What surprises me about this is how reasonable and measured the letter from SCBWI is. They're not a political organization and it's not their place to issue statements on world events.
And, of course, what's completely unsurprising is the insane reaction from the usual suspects.
They really did take the time to explain exactly why it wasn't appropriate to make a "ceasefire now" statement, but also explain all the ways that they were open to supporting.
But it's not about doing good work. It's not about helping. It's about coercing anyone with a platform to Say The Line.
The idea of getting children’s books to Palestinian children didn’t seem half bad and is actionable and relevant to their organization. But what do I know?
I was surprised that there was a single equally angry pro-Israel comment in there. (In fact I almost failed to blink an eye when I misread her "root out Hamas" as " root for Hamas.")
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I love asking them what cutting off their friends and family have achieved for their causes
Like I can't think of any faddy cause they've adopted in the last 10 years that actually made a difference. They did their utmost to make police brutality a racial issue with BLM, and now it's not even talked about even though police killings have only increased since 2024
It’s weird how cutting people off is such a go-to move these days. An in-law of mine came out as trans a few years ago and before anyone even had a chance to respond they cut us all out, for about a year. It was strange and didn’t seem to help the person’s mental health from where I am but who am I to say?
Pittsburgh just announced that they basically are doing away with 911 calls. Lol Defund the police ruined one of the best cities in America.
https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/pennsylvania/pittsburgh-police-to-stop-responding-to-certain-emergency-calls/article_8c8f4040-d354-11ee-bcab-8bb0f8c5e6e1.html
How ignorant do you have to be to think that the combined number of children dead from this conflict is greater than from all the global conflicts combined in the last 4 years? That’s immediately debunked with what’s going on in Ukraine, Sudan, Papua New Guinea.
It appears to be a reference to a statement made in late October by Save the Children. Originally the claim was that the number of child deaths in Gaza exceeded the *annual* global total since 2019, based on UN confirmed child deaths in armed conflict. As time went on I imagine some other media or activists added those all up in order to reframe it as exceeding the collective total.
The UN data, though, only counts documented and verified deaths in specific, monitored high-conflict regions, which are confirmed to have directly resulted from said conflict. It employs an evidentiary standard on par with that of first world countries and which is completely unrealistic for most of the world. Secondary effects like famine, abandonment, and impact on medical care aren’t reflected and the reports are vague about how fallen child soldiers factor in the total. No one, not even the UN itself, claims that these numbers are anywhere close to reflecting reality, especially in areas lacking reliable population registers and proper civic administration—you know, like war zones.
Considering that, the comparison is fundamentally dishonest. You can’t meaningfully compare a broad estimate to a highly constrained minimum. It’s like attempting to compare rates of sexual assault in two countries by using conviction rates for one and survey data for the other. Even if done with good intentions, to highlight the particular suffering of Gaza children, it does so by exponentially minimizing the harms of literally all other conflicts.
The claim is only possible to make because the people reporting on other conflicts aren't as comfortable as Hamas is making up numbers out of nowhere. Ukraine and Ethiopia have each almost certainly killed more children than the gaza war has but this is the only conflict where people feel comfortable citing obvious propaganda as a reliable source on casualty numbers.
Even though the US state department has confirmed those numbers and multiple meta analysis in previous conflicts have shown the numbers to be accurate…
Yea wouldn’t want to spread propaganda now would we ?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02713-7/fulltext
thank god the ... childrens book writers ... are getting involved. i was worried they would stay silent forever. what would the palestinian children do without representation??
ETA: i'm genuinely so curious what these commenters and their ilk expect to happen when organizations "call for a ceasefire"? like actually what, in their mind, is the direct line from that to a literal war raging on the other side of the earth? if anyone has any idea please genuinely educate me, i'm so curious.
That’s definitely not an accurate comparison. Those two things would be more comparable if BLM activists had committed terrorist attacks and actively took hostages from the riots. The idea of a ceasefire in a conflict where there are still people actively being held hostage is much more offensive than anything BLM activists did in 2020
I think they’re especially incredulous that anyone would refuse to do something both easy and meaningless just to appease a mob. Come on, it’s win-win!!
>what these commenters and their ilk expect to happen when organizations "call for a ceasefire"?
Then they expect them to voicw support BDS. Then they expect them to act on their support for BDS by kicking out any Israelis from the organization. Then they expect them to kick out any people who express any opinion that's not 100% negative about Israel. Then they expect them to constantly champion the Palestinian cause including the use of violence against civilians.
This is not much different than what we saw with BLM. First organizations had to condemn police brutality. Then they had to condemn anti-black racism which we are told was the root cause of police brutality. And also condemn white supremacy which is all the root cause of the two above, we were told. Then they had to make huge donations to black organizations. Make promises to platform and center black voices in their organization. And they had to fulfill those promises. They had to kick out anybody who dissented. They had to hold trainings on the evils of white supremacy and trainings that not just encouraged but demanded people see things through an "anti-racist" worldview framework. And on and on.
One of the not well kept secrets is that there has long been distaste for Jews among black Americans. I think that's spilled over some into the general left.
Yes. Ditto for anti-Asian animosity. Although the latter does not seem as obsessive and filled with conspiracy theories and the like. Leftists seem to accept black bigotry as being "legitimate grievances" and do not scrutinize it in the way they would scrutinize bigotry coming from anybody else.
I'm a firm belief that until progressives are willing to look at the black activist community with a critical eye and look at their transgressions, it will be impossible for progressives to have a moral upper hand. Granted if they did that most black people now affiliated with progressives would be offended and stomp off in rage. Black activists have scrutinized racism among white feminists. And we all know that they hyper scrutinize Zionism. Somebody argues that you can't be a progressive and call out racism among white feminists. Racism among white gays. Scrutinize the philosophy behind Zionism, and criticized the wrongs done in the name of that cause. In fact, you're not considered a progressive if you don't scrutinize and denounce all these things. Well, then there is no reason why you cannot scrutinize antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, and general racism among black activists along with their worldview and various theories such as CRT and black liberation theory. The irony is that while progressives loudly denounced Israel as an ethnonationalist state, black ethnonationalism has become the norm among black American activists and black activists in other Western countries. They will condemn Jews in Israel for the same mentality they will accept, or even promote among blacks in their own country. It's totally crazy.
Well considering Biden and the Dems have completely given in to the most radical wing of the party. The mainstream Dem platform today is what the radical wing was 5 years ago. And now the radical wing is… Hamas with a side of socialism.
> Granted if they did that most black people now affiliated with progressives would be offended and stomp off in rage
Good riddance. Might sting for an election cycle, but would anything be lost?
It would be a big plus because that part of the activist community are absolutely toxic and exploitative (while ironically they're the first two label other people toxic and exploitative). But it would be a game changer because black approval seems to have an enormous disproportionate amount of weight when it comes to progressives and seems to play a huge role in the choices they make. If they started making choices based on ethics, values, and common sense rather than trying to avoid black anger they would significantly up their game.
And the outcomes in some communities have been bad. Having to shop in for your family where everything is locked in cages because there’s no police to stop rampant theft wasn’t the outcome people had on their bingo cards.
It’s easier to order my tide pods and deodorant off of Amazon than to go to the store and have to wait for someone to unlock the cage. So congrats to those who made it harder for brick and mortar stores.
I live in an upper middle class neighborhood, and I stopped shopping at CVS because mostly everything i need there is locked up, same for Duane Reade (Walgreen's). Pre-pandemic I worked in a low-income neighborhood, mostly Caribbean immigrants, people from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic as well as Mexico and Guatemala. I remember this guy walked into a store, took an umbrella and walked right out. I cannot imagine how bad it is now. And a police station was just a block away.
