#Jewish exceptionalism

[hussyknee]

Tried to tell someone that Zionism is about white supremacy, Islamophobia and colonial capitalism and to stop centering western antisemitism when the whole reason that Palestinian Christians aren't protected by Christian Zionists is that they're the wrong race. And they blocked me.

Twenty thousand dead and y'all are still not done shutting down BIPOC and Muslims lol. You're not equal victims as colonized people and you never have been. Colonized natives of settler societies and people from Africa and Asia will never be white, and always be vulnerable to and exploited by white Europeans, no matter their own regional disenfranchisement. Zionism is about race, not religion. Religion is just a convenient alignment and rationale for US imperial interests i.e military industrial economy, weapons trade, shipping lines and gas reserves. Your white asses are the beneficiaries and will be last in the line to be eaten after the Black people, brown immigrants, Muslims in their own damn countries, and Natives. Every time you deny it, you're showing your refusal to divest from white anxiety and become more complicit in Zionism. Die mad.

[uncanny-tranny]

Big reminder that your country is not immune to bigotry. I've seen so many people, for example, pretend like antisemitism doesn't exist in the USA because we were part of the allied forces in WWII (of course, they conveniently don't remember that we rejected jewish refugees when WWII broke out and we only really joined because Pearl Harbor was bombed, but I digress).

If you think your country is immune from antisemitism, racism (including anti-Indigenous racism), class issues, ableism, whatever else it may be, look deeper because you will find it.

[kosherkept]

i hope it doesnt sound too stupid but sometimes i scroll through pinterest and look at all gorgeous judaica and feel such a surge of love for judiasm. maybe its becuase i just really love things

[abyssaldyke]

Reading The Metamorphosis and can I just say I think Franz Kafka would've really benefited from some non-judgmental parallel play

[silly-jewish-vents]

Begging, screaming, pleading with gentiles to use Hashem, G-d, or The Tetragrammaton to refer to the Jewish god specifically. Being academic or whatever nonsense you’re using to rationalize it is no excuse to butcher the pronunciation of a name that is not meant to be spoken by the culture you’re referring to. You’re not being academic. You’re just being a jerk.

Edit/additional notes for clarification: this is specifically talking about attempted pronunciations/spellings of the Tetragrammaton in areas like Academia or in conversations about Judaism centered around Jews. This is not about in terms of a religious context such as church or mosque.

The spelling of G-d with a dash instead of an o is my personal comfort level for this post. For anyone for whom that isnt their custom that isnt an issue and they can absolutely use an oh and spell out G-d fully. I chose not to for this post. I may choose to spell it out in the future.

There is technically an argument to be made for exceptionally early israelite history like canaanite era usage. Personally still makes me and others uncomfortable and feels weird. That argument does not apply to temple or onward Jewish history era.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Israeli democracy is an oxymoron; it is not even a democracy for its Jewish population, let alone its Palestinian citizenry. Indeed, Israeli sociologists and political geographers have examined Israel in order to find an accurate definition that properly describes its peculiar nature. Oren Yiftachel has called Israel an ethnocracy while Sami Smooha defined it as an ethnic democracy. Other historians looking at similar examples, such as apartheid South Africa, have used a German term of the Nazi period and have defined regimes based on racialized marginalization as herrenvolk democracy, which offers a more nuanced and less atypical definition. After all, Israel and Israeli academics have continuously argued for the exclusivity and exceptionalism of Israel, presenting Israel as unique in world history. Instead, one may examine the normative definition to check their fit for this case.

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation

[psychologeek]

And that also ignoring the long history of hate and persecution before the establishment of Israel.

That is not to hijack this post. But -

I just shared and wrote a long post about it earlier today.

(ft. Ma'abarot, relative-search bureau, the Tsena era, and "you gotta ring twice")

I currently have a lot of Jewish mutuals/people I follow and over the course of the last few months, almost Every. Single. One has talked about their mental health declining, that they’re exhausted and terrified, that they’ve become more closed off and lost their trust in people from outside their communities, due to being gaslit and ignored constantly on a society wide scale. Almost all of them have experienced antisemitic abuse or violence personally or had bomb threats to their synagogues and community centres or had swastikas and slurs graffitied on their properties.

