nakbah in 1948 but actively chose not to, and we have continued to choose not to every single day since.

But that would require admitting something. That would require admitting that the “two-state solution” isn’t a solution at all—it’s a permanent normalization of land theft, a way to make Palestinian statelessness official policy while everyone shakes hands and smiles for the cameras.

So instead, we get the waiting game.

Here’s the plan, as best I can tell: We wait. We keep our heads down. We let Israel do what it’s doing—shrinking Palestinian existence, walling them in, reducing them to an ever-smaller fraction of what they had, clandestinely trickle-expelling them to other countries. We let the refugee camps fester for another generation or two hoping their host countries would eventually throw their hands up and just give them citizenship. We let the ethnic cleansing run its course until there’s barely anything left to argue about.

And then—then—when it’s all over, when the Palestinians have been reduced to a historical footnote of their own, when there’s nothing left but museum exhibits and the occasional PBS documentary—that’s when we’ll weep. That’s when we’ll gather our Palestinian flag handkerchiefs and mourn. That’s when we’ll say, “We should have done something. We should have given them the right to return. We should have treated them like South Africans and ended apartheid.”

And then we’ll add the magic words: “But it’s too late now. What’s done is done.“

It’s a beautiful, airtight system of perpetual moral absolution. You get to feel terrible about history while actively funding the next chapter of it. You get to hold the shovel and cry about the hole at the same time. And when the hole is deep enough, you can cover it over, plant a flag, and give a speech about how you would have done things differently if only you’d been in charge.

That’s the game. That’s always been the game. And if you think for one second that the establishment liberals are actually serious about breaking it, I’ve got a federally funded documentary on Native American contributions to democracy that I’d like to sell you.

The Real Litmus Test Isn’t Refusing AIPAC Money—It’s What You Do After

by damagecollateral

Let’s give credit where it’s due: refusing AIPAC money in today’s Democratic Party takes a certain kind of nerve. It’s not nothing. It’s walking into a room full of people holding cash and saying, “No thanks, I’ll take the death threats instead.” That takes spine, and spine is in short supply on Capitol Hill.

But here’s the difference between those who just want to stop the genocide so they can go back to feeling comfortable with the world and those who want lasting peace and an actual end to the conflict that is at the heart of global unrest: refusing the money is the bare minimum. It’s the opening move, not the final exam. And if we treat it like the finish line, we’re setting ourselves up for the same old disappointment.

Because even politicians who refuse to take AIPAC money, call for ending weapons and money to Israel, call for ending settler violence, and/or call for implementing the two-state solution while still believing in Israel’s co-called right to exist as a Jewish state are still Zionists, and the problem with lesser Zionists is that, when push comes to shove, they are just as capable of mega macabre acts as the overt ones. Look at Joe Biden. We chose him over Trump because Trump was openly Netanyahu’s real estate agent—moving the embassy, gifting the Golan, treating the West Bank like a timeshare. And what did we get? A holocaust. Not hyperbole. An actual, documented genocide, live-streamed to our phones. Kamala would have been more polite about it, but the outcome? Gaza depopulated by now, just with more sympathetic press releases.

The same goes for the Amy Klobuchars, Cory Bookers, and Hakeem Jeffrieses of the world. They’ll stand for a photo with Netanyahu—war criminal, architect of slaughter—and call it diplomacy. They’ll vote for arms packages and call it “supporting our ally.” They don’t view themselves as radically evil as they are, they view themselves as normal. You see, to them, accepting Israel’s founding and existence is normal, and that’s why we can’t have people like them.

So when a politician steps up and says, “I won’t take AIPAC money,” that’s worth noting. It’s a break from the consensus. It’s costly. It invites primary challenges, smear campaigns, and the full weight of a lobbying apparatus that treats Palestine like a PR problem.

But it’s not enough. Not even close.

