#Zionism is not Jewish faith

[pilloclock]

The difference between Pro Israeli protesters and Pro Palestine protestors could not be more different. 🇵🇸

When I was at my local Pro Palestine protest I saw nothing but bravery, humanity and kindness. I fell over at one point and a mother asked me if I was okay and we laughed together for a moment about how clumsy we are in crowds. I welled up watching proud fathers pass microphones to their children holding Palestine flags shouting for a ceasefire. I heard no threats, no insults, no hate. Everyone who was there was there to speak up for the Palestinian people and demand the UK to do the right thing and ceasefire. I felt so safe and amongst likeminded people.

These Pro Israeli supporters in this video are disgusting, my heart aches that there are people so fuelled by hate. The UK have the audacity to call Pro Palestine marches ‘hate marches’ but watch this video!

To hear a woman shouting at a fellow woman about wanting her to be r @ p e . d. How morally bankrupt and evil can a person be? And the delusion and the arrogance to think other peoples land is rightfully yours. Zionism is not Jewish faith and Israel does not represent the Jewish faith. Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[captaintiny]

.

[jew-flexive]

what is happening in gaza is a crime and must be opposed by the global community. the israeli government’s role in subjugating palestinians and opposing their justified national aspirations—aspirations shared by the jewish people—is undeniable. bibi is a war criminal, and likud cannot be allowed to continue to drive israel into dark and deeper dark.

october 7th was a day of inhumane brutality, and to deny or undercut the scale of the horror is antisemitic in the extreme. hamas is a terrorist organization that cannot be trusted to build a lasting peace for the region or for their people. hamas refuses to hold elections, has committed war crimes, and has never dealt with the peace process in good faith.

these are all truths we can and must hold in conversation with one another if we are to build a world that ensures the safety, dignity, and humanity of israelis and palestinians. denying history does nothing to ensure a liberated palestine or a homeland for the jewish people. i believe in self-determination for all peoples in their native lands. i refuse to allow my commitment to the jewish and palestinian causes to live in conflict with one another, and i’m sick of so many americans who have no understanding of the conflict or the history of the region and its people refusing to allow room for nuance, discussion, and grief for the victims—all of them.

[cyber-judas]

possibly a hot take but if you as a Jewish person tie your ENTIRE identity to NEEDING an ethnostate, you need to reevaluate your relationship with your religion/ethnicity.

i know many Jewish people who i am good friends with who do NOT feel the need to tie their religion or identity to a colonial ethnostate, and support the freedom of palestinians.

this is not about your religion or your identity, this is about fascism and genocide masking itself with the suffering of the Jewish people.

Fascists are using you and your religion as a scapegoat to justify genocide.

[trying-to-jew]

Jewish Zionists should get magical girl transformations and powers as reparations

(I define ‘Zionist’ as ‘someone who believes that Israel as a Jewish state in the Levant has the fundamental right to exist’)

[hellscape-halogens]

I've literally got no fucking clue what to think about the literal war and genocide going on in Israel except hey ethnically cleansing is bad, terrorism is bad, and I really fucking wish that the world wasn't so bad.

I'm trying to stay educated as possible on the whole topic because I never want to come off as uneducated. But at the same time, I'm being 24/7 bombarded with so many different accounts of what's going on that I literally don't know what to believe or what to believe "more."

I despise the treatment of native Palestinians by Israel. I despise how heavily policed and segregated and discriminated against the native Palestinians are. I especially despise the senseless violence that war brings because death does nothing except bring sadness, anger, and insurmountable grief.

My heart aches for all the innocent lives lost, both Palestinian and Israeli. I am human. Death is sad and terrifying.

And until I know enough to an acceptably educated degree, I will not be forming an opinion beyond "This situation is fucked up and I wish it wasn't happening."

[homeybee]

sometimes i wish people would learn about judaism and make some jewish friends.

[blorbosexterminator]

Imo, "free Jewish people around the world from Zionism" is a much more accurate outcry than the dumb shit that is "free Palestine from Hamas"

[necronomeconomicism]

Ok gotta talk about it.

As a Jewish historian, I fucking hate Israel in ways most probably will never be able to comprehend. I'm going to try and explain it anyways. The central creation myth of Israel is that it is Jewish, and then consequently, that Israel is a part of Jewishness. Its easy to simply state this is false, but fully comprehending this and putting it into practice in thought and deed seems rare to me.