The worst thing about this outrage is that none of them are really surprised by it - frightened, sickened, yes - but not surprised. They and their ancestors have had to deal with this shit for thousands of years. And all of them expect - no they *know* - it’s going to get worse.

It’s beyond fucking shameful. We are failing these people on a massive, society wide scale. Again.

So, I NEVER want to see a single one of my fellow goyim say shit like “Jews are just playing the victim,” “the rise in antisemitism is overblown and not as bad as they say because I haven’t seen it,” “it’s just a few extremists,” because NO, IT ISN’T - it’s systemic. Those who aren’t directly perpetrating it are mostly ignoring it. If you won't believe or listen to Jewish voices (if not, why not?) then the cold statistics cannot be waved away.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-antisemitic-incidents-up-about-400-since-israel-hamas-war-began-report-says-2023-10-25/

https://news.sky.com/story/more-than-4-000-antisemitic-incidents-recorded-by-jewish-charity-in-uk-in-2023-with-explosion-in-hatred-blamed-on-hamas-attacks-13071580

https://www.reuters.com/world/how-surge-antisemitism-is-affecting-countries-around-world-2023-10-31/

[germiyahu]

It is absolutely disgusting to frame Jews as "ungrateful brats" for daring to (correctly) say "nobody came to our aid in WWII" while you yourself are being an ungrateful brat stomping your feet and screaming and crying that over 400,000 Americans "gave their lives to save the Jews."

This patronizing and frankly victim blaming "community notes" on a speech made by Netanyahu is pretty damning! I smell some Hitler particles coming off of this, what about you? And we all know Netanyahu is a criminal clown but this quote:

Was not incorrect.

It says so much about how you view the Holocaust if you agree with the American (and other Allies') perspective on the Shoah. History says otherwise. The Allies only cared about the Shoah when it was politically beneficial and convenient to frame themselves as liberators and heroes.

They turned boats carrying Jewish refugees away, the USSR sank some of them, drowning hundreds. All these governments denied entry visas. The United States allowed Nazi sympathizers to hold rallies and stage protests, while normal Americans prided themselves on their neutrality (more Americans were sympathetic to Syrian refugees entering in the 2010s than Jewish refugees in the 1930s).

American (and British) forces entering "liberated" camps were often "shocked" by what they found. And yet the world knew for years about Hitler's antisemitism, the Nuremburg Laws, Kristallnacht. So not only were they aware of the danger posed to Jews, most people as well as their governments didn't care. And their "shocked" reaction to discovering evidence of genocide should tell you they certainly weren't motivated to join the war to stop a genocide!

To demand that a people be "grateful" to you for doing nothing and then helping defeat the Nazis (for your own benefit) which stopped the genocide they faced after only a paltry 6 million people were murdered... you are the real brats. Thankfully a few brave naïve Twitter people pointed out under the predictable comments things like the Yad Vashem... or the fact that so many people saying "I've never heard a Jew thank a goyim for anything!" were met with "you probably don't know any Jews lol."

The legacy of the Holocaust/Shoah to people like this is "Worship us, sanctify our names and deepthroat our cocks forever because we think we saved you." Like how dare you think Jews should forever be on their knees kissing your feet because you deigned to "end" a genocide after 80% of Europe's Jewry was gone. Your true colors show the moment any Jews ever question America's exceptionalism and beneficence. This happens a lot. If an Israeli ever says a single thing that does less than imply sunshine comes out of America's ass, a lot of the (right wing) American non Jewish Israel supporters immediately go off the fucking rails and "threaten" to stop their support.

This is the dangerous side of American Philosemitism. Because without fail, and I mean without fail, this jingoistic kneejerk temper tantrum instinct in Americans invites literal Holocaust deniers to come out of their toilets and start spewing their vile nonsense. And do you know what all of these people crying about their peepaw's sacrifice for those ungrateful Christ Killers say in response to these Nazis? Nothing.

Their support for Jews is entirely contingent on how much Jewish people kiss their asses, or how much they perceive Jewish people to be kissing their asses, and America's ass. Childish!

[matan4il]

Today is Family Day in Israel.