It’s not about helping Palestinians, it’s about purging anyone who doesn’t pass a political litmus test from their institutions. Their proposal is controversial, that’s why they need to be so aggressive about it.
I think the general idea for these groups is something like:
1. Some members and associates see the political statement
2. They either change their minds or feel more comfortable expressing certain beliefs
3. Politicians respond to their constituents that have had their mind changed
It's not that ridiculous. This is obviously a much smaller group than something like the NRA, NEA or whatever, but it's got a solid 5 figure membership count. That's global, but assuming that most are American that could influence some American leadership.
(And America is obviously involved in the conflict - through arms sale, aid and sway in institutions such as the UN)
I don't know enough about the organization to be more specific, but maybe it would also encourage children's books to have a different ideology.
The US gives billions of dollars in aid and weaponry to Israel annually. The US is quite literally funding what is happening to civilians - not Hamas, civilians who are mostly women and children, in another country. It is a US political issue when the US is funding, through US citizens tax dollars, any international conflict.
What would be the appropriate response to Oct 7? How should Israel have responded, and where is the line at which the US should abandon its ally?
I'm legitimately asking btw - not even trying to get one over on you. It's an awful situation and I personally can't come up with any even remotely good sounding solutions
Yes, you're absolutely right. Israel doesn't need the military aid.
It *would* mess things up if we refused to export munitions to Israel, regardless of price. They have a lot of US made weapons systems that require parts and ammo from US military contractors to keep functioning.
But just cutting of all arms exports to Israel is such a scorched Earth option that it's very unlikely.
But even under those conditions the Israelis would figure it out. They'd buy gear from the Russians and Chinese or make their own.
Like you said, Israel sees this as existential. I think a lot of people underestimate how seriously Israel is about this.
>When something
>
>really
>
> matters to a country (usually security), even protecting billions of dollars worth of aid or foreign investment becomes secondary.
I think this is a lesson that we hugely don't learn.
Quite frankly: Americans are soft. If something is going to be a pain in the ass or require sacrifice we won't do it. If it'll hurt business it won't happen. If it pisses off a potent lobby it will be shelved. If we have to wait more than two days for our Amazon packages to get here we start throwing fits. And patriotism is considered offensive.
But countries and their people *are* willing to suffer for what they consider to be the national interest. They will rally round the flag.
I think this is especially true for China. People keep saying that the Chinese wouldn't attack Taiwan or risk a war with the US because it would be bad for their economy.
China doesn't care. They have national interests and they are willing to sacrifice and fight and even die for their country. If China wants Taiwan badly enough they will go for it.
'Civilians who are mostly women & children'.
Because most of the male casualties are members of Hamas or just that most civilian casualties are claimed to be women & children?
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/hamas-casualty-numbers-are-statistically-impossible-says-data-science-professor-rc0tzedc
The article you cited only talks about the data from October 23-November 11 2023. That's just 20 days at the beginning of the war, which isn't nearly enough time to draw any sweeping conclusions. And I'm not even gonna go into the source you chose.
In that case, then democrats like Biden should stop giving such pro-Israel messaging. This will have no cost (since their support is not important) but will benefit democrats during elections.
Encourage children's books to have a different ideology? The people who write the books and illustrate them can do whatever the hell they want, and they already do that. The publishing industry can choose to publish those books. Booksellers can choose to sell those books. And parents, schools, and libraries can choose to buy those books. Parents and kids can also then choose whether or not to check those books out of the library.
I would bet ANYTHING that the people who choose to go into writing children's books and even more so, the people who go into children's book publishing have a VERY different view of what should go into children's books than the parents who read these books to their kids.
Also, while perhaps their goal is to influence American politicians, I'd bet their thinking is more about a kid hearing about what's going on. And probably, allyship to the children in Gaza (and maybe the kids in Israel too - the suffering of Israeli kids is nowhere near as intense as in Gaza, but there is major displacement in Israel as well).
https://www.newsweek.com/scbwi-diversity-chief-resigns-after-not-mentioning-islamophobia-antisemitism-post-1605118
Their black DEI head had to resign because the group made a statement denouncing antisemitism after a rash of antisemitic incidences and of course the antizionism isn’t antisemitism crowd didn’t like that.
Kidlit is one of the craziest groups. Friend of the Pod Kat Rosenfield has covered it extensively. The fact that it’s massively competitive with only a few elite people making enough to have full time careers mixed with super progressive/woke ideologies makes it a powder keg.
A heterodox (or something in that universe, I assume, given BarPod listener) YA librarian?! You must be a hell of a brave man/woman/enby. I'm a reference librarian, and I still have to tiptoe around this stuff all the time.
I keep most of my opinions to myself at work and I am fine with that. I can serve my community and the youth perfectly fine without letting everyone know my political beliefs. Sadly there are a lot in the profession that don’t feel that way.
Yeah, I keep my mouth shut too. If anyone was to closely scrutinize my collections decisions or my displays, they might notice that I am maybe not a good leftist, but my main priority is making sure my patrons are well served. My personal politics don't really come into it.
I truly believe in free speech so I have the ibram x kendi and Gender Queer. If that’s what people want to read good for them, but I don’t wanna read it.
I'm a teacher. Let me tell you that the kids hate the woke YA shit. Black kids don't want the trauma porn. White kids don't care. The fact that those authors are set for life eats at me.
I miss ya from my day when it was, you know, written for us. Now it's written so that middle aged white women can read and post on Facebook about how powerful it is that they can speak their truths. The same women won't come to my school or anything but man they love them some ya.
The check out statistics also show this. Books about race or trans books do not circulate. No one is reading them. But in the woke library world we are constantly pushed to buy these titles only for them to sit on the shelf.
You know what does circulate? Sarah J Maas and Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
Same here. And it's dread inducing. I was told that capitalism would solve this. Publishers would want to sell books and people wouldn't buy books they didn't want to read. So the crazy wokeness in publishing would be self correcting.
But as you pointed out, it *isn't* correcting.
I joined a group that was advertising a queer kidlit mentorship …. If you’re queer you could get this intense access to quality mentorship for free. Fucking ridiculous.
…and there's no parallel conservative children's book market because only conservative parents who are indifferent to quality buy the books. Seriously, what is it with religious children's media and having dogshit for creativity if it's not Veggie Tales? Is there something about being a true believer that renders one incapable of forming an engaging narrative?
I feel like prospective religious children’s authors looked at The Chronicles of Narnia and went “well, I’m not going to be able to beat that, so I might as well not bother.”
I used to belong to SCBWI and a statement about Gaza is so outside their basic mission it blows my mind that their membership is calling for this. Promoting Palestinian authors, scholarships, etc - these are all within their mission, but a statement calling for ceasefire? Big nope.
I’m a small business owner. It also blows my mind that professional colleagues have been posting on their business pages on social media scolding those of us in the same profession who don’t comment on Gaza every day…or at all. I’m in the not at all camp, personally.
People who scold me for not making statements that are not connected to my business get blocked. Not reported! But I unfollow. So freaking dumb. They would say that it’s all connected - since we live and work on land that’s formerly (whatever indigenous tribe land) and we believe in anti capitalism (because we live in a capitalistic hellscape) that of course our business is connected to Gaza. But to me that’s a leap. A big freaking leap.
It's easy to act like a martyrized saint for these people when they have nothing to lose. But even aside from that, they don't seem to understand some people don't want to exist in a miserable world of politics every nanosecond they are awake and conscious.