Here’s what separates the real thing from the performance:

1. BDS isn’t optional. If you’re not willing to support boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel and the companies that prop up its occupation, you’re not serious about ending apartheid. The Palestinian civil society call in 2005 wasn’t a suggestion—it was a strategy. Ignoring it is ignoring the people you claim to stand with.

2. The right of return for all Palestinians into all of historic Palestine isn’t negotiable. UN Resolution 194 wasn’t a footnote. Palestinians didn’t leave because they wanted to—they were driven out, dispossessed, and replaced. They still live in refugee camps, generations later, while their old homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and the hundreds of Palestinian villages now engulfed in “Israel” are occupied by people who had no connection to the land. They were traded generational poverty for their generational wealth. Any politician who sidesteps this is normalizing theft and ethnic cleansing.

3. Two states is dead. Long live equality. The two-state solution isn’t a solution anymore—it’s a rhetorical coffin. Settlements have carved up the West Bank past the point of viability. What we have is one state, and it’s an apartheid state. The only moral path forward is full equality for everyone between the river and the sea—whether through one state, a federation, or something we haven’t imagined yet. Every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza deserves the same rights as any Jew in 1948 Palestine, and every diaspora Palestinian deserves the same right to go back to historic Palestine and gain citizenship that Jews around the world can gain.

This isn’t about purity-testing the people who are actually trying. It’s about keeping the goalposts where they belong. The politicians who refuse AIPAC money deserve our respect—and our scrutiny. Because if they stop at “I said no to the check,” they’re still selling us short.

The system doesn’t need tweaks. It needs dismantling. And that starts with demanding more from the people who claim to be on the right side—not less.

So no, don’t attack the ones who’ve taken the courageous step. Praise them. Then hand them a list of what comes next. Because without these demands, we’re not building peace—we’re just trading one set of enablers for another, and the bodies keep piling up.

And that’s the grift we’ve all been sold.

The New York Times’ Recurring Gift of Poisoned Honey: How a Genocide Apologist Machine Pretends to Have a Conscience

by damagecollateral

You probably heard the buzz. The New York Times, in its infinite wisdom, decided to let Nicholas Kristof—its resident paternalistic center-left tourist—wander into the opinion pages this week to write about the sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

And look, full disclosure: the piece is, in its raw content, damning. Kristof documents a horrifying pattern of abuse that deserves condemnation. But if you think this is a turning point for the Gray Lady, you haven’t been paying attention for the last two years. This isn’t journalism. It’s a restoration project. It’s the Times trying to sandblast the blood off its own hands while charging you for a subscription.

The Gore S’more

Here is the Collateral Damage Rule of Mainstream Genocide Coverage: They will tell you the truth, but only if they can wrap it in two layers of bullshit.

Kristof does this masterfully. He spends paragraphs documenting systematic rape—including the dog allegations, which we now understand are medically plausible and supported by multiple survivor testimonies. But then, like a priest hedging his bets before a mob boss, he bookends the whole thing with the Times’ favorite Zio-lore: the “Hamas rape” narrative of October 7th.

Let’s be clear-eyed about this. The Times published a series of free-of-evidence “reports”—framed as news, not opinion—that claimed to document systematic sexual violence by Hamas. When Israel is the accused? It’s an opinion column. When Palestinians are the accused? It’s front-page news. As the group Writers Against the War on Gaza noted, the Times has spent this entire war acting as a “mouthpiece for American imperialism,” advising its own reporters to avoid words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”

Months ago, a group of surgeons who volunteered in Gaza gave horrifying testimony. Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an American surgeon, told the press—and later the courts—that he and the rest of the group witnessed a clear pattern of Palestinian children presenting to the ER with sniper shots to the head.

Where was that published? If you said “the opinion section” or ignored entirely, give yourself a cigar. The Times didn’t treat that as a news flash. Because the narrative didn’t have a “both sides” hook.

But this Kristof piece? It’s designed to do two things:

  1. Restore credibility with the anti-war left.
  2. Whitewash the paper’s history of aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing.

