They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog “Tutsi.”
Until no more messages came.
And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband Igal vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.
Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and potentially dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.
Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging during the last few days.
“They are breaking down the safe room door,” Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. “We need someone to come by the house right now.” She had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.
Keren described her mother, who worked as an administrator in a local college, as someone who had the “sweetest biggest heart,” who everyone knew and loved, and who had spent a lifetime advocating for the rights of Palestinians, including those who live in Gaza where she may now be held.
If this were true, then there would have been no point in supporting emancipation or civil rights as a white person. No point supporting women’s suffrage, even though that was passed democratically with the help of voting men. LGBTQ people do not hate allies, they hate people who actively oppose their right to exist.
I think this pop psychoanalysis doesn’t apply to questions of social justice. What Palestinians need is not just “a sense of self worth”, as if this is just a question of having the right attitude. They need rights.
This thread is conflating support with “savior complex”. Black people, women, LGBTQ, etc. Don’t need a savior. An ally or supporter is not a savior figure.
The problem is that a lot of these Israeli “supporters” want to project the idea that the Palestinians need to be saved. Sometimes as a product of complex self-hatred and historical guilt. Sometimes out of a superiority complex, where they see themselves as the righteous vessel to save humanity. Which is actually a hurtful stance to those who need support and help the most.
Then, you’ll notice that the comment above explicitly says, “those with an inferiority complex”. Not all humans are the same. I bet that most Palestinians are grateful for any external help they can get, given the conditions they’re on. But it only takes one religious nutjob radicalizing young men to promote this kind of hateful mindset to others.
Finally, not all allies are made the same. As an LGBTQ person myself, I can accurately tell you that not every self-proclaimed ally is accepted. There’s self-righteous assholes who want to project themselves as saviors or that try to instrumentalize the Queer movement for political clout. There are predators who use their ally stance to access victims for abuse and exploitation. You might think “well, they are no true allies if…” but that’s not what this point is about. The truth is that not all self-appointed allies will be automatically accepted as such, and the marginalized and oppressed people are 100% in their right to decline or denounce ally status to whoever they feel like it.
OK, those distinctions exist, but I’m not seeing anything that suggests this situation has anything to do with a “savior complex” or “inferiority complex”. I don’t get any sense that this woman was a “self-righteous asshole” or that her support was hated or rejected. The idea that being strongly supportive of human rights is pointless or just serves one’s own “self-satisfaction”, as OP suggested, sounds a lot like when the right dismisses everything as “virtue signaling”.
I think she’s just swept up in a war zone. Hamas obviously didn’t attack this settlement to specifically target people like her.
Yes, but we are arguing abstracts not specifics. To suggest that all allies will be accepted by default, that inferiority complex, or that savior complex, don’t exists, is just plain ignorance. Just because virtue signaling is used as a right wing argument, doesn’t mean it is false. True things are used by bad faith actors all the time, and it doesn’t change their value as truth.
You’re creating a reductio ad absurdum argument that has no bearings in the discussion of the specifics either. But that doesn’t matter now, because the comment doesn’t exist anymore.