#a black jew is black until they are jewish

[boreal-sea]

Nothing in my post is actually explicitly Zionist. I didn’t even say whether or not I’m Zionist.

I just said that people might want to check themselves if the idea of lynching Jews gives them pause but the idea of lynching “Zionists” doesn’t.

What is your definition of an ethnostate? What is the cut-off percentage of one race? 60%? 70%? More?

What is the racial makeup of Israel?

How do other countries such as Ireland or China NOT fulfill that definition? Or do you consider China and Ireland to be ethnostates, and thus immoral?

Did you know you’re misinformed about the Ethiopian Jews and you’re spreading antisemitic lies?

Jewish Ethiopian women were offered Depo Provera when in transition camps in Ethiopia on their way to Israel. Others were offered the shots once they reached Israel. Depo Provera is a very helpful form of both control in non-ideal situations for multiple reasons, especially the fact that it lasts several months and lightens your period, both things that would make a difficult journey easier. These were administered by a mix of medical personnel, many of whom weren’t Israelis.

Every single woman who received the shot was able to get pregnant afterwards. That’s a pretty ineffective sterilization attempt if every single one of them got pregnant.

Now it is absolutely true that some of the women who received the injection didn’t know what it was and that is ABSOLUTELY a failure of the system and a failure of communication. But those women did eventually receive the proper information, were able to stop taking it, and those who wanted, got pregnant. Again, this was not a sterilization attempt in any way.

Like. I don’t know if I’m a Zionist or not and I don’t actually use that word because I’m not done with my conversion yet. I also didn’t talk about proportions of anti-Zionists to Zionists in this post, so I’m not sure why you’re accusing me of erasing anyone.

Israel as a state exists. People live there. Forcibly removing people from their homes is wrong. It would be wrong to forcibly remove every American of European descent from the USA, and we’re actually colonizers.

I actually fully support the Palestinian right to return. I think Israel needs to work out some way to accommodate and embrace Palestinians that were forced out during the Nakba. Much like Land-Back in the USA, this should be a peaceful, cooperative thing that doesn’t involve forcibly removing anyone from their homes. Yes, that means it’s probably going to take a long time.

I think the illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, however, should absolutely be forcibly removed. In some cases they MURDERED people to steal those homes. It is internationally recognized they are breaking the law. Even Israel admits this. So they need to go, right now.

I think Israel should absolutely pay to rebuild Gaza. They should house Palestinian refugees until the process is complete.

I don’t know what the best step forward is for the peace process right now. Both sides want impossible things from each other.

None of that is going to happen while Trump is in power, unfortunately.

The moment for thinking “what would I have done in Germany before and during Hitler’s reign” is over. Look back over the past two years. What did you do? What did you think and feel?

Did your opinion about Jews change?

If you went from supporting all Jews to thinking that a least some Jews, (namely “Zionists” or “Israelis”) deserve suffering, exile, and/or death, then you fell for modern antisemitic propaganda, and you would’ve fallen for it in Nazi Germany, too.

Maybe you would blink if the police today started rounding up the Jews in your neighborhood, or smashing synagogues, or arresting Jews off the streets. But would you feel better about it if they call them Zionists or Israelis? They’re not arresting “good Jews”, they’re arresting Zionists, to make them pay for their crimes.

It’s not too late to fix that, though. You can come back from being sucked into antisemitism. You can do better going forward.

[squidgirlautism]

okay I don’t mean to be rude but I saw your post about Jewish people being white and I’m confused both by what you said and the fact that the question is being asked. Like surely whether jewish people are white depends on the Jewish person in question, some of whom surely are and some of whom aren’t? Like just going through life I’ve met jewish people who were polish blondes and jewish people who were visibly middle eastern. Who is possibly asking you if white Jewish people exist? And why on earth would the answer be no?

there’s a lot to unpack here but I’m going to start with your last questions. the world and the interweb are vast places and people from all corners of the political spectrum itch to place Jews into boxes and use the (american-centric tbh) framework of race to categorize. since the Jewish people existed before the concept of race, we simply do not fit. we are a West Asian diaspora population that has historically *never* been treated as white, and we are only sometimes white because we are a “model minority” and generally only called white by the left, where white=oppressor. it is also a (poor) attempt to “atone” for the holocaust and all the violence Jews have faced.

