Isaac Williams

Israel’s PR problem is caused by Israeli behavior. They can increase their propaganda budget as much as they like and western hasbarists can churn out all the narrative spin in the world, but it still won’t cancel out what happens when you just film Israelis doing Israeli things.

I never asked to know what a dismembered child looks like. Israel imposed that knowledge upon me. I never wanted to know what it looks like when military explosives blow an infant's head off. I only know it because Israel forced me to know it. The reason the Gaza holocaust hit westerners so hard is because it punched through our shitbrained western supremacist narcissism and our vapid mainstream culture and shook us violently awake to something real and terrifying. All of a sudden the idea that our bombs are killing people in the middle east was no longer a vague abstraction sitting in the periphery of our awareness. It was a reality hitting us right in the guts in the middle of the day while we casually scrolled our phones, forcing us to run to the toilet to vomit up our lunch. It made it personal. We were being kicked in the stomach over and over again by the state of Israel with the backing of our own western governments. The abuse of the Palestinians wasn't something that was happening exclusively to the Palestinians; to a much smaller degree, it was also something that was happening to everyone who witnessed it. Westerners aren't accustomed to such confrontations. We are accustomed to bustling around in our mind-controlled dystopia with our first world problems and our neuroses and distractions, our attention going into treats and screens and our consumerist preferences and the petty dramas playing out in our respective social circles. Then all of a sudden we find ourselves in the bathroom puking up our sushi because our phone had just shown us the most unimaginably horrific thing we have ever seen. And we were at all times aware that all the nausea and horror and rage and disgust we experienced when witnessing the Gaza holocaust happened because of the real material actions of real material people. The Israelis were deliberately causing as much devastation as possible to advance their longstanding goal of forcibly transferring all Palestinians out of Gaza. Our leaders were deliberately stalling and equivocating from behind their podiums to buy Israel enough time to make Gaza uninhabitable. We all understood that the waking nightmare we were witnessing was not some natural disaster that was passively occurring; it was being actively inflicted by people who were fully aware of what they were doing. That's the sort of thing that changes you as a person. Changes your whole worldview. Changes your politics. Changes your beliefs. The average westerner needs to do a lot of internal restructuring to truly reckon with the Gaza holocaust and all its implications. That, I think, has been the biggest reason why the genocide of the Palestinians has gotten so much attention and sympathy. It's because its live-streamed nature caused it to affect us in ways other acts of mass military slaughter usually don't. Westerners are so propaganda-addled and indoctrinated that we are largely apathetic to what our bombs are doing to human bodies on the other side of the world. It's only when we are given some skin in the game, as in the Vietnam draft, that we start caring in any politically significant way. Gaza gave us skin in the game in the way it entered into our lives through our electronic devices and showed us things that were so jarring it left a permanent mark upon our lives. Gaza forced us to look, and forced us to see, against all the efforts the propagandists have expended trying to keep us from noticing such things. That's why this thing isn't going away. People are only getting angrier and angrier. The empire has spent three years scrambling around unsuccessfully trying to get us to close our eyes again, and it keeps failing and failing and failing.

Nobody gives a fuck about October 7. No one cares. They used to, but then Israel spent three years showing the world why October 7 happened in the first place. After witnessing the cruelty and savagery of the state of Israel, people get it now. Everyone understands. After Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on the morning of October 7, there was an outpouring of love and sympathy for Israel from around the entire world. Every major landmark from the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House to the Empire State Building were illuminated blue and white in solidarity with the Israeli people. Grown men wept. Bono permanently ruined "Pride (In The Name of Love)" by changing the lyrics to "Early morning, October 7, as the sun is rising in the desert sky, Stars of David, they took your life, but they could not take your priiiiide." Anyone who hadn't been following the Israel-Palestine issue very closely was on Israel's side that day. And then the bombs started dropping. And dropping. And dropping. And dropping. And as the bombs dropped, Israel's approval rating dropped with them. There are only so many children you can see shredded to bits by Israeli military explosives before you start suspecting that there's something terribly wrong with the Zionist project. There are only so many pictures and videos you can see posted by IDF troops dressed in the underwear of dead and displaced Palestinian women before you start wondering if there's something terribly wrong with the culture of the Israeli military. There are only so many Israeli polls you can see published showing overwhelming support for the Gaza onslaught before you start believing there is something terribly wrong with Israeli society itself. There are only so many mainstream humanitarian institutions who can determine that Israel is guilty of genocide before you start recognizing exactly what it is that you are looking at. There are only so many bombed-out hospitals, so many miles of completely flattened neighborhoods, so many grizzly accounts of Palestinian prisoners being savagely raped and tortured by Israeli soldiers you can see before all the excuses, justifications and spin stop working on you. And once the hasbara stops working, it's just you and the unadorned reality of the situation, staring each other right in the eyes. The propagandists and spinmeisters have been falling all over themselves trying to frame the world's plummeting support for Israel as an epidemic of "antisemitism", but that's not working anymore either. Everyone knows it's a lie. Nobody's buying it. It just feels like they're insulting your intelligence. The Gaza holocaust was the single worst thing I have ever seen in my entire life. Day after day, month after month, year after bloody year staring right down the barrel of that waking nightmare changed me forever, and there is nothing in me that will ever forget the horrors I witnessed. And the world is full of people who had the exact same experience I had. Support for Israel is never coming back. When the lights flicker on and you see that the room you've been standing in is full of scorpions, you're not going to forget what you saw when the lights go out again. All of the events which occurred after October 7 showed the world what life was like for Palestinians before October 7. Israel threw a stone into the air and spent three years crying after the stone came down on its head. The hasbarists have been flailing all over the place trying to erase everything that happened before October 7 and to justify everything that has happened since, but their words are just words now. They have no power anymore. And now it's just a matter of time before the world turns against Israel to right the wrongs of the past and set everything back the way it ought to be. From the river to the sea.