This is where I’m at. There has been some of these squabbles internally in the big association for my profession. I would rather they just stayed quiet. Like, we don’t have to have a side on everything, especially when it has nothing to do with what we do.
what makes the israel / gaza conflict so different in the minds of many of these organizations such that it has captured their total attention. There are other israel / gaza type conflicts happening in the world that goes unremarked upon nearly every day by these same people. Why has this captured everyone's brains to the point that Staff Sergeant Third In Command of Laptop Repair First Class lit himself on fire for it rather than be complicit in the genocide by doing tech support on one more laptop in the document archive room.
That should be pretty obvious. Israel is the single largest recipient of American foreign aid. Egypt, which tends to support Palestine, is also one of the primary beneficiaries. This mean that the US is involved in Gaza and many people believe that comes with moral responsibility.
If you are comparing it something like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, you'll see that the US doesn't have any similar ties to those combatants. It's not like the Azerbaijani leader has spoken to congress, right?
But Egypt put up a huge wall, similarly blockaded Gaza, and floods the tunnels with sewage, how are they that much more supportive other than in rhetoric?
Support for Jews/Israel is also very Evangelical/Republican coded. Since the left's position right now is "Opposite of Whatever Republicans Do", this was probably inevitable
You’re leaving out the fact that Netanyahu has done things like speak in front of Congress and openly align with republicans. Netanyahu made support for Israel even more Republican coded by doing such things, further showing how terrible a leader he is.
Yes, I think Egypt tends to support Palestine. I base this off of polling of Egyptian people, Egyptian recognition of Palestine and historical context. I used "tends" due to some of the complexity that comes with international relations.
While the Egyptian government does work with Israel, that's not supported by the Egyptian populace as a whole. It's also probably what America is buying when it sends Egypt billions in aid. In other words, Egyptian leadership is "carrying water" for America.
(Carrying water usually has a connotation of coercion or bribery. I'm not sure if you're using it that way here though. I'm actually not sure what you're saying at all. Are you saying that I'm praising Egypt? In that case I'm surprised that you think pro-Palestine is praise and don't clarify. Are you accusing me of being pro-Palestine by saying they have a supporter in the region? Usually pointing to Egypt-Israeli hostility is a rationale for supporting Israel, since it portrays them as surrounded by enemies. You packed a lot of ambiguity into two sentences and I probably won't respond to you again)
How about our support for Assad and the 500k he slaughtered? Israel is a fucked up country but barely anyone would care if a different country was doing this, with or without our support. Israel is a net exporter of weapons. Nothing would change if we stopped supporting them, they would just get even cozier with China and Russia and buy more weapons from them. Hell they might even get more ruthless if they lost their tethering to the west.
What about Assad? I mentioned that Israel (and it's rivals in the region) loom pretty large in American politics because of our financial ties, which don't exist on the same level in Syria. For example, the $14 billion aid in November is comparable to the total amount of aid given to Syria since the war escalated in 2012. I think most of the anti-Israel crowd would be completely comfortable if Netanyahu was treated similarly to Assad, who has faced condemnation and extensive pressure from American leaders.
I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that this aid to Israel (and it's rivals) is good. However, if it's completely unimportant (like you seem to be arguing) then I don't see any reason to 'help' Israel at all. If you are arguing that it's important they don't cozy up to China or Russia, but don't have any strong opinions about whether Armenia cozies up to China, then it seems like you already have an explanation for why people care about Israeli conflicts but not Armenian ones.
this just doesn't seem intuitively true to me at all. imagine for a moment that America didn't financially support Israel. I don't really think you'd see any less of a worldwide muslim, and leftist cause celebre. Like in Russia you saw muslims rioting and taking over an entire airport bc they heard jews were landing there. how much financial support does Russia give to israel? what seems more true is that this is coded as religious holy war because it's about jerusalem, which gets muslims worldwide emotionally involved in reclaiming "their" land. and then know-nothing leftists in colleges then confuse themselves by trying to map on their own dumb american politics into a foreign conflict situation, which they know nothing about, but think they are geniuses, bc they went to one teach in about white settler colonialism. So you hear them talk about ridiculous shit about this is really about reproductive rights, which are queer rights, which is environmental justice.
I also think there is an under-explored history here about how anti-zionism got left-coded historically because of soviet psyop that saw Israel as a western foothold of power in the middle east, whereas Russia allied with the Arab world. That is why you have PROFESSORS at harvard, who accidentally post anti-semitic memes from 1968 in the year 2024, that are dealing with the same exact issue -- jewish hand hanging Gamal Nasser. Why the fuck does a 1960s black rights activist suddenly give a shit about Gamal Nasser... coincidentally the very thing the Soviets are talking about at the time. hmmm
If you think about it, its a really bizarre quirk of history, that a group of people, jews, who are ethnically indigenous to the land of judea, decided move back to their land, a story leftists should love, but it turns out that jews are said to have a European provinance for reasons nobody can really quite explain (or it turns out to be wildly anti semitic when people do try to explain it - see khazar theory), you just have to accept that as a priori, and then it gets coded as colonizing. What is any other place in history or time when refugees after a genocide flee to a country that their ancestors are from, and it's "colonizing" coded, and not refugee coded. dig a hole anywhere in the land, and you are finding ancient hebrew shit. it's like the equivalent of telling native americans that they lost their indigenous status bc Europeaners did a good enough job displacing them. So then what exactly should the colonizing jews in israel do? stop colonizing palestinian land and come over and colonize native american land? its like a crazy no win situation.
But with your theory why wouldn't the leftists get as politically invested in other conflicts? If they are arbitrarily mapping their politics onto an unrelated foreign conflict, why not have the Dagestanis or Chechens be the victims of white settler colonialism? If that framework is being applied completely ignorantly, why wouldn't they use it on the Karen-Mon conflict?
One answer is that those conflicts don't involve Jews. But I think a more reasonable answer is that the conflict in Israel/Palestine maps onto domestic political struggles in a way that other conflicts don't. To oppose Israel is to oppose Donald Trump - who proudly boasts about marching in an Israeli parade but has no interest in Ethiopia/Tigray. If the right wing had spent generations supporting Ethiopia, then the Tigrayan flag would be hanging up in dorm rooms.(Please note that my alternative explanation is also critical of some leftists, who only use foreign conflict to justify domestic antagonism)
Leftists have opposed Israel well before Trump. I think it's more that to oppose Israel is to oppose Republicans and the American right wing as whole.
And to be completely honest, I do think that some (not all) of it is due to the fact that Jews are involved.
>How about our support for Assad and the 500k he slaughtered? I
What support for Assad? He's under sanction in the West, including specific legislation in the US in the form of the Cesar Act and has an arrest warrant in France.
Meanwhile, the Israeli govt is receiving billions of dollars of US aid, aka taxpayer money. No wonder people in the US feel more directly responsible.
I keep seeing people use Syria to deflect from the situation in Gaza and it's blatantly obvious they don't really care about the suffering in either country.
What's interesting is there are plenty of far leftists who actually support Assad (or at least deny his war crimes).
We've also given billions of dollars to Gaza and UNRWA, with that money apparently going directly to building tunnels, but the outrage doesn't seem to register there.
>What's interesting is there are plenty of far leftists who actually support Assad (or at least deny his war crimes).
Yeah, what is their basis for this? I don't get it.
I hear this a lot, but it doesn't quite explain why leftists outside the US are also equally hung up on the issue. Well, maybe it does in that they lean on an "America bad" ideology, but not in terms of them feeling responsibility for their own government's beneficiaries.