with that out of the way, why cant Jews be white? there are pale skinned and blonde Jews after all. while there are Jews who pass as white and many who pass as something entirely different (ie East Asian, Black), the moment they are recognized as a Jew, that is all they are. It does not matter what you look like when you are recognized as Jewish, and all privileges you may have had by not being recognized as one is gone. on top of that, “passing” Jews are often under more scrutiny because they “tricked” others into believing that they were not a Jew. being white passing will not save you from being a Jew and the baggage it comes with.

whiteness is part of assimilation as well, as Irish and Italians and Catholics in America were not white. In Europe, it was/is a similar concept. Once they assimilated into it they could be (ie Kennedy) but Judaism, at its core, does not assimilate. as an ethnic religion (meaning, only the ethnic group can practice the religion (yes converts become ethnic Jews)) originating in the Middle East, with all of our traditions related to the levant specifically, unless you insist that the white appearing Arabs and other SWANA groups are white, calling Jews white is a double standard.

race is more than skin color and it is a social construct that is based on privilege—and Jews are not privileged. Jews have not ever been white until the left needed us to be so we fit their narrative that only whites are oppressors, and the right never has and never will see Jews as white. people like the Syrian Nazi’s use it to deny that Jews are a people that come from the levant, because obviously “white” people can’t be from the Middle East and are liars (if this sounds like a dogwhistle, it’s because it is; replacement theory and Jews being liars)

tldr white Jews can’t exist because the moment they are a Jew, all whiteness they may have had is lost.

[fairuzfan]

The thing that's never made sense to me is the "Holocaust inversion" talking point and the idea that we are "moralizing" the Holocaust as something you're supposed to learn from which like aside from the fact that israel's entire pr is that it needs to exist because of the Holocaust, I really don't understand how feeling empathy based on past experiences is like... a moralizing action?

Even those who don't feel empathy, they still like... have the universal idea that you shouldn't do bad things onto other people. When you consider that yeah, when you live in the world, you experience terrible things and you relate those terrible things to other terrible things happening in the world. That's just what everyone does. Whenever I hear things happening to indigenous Turtle Islanders I always relate it back to Palestine. When I hear about violence happening to Black people, I think "Ah it must be terrifying" and I think back to my own family members and friends who were killed by Israel. When i think of antiBlackness in arab spaces, i relate it back to the occupation and compare myself to the occupation on whether or not im inflicting the same pain i and my family endure onto others. It's just how you experience the world. No one is asking you to "learn" from the Holocaust, people are just asking you to apply empathy.

A universal example is that you don't really understand the grief of losing a loved one until you yourself lose a loved one. And when you encounter a person who lost a loved one as well, you relate to them in a unique way that you wouldn't have without having that experience of grief before. It's not a moralizing experience, it's just... an experience. An awful one but you don't *learn* anything from it.

So it always confounds me that there's such vehement pushback against the idea that what Palestinians are going through is similar to the Holocaust because it's not like we're making light of the Holocaust? It's that we are asking you, a zionist (in this case one who is Jewish specifically), to acknowledge that there are similarities between the way Palestinians are treated and the ways Jews, Roma, and multiple other people were treated during the Holocaust. It's that we're relegated to second class status, we are considered lesser, we are confined to ghettos, we have our livelihoods stolen from us, we have weapons tested on us, we're survielled like we are dangerous monsters and we experience systematic segregation. And now we are experiencing mass slaughter campaigns within our concentration camps. But what's the issue? Are you offended that Palestinians can even remotely understand the terrible violence that Jews experienced in the Holocaust? Or are you denying that Palestinians are experiencing those things??

People always bring up like "Oh you don't understand what exactly happened during the Holocaust, you're just using it as a stand in for "a very bad thing"" and that's like... never made sense either because what does that mean? I'm not... using the Holocaust out of nowhere, I'm using it because Israel tells US, PALESTINIANS, that we need to be kicked out and raped and tortured *because* of the Holocaust. When us, Palestinians, ask you to feel empathy for us based on what you experienced during the Holocaust, we aren't just pulling it out of thin air, we are using a zionist talking point and pointing out the flaws. "Does experiencing a Holocaust allow you to conduct massacres and unbelievable violence onto other people?" and "Why are we paying for the terrible crimes of Europeans? Why is this our fault that we must suffer for it, as you, a zionist, insist we must?"