This post is dedicated to every Jewish family destroyed, in part and especially in whole, by anti-Jewish violence in the Israeli-Arab conflict. It's dedicated to the Kutz family, who were murdered to the last one by Palestinian terrorists on Oct 7. When their bodies were found, they were still embracing.

It's dedicated to Rachel Hiller and her fiance Yossef Weissman, who were each the last surviving member of their families, and were murdered in the Kfar Etzion massacre, which took place before the State of Israel was even established, before they had a chance to marry, and start a family following the loss they experienced in the Holocaust, and to a total of 144 Holocaust survivors who were the last ones, and when the Arabs killed them during the Independence War, these families were wiped out as well, finishing what the Nazis started.

It's dedicated to Livia Dikman, an only daughter, who was pregnant with her first kid, and was murdered in Jerusalem by Hamas terrorists on a day when Israel and Hamas were supposed to have a truce as part of the hostage deal. Livia's sister in law is a colleague of mine at our museum.

It's dedicated to my own relative, Yitzchak Roller, who was an only son to a family that survived the Holocaust in Romania, a baby survivor. He and his mom came to Israel when he was 8, and even though they barely had anything, while giving private lessons for a living, Yitzchak insisted on not taking any money from those in need. Everyone who knew him remarked what an exceptionally good person he was. He also wrote a research paper on the pogrom that was carried out against the Jews of Iasi, which my grandmother had survived (but in which she lost family, something she never fully recovered from). The paper was published by our museum, though Yitzchak didn't get to see that. Being an only child meant he didn't have to serve in the army, but he felt that he had to do his part in defending our country. He was killed in the Six Day War, before he got the chance to marry and have kids. That branch of our family is gone forever.

May all of their memories be a blessing. We will never forget that we are not whole without you.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[hussyknee]

[littlestpersimmon]

Most movements that center on exclusion and separatism will always fail to see (and therefore fail to dismantle in any meaningful way) systems of oppression. T3rves will complain about trans women in women's prisons and will never, ever complain about the existence of prisons in the first place, Transmeds will completely isolate themselves from any iteration of transhood that does not medicalize itself, therefore leaving the thousands of trans identities of various cultures as totally invalid, and having the medical industry be the end all be all of arbiters on the matter. Do u get what I'm saying. Any conversation around oppression that frames an oppressed demographic as exceptionally oppressed often turn into echo chambers where it becomes impossible to talk about the intricacies and intersectionalities of bigotry, often resulting into demands of unconditional support, with guilt tripping and weaponized marginalization. Being an antizionist jew has been, actual, literal hell when I know by heart every single liberal zionist Jewish argument that every moderate on this website falls for. I have to make myself clear that I put anti imperialism over my own feelings, that many many others before me have pointed out how callous it is to center jewish feelings, to invoke the millenia of our peoples suffering, to speak of antisemitism in tandem with palestinian resistance, as if speaking of palestine insinuates a steady slope onto hatred of Jews. Many cliques on this website have a bunch of enablers to exploit their own status as part of a marginalized and oppressed group to silence any criticism of Israel and America, which is to me is incredibly perverse and manipulative. If you are a true ally to Jews, any place in the world should be a safe place for us, and it should not be at the desire to build ethnostates on the expense of an indigenous population made to reckon with crimes they did not commit. I don't know.

[etz-ashashiyot]

About Me/FAQs

You can call me Avital. I am a non-binary traditional egalitarian Jew living in the US. Any pronouns except they/them are fine. (!היא/את בעברית, בבקשה. תוד��)

I really appreciate human interaction. That being the case, if you follow me and I don't already follow you, please send me a DM with the following:

What you want me to call you (internet name, username, nickname, whatever)

What brought you here and made you want to follow me

Something random about you that you feel comfortable sharing (pet pics are always welcome too <3)

I had a whole lot of other rules on my previous blog to weed out the faint of heart, but I genuinely don't know how well that worked, so instead I will simply put roughly the same information below as resources and recommended reading. Fair warning: I will operate from a baseline assumption that you've done the reading and therefore will not be explaining anything in them.

I also had a listing of my firm opinions and other miscellaneous information. That got long and unwieldy, but a lot of people seemed to appreciate it, so I will post roughly the same list under the cut.