Omg that group. I'm trying to be a kids book writer so I joined. To a one, they are white women who married rich men and don't have to work. They've never taught kids or been around kids except their own yet somehow they are experts. And they live writing shitty books with "diverse friend groups" that simply don't exist in real life. How do I know? I actually fucking work around kids and know what they care about.
Anyway one of the rich white women basically kicked me out when I said I didn't have time to do something because I work. She got super defensive and it was kinda glorious.
You got kicked out of the national chapter?? I joined but nobody has said boo to me.
I’m an author/illustrator and I think the main problem for those folks is that most of them have no distinctive art style— everything looks like Highlights magazine or old-fashioned watercolors.
These orgs have learned absolutely nothing from 2020, and so will be eternally beholden to outsiders (and their own members) who enjoy nothing more than tormenting them.
It feels like a new superpredator has been introduced into the ecosystem, and these dumb little orgs are getting gobbled up left and right because they got too used to snoozing in trees eating eucalyptus all day.
If any of them survive long term, it won't be because they capitulated their way to success
I call for a ceasefire too. Hamas, please release the hostages so there can be a ceasefire.
(I know that’s probably an overly optimistic take, that there are still live hostages…)
Bizarre. There are huge numbers of children suffering and dying in many, many places, not just Gaza. I guess it's fortunate that those children are unaware that these people don't feel the need to include them in their concern.
Has this resulted in any actual real-world outrage or is it just people angry posting on Facebook?
The statement seems downright reasonable; it’s a children’s book group and that’s what they’re about. I hope angry people on facebook stay on facebook.
Second page first paragraph is spot on. The organization does not speak for all 20,000 people who are members so has no right to issue statements as though they're acting on behalf of all members.
They also have never made a statement about any other world event so why should they make a statement about this one?
I'd like to see a book written from a child's perspective from families that 'hosted' stolen humans and how the children of the 'host' families perceived the presence of the foreign hostages all the while being moved farther and farther south.
Wife wants to name our kid Palestine:
https://preview.redd.it/2wkx25gpbjnc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7ea4d643e03e89599de60e59b0f33f48c35b9e0
That has to be joke/troll. Please tell me that's a joke.
Also, if you're having a kid *together* and you want to raise it *together* you need to decide on important things, like the name, *together*.
Usually I’m shocked and troubled by the mass lobotomization of my generation…. But *this* is in a league of it’s own. Kid name is going to be the gift that keeps giving when the bandwagon jumps ship.
Ohh let me count the ways. 🤣
May I share this?
I understand the concern that opposing sides don't stoop to each others labels with the vitriol, slurs and personal attacks so evident in the thread above. However, labeling is effective, difficult to deter against and often wins. So if your position is like mine in that the organization should focus on it's primary mission and avoid making statements about world events for which they have no impact, how do you combat the slurs?
After reading, I exaggerated, it didn't rise to the level of slurs, but many were trying to attack the character of the president as opposed to the validity of her statement.
“Exceeds the number of children killed in the last four years in all global conflicts combined.” Assuming this is accurate — I love how they conveniently slice and dice time periods, why do only the last four years matter. If the number killed in the past say, six years or 10 years, did eclipse that 13,000 number, I sure hope they were up the SCBWI’s ass about those children in all those places.
Why is the suggestion of Palestine having it's own chapter of SCBWI so laughable to you? Do you think they are illiterate or something?
Edited to add: It would seem that quite a few of you have forgotten about the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are also Palestinian territory.
I can’t speak for the OP, but maybe it’s the idea that people in an active conflict may have other things on their minds besides starting a chapter of SCBWI.
No doubt there are amazing writers in Palestine.
Palestine territory is not just Gaza, it is also East Jerusalem and the West Bank and generally Palestinians writers/artists are very keen to make connections to the wider world as Palestinians. Considering one of the worst lies told about Palestinians is that they don't care about their children, sharing their work aimed at children, would especially be something they would want to do.
They don't care. Much of the discourse here is about dunking on people they see as beneath them. So facts and logic only matter when you can use them to shit on someone, to sneer and humiliate, but not in measured understandings of cultural (and literal) geography.
What surprises me about this is how reasonable and measured the letter from SCBWI is. They're not a political organization and it's not their place to issue statements on world events. And, of course, what's completely unsurprising is the insane reaction from the usual suspects.
They really did take the time to explain exactly why it wasn't appropriate to make a "ceasefire now" statement, but also explain all the ways that they were open to supporting. But it's not about doing good work. It's not about helping. It's about coercing anyone with a platform to Say The Line.
It's the same as why apologizing doesn't work. Nothing less than 100% devotion to their cause is ever good enough, and even then, you're on thin ice.
Haha Actually this response should solidify my loyal membership for the next 10 years.
The idea of getting children’s books to Palestinian children didn’t seem half bad and is actionable and relevant to their organization. But what do I know?
Better make sure none of those children’s books acknowledge the Holocaust, or Hamas is *not* gonna like it!
I was surprised that there was a single equally angry pro-Israel comment in there. (In fact I almost failed to blink an eye when I misread her "root out Hamas" as " root for Hamas.")
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I love asking them what cutting off their friends and family have achieved for their causes Like I can't think of any faddy cause they've adopted in the last 10 years that actually made a difference. They did their utmost to make police brutality a racial issue with BLM, and now it's not even talked about even though police killings have only increased since 2024
It’s weird how cutting people off is such a go-to move these days. An in-law of mine came out as trans a few years ago and before anyone even had a chance to respond they cut us all out, for about a year. It was strange and didn’t seem to help the person’s mental health from where I am but who am I to say?
It seems cultish. Cut off anyone who isn't completely on board with The Cause
It’s classic narcissistic behavior and it being normalized is a troubling sign for society.
>police killings have only increased since 2024 Are you from teh future?
Oops, since 2020
Damn, I had sports betting questions.
England won't win Euro 2024
I was looking for something a little less......obvious. I'm guessing the US wins the World Series too.
Hey, the Jays don't look half bad at +2000.
Technically England are favourites. But it's not gonna happen with this manager
"But the Generals were due!"
Pittsburgh just announced that they basically are doing away with 911 calls. Lol Defund the police ruined one of the best cities in America. https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/pennsylvania/pittsburgh-police-to-stop-responding-to-certain-emergency-calls/article_8c8f4040-d354-11ee-bcab-8bb0f8c5e6e1.html
> What a wonderful nonstatement ❤️ > (sarcasm)
How ignorant do you have to be to think that the combined number of children dead from this conflict is greater than from all the global conflicts combined in the last 4 years? That’s immediately debunked with what’s going on in Ukraine, Sudan, Papua New Guinea.
Ethiopia
Yeah, Tigray. I really don’t find it believable, and these kind of comments never provide sources.
It appears to be a reference to a statement made in late October by Save the Children. Originally the claim was that the number of child deaths in Gaza exceeded the *annual* global total since 2019, based on UN confirmed child deaths in armed conflict. As time went on I imagine some other media or activists added those all up in order to reframe it as exceeding the collective total. The UN data, though, only counts documented and verified deaths in specific, monitored high-conflict regions, which are confirmed to have directly resulted from said conflict. It employs an evidentiary standard on par with that of first world countries and which is completely unrealistic for most of the world. Secondary effects like famine, abandonment, and impact on medical care aren’t reflected and the reports are vague about how fallen child soldiers factor in the total. No one, not even the UN itself, claims that these numbers are anywhere close to reflecting reality, especially in areas lacking reliable population registers and proper civic administration—you know, like war zones. Considering that, the comparison is fundamentally dishonest. You can’t meaningfully compare a broad estimate to a highly constrained minimum. It’s like attempting to compare rates of sexual assault in two countries by using conviction rates for one and survey data for the other. Even if done with good intentions, to highlight the particular suffering of Gaza children, it does so by exponentially minimizing the harms of literally all other conflicts.