It's just so confusing how people would take offense at feeling empathy for Palestinians. We aren't denying the awful, awful genocide of the Holocaust, nor are we "making light of it..." but if you believe that comparing what Palestinians go through is making light of the Holocaust, then you must think that what we are going through is not bad at all.

[xclowniex]

I will say that it's been wild watching people go "fascism bad", when they're the same exact people who have been pushing fascism for almost 2 years.

Because these people don't view fascism as bad, they just view right wing fascism as bad, they view it as bad only when they're oppressed.

Because leftists for the almost past two years have been shouting for Israelis who have left Israel, immigrated to other countries to be deported. Deporting immigrants good apparently if it's immigrants you don't like. Kinda sounds like right wingers when they are fine with European immigrants, sorry "expats", but dislike any brown or black immigrants.

Protecting minorities good until it comes to jews being physically attacked on campus when walking to class, or when jews in Australia are doxxed en masse. Or when a 12 year old jewish girl is raped.

The core component of fascism, killing people who disagree with you, is bad, unless it's those darn joos with their zionism, because killing zionists is good and not at all a sign of fascism.

I say this as a leftist, as someone who holds leftist values, the left as a fascism problem. The far left in its current form, does not care about actually helping people, about improving the lives of those underserved by the government. They don't care about preventing fascism, they just want to be the ones doing it.

[jewish-sideblog]

Are you fucking for real with this? Y’all have really been whipped into such an antisemitic frenzy like.

“Members of a non-European ethnic group were displaced from their ancestral land and forced to take European names in Western nations hundreds of years ago. Now they’re changing their names back to names that have historical precedent in their native languages. (Black people)” is universally accepted as a good thing by liberals / leftists / anti-racists. But for some reason

“Members of a non-European ethnic group were displaced from their ancestral land and forced to take European names in Western nations hundreds of years ago. Now they’re changing their names back to names that have historical precedent in their native languages. (Jewish people)” is considered a horrifyingly evil colonial tactic?

Most Jews living in European diaspora didn’t have surnames at all until a handful of centuries ago. Sephardim were forced to take on Spanish surnames to avoid being killed by the Inquisition following the Alhambra Decree in 1492. Ashkenazim were forced to adopt Germanic and Eastern European names in different nations at different times between the 1780s and the 1850s. Both Ben Gurion and Netanyahu’s “white” names were forced upon them by local Prussian, Russian, or Austro-Hungarian officials less than three hundred years ago. Adopting Hebrew-or-Yiddish-derived last names were banned by most of these laws. When Jewish families left the nations that had forced them to adopt white Germanic last names, they adopted indigenous Jewish last names instead.

David Ben Gurion was born David Güre. He literally just added a Hebrew patronymic prefix to his father’s last name. Meanwhile Mohammed Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay. Amiri Baraka was born Everett Leroy Jones. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor. When you commend black people for shaking off names that were forced upon them by Europeans three hundred years ago, but vilify Jewish people for doing the exact same thing, you’re antisemitic. There’s no other way around it.

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

is Jewish Voice for Peace actually Jewish? I've heard a couple different things about that but no sources

@gryphistheantlerqueen also asked:

Whooo boy. So this has been sitting in the inbox for a few months, I wrote up a draft, and then it just sat... until this past week, when some new JVP BS hit the fan and gave me the kick to finish it.

Sooooo...

Verdict: Not Actually Jewish

(updated verdict after finding out about the “self-managed conversion” and “teacup mikvah”) Jewish, technically, and that "technically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and is actively debatable without access to a detailed breakdown of JVP’s actual membership rolls. 