The current username refers to my current symbol of a tree of lanterns in the starlight. This is related to my desire to create self-symbolism, old school style (like I really want to create a family crest, a flag, a seal, and other heraldic nonsense. Why? Because it delights me, of course.)

This page is under construction and subject to change at any time.

B'vracha,

Avital

Recommend Reading

For followers who are Christian, were Christian, are non-Jews who grew up in a Christian culture and/or have only learned about Judaism through Christianity, these links are very helpful in unpacking some of the antisemitism you were taught:

Better Parables (specifically the article about Pharisees, but read the rest of the site too, it's great)

Antisemitic readings of the Temple table-flipping incident in the New Testament

The current Israel-Hamas war and just המצב discourse in general require a lot of background knowledge to discuss intelligently, and not just propaganda. There is a LOT of antisemitism in the public around this topic and it is having serious real-world consequences for Jews all over the world. The mis- and disinformation is causing problems for everyone involved. Islamophobia in the West has increased as well. If you're going to engage in this discussion, I am respectfully but forcefully asking you to read the following sources. They are useful regardless of where you fall on that political scale.

There Is No Magic Peace Fairy

Ways to help: [1], [2], [3]

Muslim organizations advocating for peace, education, positive interfaith relations, and fighting antisemitism

This is perhaps my best summary of my own feelings on the whole thing

Is your pro-Palestine activism hurting innocent people? Here's how to avoid that

Please learn what Kahanism is, because it actually is what people think Zionism is. Zionism is simply a desire for Jewish self-determination in our ancestral homeland of eretz Yisrael. Kahanism is a type of racism that cloaks itself in Zionism but is fundamentally bigoted.

A non-exhaustive list of antisemitic incidents, attacks, and pogroms during [OP's] lifetime

An exceptionally long and thorough explanation of antisemitism and antisemitic violence throughout history

Why The Most Educated People in America Fall for Antisemitic Lies by Dara Horn (tumblr link in case the article link gets broken)

This explanation of the atrocities endured by Soviet Jews and how the legacy of Soviet antisemitism undergirds western "antizionism-not-antisemitism." If you call yourself an anti-Zionist, this is required reading.

An excellent overview of the basics

This is nowhere near complete information, but it's an important start. I will very likely continue to add resources as they become available and would love to create a primer on this topic more generally.

If you don't believe that October 7th happened or wasn't that bad, or really any atrocity denial please read this article from a reporter who was shown the actual footage, as well as this article documenting its effects on him.

If you are still in denial about the pattern of gender based violence, sexualized torture, and widespread rape as a war tactic committed by Hamas on 10/7, you are legally required to read this article.

About the blog:

I’m going to try my best to keep this blog to primarily Judaism, comparative religion and theology, with the occasional side sprinkling of queer & trans stuff, BUT it is absolutely a personal blog at the end of the day.

I talked about Israel and המצב stuff a lot on my previous blog and will likely continue a bit over here too. I welcome a broad swath of opinions, so long as they objectively treat all parties involved as human and deserving of safety, stability, freedom, dignity, and peace. That is apparently a large ask these days, and a not-small part of why I keep talking about this issue. Please be part of the voices that give me hope for the future, okay?

Minors can follow and interact but please keep in mind that I’m probably closer to your parents' age than yours if you do want to interact with me directly.

Interactions:

Rude asks will be deleted. Harassing blogs will be blocked and probably reported.

I consider anything even remotely in the vicinity of trying to proselytize to me to be “harassing,” or at a minimum, rude. Just FYI.

Otherwise, nice interactions are welcomed.

Banter is encouraged; trolling will be ignored

If you are a goy and want to argue with me about Jewish theology, you have to match my perfect score on this popquiz, no cheating by looking things up during the quiz. I learned Judaism as an adult mostly through self-study so you have no excuse. If you're invested enough to argue with me you're invested enough to do the reading homework. (To clarify: I'm happy to explain Jewish stuff to anyone who is sincerely asking or just have a friendly comparative theology discussion or whatever. But I have zero patience for those who want to argue with me about basic shit claiming they know more than me, especially if what they're claiming they "know" is not only wrong but antisemitic and wrong.)

