…meanwhile today, from the noted antisemitic organization called J Street:
Babale loves to play the deflection game. It allows them to pretend they’ve got the moral high ground when in reality they are defending this: the de facto annexation of Palestinian land, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
And the sad thing is that his tactics work. Nobody wants to talk about this. They will get baited into extended debates about podcasters that nobody here actually listens to. And what Macklemore did in 2014 was obviously antisemitic, was really fucking stupid, and was rightly condemned at the time; he apologised, and nothing he has done since leads me to believe he did it out of a hatred of Jewish people or because he holds antisemitic views. I think he did it because he was fucking stupid.
But we can both concede that what he did was antisemitic AND oppose what Israel is doing to Palestine and to Southern Lebanon; we can condemn this utterly rediculous war with Iran that is causing global disruption.
We can look at what happened to Macklemore and say that this just isn’t right. The same as the activists who were targeted by ICE. For the people that spoke up for Palestine that got fired from their jobs, kicked out of their accommodation, for the people that worked for the UN and for the International Courts that face sanction from the US, which means they can’t even open a bank account now, for the grannies in the UK who got thrown in jail because they held up a sign in support of a “proscribed terrorist group.”
It should be plainly obvious what Babale actually stands for. They won’t condemn the killing of Hind Rajab, of Refaat Alareer, of the 15 paramedics and aid workers that were slaughtered on the 23rd of March 2025. They literally just said they support Israel’s actions in Gaza and in defense of its actions in Gaza, I’m going to assume atrocities and all because they won’t condemn the most obvious examples of them.
Babale supported the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. In its short time being in charge of food distribution in Gaza, 2600 Palestinians in Gaza were massacred trying to get food from them. Nearly 20,000 people were injured. While they were running food distribution part of Gaza slipped into famine.
Babale’s thought that the point of this video was that “Ben Gvir has been bragging about how the prisons used to serve fresh baked pitas everyday until he got involved.”
Babale described the Palestinians in this AI-generated video as “fat and jovial.” Babale rightly condemns Macklemore for wearing an obviously antisemitic mask. But Babale can’t and won’t condemn what was obviously a bigoted portrayal of Palestinians.