In general summation, JVP is a far-left radical antizionist group that is headed by a few visibly antizionist Jews and whose membership rolls are either a strong minority or outright majority of non-Jews, based on variable statistics that they've released. Although they claim that the “majority of their members and staff are Jewish”, this seems to be both statistically unlikely and actively suspicious due to their noted tendency to instruct even non-Jewish members to speak #AsAJew on social media, and their instructions to do “self-managed conversions”.  However, due to their title, they are very popular with people who want a Jewish Stamp Of Approval for demonizing Israelis and Zionist Jews as a result. In effect, they are Jewish in the same way that people like Candace Owens and Hershel Walker are Black—as self-tokenizing minorities who throw the rest of their ethnic group under the bus in exchange for power and political access.

And despite the claims that they are “inspired by Jewish values and traditions” (as put on their website) and “oppose anti-Jewish hatred,” JVP routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric, up to and including blood libel and antisemitic conspiracy theories, and acts as a shield against non-Jews who also engage in antisemitic rhetoric so long as the non-Jews in question remember to shout "For Palestine!" first. This is not an exaggeration. 

The primary example of their in-house antisemitic rhetoric is their "Deadly Exchange" program, where they explicitly and conspiratorially blame Israel as being responsible for American police brutality and militarization. However, for all of their fearmongering and blame-casting on the subject—as if American cops needed outside help in brutalizing minorities or gaining military-grade handmedowns from the Pentagon, both of which are explicit claims of the "Deadly Exchange" program—they have a hard time actually identifying specific deaths associated with the international training seminars they're holding up as responsible.

One of the the closest they've come to a specific allegation is claiming that "former St. Louis County police chief Timothy Fitch trained with the Israeli military three years before Michael Brown’s killing and the Ferguson uprising." (Note: this was in a video that appears to have since been made private.) But Darren Wilson worked for the Ferguson PD, not the St. Louis PD, and Fitch retired months before the killing. So he was in a completely different police department, and this is the closest JVP comes to pointing to specific deaths or acts of brutality that they blame on Israel. Everything else is literal fearmongering--up to and including the classic conspiratorial tropes of "secretive Jewish governmental influence".

JVP has also happily supported the words of white supremacists like Richard Spencer, taking his “You could say that I’m a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people," statement at face value, using it as the basis for entire articles where they compared Zionism to White Supremacy as a deliberate misrepresentation of the ideology that is common on the extreme political Left (you can compare that treatment again with how Candace Owens treats the word "Woke" on the Right). Even when the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" march happened, JVP wasted no time in comparing Zionism with the very ideology fueling the people chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us," saying that Zionism is "Jewish racial supremacy" and calling for a universal condemnation of the ideology as a form of White Supremacy... which was the exact sort of message that many of those same White Supremacists would have happily agreed with.  So JVP is essentially siding with literal White Supremacists,  even as they claim that "Jews are not the primary victims of White Supremacy."

JVP also engages in Holocaust revisionism, such as with this lovely quote from Cecilie Surasky, the deputy director of JVP, “I believe it is critical to situate the genocide of Jews in a broader context, and not as an exceptional, metaphysically unique event. Some 6 million Jews died, but another 5 million people were also targeted for annihilation.”

(another quote, from an article by Surasky, which compares Netanyahu to Hitler.)

This is just straight revisionism of the entire Holocaust and the unique fixation the Nazis had on the Jews. Literally, even when they were losing, they were diverting resources from the war just to kill more Jews. Quote Hitler himself, "Jews must be prevented from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations." The very basis of the Nazi ideology paints Jews as an existential threat to the human race's peace and security—a far cry from JVP's claim that the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust wasn't unique or exceptional.

Additionally, JVP ignores or re-envisions Mizrachi Jewish history. They call the very term Mizrachi “Zionist rhetoric,” and refer to Mizrachi “immigrants,” (“Deadly Exchange,” pg. 16-17), and claim “the Israeli government facilitated a mass immigration of Mizrahim” (“Our Approach to Zionism”) as though those weren’t the direct result of the mass expulsion of and violence against Jews in MENA countries. These weren’t immigrants, these were refugees. 

And as for the question of “Are they Jewish?”, well...