If I don't respond to your interaction, there's a strong chance that I (a) have no idea what to say and am thinking about it, (2) totally meant to respond and just forgot after the notif disappeared, and/or (3) got incredibly busy. It's not personal! Please don't be shy about following up with me if you like. I promise that if we have a problem that is fixable, you'll know. If we have a problem that is not fixable, you'll be blocked.

I am currently learning Ivrit and am delighted to have interactions in Hebrew. Please feel free to message me, reply to posts or reblog, submit asks, etc. in Hebrew and I will do my best to read and respond to it. (Responses will be slower, but not for lack of appreciation of your thoughts!)

Anything else, just ask.

Hard stances:

You're not going to change my mind on these things; I've looked at the evidence, my personal experiences, and thought about them long and hard, and I am not going to be swayed by an internet rando. I can (often, but not always) co-exist just fine with people who I disagree with, but if seeing my posts about this is going to upset you, just do us both a favor and block me now please.

I am deeply distressed at how many people are choosing to live in a "post-factual society" where the truth is based on truthiness vibes and the politics are based on the quippiest of slogans. I don't care who's doing it, misinfo, disinfo, propaganda, atrocity denial, and gaslighting are BAD. There is no nuance here; these are bad things. They are bad if they go against your cause and they are bad if they "support" your cause. No cause is better than the truth.

If we cannot have a discussion where we are operating from the same baseline reality of verifiable facts, we cannot have a productive conversation and I will not engage with you. We can agree or disagree on a lot and that is fine, but facts matter.

If you cannot be reasoned with in accepting verifiable facts as reality, you need help. I'm serious. That is cult behavior. Get off tumblr and get help.

I don't know how to tell you that you should care about other people. If you don't see the inherent worth in other human beings' lives, I can't fix that. Go take that struggle to G-d and heal your soul.

I support the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our ancestral homeland of Israel, the same way that I support other indigenous groups' right to self-determination in their ancestral homelands. If you don't, I'm going to need you to examine why Jews should be singled out of every other group to be denied this right or denied support in seeking it. That said, I definitely do not agree with many of the decisions made by the Israeli government, especially (but far from exclusively) regarding their treatment of Palestinians. I think both Jews and Palestinians deserve to live in peace, safety, freedom, dignity, and self-determination for both. No one is going anywhere; any real solution must recognize that. I tend to favor this proposal by A Land for All as an ideal (and given the grassroots nature of this idea, I think it could work pragmatically too, if the political will exists on both sides.)

I reject the Zionist/anti-Zionist dichotomy altogether for a number of reasons: 1) It impedes conversation because too many people agree but will never know it because they refuse to talk about what they actually mean by those labels and instead make assumptions about the other group. 2) It inherently puts the validity of an existing state up for debate rather than looking at real solutions for the future. You cannot unmake the state of Israel without widespread atrocities, but you can figure out options for everyone to live together in peace and heal from the collective trauma. 3) It also makes it way too easy to play Good Jew/Bad Jew and "Zionist" has basically become the slur de jour for "Jew." It sucks that people took a Jewish word for an important Jewish concept and made it synonymous with "bloodthirsty racist," but personally I don't think arguing over that at this exact juncture in time is helpful.

Bottom line: I'm a humanitarian and a pragmatist, and I care about all the people who call that part of the world home.

Update: for real, if you have trouble seeing Israelis and Palestinians both as human and deserving of safety, dignity, freedom, and inherent worth as living human beings, I don't want to know you. I don't want to talk to you. Go fix yourself.

🌻 I stand with Ukraine 🇺🇦

Free Iran from the Islamic Republic // Women Life Freedom

Abortion is a human right and should be safe, legal, available on demand, and shameless. It's a necessary medical procedure and it's completely barbaric that we're still talking about it as anything else.

Birth control, abortion, and no-fault divorce are actively positive parts of society and building healthy families.

Transition care is healthcare and also a human right. Allowing people to transition prevents self-harm and suicide, and has an extremely high efficacy rate with an exceptionally low level of risk or regret. We now have well over a century of data on this.