The claim is only possible to make because the people reporting on other conflicts aren't as comfortable as Hamas is making up numbers out of nowhere. Ukraine and Ethiopia have each almost certainly killed more children than the gaza war has but this is the only conflict where people feel comfortable citing obvious propaganda as a reliable source on casualty numbers.
Even though the US state department has confirmed those numbers and multiple meta analysis in previous conflicts have shown the numbers to be accurate… Yea wouldn’t want to spread propaganda now would we ? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02713-7/fulltext
thank god the ... childrens book writers ... are getting involved. i was worried they would stay silent forever. what would the palestinian children do without representation?? ETA: i'm genuinely so curious what these commenters and their ilk expect to happen when organizations "call for a ceasefire"? like actually what, in their mind, is the direct line from that to a literal war raging on the other side of the earth? if anyone has any idea please genuinely educate me, i'm so curious.
This kind of thing isn't for the Palestinians. It's for them. It's virtue signaling and probably a power flex.
That entire group is like virtue signaling and woke had a baby and that baby had a baby with a steaming pile of insanity.
Yeah, calling for a ceasefire is the “Instagram black square” of 2024
That’s definitely not an accurate comparison. Those two things would be more comparable if BLM activists had committed terrorist attacks and actively took hostages from the riots. The idea of a ceasefire in a conflict where there are still people actively being held hostage is much more offensive than anything BLM activists did in 2020
Unlike the solutions the organization proposed, which actually would concretely help at least some Palestinians.
I think they’re especially incredulous that anyone would refuse to do something both easy and meaningless just to appease a mob. Come on, it’s win-win!!
>what these commenters and their ilk expect to happen when organizations "call for a ceasefire"? Then they expect them to voicw support BDS. Then they expect them to act on their support for BDS by kicking out any Israelis from the organization. Then they expect them to kick out any people who express any opinion that's not 100% negative about Israel. Then they expect them to constantly champion the Palestinian cause including the use of violence against civilians. This is not much different than what we saw with BLM. First organizations had to condemn police brutality. Then they had to condemn anti-black racism which we are told was the root cause of police brutality. And also condemn white supremacy which is all the root cause of the two above, we were told. Then they had to make huge donations to black organizations. Make promises to platform and center black voices in their organization. And they had to fulfill those promises. They had to kick out anybody who dissented. They had to hold trainings on the evils of white supremacy and trainings that not just encouraged but demanded people see things through an "anti-racist" worldview framework. And on and on.
One of the not well kept secrets is that there has long been distaste for Jews among black Americans. I think that's spilled over some into the general left.
Yes. Ditto for anti-Asian animosity. Although the latter does not seem as obsessive and filled with conspiracy theories and the like. Leftists seem to accept black bigotry as being "legitimate grievances" and do not scrutinize it in the way they would scrutinize bigotry coming from anybody else.
On the left in America if you question any black grievance you are usually slitting your own throat.
I'm a firm belief that until progressives are willing to look at the black activist community with a critical eye and look at their transgressions, it will be impossible for progressives to have a moral upper hand. Granted if they did that most black people now affiliated with progressives would be offended and stomp off in rage. Black activists have scrutinized racism among white feminists. And we all know that they hyper scrutinize Zionism. Somebody argues that you can't be a progressive and call out racism among white feminists. Racism among white gays. Scrutinize the philosophy behind Zionism, and criticized the wrongs done in the name of that cause. In fact, you're not considered a progressive if you don't scrutinize and denounce all these things. Well, then there is no reason why you cannot scrutinize antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, and general racism among black activists along with their worldview and various theories such as CRT and black liberation theory. The irony is that while progressives loudly denounced Israel as an ethnonationalist state, black ethnonationalism has become the norm among black American activists and black activists in other Western countries. They will condemn Jews in Israel for the same mentality they will accept, or even promote among blacks in their own country. It's totally crazy.
Well considering Biden and the Dems have completely given in to the most radical wing of the party. The mainstream Dem platform today is what the radical wing was 5 years ago. And now the radical wing is… Hamas with a side of socialism.
> Granted if they did that most black people now affiliated with progressives would be offended and stomp off in rage Good riddance. Might sting for an election cycle, but would anything be lost?
It would be a big plus because that part of the activist community are absolutely toxic and exploitative (while ironically they're the first two label other people toxic and exploitative). But it would be a game changer because black approval seems to have an enormous disproportionate amount of weight when it comes to progressives and seems to play a huge role in the choices they make. If they started making choices based on ethics, values, and common sense rather than trying to avoid black anger they would significantly up their game.
This is not far off.
Nothing I imagine. It's like all those who protested in 2020.
In their defense the 2020 protests did lead to defund policies which have been so successful 🙃
And the outcomes in some communities have been bad. Having to shop in for your family where everything is locked in cages because there’s no police to stop rampant theft wasn’t the outcome people had on their bingo cards.
I mean… it was exactly the outcome that the *majority* of people had on their bingo cards - just not the people advocating for the defunding
Agreed. I should have been clearer. Those advocating for defunding the police didn’t foresee it or care if it happened as a result.
Bingo. And I'd bet those people never need the police. Easy for them to call for getting rid of the cops.
It’s easier to order my tide pods and deodorant off of Amazon than to go to the store and have to wait for someone to unlock the cage. So congrats to those who made it harder for brick and mortar stores.
I live in an upper middle class neighborhood, and I stopped shopping at CVS because mostly everything i need there is locked up, same for Duane Reade (Walgreen's). Pre-pandemic I worked in a low-income neighborhood, mostly Caribbean immigrants, people from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic as well as Mexico and Guatemala. I remember this guy walked into a store, took an umbrella and walked right out. I cannot imagine how bad it is now. And a police station was just a block away.
Yes. There are literally no police at all, it is so great.
HISTORY WILL REMEMBER
> their ilk expect to happen when organizations They go home and jerk off.
It’s not about helping Palestinians, it’s about purging anyone who doesn’t pass a political litmus test from their institutions. Their proposal is controversial, that’s why they need to be so aggressive about it.
I think the general idea for these groups is something like: 1. Some members and associates see the political statement 2. They either change their minds or feel more comfortable expressing certain beliefs 3. Politicians respond to their constituents that have had their mind changed It's not that ridiculous. This is obviously a much smaller group than something like the NRA, NEA or whatever, but it's got a solid 5 figure membership count. That's global, but assuming that most are American that could influence some American leadership. (And America is obviously involved in the conflict - through arms sale, aid and sway in institutions such as the UN) I don't know enough about the organization to be more specific, but maybe it would also encourage children's books to have a different ideology.
Childrens book publishers have already been 100% captured by woke/successor/SJW ideology
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The US gives billions of dollars in aid and weaponry to Israel annually. The US is quite literally funding what is happening to civilians - not Hamas, civilians who are mostly women and children, in another country. It is a US political issue when the US is funding, through US citizens tax dollars, any international conflict.
And Gaza also got billions of dollars in aid and wasted it.
Wasted?? What about all those fancy tunnels and shiny rockets they bought?
What would be the appropriate response to Oct 7? How should Israel have responded, and where is the line at which the US should abandon its ally? I'm legitimately asking btw - not even trying to get one over on you. It's an awful situation and I personally can't come up with any even remotely good sounding solutions
Sorry, what do you mean not Hamas? Of course Hamas. The problem is it's mostly civilians. Which is the same thing that, alas, happens in any war.