Statistically, they are not representative of the Jewish population as a whole, 90% of whom identify as some degree of Zionist in the sense of “Supporting Jewish self-determination.”  One does not need to be Jewish to join JVP, as they proudly state on their website. Their membership rolls are also extremely obfuscated, and the fact that they encourage their followers, whether Jewish or not, to post and speak “as Jews” on social media makes it even more difficult to figure out what percentage of their membership is actually Jewish.  Furthermore, they have instructions for their members to engage in “self-conversions” that are not acceptable to Jewish law or tradition, and misuse/appropriate other sacred Jewish traditions to the point that “blasphemy” is an accurate description, with their instructions on the mikvah (a sacred bath) being outright offensive.  

(note that one has to be completely nude and bare of any adornment or makeup to use the mikvah, which is a pure pool of collected rainwater to be immersed in, for context on the above... misuse.  Trying to claim this as being “in line with sacred Jewish tradition” is like trying to claim to be Catholic while also saying that the Pope is the Antichrist and that using beer and a doughnut for the Eucharist is acceptable. For more information on mikveh, see: The Jewish Virtual Library, Aish, myjewishlearning, or Chabad.

There's also no altar.

The irony of asking people not to appropriate while doing this is astonishing.)

It’s also telling that they straight up say they are “claiming” the practice as their own.

Furthermore, JVP has hosted panels on “antisemitism” in the past... headed by people who are not only not Jewish, but who have been credibly accused of antisemitism in the past.  

JVP has also endorsed The Mapping Project Boston, which was a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) subsidiary, listing every “Zionist” organization in Boston, Mass. This included Jewish schools, elder homes, community centers, disability centers, and more; all of them painted with scary and misleading “links” to non-Jewish organizations to insinuate Jewish control of the state and city governments, invoking age-old antisemitic tropes of a conspiracy of Jews as they did so:

(first image is the Mapping Project, the second is a 1938 Nazi political cartoon)

The Mapping Project also, and this is my personal favorite, accused Harvard University of doing “racist science” for engaging in archeological and genetic studies of Jews and Jewish history.  Tellingly, BDS actually disavowed The Mapping Project (albeit for bad optics, not for the rank antisemitism they were promoting)... but JVP has not, even though the Mapping Project’s entry for the ADL reads as follows:

Masquerading as a “civil rights” group, the ADL is a counterinsurgency and espionage organization whose mission is to protect the mutual interests of the US and Israeli governments, and to eliminate solidarity among oppressed peoples, especially concerning Palestine. The ADL spies on and criminalizes activists (using its connections to governments, police, schools, and corporations) while undermining their work by pushing its own state-sanctioned, pro-“Israel” agenda. And while the ADL claims to represent Jews and to fight “antisemitism” on their behalf, the organization has supported anti-Jewish state violence and sanitized Nazis. The ADL cannot be reformed: it must be dismantled and whatever resources it has should go towards repairing the many harms it has done. (Emphasis added.)

Of course, JVP has also engaged in similar conspiracy-toned antisemitic dogwhistles, such as this fun bit from their first Deadly Exchange video:

So clearly (to me at least), they have no problems with The Mapping Project’s tone and presentation.  

And this isn’t even going into JVP’s routine promotion of blood libel, their egregious double standards, their approving of pogroms, their active support for Hamas terrorists and demonization of Hamas’ victims, their attempted revisionism of Jewish history, their abject rejection of Jewish culture, and their other actions that show not just bias, but outright hatred for 90% of the world’s Jews.  

As one commentator put it, JVP as an organization is very much like Autism Speaks is to Autistic people--a thinly disguised hate group that views the people they’re supposedly speaking for as the problem, and themselves as promoting the Solution.  To this moderator, they’re the equivalent of the Association of German National Jews, who were also known as the Jews for Hitler; they wanted to abandon Judaism and embrace Naziism... and they got sent to the gas chambers anyway.  

Mod Joseph

Sources:

www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/jewish-voice-peace

www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Mikveh-Guide-for-Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-Outlined.pdf

(and also just... a general experience/exposure to them on social media, where even the most progressive actions taken by Israel, such as the recent ruling regarding queer Palestinians being able to claim sanctuary in Israel, being labeled as “pinkwashing”)

[coolcarsntrucksngunsnusa]

TRUMP DOES THE UNTHINKABLE by Liz Crokin

As an entertainment journalist, I've had the opportunity to cover Trump for over a decade, and in all my years covering him I've never heard anything negative about the man until he announced he was running for president. Keep in mind, I got paid a lot of money to dig up dirt on celebrities like Trump for a living so a scandalous story on the famous billionaire could've potentially sold a lot of magazines and would've been a Huge feather in my cap.