The Times is still facing a lawsuit from Israel over this very piece, which they’ve labeled a “blood libel.” And while I have zero sympathy for Bibi Netanyahu’s legal intimidation tactics—the lawsuit is likely a sham to stifle speech—the dance is instructive. The Times gets to play the martyr for press freedom while also laundering propaganda.

The Boycott We Actually Need

Here is the hardest truth for the anti-imperialist crowd to swallow: Sharing this article as a “win” for Palestine makes you look like an opportunist.

You cannot spend six months screaming “Boycott the Times!” only to turn around and post a gift link to Kristof because he finally said something you liked. That is the definition of being played. The Times is counting on you to do that. They want the clicks. They want to show advertisers that even their critics can’t look away.

As the saying goes, the Times published a piece that confirms the Times has been lying to you for a year, and they want a medal for it.

The only correct response is to amplify independent journalists—the ones who have been reporting on this torture for months without the “opinion” label—while calling for a boycott of the imperialist mouthpiece.

A world without the New York Times as the gatekeeper of war crimes is a world less dangerous. I really, truly, from the bottom of my heart, hope the lawsuit or simple bankruptcy brings it to its knees. It can’t happen soon enough.

How to deal with Bondi (not the pedophile protector one)

by damagecollateral
They’ll scream at us, and we’ll scream back louder than ever

(This article applies whether the Bondi Beach attack was a psy-op or not)

Let’s be clear about what happened yesterday at Bondi Beach. It was a massacre, a gruesome spectacle of violence that the media will feast on for days. But if you think this was some unforeseeable tragedy, a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky, you haven’t been paying attention. You’ve been swallowing the official narrative like a free lunch.

Just as the October 7th attack was the grim, predictable outcome of decades of Israeli sadism, ethnic cleansing, and a supremacist ideology that views non-Jews as subhuman, the attack at Bondi was inevitable. It was baked into the cake. You can’t stomp on a people’s face for 75 years, bomb their children into oblivion, starve them, and humiliate them on a daily basis without expecting some of that rage to eventually blow back in horrific, unpredictable ways. And make no mistake, there will be more, and Zionists are praying hard, if not orchestrating, for it. This is not an anomaly; it is the new normal, the logical consequence of a policy of endless, unpunished aggression.

And the response? It’s a script we know by heart. The Israeli propaganda machine, already greased and ready to go, will kick into high gear. Its proxies in Western media and politics will wail about a “new wave of terror,” using the bloodshed to justify their own brutality and paint anyone who dares to question the official narrative as a sympathizer. They will weaponize this tragedy just as they have weaponized every other, to deflect from the genocide they are actively perpetrating.

The last thing any of us should do right now is fall for this. The last thing we should do is let this event distract us, or worse, make us shrink. That is precisely what the Zionists want. They want you to look at the bloody sand in Australia and forget the bloody rubble in Gaza. They want you to be so overwhelmed by their pain that you no longer have the energy to fight for justice for their victims.

So what do we do? We use Bondi to double down. We get louder.

This is the moment to up the ante on exposing Israeli atrocities, both the current live-streamed genocide and the historical record of dispossession and terror that founded the state. We must constantly, relentlessly remind everyone that attacks like Bondi are not the cause of the problem, but a symptom. The focus must shift from the pathetic, predictable chorus of “what a terrible event” to the cold, hard truth: “We told you this would happen if you didn’t change your ways.” This is not about condoning violence; it’s about explaining its origins. It’s about stating, unequivocally, that the blood of these victims is also on the hands of the politicians and ideologues who created the conditions for this to happen.

And we must hammer home the point that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. This is not a nuance; it is the central battlefield. We need to weave this message into every march, every talk, every social media post. Zionism is a political ideology, a violent, colonial project, and it is no more synonymous with Judaism than fascism is with Italianism. To equate the two is a deliberate, cynical smear tactic designed to shut down all debate.