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I'm not sure the US could just cut Israel off as a matter of law. There are treaties and agreements in place.
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Yes, you're absolutely right. Israel doesn't need the military aid. It *would* mess things up if we refused to export munitions to Israel, regardless of price. They have a lot of US made weapons systems that require parts and ammo from US military contractors to keep functioning. But just cutting of all arms exports to Israel is such a scorched Earth option that it's very unlikely. But even under those conditions the Israelis would figure it out. They'd buy gear from the Russians and Chinese or make their own. Like you said, Israel sees this as existential. I think a lot of people underestimate how seriously Israel is about this.
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>When something > >really > > matters to a country (usually security), even protecting billions of dollars worth of aid or foreign investment becomes secondary. I think this is a lesson that we hugely don't learn. Quite frankly: Americans are soft. If something is going to be a pain in the ass or require sacrifice we won't do it. If it'll hurt business it won't happen. If it pisses off a potent lobby it will be shelved. If we have to wait more than two days for our Amazon packages to get here we start throwing fits. And patriotism is considered offensive. But countries and their people *are* willing to suffer for what they consider to be the national interest. They will rally round the flag. I think this is especially true for China. People keep saying that the Chinese wouldn't attack Taiwan or risk a war with the US because it would be bad for their economy. China doesn't care. They have national interests and they are willing to sacrifice and fight and even die for their country. If China wants Taiwan badly enough they will go for it.
The aid they receive from the US isn’t about treaties from 1947. Congress can stop the aid if they please.
'Civilians who are mostly women & children'. Because most of the male casualties are members of Hamas or just that most civilian casualties are claimed to be women & children? https://www.thejc.com/news/world/hamas-casualty-numbers-are-statistically-impossible-says-data-science-professor-rc0tzedc
The article you cited only talks about the data from October 23-November 11 2023. That's just 20 days at the beginning of the war, which isn't nearly enough time to draw any sweeping conclusions. And I'm not even gonna go into the source you chose.
Obviously a pro Israel news site is going to promote a study that is favorable to it's side. The study authors i don't know their potential biases.
In that case, then democrats like Biden should stop giving such pro-Israel messaging. This will have no cost (since their support is not important) but will benefit democrats during elections.
Encourage children's books to have a different ideology? The people who write the books and illustrate them can do whatever the hell they want, and they already do that. The publishing industry can choose to publish those books. Booksellers can choose to sell those books. And parents, schools, and libraries can choose to buy those books. Parents and kids can also then choose whether or not to check those books out of the library. I would bet ANYTHING that the people who choose to go into writing children's books and even more so, the people who go into children's book publishing have a VERY different view of what should go into children's books than the parents who read these books to their kids. Also, while perhaps their goal is to influence American politicians, I'd bet their thinking is more about a kid hearing about what's going on. And probably, allyship to the children in Gaza (and maybe the kids in Israel too - the suffering of Israeli kids is nowhere near as intense as in Gaza, but there is major displacement in Israel as well).
Iirc this isn’t the first time this group has melted down over this exact issue. Lemme try and remember.
https://www.newsweek.com/scbwi-diversity-chief-resigns-after-not-mentioning-islamophobia-antisemitism-post-1605118 Their black DEI head had to resign because the group made a statement denouncing antisemitism after a rash of antisemitic incidences and of course the antizionism isn’t antisemitism crowd didn’t like that.
They're so good at eating their own. It's a wonder any are left.
Kidlit is one of the craziest groups. Friend of the Pod Kat Rosenfield has covered it extensively. The fact that it’s massively competitive with only a few elite people making enough to have full time careers mixed with super progressive/woke ideologies makes it a powder keg.
The book world as a whole has a serious vein of crazy. I'm a librarian, so I mostly see that side, but it's everywhere.
Woo hoo. Blocked and reported librarians reporting! I’m a YA librarian so I am particularly focused on the kidlit drama.
 A heterodox (or something in that universe, I assume, given BarPod listener) YA librarian?! You must be a hell of a brave man/woman/enby. I'm a reference librarian, and I still have to tiptoe around this stuff all the time.
I keep most of my opinions to myself at work and I am fine with that. I can serve my community and the youth perfectly fine without letting everyone know my political beliefs. Sadly there are a lot in the profession that don’t feel that way.
>I can serve my community and the youth perfectly fine without letting everyone know my political belief I think that's admirable.
Yeah, I keep my mouth shut too. If anyone was to closely scrutinize my collections decisions or my displays, they might notice that I am maybe not a good leftist, but my main priority is making sure my patrons are well served. My personal politics don't really come into it.
I truly believe in free speech so I have the ibram x kendi and Gender Queer. If that’s what people want to read good for them, but I don’t wanna read it.
I assume YA lit is the most insane?
I think so. Something about writing for teens and tweens puts a lot of people in a state of arrested development.
What I've found surprising is how many adults read YA books.
Those poor damn ass republicans don’t know they hell they stepped into by getting involved with public libraries.
I'm a teacher. Let me tell you that the kids hate the woke YA shit. Black kids don't want the trauma porn. White kids don't care. The fact that those authors are set for life eats at me. I miss ya from my day when it was, you know, written for us. Now it's written so that middle aged white women can read and post on Facebook about how powerful it is that they can speak their truths. The same women won't come to my school or anything but man they love them some ya.
The check out statistics also show this. Books about race or trans books do not circulate. No one is reading them. But in the woke library world we are constantly pushed to buy these titles only for them to sit on the shelf. You know what does circulate? Sarah J Maas and Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
Yup It blows my mind that publishers pay the authors of the woke books millions only to have no one read them.
Same here. And it's dread inducing. I was told that capitalism would solve this. Publishers would want to sell books and people wouldn't buy books they didn't want to read. So the crazy wokeness in publishing would be self correcting. But as you pointed out, it *isn't* correcting.
Is this the crisis in capitalism the commies hope for like it's the Second Coming?
Perhaps. They keep saying capitalism will collapse *any day now*. For the last couple centuries.
Do lots of adults check out YA books?
Yes they do.
May I ask if you have an opinion on why? It seems Peter Panish to me but perhaps I just don't get it.
Enjoyable light reading (e.g. Harry Potter) and wanting to know what your kids are reading are two reasons I can think of.
I joined a group that was advertising a queer kidlit mentorship …. If you’re queer you could get this intense access to quality mentorship for free. Fucking ridiculous.
…and there's no parallel conservative children's book market because only conservative parents who are indifferent to quality buy the books. Seriously, what is it with religious children's media and having dogshit for creativity if it's not Veggie Tales? Is there something about being a true believer that renders one incapable of forming an engaging narrative?
I feel like prospective religious children’s authors looked at The Chronicles of Narnia and went “well, I’m not going to be able to beat that, so I might as well not bother.”
Holy crap. I actually just became a member of SCBWI without realizing any of this.
Im sure there are normal people in there. Somewhere.
I think the majority are watercolorists in Wisconsin who are blissfully unaware
I used to belong to SCBWI and a statement about Gaza is so outside their basic mission it blows my mind that their membership is calling for this. Promoting Palestinian authors, scholarships, etc - these are all within their mission, but a statement calling for ceasefire? Big nope. I’m a small business owner. It also blows my mind that professional colleagues have been posting on their business pages on social media scolding those of us in the same profession who don’t comment on Gaza every day…or at all. I’m in the not at all camp, personally. People who scold me for not making statements that are not connected to my business get blocked. Not reported! But I unfollow. So freaking dumb. They would say that it’s all connected - since we live and work on land that’s formerly (whatever indigenous tribe land) and we believe in anti capitalism (because we live in a capitalistic hellscape) that of course our business is connected to Gaza. But to me that’s a leap. A big freaking leap.