Instead, I found that he doesn't drink alcohol or do drugs, he's a hardworking businessman. On top of that, he's one of the most generous celebrities in the world with a heart filled with more gold than his $100 million New York penthouse.

Since the media has failed so miserably at reporting the truth about Trump, I decided to put together some of the acts of kindness he's committed over three decades which has gone virtually unnoticed or fallen on deaf ears.

In 1986, Trump prevented the foreclosure of Annabell Hill's family farm after her husband committed suicide. Trump personally phoned down to the auction to stop the sale of her home and offered the widow money. Trump decided to take action after he saw Hill's pleas for help in news reports.

In 1988, a commercial airline refused to fly Andrew Ten, a sick

Orthodox Jewish child with a rare illness, across the country to get medical care because he had to travel with an elaborate life-support system. His grief-stricken parents contacted Trump for help and he didn't hesitate to send his own plane to take the child from Los Angeles to New York so he could get his treatment.

In 1991, 200 Marines who served in Operation Desert Storm spent time at Camp Lejune in North Carolina before they were scheduled to return home to their families. However, the Marines were told that a mistake had been made and an aircraft would not be able to take them home on their scheduled departure date. When Trump got wind of this, he sent his plane to make two trips from North Carolina to Miami to safely return the Gulf War Marines to their loved ones.

In 1995, a motorist stopped to help Trump after the limo he was traveling in got a flat tire. Trump asked the Good Samaritan how he could repay him for his help. All the man asked for was a bouquet of flowers for his wife. A few weeks later Trump sent the flowers with a note that read: We've paid off your mortgage.

In 1996, Trump filed a lawsuit against the city of Palm Beach ,

Florida, accusing the town of discriminating against his Mar-a-Lago resort club because it allowed Jews and blacks. Abraham Foxman, who as the Anti-Defamation League Director at the time, said Trump put the light on Palm Beach not on the beauty and the glitter, but on its seamier side of discrimination. Foxman also noted that Trump's charge had a trickle-down effect because other clubs followed his lead and

began admitting Jews and blacks.

In 2000, Maury Povich featured a little girl named Megan who struggled with Brittle Bone Disease on his show and Trump happened to be watching. Trump said the little girl's story and positive attitude touched his heart. So he contacted Maury and gifted the little girl and her family with a very generous check.

In 2008, after Jennifer Hudson's family members were tragically murdered in Chicago , Trump put the Oscar-winning actress and her family up at his Windy City hotel for free. In addition to that, Trump's security took extra measures to ensure Hudson and her family members were safe during such a difficult time.

In 2013, New York bus driver Darnell Barton spotted a woman close to the edge of a bridge staring at the traffic below as he drove by. He stopped the bus, got out and put his arm around the woman and saved her life by convincing her to not jump. When Trump heard about this story, he sent the hero bus driver a check simply because he believed his good deed deserved to be rewarded.

In 2014, Trump gave $25,000 to Sgt. Andrew Tamoressi after he spent seven months in a Mexican jail for accidentally crossing the US-Mexico border. President Barack Obama couldn't even be bothered to make one phone call to assist with the United States Marine's release; however, Trump opened his pocketbook to help this serviceman get back on his feet.

In 2016, Melissa Consin Young attended a Trump rally and tearfully thanked Trump for changing her life. She said she proudly stood on stage with Trump as Miss Wisconsin USA in 2005. However, years later she found herself struggling with an incurable illness and during her darkest days, she explained that she received a handwritten letter from Trump telling her she's the bravest woman, I know. She said the opportunities that she got from Trump and his organizations ultimately

provided her Mexican-American son with a full-ride to college.

Lynne Patton, a black female executive for the Trump Organization, released a statement in 2016 defending her boss against accusations that he's a racist and a bigot. She tearfully revealed how she's struggled with substance abuse and addiction for years. Instead of kicking her to the curb, she said the Trump Organization and his entire family loyally stood by her through immensely difficult times.

