research, policy, advocacy, equity, harm reduction, access to health care. cannabis. psychedelics. MHA, PhD. Earthling. Opinions are my own. RTs ≠ endorsement
Vancouver, British Columbia
Joined May 2015
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Rielle Capler retweeted
My Jewish ancestors lived till 70 CE in Judea from where they were taken by the Romans around the year 100 as slaves to Europe, forming the Diaspora. My Barzelay lineage lived till 1380 in Basque country, till 1496 in Portugal, till 1715 in Venice, and since then in Amsterdam.
I'm proud of my biblical name, Barzelay (or Barzilai), meaning “man of iron". Barzelay the Gileadite was King David's friend (2 Samuel 17.27-29 & 19.32-40). Barzelay the Meholathite (2 Samuel 21.8). In Ezra (2.61) & Nehemiah (7.63) a priestly clan is called "children of Barzelay”. I can trace my Barzelay family name back to Basque Country in 1353.
I’m the sole male 2nd generation Holocaust survivor who never got to know 214 relatives of my four grandparents’ families, murdered by the German Nazis with the help of Dutch collaborators.
Since 1967 I’m back in my ancestral homeland, Israel, rebuilding my decimated family.
What’s my privilege? So far the only privilege I have had, is being a target of IslamoFascists and antisemites of all ethnicities, colors, shapes and backgrounds, just like my ancestors for 3000 years. Nothing changed. What was supposed to be “Never again” became “More of the same again”.
Except that we Jews don’t take antisemitic shit any longer. Antisemites can shove it. We defend our existence and fight back since 1948, to the chagrin of our enemies.
Am 🇮🇱 Chai.
Rielle Capler retweeted
Can you imagine the @washingtonpost publishing this article, today?
They should run it again, but they probably won’t, because they’re cowards.
Rielle Capler retweeted
"Windows hit at synagogue" is perhaps the least urgent and most passive way possible to describe yet another racist attack on Jews during a historic wave of bigotry.
Windows at Westmount synagogue hit by apparent pellet gun fire, police say ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/…
Rielle Capler retweeted
He was famous for advocating for peace between Muslims and Christians. Islamists murdered him for that.
You don’t hate the BBC enough.
Rielle Capler retweeted
Calling Jews racist for rejecting Arab parties that won’t call Hamas terrorists is like calling Black people racist for rejecting the KKK.
Jews are expected to prove they're not racist by endorsing those who are ok with them being murdered, tortured and kidnapped for being Jews.
Rielle Capler retweeted
So if Eisenkot's coalition doesn't join with Arab parties, they're racist?
One of the Arab parties is extremely anti-LGBTQ+. They refuse to condemn Hamas.
When you judge a party by what you see as its "race," instead of its stances, who is the racist one?
Rielle Capler retweeted
The media posted more about Macklemore's opening show than over 60 Christians being massacred this morning.
Weird.
Rielle Capler retweeted
FACT: The annual funding Israel receives from the US amounts to less than one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget. Less than 1/10th of 1%.
FACT: That annual funding would cover only a few hours of federal health care spending. A few hours.
Yet politicians who specialize in scapegoating would have you believe that Israel is responsible for America’s affordability crisis.
Like every form of scapegoating before it, it is a dangerous lie.
Rielle Capler retweeted
Capitalism didn't create your need to work to survive. Nature did.
An employer doesn't impose that necessity upon you. He offers you an opportunity to satisfy it through voluntary exchange.
Socialism doesn't eliminate the necessity of work. It merely transfers authority over production to politicians or the collective.
Under capitalism, you're free to change employers, negotiate wages, work for yourself, or establish a cooperative. None guarantees success, but the freedom exists.
And here's where your moral superiority becomes particularly ridiculous.
You condemn people for offering employment on terms others are free to reject, yet consider yourself morally entitled to dictate how they must use their property, run their businesses, and compensate others.
You call voluntary agreements exploitation while presenting coercion as compassion.
Your objection isn't that people are being forced to serve others. It's that they aren't being forced to serve others on your terms.
And somehow, you've convinced yourself that makes you the moral one.
After reading the replies to my original post, I've learned that some libertarians have a much bigger problem than their understanding of economics. Their complete lack of empathy is fucking astonishing.
I suggested that paying half your income in rent because the alternative is sleeping in a freezing car isn't exactly a wonderful example of economic freedom. The responses were an extraordinary collection of lectures about voluntary exchange, personal responsibility, property rights, and why homelessness is apparently just another consumer preference.
Here are the five most common arguments.
