cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26883105
from #MiddleEastEye #MEE
By Nadav Rapaport
Published date: 5 March 2025 15:35 GMT“The youths film themselves posing as representatives of a fictional humanitarian organisation and call their family members and friends to ask for donations for Palestinian children. Those called usually react with rage, shouting and swearing before the callers reveal themselves in the videos uploaded to the platform as humorous pranks.”
Its interesting - the article has taken one view of this as the the target being Palestinian children.
However reading this, the target actually seems to he the “prank” victims. Young people are goading older israelis into showing how angry, biased and racist they are when asked to help Palestinian children, and then sharing that and laughing at them?
It feels like Israeli children are mocking Israeli adults. Its a bit crass but the targets aren’t really Palestinian children. If anything its showing just how racist Israeli adults are.
Of course there is also the disturbing element of Israeli children seeing this all as just a joke, and not seeming to care about what this means about their parents and the country they live in. To see people get so viscerally angry when asked to help starving children is shocking yet I don’t think the Israeli youth seem atnall disrtubed by how hateful the people they’re talking to really are.
It seems to be a bit of both. The article does cite a lot of comments agreeing with what the older relatives said and getting a bunch of likes. So some people are laughing at how horrible and racist it is, but some are laughing at the unapologetically saying what we’re all thinking aspect.
A lot of racist jokes are just people saying their biases out loud and unapologetically, and then the racists laugh because they agree, and they get to affirm those beliefs. You might get some people on the other side laughing at the absurdity, but for the people of the race being made fun of, it just feels like the attack it is. Especially when the subject is serious and you can’t distance yourself from it, and nothing is more serious than genocide.
Like if you showed these to a Palestinian child they’d probably become depressed and scared by it. If you showed these to a boomer israeli they would probably laugh at it and say they’re right.