That said, detransitioners who are still supportive of trans people/aren't transphobic are more than welcome here, as any exploratory process deserves the right to say, "Interesting! But nope!"

Transunity, ace/aro positivity, and just inclusionism in general, 100%. Fuck off with anything else.

Queer might be a slur in the mouths of some people, but my identity isn't. Don't reblog my posts if you're going to tag it with "q slur" or "q word" or censored in some way. I'm not Gay as in "I prioritize cis men over the entire rest of the community" but Queer as in "my personal labels are none of your business but my political stance on queer liberation sure as fuck will be."

If you don't vaccinate yourself and your kids for any reason other than medical necessity, and especially if you promote anti-vaxxer views and the associated pseudoscience, you are actively harming the most vulnerable members of society for entirely selfish reasons and that makes you a bad person. I hope your kids bypass you to get vaccinated.

Wear a mask 😷

[eretzyisrael]

by Jake Wallis Simons

Therefore, the number of women and children killed was likely grossly exaggerated. If that is the case – if, as Prof Wyner suggests, “the casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters” – where does that leave western outrage? Has the West fallen victim to a monstrous con?

The true ratio of civilian casualties to combatants is likely to be exceptionally low, “at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1”. This, Prof Wyner says, is a “successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians”.

By rights, if the central pillar of the anti-Israel edifice has been discredited, the whole structure should come tumbling down. But don’t hold your breath. The reason why Hamas’s dodgy data is so easily believed is confirmation bias. The drip-drip of Israelophobic propaganda over the years has created a powerful tendency to view the Jewish state, Britain’s democratic ally, as a colonialist aggressor and the Palestinians – even as they butcher children – as the “freedom fighters”. Regardless of the evidence, to many people this has become second nature.

It speaks of millennia of inherited anti-Semitism. A 2012 study by economists Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth found that Germans from towns where Jews were blamed for the Black Death and burnt alive in the 14th century were significantly more likely to vote for the Nazis 600 years later. In his 1945 essay, Orwell recalls a “young intellectual, communist or near-communist” remarking: “No, I do not like Jews. I’ve never made any secret of that. I can’t stick them. Mind you, I’m not anti-Semitic, of course.” Depressingly little has changed.

That is the advantage enjoyed by the jihadis of Gaza. They didn’t even need to keep their strategy a secret. Everyone knows they try to get civilians killed for propaganda gains, aiming to curtail Israeli operations with international outrage. Everyone knows that their censors keep dead terrorists away from the cameras, giving the world the impression that Israel is only attacking civilians (look up former AP reporter Matti Friedman’s seminal 2014 essay, “What the media gets wrong about Israel”, for a sense of how long such games have been played). A gang that murdered and mutilated babies may also, on occasion, be tempted to lie. So much should be obvious. But all this is smoothly eclipsed when a greater narrative is at work.

[rodeodeparis]

re holocaust exceptionalism: as someone who's genuinely annoyed by how ashkenazim do not realize that they're "white" in the us, i really don't think ethnic ashkenazim being white by today's standards has anything to do with conclusions that the holocaust was "unique" or that it's worth recognizing, let alone why its memory is used to justify -sraeli atrocities. the us (for example) is perfectly capable of recognizing the danger uyghurs (largely not white) are being put through - the fault of china, the "enemy superpower" - while not recognizing the danger palestinians (largely not white) are being put through - the fault of their vassal state in the middle east and their own blind support for it.

at the end of the day, countries like the us view the holocaust the way they do because it's both "safe" and politically advantageous for them to view it that way. compare that to, like, iran, who doesn't have good relations with the us and its friends, hence that holocaust denial conference ahmadinejad hosted in 2006 where he invited david duke to speak. (yes, really, look it up.) also compare it to how the us has yet to recognize the many genocides it's committed against native americans, let alone making any significant effort at reparations past whatever haphazard thing they drafted up in the 19th century. the "unique" thing could be a way to deny other genocides the us and its allies were involved in as much as it could be a genuine belief that the genocides the us was complicit in were justified, but it doesn't matter.

as for why individuals think that way, i'd say it's more on a case-by-case basis. some understand how political atrocity recognition and having an ethnostate of your own are and are afraid that losing "power" will somehow make the world revert to rampant antisemitism. some think the us is acting out of the kindness of its heart and are just mindlessly swallowing hasbara narratives that people wanting a free palestine also want to kill every jew. either way, you get the sense that jewish people who are z-onists who think this way are placing themselves in some sort of "competition" against palestinians and other oppressed people, like there's only so much love to go around. looking at the world in this way is selfish, even if it comes out of fear, but you don't need me to tell you that.