The evil at the heart of this violence predates the recent acceleration of genocide. Israel is a colony, and more than that, an antisemitic fraud itself. After WW2, when Israel was being founded, the Jews of Europe generally did not wave goodbye to their neighbors and head to the promised land. Many were expelled from their homes. Zionism itself, as an action, was a false choice at the time. A mere excuse to place an ally in the middle east, and an excuse to complete the expulsion and destruction of the European Jew. The Zionist Jew is more than complicit in this, they actively seek the destruction and assimilation of all other Jews.

Many fail to realize, and largely because of Israel, that Jews are not inherently white, Ashkenazi, European-descended people. Our faith and culture has an immense variety that is spread all across the globe. Jewishness, in population and volume of culture, exists more so outside of Israel than within it. Israel is for a very specific kind of Jew. The kind that lets Yiddish die, that attaches themselves to European things, that makes themselves and their practices as white as possible.

And they have the nerve, the fucking belligerent GALL, to frame themselves as the necessary saviors of our people. To the Zionist, questioning Israel is to question Jewishness itself. They bake adoration for the colonial machine into their very prayers, and push them on us even as children. To *not* oppress, to *not* kill, to *not* genocide, is to invite death. This is the core of fascistic thought, of course. "Kill them before they kill us." And they KNOW this too, they really do. The truth of that irony does not matter, because as is true for all fascists, the truth itself does not matter to them. They wanted this, they wanted this even before the British saw it in their best interest to give them the land. Any excuse to RETVRN, as the neo-nazis say of Rome, or the German Empire, or whatever the fuck stupid country they want to poorly animate the corpse of. Some select Zionists even *sided with the fucking Nazis* in agreement they should abandon Europe to colonize Palestine. (Haavara Agreement)

My people have proved time and time and time again you don't need a nation state to have an enduring culture. We have protected ourselves for thousands of years without the help of these spiteful, doom-saying maniacs. I was going to post something like this on Passover, but that would be hypocritical. The state of Israel doesn't actually have shit to do with Jewishness. Hear Israel (the state and supporters, Israel the icon) I should outlive it long enough to bury it. (old yiddish curse)

Free Palestine. Donate what you can, they need it right now.

[queermarzipan]

It's honestly sad that it's the second time you're trying to make that post when you know damn well what "Zionism" means to the larger public, who don't know the term "Kahanism." It's bad faith, really. You want to find reasons to make this about you when there's babies dying right now to the hands of a military that see their deaths as a thing to mock and post on Twitter. Antisemitism is real and should not be excused. What Israel is doing is just plain wrong. Don't pretend you don't know that.

have i been . precieved. as jewish

[vamptastic]

it's such a fucking nightmare that a jewish state exists in my lifetime but it's heavily influenced if not fully dependent on the US and highly militarized and not at all socialist and can't coexist with any of its neighbors and has the weight of decades of mistreatment of the people who lived there upon it and the far right leadership has fucked everything beyond belief. I don't think we'll manage to make anything good out of this in my lifetime. Brother it is so joever for the 3rd Temple

[zvaigzdelasas]

New York University led by troubling example when the school shared an updated code of student conduct last week. Ostensibly aimed at curtailing bigotry, the new language instead shuts down dissent by threatening to silence criticism of Zionism on campus. Students who speak out against Zionism — an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century — will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.[...]

Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Referring to the university’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy, known as NDAH, the updated conduct guide says, “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”[...]

“Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’” the guide says, “does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH policy.”[...]

The entire premise of the guidance — that “Zionist” must be functioning as a “code word — is a flaw egregious enough to reject the entire document outright.

The language here is of utmost importance. The text does not say that “Zionist” can and has been used by antisemites as a code word, which is no doubt true. Instead, it takes it as a given that, when used critically, “Zionist” simply is a code word.[...]

According to NYU’s guidance, then, Zionist and Zionism are either antisemitic dog whistles when invoked critically or a protected category akin to a race, ethnicity, or religious identity. Ethically committed and politically informed anti-Zionism — including the beliefs of many anti-Zionist Jews like myself who reject the conflation of our identity and heritage with an ethnostate project — is foreclosed, and the long history of Jewish anti-Zionism, which has existed as long as Zionism itself, is all but erased.[...]

“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” the NYU guidance says. And this is of course true. That does not, however, make Zionism an essential part of Jewish identity.