Furthermore, and just as importantly, we must turn this moment into an opportunity for real talk about value. Ten people die at Bondi, and the world stops. Governments issue solemn statements, flags fly at half-mast, and the media dedicates 24/7 coverage. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are systematically exterminated in Gaza, a genocide funded and armed by the West, and it’s a “complex conflict.” It’s a “tragedy” with “two sides.” To give these ten lives more weight, more outrage, more political capital than the tens of thousands of lives snuffed out by Israeli bombs when they are literally a blip in the totality of carnage is not just biased; it is an act of profound, seething racism. It is the clearest demonstration imaginable of whose life the world deems valuable and whose it deems disposable.

So no, this is not the time to be intimidated. It is not the time to cower in fear of government crackdowns or online mobs. We don’t need to defend ourselves or apologize for what we stand for. The truth is a defense in itself. We already have the majority of the public on our side of the fundamental question: the slaughter in Gaza must stop. Our job is to connect that sentiment to its root cause.

Slowing down now will send the wrong message to Zionists. It will teach them that crimes like Bondi work. It will incentivize them to work with the MI6 and all the other happy-to-oblige intel agencies to commit more. That’s why doubling down on the pro-Palestine message is necessary to prevent future crimes, to save lives!

This is the time to scream from the rooftops how utterly racist it is that the death of a handful of Westerners warrants global action while the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians earns a shrug. This is the time to declare, loudly and without apology, that the only path to peace, for Palestinians and for Jews alike, is for the West to finally pull the plug on the rotten, corrupt, and murderous Zionist project. And it is the time to say the one thing they desperately don’t want you to believe: No Jew will ever be truly safe so long as the ideology of Zionism, which conflates Jewish identity with a violent, colonial state, continues to exist. Their project is a death trap, and this is not the time to stop saying so.

So to summarize, our messaging should include the following points:

1- Spare us the crying and focus on the root of the problem. If you won’t, we will.

2- Anyone who’s calling for a dramatic uptick in suppression of pro-Palestine speech while not calling for stopping weapons and intelligence assistance to Israel is not only pro-fascist, but is deeply, brazenly hateful and supremacist toward Arabs, Muslims, and especially Palestinians.

3- In order to prevent future attacks like Bondi and save lives, it is ever more prudent to work on ending Zionism now.

4- Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and never was. Thousands of Jews, holocaust scholars, and holocaust survivors agree.

The Zionist Playbook: What 300 Million Silenced Arabs Can Teach Us About Where This Is Heading

by damagecollateral

Egyptian political prisons are looking more and more like they’d be right at home in America

There’s a pattern emerging in how pro-Israel advocates are responding to dissent in America, and it doesn’t involve winning hearts and minds. University presidents were sacked. Students were expelled. Professors were fired. Deportations for speech. Local governments are passing increasingly draconian anti-BDS resolutions. And the people behind these efforts aren’t exactly being subtle about it.

What’s striking isn’t just the heavy-handedness—it’s the openness. Major donors discuss their leverage over universities in newspaper interviews. Lobby groups openly strategize about buying media companies and increasing “control” over government policy. They’re not hiding the ball. In fact, they’re so brazen about deploying wealth and political muscle that they’re inadvertently reinforcing some of the oldest and ugliest stereotypes about Jewish power—leading to the darkly funny speculation that maybe, just maybe, this is intentional. Create enough anxiety about antisemitism, the theory goes, and you’ve got your pretext for an even bigger crackdown.

The question is whether this strategy can actually work. Can you suppress a political movement through sheer force—financial pressure, institutional capture, legal intimidation—without ever bothering to change anyone’s mind?

For an answer, look east.

The Middle East Laboratory

Across the Arab world, roughly 300 million people live under regimes that are, to varying degrees, in the business of protecting Israel from their own populations. This isn’t conspiracy theory; it’s barely even subtext. These governments were installed with Western backing, maintained with Western support, and in many cases rely on Israeli surveillance technology and intelligence sharing to keep the lid on.