Donald Trump's kindness knows no bounds and his generosity has and continues to touch the lives of people from every sex, race, and religion. When Trump sees someone in need, he wants to help.

Two decades ago, Oprah asked Trump in a TV interview if he'd ever run for president. He said: "If it got so bad, I would never want to rule it out totally because I really am tired of seeing what's happening with this country.'"

That day has come. Trump sees that America is in need and he wants to help. How unthinkable! On the other hand, have you ever heard of Hillary or Obama ever doing such things with their own resources?

Now that's really unthinkable! Might be worth passing on!!!

Just shows we hired the right guy. If Hollywood , the liberals and the

media ever STOP harassing him, Trump will have time to do many more positive things for our country....the good ole United States of America!!

PS ~ To those who are already Fact Checking, don't bother . . . already did it, and all the stories are TRUE!

The Liberal, progressive, socialists want to destroy this guy. .

[a-very-tired-jew]

Sad Realization and Confirmation - we're in hiding

I was coming home from work last night and had the realization that I had not seen any of the Chabad students walking across campus as I normally do until that moment. The student was not even dressed in the regular attire of a Chabad member, but in "normal" clothing. Their yamulke had been replaced by a baseball hat and they were wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Gone was the white button down and black slacks, let alone the tallit being worn underneath. It then hit me that I hadn't seen any of them since about late October / early November and that they likely had all switched to wearing less obviously Jew identifying clothing. I am a secular Jew that grew up in the Reconstructionist movement. While I don't wear anything that makes me stand out as a Jew, nor do I have much of my identity wrapped around clothing associated with my ethnicity, I do get recognized as one for my phenotypic expression. For the Chabad students the clothing is part of who they are. They are hiding it now because it's simply not safe. The fact that this echoes what I have seen across the internet about Jews hiding to be safe hit me like a ton of bricks. This isn't something we should have to do in 2024, but here we are. I went to the FB page of our local group as well and noticed that the attire had even changed in the safety of their own facility. So yeah...that's what we've come to. Jewish students who can't be outwardly Jewish because anti-Zionism is just a dogwhistle to go after us. It does not matter if you are not going after Jews, there is such a significant amount of threatening rhetoric that we as a people are going back to our old survival methods.

[scramratz]

So, I tried reading some articles but really feel like I'm not getting the full/real story. But why is being a hotep a bad thing? It seems like excessive pride in one's unknown/imagined origins but I could be really missing what's between the lines here.

On paper, it's fine, but in practice, hotep ideology promotes a lot of conspiracy thinking, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and often antisemitism. These are just a few things I've heard or been told by hoteps

"It's unnatural for black women to have periods. Black women didn't have periods until they started eating pork"

Being gay isn't natural for black people. It's a white concept that's used to emasculate black men

There's a hollywood conspiracy to put black men in drag as a form of degradation ritual

The media and the banks are controlled by Jewish people

That just off the top of my head. My mom was just straight-up racist towards Asians, didn't "believe" there were Natives Americans (natives are also African in her world, which if you wanna be pedantic isn't technically false), jews have never be persecuted, Egypt was a homogeneous culture with no connection to other countries like Greece, interracial dating and marrage is bad, and being gay/trans is white people shit. Also she'd call me melanin deficient (which is hilarious in a vacuum) despite being the reason I'm mixed

[occasionally-poetic]

marauders characters’ ethnicities/religions/languages

just my own HCs so don’t get offended!

jayaram fleamont potter

(tells people to call him j or jamie bc its easier, so everyone assumes his real name is james, and he doesn’t correct them)

indian hindu on his mum’s side (tamil nadu specifically)

effie comes from a rich tamil pureblood family (many pureblood families name their children something greek/latin, thus ‘euphemia’), and teaches jamie hindi, tamil and some greek

his tamil is great and he’s fluent in writing/reading as well as speaking, writing letters to effie from hogwarts in tamil

his hindi is okay, mostly with reading and talking, his writing is pretty limited