There are conservative Christians for whom the damnation of homosexuality is a key part of their Christian faith too, but Republican lawfare to see homophobic positions enshrined as protected religious expression have been rightly and consistently condemned by the liberal mainstream.

“The new guidance sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people,” NYU’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine said in a statement in response to the updated conduct guide.[...]

“Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group’s understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections.”

27 Aug 24

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Again, you can support Palestine and Palestinian liberation without ignoring TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE AND CONSTANT EXPULSIONS AND MASSACRES OF JEWISH PEOPLES ALL OVER THE WORLD.

This is not something "in the past" (btw, those posts about how the Holocaust was "sooooo long ago" are fucking disgusting!), antisemitic violence is a global ongoing reality. Synagogues are being threatened and attacked, Jewish people are being harassed and murdered, Jewish-owned businesses are being threatened and vandalized, there are people in the streets calling for a Jewish genocide, and there are ongoing pogroms and expulsions of Jewish communities.

Jewish people did not leave their respective home countries for funsies, they left because those countries made it extremely and violently clear that they were not welcome. Many Israelis can't "go back home" because those "homes" chased them out at gunpoint or worse.

Again, this is not about having to support Israel or the actions of the Israeli government. It's literally just about not spreading antisemitic rhetoric and revisionist history that tries to blame Jewish people for antisemitism (and yes, I've seen those "Zionism makes Jews think they can't belong anywhere else" posts, as if the constant hate and violence isn't at all part of that).

I'm so beyond disgusted by the behavior I've seen from people who I previously respected. I've seen so many Jewish people I follow saying that they no longer feel safe in any leftist community and I don't blame them for that. I'm not even Jewish and I have lost so much trust and faith in Western leftists over just the last month.

[tamamita]

Hey Sal, I’m Jewish but I don’t support what Israel is doing at all, it’s frankly disgusting to me and it’s left me questioning my faith…

Should I jump ship or somthing??? Idk it’s hard to talk to anyone about this.

No, why should you question your faith?? Your Jewishness and your faith are about 3000+ years old, Zionism is a hundred years old and was founded by a bunch of secular people. It has no religious basis whatsoever. Don't let the Zionists weaken your faith, you've seen so many Jews fight for the rights of Palestinians. Palestinians are always welcoming to anyone who support them.

[lucybellwood]

Jewish Maker Rachel D. Mark is crafting miniature Yahrzeit Memorial Candles as a fundraiser for Palestinian families. For those unfamiliar with the tradition, Jewish mourners light one of these long-burning candles on the anniversary of a loved one's death. Rachel's candles are 1:12 scale, measuring just 1/2"H x 1/4"D. Made with real glass dollhouse cups, Yehuda Yahrzeit Memorial Candle wax, and cotton thread wick. You can purchase one for $36 here.

In her own words:

This past March, I purchased an extra yahrzeit memorial candle when I was celebrating the life of my late brother, Daniel. At that time, I began making 32 miniature candles of grief to honor the 32,000 Palestinians slaughtered in the ongoing genocide. The project has since expanded and I will continue to make these little candles as an expression of the deep grief we feel for those lost to such terror and violence. Anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitic. We, as a people, have always been and will continue to be nomadic tribes. It is not anti-Semitic to question the Israeli government's apartheid-turned-genocide of the Palestinian people. Nor is it anti-Patriotic for an American to question the US government's continued funding of this mass genocide. I am using my art and faith to raise money for organizations actively lobbying US Congress for a ceasefire and organizations directly supporting Palestinians on the ground. All proceeds from sales will be documented and shared transparently.

Her goal is to raise $1,000 through candle sales. All proceeds will be donated to Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP, JewishVoiceForPeace.org), United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA.org), and Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS, palestinercs.org).

Again, the link to buy a candle is here.

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

"I'm calling to ask the Congressman to vote against House Resolution 894, because of part 4 of the Resolution which equates anti-zionism with anti-semitism. That is absolutely untrue, and not a myth I want my Representative supporting."

Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

(You can read the full text here)

It is clearly important to always stand against anti-semitism, but this resolution "clearly and firmly" equating anti-zionism to anti-semitism is not only ridiculous but actively harmful to Jewish people and their allies.

Many of the protests we are seeing in the US are organized or co-organized by Jewish activists. Their strength, empathy, resilience, and faith have been truly inspiring.

Falling into the trap of Israeli propaganda that to be against settler-colonialism is to be against Jews is absurd.