The dissidents these regimes crush—whether they’re Islamists, leftists, or just people asking for basic rights—aren’t usually being imprisoned because they’re decrying corruption. They’re being imprisoned because they see their governments for what they are: subordinate to Western interests, including the protection of Israel. And the scale of repression required to maintain this arrangement is staggering. Hundreds of thousands killed, disappeared, imprisoned, exiled. Families destroyed. Entire generations of opposition ground into dust.

These movements didn’t go quietly. In fact, many fought hard—which only gave their autocrats the excuse to crack down harder. Eventually, after enough bullets and prison cells, they learned: you go silent, or you disappear.

The result? Walk through Cairo, Amman, Riyadh. Notice something missing? Street protests for Gaza are nearly nonexistent. Not because Arabs don’t care—they’re overwhelmingly anti-Zionist—but because they’d be shot for it. Meanwhile, their governments are quietly helping Israel, financially and militarily, and there’s nothing their populations can do about it.

This doesn’t work forever. Oppression breeds resentment, and eventually, revolt. But here’s the thing: that’s actually fine with the people running this system. The West has gotten very good at subverting revolts. See: Arab Spring, results of.

The Lesson: Repression Works (For a While)

What we might not fully appreciate, sitting in our relatively comfortable American context, is that while brutal repression doesn’t change minds, it absolutely stops open dissent. We’re already seeing it on college campuses. A few expulsions, some disciplinary actions, and suddenly the encampments are gone. The protests have quieted. Students have learned what happens when you stick your neck out.

So imagine if the government went further. Not just expulsions—actual criminal penalties. Not just penalties—actual violence. History suggests that killing a few dissidents sends a very effective chill through a movement.

And here’s where the Middle East comparison gets uncomfortable: if we don’t stop this trajectory now, there’s no natural endpoint. Learning from Muslim-majority countries, Zionist-driven authoritarianism doesn’t stop at “a little bit of censorship.” It stops nowhere.

Presidents for life? Sure. Constitutional rewrites to consolidate power? Ask Egypt how that goes. Thousands disappeared into political prisons? Standard operating procedure in the region. And lest you think this is hyperbole, consider that Jonathan Pollard—the convicted Israeli spy—recently mused about using nuclear weapons if necessary. These people are not shy about their willingness to step on your neck and make you comply, whether you like it or not.

“But We Have Guns”

Some will say this can’t happen here because Americans are armed. The Second Amendment, the militias, the culture of resistance—surely that’s a firewall against tyranny.

I don’t buy it. Individual firearms and loosely organized militias don’t stop a determined government with modern surveillance, legal machinery, and overwhelming force. They just don’t. The fantasy of armed resistance collapses the moment you’re up against a state apparatus that’s willing to use its full weight.

The Long Game

So where does this leave us?

First, don’t assume it can’t get worse. It can get much, much worse. The people driving this have shown us, through their actions across the Middle East, exactly how far they’re willing to go.

Second, if you want to stop it, you need to start now. And you need to plan for a long, grinding fight. This isn’t going away because you posted the right thread or attended the right protest. It’s going away because enough people commit to tireless, persistent resistance over years and decades.

The alternative is learning the lesson that 300 million Arabs have already learned: when you’re up against people with enough money, enough political influence, and enough shamelessness to say the quiet part loud, silence becomes survival.

And they’re counting on you choosing silence.

The Punchline That Stopped Being Funny

by damagecollateral

Or: How I Learned to Stop Laughing and See the Abyss

One can be evil and colorful at the same time

There’s a moment in every con when the mark realizes he’s been had. Mine came late—embarrassingly late. I’d been riding the Trump rollercoaster for years, white-knuckling it through loop-de-loops of outrage and absurdity, telling myself it was all part of some grand American farce. The joke was on the liberals, the establishment, the whole rotten system. Trump was the whoopee cushion at the funeral of American decorum, and I was too busy laughing to notice the corpse was real.

