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   George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽 (georgetakei@universeodon.com)'s status on Monday, 09-Oct-2023 00:44:40 JST George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽

   When I was a little boy, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor. It was a surprise attack, and thousands of U.S. servicemembers perished. As a nation, we were stunned. And we vowed to strike back. Revenge was understandably on everyone’s mind, including many Americans of Japanese descent who opposed the emperor and were peaceful and law-abiding U.S. citizens and residents. /1

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     George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽 (georgetakei@universeodon.com)'s status on Monday, 09-Oct-2023 00:44:48 JST George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽

     in reply to

     In its zeal to exact that revenge, however, the U.S. government overreacted, out of fear and bigotry. They targeted everyone who happened to look like the people who had carried out the attack. Those of us who had done nothing wrong were forced to pay the consequences for the decisions of others far away and disconnected from us. We were interned for years, in open-air prisons, while America went off to fight Japan, Germany and Italy.

     /2

     Betsy Bee repeated this.
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     George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽 (georgetakei@universeodon.com)'s status on Monday, 09-Oct-2023 00:45:07 JST George Takei :verified: 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽

     in reply to

     It’s so important that we carry the lessons of the past through to today. Merely because one group commits atrocities and acts with depravity does not mean vast hundreds of thousands or even millions of others should be lumped together with them and made to suffer. We must never paint with the brush of justice and retaliation too broadly, or the toll of human suffering will rise immeasurably.

     /end

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     guitardis@universeodon.com's status on Monday, 09-Oct-2023 02:40:18 JST guitardis

     in reply to

     @georgetakei the people that are doing the lumping-in don't know the history.
     The events that allowed the hard-liners to come to power in Israel, for example. What would things be like now, if Hamas had not sworn to drive Israel into the sea? And all the attacks that followed. 1967 borders, no settlements, maybe even place? No Bibi? No "apartheid Israel"?
     None of the civilians, Arabs or Jews, deserve what their governing bodies are doing to them.