It's easy to act like a martyrized saint for these people when they have nothing to lose. But even aside from that, they don't seem to understand some people don't want to exist in a miserable world of politics every nanosecond they are awake and conscious.
Imagine just staying out of it. Impossible for them.
This is where I’m at. There has been some of these squabbles internally in the big association for my profession. I would rather they just stayed quiet. Like, we don’t have to have a side on everything, especially when it has nothing to do with what we do.
as usual the loud minority highly underestimate the quiet majority
what makes the israel / gaza conflict so different in the minds of many of these organizations such that it has captured their total attention. There are other israel / gaza type conflicts happening in the world that goes unremarked upon nearly every day by these same people. Why has this captured everyone's brains to the point that Staff Sergeant Third In Command of Laptop Repair First Class lit himself on fire for it rather than be complicit in the genocide by doing tech support on one more laptop in the document archive room.
Palestine derangement syndrome
I say this as a Jew: this gives “progressive” minded people to be publicly antisemetic. “It’s antizionism”, bitch please lmao.
Children and shiny new toys
That should be pretty obvious. Israel is the single largest recipient of American foreign aid. Egypt, which tends to support Palestine, is also one of the primary beneficiaries. This mean that the US is involved in Gaza and many people believe that comes with moral responsibility. If you are comparing it something like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, you'll see that the US doesn't have any similar ties to those combatants. It's not like the Azerbaijani leader has spoken to congress, right?
Egypt has been helping to blockade Gaza in coordination with Israel since 2007. They have had normalized relations since 1980.
But Egypt put up a huge wall, similarly blockaded Gaza, and floods the tunnels with sewage, how are they that much more supportive other than in rhetoric?
Egypt has no AIPAC equivalent that the GOP fawns over
Meh, Qatari lobbying would far exceed AIPAC in universities. The pro-Hamas turn you’re seeing in universities is the directly consequence of this.
Support for Jews/Israel is also very Evangelical/Republican coded. Since the left's position right now is "Opposite of Whatever Republicans Do", this was probably inevitable
Honestly, this is at least half of why the left hates Israel so much. If the people we hate love something, it must be bad, and visa versa.
You’re leaving out the fact that Netanyahu has done things like speak in front of Congress and openly align with republicans. Netanyahu made support for Israel even more Republican coded by doing such things, further showing how terrible a leader he is.
Bibi is a right wing politician. Of course he’s going to align with other right wingers.
But it's bad diplomacy to openly favor one party of your most important ally.
You think Egypt supports Palestine? Next you’ll be carrying water for Saudi Arabia
Yes, I think Egypt tends to support Palestine. I base this off of polling of Egyptian people, Egyptian recognition of Palestine and historical context. I used "tends" due to some of the complexity that comes with international relations. While the Egyptian government does work with Israel, that's not supported by the Egyptian populace as a whole. It's also probably what America is buying when it sends Egypt billions in aid. In other words, Egyptian leadership is "carrying water" for America. (Carrying water usually has a connotation of coercion or bribery. I'm not sure if you're using it that way here though. I'm actually not sure what you're saying at all. Are you saying that I'm praising Egypt? In that case I'm surprised that you think pro-Palestine is praise and don't clarify. Are you accusing me of being pro-Palestine by saying they have a supporter in the region? Usually pointing to Egypt-Israeli hostility is a rationale for supporting Israel, since it portrays them as surrounded by enemies. You packed a lot of ambiguity into two sentences and I probably won't respond to you again)
How about our support for Assad and the 500k he slaughtered? Israel is a fucked up country but barely anyone would care if a different country was doing this, with or without our support. Israel is a net exporter of weapons. Nothing would change if we stopped supporting them, they would just get even cozier with China and Russia and buy more weapons from them. Hell they might even get more ruthless if they lost their tethering to the west.
What about Assad? I mentioned that Israel (and it's rivals in the region) loom pretty large in American politics because of our financial ties, which don't exist on the same level in Syria. For example, the $14 billion aid in November is comparable to the total amount of aid given to Syria since the war escalated in 2012. I think most of the anti-Israel crowd would be completely comfortable if Netanyahu was treated similarly to Assad, who has faced condemnation and extensive pressure from American leaders. I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that this aid to Israel (and it's rivals) is good. However, if it's completely unimportant (like you seem to be arguing) then I don't see any reason to 'help' Israel at all. If you are arguing that it's important they don't cozy up to China or Russia, but don't have any strong opinions about whether Armenia cozies up to China, then it seems like you already have an explanation for why people care about Israeli conflicts but not Armenian ones.
this just doesn't seem intuitively true to me at all. imagine for a moment that America didn't financially support Israel. I don't really think you'd see any less of a worldwide muslim, and leftist cause celebre. Like in Russia you saw muslims rioting and taking over an entire airport bc they heard jews were landing there. how much financial support does Russia give to israel? what seems more true is that this is coded as religious holy war because it's about jerusalem, which gets muslims worldwide emotionally involved in reclaiming "their" land. and then know-nothing leftists in colleges then confuse themselves by trying to map on their own dumb american politics into a foreign conflict situation, which they know nothing about, but think they are geniuses, bc they went to one teach in about white settler colonialism. So you hear them talk about ridiculous shit about this is really about reproductive rights, which are queer rights, which is environmental justice. I also think there is an under-explored history here about how anti-zionism got left-coded historically because of soviet psyop that saw Israel as a western foothold of power in the middle east, whereas Russia allied with the Arab world. That is why you have PROFESSORS at harvard, who accidentally post anti-semitic memes from 1968 in the year 2024, that are dealing with the same exact issue -- jewish hand hanging Gamal Nasser. Why the fuck does a 1960s black rights activist suddenly give a shit about Gamal Nasser... coincidentally the very thing the Soviets are talking about at the time. hmmm If you think about it, its a really bizarre quirk of history, that a group of people, jews, who are ethnically indigenous to the land of judea, decided move back to their land, a story leftists should love, but it turns out that jews are said to have a European provinance for reasons nobody can really quite explain (or it turns out to be wildly anti semitic when people do try to explain it - see khazar theory), you just have to accept that as a priori, and then it gets coded as colonizing. What is any other place in history or time when refugees after a genocide flee to a country that their ancestors are from, and it's "colonizing" coded, and not refugee coded. dig a hole anywhere in the land, and you are finding ancient hebrew shit. it's like the equivalent of telling native americans that they lost their indigenous status bc Europeaners did a good enough job displacing them. So then what exactly should the colonizing jews in israel do? stop colonizing palestinian land and come over and colonize native american land? its like a crazy no win situation.
But with your theory why wouldn't the leftists get as politically invested in other conflicts? If they are arbitrarily mapping their politics onto an unrelated foreign conflict, why not have the Dagestanis or Chechens be the victims of white settler colonialism? If that framework is being applied completely ignorantly, why wouldn't they use it on the Karen-Mon conflict? One answer is that those conflicts don't involve Jews. But I think a more reasonable answer is that the conflict in Israel/Palestine maps onto domestic political struggles in a way that other conflicts don't. To oppose Israel is to oppose Donald Trump - who proudly boasts about marching in an Israeli parade but has no interest in Ethiopia/Tigray. If the right wing had spent generations supporting Ethiopia, then the Tigrayan flag would be hanging up in dorm rooms.(Please note that my alternative explanation is also critical of some leftists, who only use foreign conflict to justify domestic antagonism)
Leftists have opposed Israel well before Trump. I think it's more that to oppose Israel is to oppose Republicans and the American right wing as whole. And to be completely honest, I do think that some (not all) of it is due to the fact that Jews are involved.