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Nearly as soon as the Bolsheviks took power, they began to execute anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries, most of whom had fought alongside the Bolsheviks in the Revolution. They also purged elements of their own party deemed "anti-Soviet" or "counter-revolutionary." This state repression was well documented by the Soviet government, but here we have chosen to use journals and letters of those affected. Lithuanian-American Jewish anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman describe the Bolshevik betrayal: The systematic man-hunt of anarchists [...] with the result that every prison and jail in Soviet Russia filled with our comrades, fully coincided in time and spirit with Lenin's speech at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party. On that occasion Lenin announced that the most merciless war must be declared against what he termed "the petty bourgeois anarchist elements" which, according to him, are developing even within the Communist Party [...] On the very day that Lenin made the above statement, numbers of anarchists were arrested all over the country, without the least cause or explanation. The conditions of their imprisonment are exceptionally vile and brutal. (Boni, 253)

[beardedmrbean]

As if commemorating the first anniversary of the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust wasn’t harrowing enough, we American Jews were treated Monday to a reminder that the marauders who want us dead are alive and well in New York City.

There they were, in Times Square and in Grand Central and in Columbus Circle and elsewhere in the greatest city on Earth, chanting for Hamas, Hezbollah and other death cults committed to raping, kidnapping and killing Israelis, Americans and Jews.

There they were, on American soil, cheering for the monsters who still hold four American citizens in captivity.

There they were, promising to globalize the intifada and bring the bloodshed that is their only true passion to these shores as well.

Watching the keffiyeh-clad thugs, many of my friends felt distraught. How, they wondered, could such hatred flourish here, in America? And why were the bullies permitted to carry on with their intimidation, turning our solemn day of remembrance into one of fear and loathing and expressing their admiration for organizations that our government had long ago classified as terrorist groups?

I understand these sentiments, but I do not share them. The sight of masked maniacs calling for my demise did not deter me. In fact, it gave me hope.

It gave me hope, because, an immigrant here myself, I believe in America. I believe in American exceptionalism.

And I believe that the jaunty little jihadists marching down the block are precisely the sort of wake-up call this great but slumbering nation needs to stretch its limbs and leap into the next big fight for freedom.

You hardly need to be Jewish, or a political scientist, to realize that the so-called pro-Palestine crowd isn’t really all that interested in Palestine.

Their main goal is America, that lone bastion of Western civilization, which is why they strategically chose all-American events, like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony, as the optimal settings to unleash their mayhem.

Trying to disrupt our favorite national pageants is a very strange way to win friends and influence people, but it’s not really our sympathy that the protesters want.

They want us to know that they hate us and everything we represent, and that, if allowed, they intend to do in Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens what they’d done in Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, Be’eri and all the other Israeli communities hit hardest one year ago this week.

Now we know.

And now that we know, we won’t let it happen.

Normal Americans are finally realizing just how deep-seated — and how dangerous — this hatred truly is, and, as Americans always do, they’re taking action. It’s why we’ve seen donations to Columbia University, that renowned seat of Jew-hatred and bigotry, drop 30% this past year.

It’s why we’ve seen lawmakers demand that we take our own laws seriously and deport any foreign national who is openly and outwardly expressing support for terrorists.

And it’s why an overwhelming majority of Americans recently told the Pew Research Center that Israel had very valid reasons to keep on fighting until it defeated Hamas and Hezbollah.

Americans, hallelujah, understand that Israel’s fight isn’t Israel’s alone. It’s the Western world’s struggle against the so-called Axis of Resistance — Iran, Russia, China and their minions. It’s a civilizational fight, and though it may have started a year ago in some dusty corner of the Middle East, it is now being waged right here in Midtown.

The barbarians are at the gates. That’s bad news. But here’s the good news: So are we.