I’ll own it: I fell for it. Not the MAGA hat stuff—I never voted for the guy—but something maybe worse. I fell for the idea that Trump was amusing. That his chaos was a kind of performance art. That beneath the carnival barker shtick was just another corrupt politician, no better or worse than the rest, just louder and more honest about it.

I was wrong.

The scales didn’t fall all at once. They peeled away in layers, like old paint on a toxic building. First came the AI videos mocking Palestinians during what can only be described as a genocide he was actively facilitating. Dark, sure, but Trump had always trafficked in dark humor, right? Then the double-cross: promising to end the siege in exchange for a dual-citizen hostage, the kind of transactional cruelty that would make a Gilded Age robber baron blush. I remember thinking, “Yeah, that’s nasty, but he’s still shaking things up, still saying things others won’t…”

The voice of the con artist’s best friend: the rationalization.

Then Jeffrey Epstein entered the picture—yes, that Epstein. In a private email that surfaced, the late pedophile and professional blackmailer wrote something that stopped me cold: “I have met some very bad people… none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.”

Now, you might ask: why would I take moral guidance from Jeffrey Epstein? Fair question. But here’s the thing about monsters—they recognize their own. When a man who trafficked children for the world’s elite says someone else is worse than anyone he’s ever met, you have to at least consider the possibility that he’s not exaggerating.

That’s when I started going back through the highlight reel, except this time I wasn’t watching for the laugh lines. I was looking at where everything landed. And I had to do something I’d resisted for years: I had to open my heart to darkness. Not the metaphorical darkness of “politics I disagree with,” but the actual thing—the possibility that some people are so profoundly deformed at their core that most of us literally can’t see it. Our imaginations won’t let us. It’s too outside the normal range of human behavior.

The final nail came with Gaza. After brokering what he called a “ceasefire,” Trump executed an about-face so brazen it would have made Machiavelli nauseous. His administration strong-armed the UN Security Council into accepting a plan that essentially outsourced the genocide, giving the Israelis a breather while other nations coordinated with them to finish ethnically cleansing Gaza—or at least demilitarize it, which amounts to the same thing for a people resisting occupation after surviving what may be the holocaust of our time.

That’s when I finally saw him clearly. And I didn’t like what I saw. Not one bit.

I can already hear the chorus: “Really? Now you see it? What about ICE? The racism? The pardons for war criminals? The corruption? The election interference? The degradation of basic decency? The tariffs that destroyed farmers? The cuts to veterans’ benefits, SNAP, Medicare?”

The list is long, and it’s a valid indictment—of Trump, but also of me. Yes, I saw all of that. But not like I do now. Not with the clarity that comes from accepting what I’d been avoiding: that this isn’t just another corrupt politician. This is something else.

I think Trump knows it too. There was a moment recently when he said he doesn’t think he’ll make it to heaven. It was delivered with his usual glibness, but I heard something underneath it—a kind of acknowledgment. The presidency didn’t create his malice; it unleashed it. It gave him the power to reach his full dark potential, potential he’d had all along. The office served as both amplifier and indictment.

Here’s what I’ve learned, late though the lesson comes: Trump’s greatest trick isn’t the lies or the bluster or the norm-breaking. It’s the way he keeps you from believing he’s as bad as he actually is. The sheer scale of it, the constant motion, the circus atmosphere—it’s all camouflage. We keep looking for the punchline because we can’t accept that the joke is on us, and it isn’t funny.

So stop being distracted by the antics. Stop giving him the benefit of the doubt. Stop telling yourself it’s all part of some complex strategy or that he’s “just playing politics.” That’s the con. You’re the mark. Believe he’s a deeply bad person and start seeing his actions in that light. Not because it’s politically convenient, but because it’s true.

The rollercoaster is still running. The question is whether you’re going to keep riding it, or finally get off and look at what it’s built on.

I got off. Late, yes. Too late, probably. But I got off.