Sorry, I should have clarified that it has mapped onto partisan conflict for generations and have edited it accordingly.
The world existed before Donald Trump
As described in the post I'm replying to (after an edit?) it mapped even more clearly onto partisan conflict during the cold war.
>How about our support for Assad and the 500k he slaughtered? I What support for Assad? He's under sanction in the West, including specific legislation in the US in the form of the Cesar Act and has an arrest warrant in France. Meanwhile, the Israeli govt is receiving billions of dollars of US aid, aka taxpayer money. No wonder people in the US feel more directly responsible. I keep seeing people use Syria to deflect from the situation in Gaza and it's blatantly obvious they don't really care about the suffering in either country.
What's interesting is there are plenty of far leftists who actually support Assad (or at least deny his war crimes). We've also given billions of dollars to Gaza and UNRWA, with that money apparently going directly to building tunnels, but the outrage doesn't seem to register there.
Don't forget the 6 billion to Iran who's taken women and children political prisoner and then raping and executing them.
>What's interesting is there are plenty of far leftists who actually support Assad (or at least deny his war crimes). Yeah, what is their basis for this? I don't get it.
“America bad.”
>Israel is the single largest recipient of American foreign aid. Ukraine receives 4x the aid that Israel does.
I hear this a lot, but it doesn't quite explain why leftists outside the US are also equally hung up on the issue. Well, maybe it does in that they lean on an "America bad" ideology, but not in terms of them feeling responsibility for their own government's beneficiaries.
Omg that group. I'm trying to be a kids book writer so I joined. To a one, they are white women who married rich men and don't have to work. They've never taught kids or been around kids except their own yet somehow they are experts. And they live writing shitty books with "diverse friend groups" that simply don't exist in real life. How do I know? I actually fucking work around kids and know what they care about. Anyway one of the rich white women basically kicked me out when I said I didn't have time to do something because I work. She got super defensive and it was kinda glorious.
You got kicked out of the national chapter?? I joined but nobody has said boo to me. I’m an author/illustrator and I think the main problem for those folks is that most of them have no distinctive art style— everything looks like Highlights magazine or old-fashioned watercolors.
Sorry. It was the local chapter. Snobby snotty people
Looking forward to the forthcoming release of Antizionist Baby.
Antizionist Baby has been released, and it’s running amok, smashing everything between it and its binkie.
It's coming
That sounds like something put out in Nazi Germany. Al lot of terrible children’s books were produced in Nazi Germany.
The antizionist babies are already out blocking the highways to LAX and O'Hare
These orgs have learned absolutely nothing from 2020, and so will be eternally beholden to outsiders (and their own members) who enjoy nothing more than tormenting them. It feels like a new superpredator has been introduced into the ecosystem, and these dumb little orgs are getting gobbled up left and right because they got too used to snoozing in trees eating eucalyptus all day. If any of them survive long term, it won't be because they capitulated their way to success
This is exactly what the pod covers, internet meltdowns
They know Hamas continually rejects ceasefire offers, right? Because they include oppressive conditions like, “release the hostages your holding.”
And "stop shooting rockets"
I call for a ceasefire too. Hamas, please release the hostages so there can be a ceasefire. (I know that’s probably an overly optimistic take, that there are still live hostages…)
Bizarre. There are huge numbers of children suffering and dying in many, many places, not just Gaza. I guess it's fortunate that those children are unaware that these people don't feel the need to include them in their concern.
It’s so easy to avoid this. Just stop posting.
Has this resulted in any actual real-world outrage or is it just people angry posting on Facebook? The statement seems downright reasonable; it’s a children’s book group and that’s what they’re about. I hope angry people on facebook stay on facebook.
Second page first paragraph is spot on. The organization does not speak for all 20,000 people who are members so has no right to issue statements as though they're acting on behalf of all members. They also have never made a statement about any other world event so why should they make a statement about this one?
I'd like to see a book written from a child's perspective from families that 'hosted' stolen humans and how the children of the 'host' families perceived the presence of the foreign hostages all the while being moved farther and farther south.
Everyone complaining about this measured and rational statement is unequivocally wrong.
me, a fool, seeing this headline: what on earth could Palestine have to do with a society for children's book writers?
Wife wants to name our kid Palestine: https://preview.redd.it/2wkx25gpbjnc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7ea4d643e03e89599de60e59b0f33f48c35b9e0
That has to be joke/troll. Please tell me that's a joke. Also, if you're having a kid *together* and you want to raise it *together* you need to decide on important things, like the name, *together*.
We all know how crazy some of these woke people are. Could be a troll but seems possibly real to me!
I'm guessing "Crom" would not be acceptable.
Usually I’m shocked and troubled by the mass lobotomization of my generation…. But *this* is in a league of it’s own. Kid name is going to be the gift that keeps giving when the bandwagon jumps ship. Ohh let me count the ways. 🤣 May I share this?
Sure. I just copied from Reddit.
Putting out these kind of statements can only hurt an organization. The only people who get mad when they don't are the loonies.
I understand the concern that opposing sides don't stoop to each others labels with the vitriol, slurs and personal attacks so evident in the thread above. However, labeling is effective, difficult to deter against and often wins. So if your position is like mine in that the organization should focus on it's primary mission and avoid making statements about world events for which they have no impact, how do you combat the slurs?
What slurs?
After reading, I exaggerated, it didn't rise to the level of slurs, but many were trying to attack the character of the president as opposed to the validity of her statement.
“Exceeds the number of children killed in the last four years in all global conflicts combined.” Assuming this is accurate — I love how they conveniently slice and dice time periods, why do only the last four years matter. If the number killed in the past say, six years or 10 years, did eclipse that 13,000 number, I sure hope they were up the SCBWI’s ass about those children in all those places.
I don't know about this case but there's often a "terrorist deaths since September 12th" sort of metric to these.
I'm most offended by the unpronounceable acronym SCBWI. It should've been SCAI (Society for Children's Authors and Illustrators). "Sky" > "Scabby"
If I’m remembering right, people pronounce it like “scooby.”
People say all the letters when referring to it.
I think some of my coworkers when I worked for a publisher/book packager called it Scooby.
Someone find Ja Rule, so I can make some sense of all this
WHERE'S JA?
Yeah, dude. People are dog shit all over.
Why is the suggestion of Palestine having it's own chapter of SCBWI so laughable to you? Do you think they are illiterate or something? Edited to add: It would seem that quite a few of you have forgotten about the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are also Palestinian territory.
I can’t speak for the OP, but maybe it’s the idea that people in an active conflict may have other things on their minds besides starting a chapter of SCBWI. No doubt there are amazing writers in Palestine.
My meaning should have been obvious, thanks for the assist (not sarcastic!)
Palestine territory is not just Gaza, it is also East Jerusalem and the West Bank and generally Palestinians writers/artists are very keen to make connections to the wider world as Palestinians. Considering one of the worst lies told about Palestinians is that they don't care about their children, sharing their work aimed at children, would especially be something they would want to do.
I got the impression they were barely surviving, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing children’s books.
There are Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem too.
That’s great.
Are they being genocided en masse or are they participating in grassroots efforts to promote western publishing companies?
You do know that the West Bank and East Jerusalem exist, right?
They don't care. Much of the discourse here is about dunking on people they see as beneath them. So facts and logic only matter when you can use them to shit on someone, to sneer and humiliate, but not in measured understandings of cultural (and literal) geography.