There is no such thing as "AI music" or "AI art". AI cannot make music. It cannot create the experience of an artist using skill and intention to transport something from inside them into an audience through vibrations in the air. It can only mimic the noises of that encounter. It's like saying "Look, there's no need to converse with anyone anymore because they've invented a machine which makes noises that sound like human speech!" You'd want to tell them "Hey, that's not the same thing mate. You're talking about a completely different experience which in no way satisfies what people are looking for in a conversation." Proponents of generative AI will sometimes say things like "I played an AI song for my friend who hates AI, and he loved it!" like that proves something, the argument being that if you can't tell the difference then there is no difference. But that's the same as saying there would be no difference between getting catfished by a chatbot and truly finding the love of your life. When you're talking about human interaction, which is what art is at its very nature, it absolutely does matter if there's someone on the other end of it. Of course it does. "AI art" does not meet the same needs as real art, in the same way a chatbot that generates friendly words would not meet the same needs as a real friend. Sure generative AI can produce a noise that sounds a lot like the noise made when a fiddler runs her bow across the strings. It can even produce an effect that looks like a video of a fiddler playing a fiddle at the same time. But there is no fiddler, and there is no fiddle, so it's not fiddle music. It's just something that SOUNDS like fiddle music. The same is true of all music, and all art, and the entire range of ways human beings connect to each other. Merely looking and sounding like something is not the same as being that thing. They can generate a chatbot effect for you that looks and sounds like your dead husband, but it will never BE your dead husband, and it would not be healthy for you to pretend it's the same thing. Generative AI fans frequently display their aversion to exploring the depths of their humanity in the way they'll stand in public saying "Look, this machine can mimic the sounds of a musician, so normal music is obsolete!" It's like, what? What do you think music is, exactly? Just noises with a beat you can dance to? I mean I guess that's all it is for some people, but those people are having a very shallow experience of the thing that music is, and probably a very shallow experience of life in general. An effect that simply goes through the motions of imitating art can only appeal to someone who has just been going through the motions of living their life. If you don't understand the significance of the difference between real human connection and something that merely looks and sounds like it, then that means your whole life is about the appearances of things rather the things themselves. It doesn't matter if your boyfriend really loves you, it just matters that he never leaves. It doesn't matter if your wife really enjoys having sex with you, it only matters that she puts out and makes it fun for you. It doesn't matter if your adult children enjoy spending time with you, it just matters that they turn up to family functions and show you the respect you feel you are owed. People like this are missing out on so very, very much of the human experience, but they don't know it because they've never explored anything outside their immediate comfort zone. They want custom-made music feeding them "infinite personalized music" that sounds like the songs they already know they like. They want custom-made podcasts of artificially generated voices feeding them political opinions they already agree with. They want a robotic spouse that caters to their every physical and egoic desire, and they'll buy them up as soon as they become available. Don't be like them. Don't live like that. Don't life your life running from true human connection. Don't be a coward hiding from your own inner dimensions. Dive into the depths of this crazy human adventure. Explore. Expand. Be vulnerable. Be brave. Otherwise you're just killing time and waiting for death in the shallow end of the pool.

See this is what I'm talking about. We're told there's an epidemic of "antisemitism" in our society and Zionists are always claiming hate crimes happened to them, but whenever there's actual footage it's always stuff like "man said Free Palestine to notorious genocide apologist."