The ground is steadier here, if lonelier. And from here, you can see the whole machine for what it is: not a ride at all, but a wreck in slow motion, with Trump’s grinning face painted on the front car as it hurtles toward something none of us should want to see.

The Mirror We Refuse to Look Into

by damagecollateral

Remember him? Of course you don’t.

There’s a ritual that plays out every time Israel does something particularly barbaric in Gaza. American officials furrow their brows. Cable news hosts purse their lips. Someone always says it: “We would never do that.”

Really?

Netanyahu has been saying something for months that nobody wants to hear. He keeps pointing out that Israel is doing exactly what America has done, over and over again. Biden himself reportedly confirmed that Netanyahu told him privately he’s doing the same thing America did in Vietnam—and much less than what we did in World War II.

The man’s a monster, sure. But on this point? He’s not wrong.

The Afghan Preview

Let’s talk about Afghanistan, shall we? The war Americans have already memory-holed, the one that’s been sanded down into a vague story about withdrawal chaos and not much else.

After 2001, we dropped an untold number of 5,000-pound bunker busters and 15,000-pound “daisy cutter” bombs in round-the-clock bombing campaigns. Cluster bombs—weapons that scatter smaller bomblets across wide areas, many of which fail to detonate and later kill children—were dropped indiscriminately. We hit UN agencies. We destroyed a Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, wiping out humanitarian supplies.

And here’s where it gets truly American: despite ongoing communication between the Red Cross and U.S. forces, we bombed the same Red Cross compound again on October 26, 2001. We destroyed supplies meant for 50,000 Afghans. Twice. With coordination channels open.

Within the first year alone, we displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghans. Estimates put civilian deaths at 3,000 to 4,000 in that first year, with an additional 19,800 refugees dying from hunger, disease, and cold during displacement. That’s not even counting the combatants, or the twenty years that followed.

We dropped thousands of cluster bombs. We used depleted uranium munitions. We systematically destroyed infrastructure: bridges, water supplies, roads, communication systems, power plants, electrical facilities. Hospital and clinic power supplies were knocked out, forcing medical facilities onto diesel generators—assuming they could get diesel. Then we started targeting privately owned fuel trucks, turning even diesel into a luxury item.

Picture the hospitals: no supplies, surgeries performed without anesthetic, staff fleeing, facilities crammed beyond capacity. We started with 500-pound bombs, then upgraded to 2,000-pounders as the war dragged on.

Wedding bombings. School bombings. Funeral bombings. These aren’t anomalies—they’re patterns.

Iraq: A Million Souls for a Lie

Then there’s Iraq, where we killed a million people based on fabricated intelligence about weapons that didn’t exist. Check the Wikileaks cables if you want the unvarnished version. A million human souls. For a lie.

What more needs to be said?

The Dangerous Comfort of “We’d Never Do That”

This is why the “we would never do that” rhetoric isn’t just wrong—it’s dangerous. It obscures the fact that we have done it, many times. It absolves us of guilt and deprives our victims of their right to accountability. It turns our war crimes into unfortunate aberrations rather than standard operating procedure.

This isn’t an attempt to reduce Israel’s guilt. The scale of destruction in Gaza—the amount of explosives dropped per square meter, per human being—is staggering even by the debased standards of modern warfare. What’s happening there is a holocaust, and no amount of historical context changes that.

But we need to emphasize our own guilt. We need to reckon with the fact that America set the precedent for what’s happening in Palestine. We normalized the bunker busters in civilian areas. We normalized the “double tap” strikes. We normalized the destruction of hospitals and the killing of aid workers and the targeting of infrastructure that keeps millions of people alive. We did all of this, and we did it in wars that most Americans have already forgotten.

Sunlight as Disinfectant

This is the case for exposure. Every single war needs to be shown the way Gaza has been shown—live-streamed, documented, impossible to ignore. No more wars fought in the shadows. No more sanitized Pentagon briefings where “precision strikes” and “minimal collateral damage” obscure piles of dead children.