1. It's voluntary because nobody is forcing you.
Apparently, choosing between unaffordable rent and sleeping in your car is the expression of liberty. Sure, nobody is holding a gun to your head. But someone with $500 in the bank doesn't have the same bargaining power as someone with $10 million in property. A decision made under financial desperation is still a decision. That doesn't mean the person has meaningful economic freedom. If your definition of liberty includes celebrating someone's choice to freeze in their car, perhaps your philosophy needs some fucking work.
2. Just move, get roommates, buy a house, or sleep in your car.
This was my favorite. One person suggested getting a gym membership so you could sleep in your car and still shower. Others recommended second jobs, roommates, or simply buying a house. Fucking brilliant. But what happens when millions of households simultaneously move somewhere cheaper? Demand increases, and those locations become less affordable unless housing supply expands. What works for one individual doesn't necessarily work for everyone. It's called the fallacy of composition. An entire housing crisis cannot be solved by giving millions of people individual financial advice. Yet apparently, sleeping in a Toyota Corolla now constitutes a comprehensive economic policy.
3. Government regulations and central banks caused expensive housing.
This was actually a reasonable argument, at least initially. Restrictive zoning and excessive development regulations absolutely can contribute to expensive housing. But blaming government for every undesirable market outcome is just ideological laziness. Housing prices also depend on incomes, credit conditions, construction costs, land values, population growth, speculation, and investment expectations. Developers build when they expect sufficient profits, not simply because people need somewhere to live. Removing bad regulations can improve housing supply. It doesn't magically eliminate every other economic problem. An economy is an interconnected system, not a fucking supply-and-demand diagram.
4. The landlord provides a mutually beneficial service.
Several people argued that rental transactions must benefit both parties because otherwise they wouldn't happen. Yes, someone facing homelessness might prefer paying half their income in rent to sleeping outside. Congratulations. You've established that people prefer shelter to freezing. But that doesn't prove the housing market is competitive, affordable, or producing desirable outcomes. People routinely accept terrible arrangements because their alternatives are worse. Individual rationality doesn't guarantee desirable outcomes for society. The existence of a transaction isn't proof that the economic system is working particularly well.
5. You aren't entitled to someone else's property or labor.
And naturally, someone had to start screaming about communism. Apparently, suggesting that people shouldn't have to sleep in freezing cars is now revolutionary Marxism. I support private property, competitive markets, and private enterprise. But supporting capitalism doesn't require celebrating every outcome it produces. Property rights don't automatically guarantee affordable housing, economic efficiency, or an equitable distribution of resources. You can defend private property without treating human suffering as an acceptable demonstration of economic liberty.
Now, here's what genuinely disturbed me.
I expected arguments about economics. What I didn't expect was how enthusiastically some people recommended homelessness. Sleep in your car. Get a gym membership. Work three jobs. Move away. Stop complaining. These weren't hypothetical responses. People actually suggested these things. Imagine seeing someone struggling to afford shelter and immediately explaining why they should be grateful to their landlord. What kind of fucking worldview produces that reaction?
Markets are supposed to serve human beings. Human beings aren't supposed to suffer simply to validate someone's economic philosophy. I'm a supporter of free markets, but I don't believe that requires abandoning basic human empathy. The irony is that people who constantly preach individual liberty seem perfectly comfortable dismissing the economic circumstances that restrict it.
If your response to someone facing homelessness is to congratulate them on having the freedom to sleep in their fucking car, perhaps you've spent too much time defending capitalism and not enough time interacting with actual human beings.
Rielle Capler retweeted
Current deaths in conflicts around the world. That one at the bottom is the "genocide" the whole world must stop by ruining Ed Sheeran tours and abusing Jewish kids in Golders Green.
Rielle Capler retweeted
Did you know?
1300 years ago, a Jew in Iran wrote this letter in Judeo-Persian to his Jewish friends in China, which goes far back in Jewish life in China.
In 1949, the communist government of China ethnically cleansed China of all Jews living there.
Tens of thousands of Jews became stateless overnight.
Since October 7th, China has taken an active role in fueling global antisemitism.
Rielle Capler retweeted
Here's CBC in one headline.
The "Palestinians" were actual terrorists, carrying machine guns to kill civilians with. But you'd never get that from the headline or the cutline.
They are just the worst news organization. The worst.
Rielle Capler retweeted
CBC deliberately inverted the story
They opened with: “Israel has closed off the West Bank after Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinians near Hebron.”
The actual sequence—that two armed men from Hebron drove up, got out of the car, and opened fire on the checkpoint, triggering a 20-minute gun battle in which the attackers were killed—was buried nearly two and a half minutes in. Only then did viewers learn about the large quantity of weapons and ammunition, Israeli officials saying the pair were planning a major attack on civilians, and Hamas praising the “high-impact operation” while calling for more violence.