The Gaza holocaust is terrible, but it’s also clarifying. For once, the world can’t look away. The documentation is too thorough, too immediate, too overwhelming. This should be the standard for every conflict, not the exception.

Whether we like it or not, we set this precedent. We wrote this playbook. Israel is just running the same plays we’ve been running for decades, with one key difference: this time, the cameras are rolling and the internet is watching.

The question isn’t whether Israel is committing war crimes. It obviously is. The question is whether we’re finally ready to admit that we’ve been committing them too, all along, in our name, with our tax dollars, under the flag we salute.

Netanyahu is holding up a mirror. We just don’t like what we see in it.

The UN’s Gaza Gift-Wrap: A Genocide Gets a Makeover

by damagecollateral
Guess who’s baaack!

On Monday, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2803, a document so brazenly contemptuous of basic political reality that it deserves some kind of award for institutional chutzpah. The resolution concerns Gaza, or what’s left of it after two-plus years of systematic annihilation. But if you’re expecting anything resembling justice, self-determination, or even a coherent plan for Palestinian statehood, you’ve come to the wrong place.

The centerpiece of 2803 is demilitarization—Gaza must be stripped of weapons before anything else can happen. Not peace. Not statehood. Not even a timeline for Israeli withdrawal. Just disarmament, made a precondition for rebuilding and, more grotesquely, for allowing “essentials” to enter. Food, medicine, water—the stuff human beings need to survive—are now leverage points in a grand disarmament scheme. It’s disaster capitalism meets hostage negotiation, with the UN playing the role of complicit middleman.

What’s most striking about the resolution is what it doesn’t say. There’s no mention of Palestinian self-determination beyond vague, aspirational language. No specific steps. No deadlines. No pressure—none whatsoever—on Israel to ever leave Gaza. The word “Palestinian” might as well be a typo. The resolution treats Palestine and Palestinians as atmospheric details, background noise in a story about “regional stability” and “security arrangements.” It’s erasure by paperwork.

So what is this really about? Simple: outsourcing the genocide.

For over two years, Israel has been doing the dirty work alone—bombing hospitals, leveling neighborhoods, targeting aid workers, and killing tens of thousands of civilians. It’s exhausting, expensive, and bad for troop morale. Turns out that constant deployments in a grinding counter-insurgency operation aren’t great for an army composed largely of conscripts who’d rather be back in Tel Aviv drinking overpriced coffee. So here comes the UN, riding to the rescue with a plan that doesn’t end the occupation—it just rebrands it.

Under 2803, international forces will be deployed to “assist” in demilitarization and security. These aren’t peacekeepers in the traditional sense. They’re mercenaries, contractors, guns-for-hire operating under the UN’s humanitarian halo. Their job? Coordinate with the Israeli military—the same Israeli military that’s been committing genocide—and essentially do the policing Israel can no longer afford to do itself. It’s a temp agency for occupation.

And who’s lining up to staff this new venture? The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organization already implicated in the deaths of over 2,000 Palestinians who were simply trying to get food. They’re recruiting now, presumably looking for professionals with experience in “crowd control” and “security operations,” which is NGO-speak for people who know how to shoot civilians without generating too much paperwork.

This is the new model: the genocide continues, but now it’s multilateral. It’s got UN branding. It’s got “humanitarian” in the name. And best of all, it gives Israel exactly what it wants—control without cost, occupation without the burden of occupation, and a international stamp of approval on the whole sick enterprise.

Resolution 2803 isn’t a peace plan. It’s a business plan. It doesn’t create conditions for Palestinian freedom; it codifies their subjugation. And it doesn’t hold Israel accountable—it makes the international community complicit.

The resolution is, in short, criminal. Not in the metaphorical sense, but in the actual, war-crimes-tribunal sense. It denies Palestinians the right to resist occupation, strips them of agency, and transforms their suffering into a logistical problem to be managed by well-paid contractors.

The UN Security Council just turned genocide into a public-private partnership. And they expect us to call it progress.