BBC, CNN, The Washington Post, and The Times of Israel all led with the attack itself. CBC chose not to.
This is not neutral sequencing. Leading with the Israeli response while delaying the fact that the dead men initiated a terrorist attack is a classic framing choice that makes the aggressors look like victims—days before Israel’s election @brodiefenlon
Rielle Capler retweeted
It is a lie that Palestinians did not exist in 1948.
One of the earliest references to Palestinians as a distinct people dates back to 1798, when German philosopher Immanuel Kant mentioned “Palestinians living among us” in his book Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.
He was, of course, referring to Ashkenazi Jews living in Europe. Palestine was always a geographical term, but on the rare occasions when it was used to refer to a people, it referred to Jews.
The Palestinian Arab identity, however, is much more recent and was indeed only invented in the 1960s. Until then, Arabs were never seen as native, and fiercely rejected and even took offense at being called Palestinian, as the term was strongly associated with Jews and the Zionist movement.
The Palestinian Arab identity was created specifically as a counter-identity to Israel and to present Arabs as an ancient and indigenous people of the region. Had Israel never been established, not a single Arab would identify as Palestinian today.
So yes, Palestinians did exist before 1948. They just were Jews.
Rielle Capler retweeted
Myriam was a 7-year-old French Jewish girl. She witnessed a terrorist break into her school and kill two of her classmates.
She tried to run but tripped while grabbing her schoolbag, causing her ballet slippers to fall out. She stopped to pick them up. He chased her and grabbed her by the hair, shooting her in the head at point-blank range.
The man was Mohamed Merah, and a rap song honoring him and other Muslim terrorists has become the unofficial anthem of the ‘student protests’ in France.
🚨 ALERTE - Des élèves ONT BLOQUÉ le lycée François Villon, à Beaugency (45), en écoutant MRH, un titre faisant référence à des TERRORISTES ISLAMISTES.
« À la Mohamed Merah, v-esqui' les caméras. Bataclan, je l'ai shooter à l'œil, chasse à l'homme, Salah Abdeslam »
« J’ai pas peur, j’ai pas peur de l’enfer, le pacte est intact, à part Allah qui peut m’arrêter. Bataclan, faisaient les morts, allongez-vous, je vais en shooter à l’œil ».
Rielle Capler retweeted
I am not Jewish. But I am a proud Israeli citizen. I live in Tel Aviv. Despite the world having extremely opinionated views about the country I live in, few people I have come across on X (that don’t live here) know little of substance about Israel apart from their warped sense of history and reality. This is the first post of a series I will write entitled Everything You Think You Know About Israel is (Probably) Wrong. The points are not in any particular order. Spread the word.
Most Israelis (just over 50%) are not white. The devastating impact on European Jews of the Holocaust meant that the newly formed Israel in 1948 was largely populated by Jews fleeing persecution in Muslim-ruled countries predominantly in the Middle East and North Africa. These are known as Mizrahi Jews and when the State of Israel was formed they made up 80% of the Jewish population living here.
Jews have had a continuous presence in the land of Israel since around 1208 BCE, that’s 3,200 years — long before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The Muslim faith, in contrast, dates back 1,400 years (610 CE). Yes, when they lost majority rule in the 7th-century Muslim conquest they were not in the majority for centuries, but still lived in their ancestral homeland.
Arab terrorism against Jews existed before 1948. In 1929, for example, 67 Jews were killed in the Hebron massacre, attacked and slaughtered by the Arabs they lived and worked beside. My wife’s great-grandfather Ben-Zion Gershon (who was a local doctor that often treated the Arab community without accepting payment) was tortured, had both his eyes gouged out and was then murdered. This was after his daughter Esther was raped in front of him, and his wife Zahava had both arms chopped off and was left to die. This was just one of many similar massacres inflicted on Jews that day.
I will continue this series over the coming days.
Rielle Capler retweeted
🚨 OMG. Stunning resurfaced footage shows Ugandan Mayor Mamdani saying the plan is to manipulate white leftists into electing 3rd worlders like him
Spoken in his 3rd world accent: "You need someone to be a validator, tell them to TRUST US."
🤯🤯
"Minority communities, because we've never had representation, we are tied to identity. White communities...are more ideology...voters think of themselves first as progressive."
Muslim invaders PURPOSEFULLY position themselves as "validators" to manipulate the public into handing over control
TERRIFYING.
He needs to be deported.