his greek is godawful and he’s barely conversational, much to effie’s dismay

(non-practicing) catholic chilean on his dad’s side

monty is (obviously) a potter, and most of his relatives live in chile or south america, but his parents moved to england for hogwarts (didn’t want him going to school on another continent to them)

he’s a practicing hindu with his mum (monty doesn’t really get it because he doesn’t speak a word of hindi so he just smiles and nods)

he speaks english and (chilean) spanish, which he teaches jamie, who speaks/reads/writes it as fluently as his english and tamil

sirius orion black

he is heir of the noble and most ancient house of black so he’s the french-est pureblooded-est guy you’ll ever meet

especially pureblooded because he’s the product of incest (his parents are second cousins) (canon)

the black family are french, owning many estates there, etc., but have lived in england for generations (his great-grandparents migrated and now they only visit france in the summer sometimes)

catholic (receiving NOO criticism here bc this is canon (no its not)) with intense religious trauma and internalised homophobia (not projecting at all whaaaaat)

sort of converts to judaism (ish?) he makes remus explain it all and siri thinks its sooo fascinating so he gets a menorah for the dorm for hanukah and buys a torah to study and remus is so happy

speaks french as his first language, and latin and greek fluently from tutoring, but only started to learn english for hogwarts (is so bad at it in first year omg)

remus yohanan lupin

(I KNOW HIS CANON MIDDLE NAME IS JOHN BUT HE IS SO JEWISH CODED TO ME SO HERE’S THE HEBREW FORM OF JOHN INSTEAD X)

polish-jewish on his dad’s side (lyall was evacuated to wales in ww2, when he was about 10, and hope’s parents looked after him until he graduated hogwarts and started dating hope (they literally adored him and helped raise remus I DONT CARE))

protestant welsh on his mum’s side (didn’t really practice her faith though - just brought them all to church on christmas eve and easter sunday)

interfaith household + being a patrilineal jew (more not fitting in angst for remus guys!)

spoke english and welsh at home, equally fluent (lyall picked up welsh while living with hope’s parents), and hebrew too from his hebrew sunday school

lyall tried (and failed) to teach him polish, as that was his first language, so remus can speak a very basic amount of polish, mostly swearing and children’s lullabies (marlene teaches him more at hogwarts so they can gossip!)

not very orthodox jews, but celebrate jewish holidays and go to the synagogue on sabbath (and he wears a necklace of the star of david that belonged to lyall’s late mother)

pieter daan pettigrew

(anglicised his name for hogwarts because everyone called him p-eye-ter (like actual pie + ‘ter’))

protestant dutch on his mum’s side (but she went to hogwarts!)

protestant english on his dad’s side

parents were ‘born again’ christians so they were very devout (grace before every meal, helping out at church every sunday, bible study every morning, etc)

peter never really believed in any of it, and would often go to jamie’s to avoid having to go

he spoke english with his dad and half-brother, but solely dutch with his mum and his other siblings. he was also taught latin before hogwarts (pureblood things) and absolutely HATED it (he was probably dyslexic and often found himself changing language in the middle of his talking exams)

picked up a fair bit of tamil from jamie and effie (aka his second mum) and absolutely LOVED the potters’ diwali party (literally the highlight of his year)

let me know any other characters i should do!! and if you disagree feel free to leave your HCs in the comments, but please respect that people have different opinions xx

[ind1g3n0us-lev1t3]

We must start to hold people and nations to account. Nations who "stand with Palestine" yet have a history of antisemitism and Jew hate.

Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are very good examples of this.

Spain and Portugal expelled their Jews, and forced other Jews to either convert or die. These policies wouldn't be relaxed until the 1800s.

Ireland had pogroms, and the nationalist party Sinn Fein had newspapers who accused Jews many antisemitic stereotypes.

By far the biggest one however is Russia. Russia not only has ties to Hamas and the IRGC, but has a deep antisemitic history. Pogroms, the pale of settlement, the cantonist system, the black hundreds, antisemitic legislation etc.

There are several other nations who haven't owned up to their antisemitic past, and still don't support Israel's right to exist as a nation and the home of the Jewish people.

Sorry if this hurts your feelings, but it has to be said. There's a clear pattern between nations who support Israel and owned up to their past, and those who don't and haven't owned up.

[elliescoolerwife]

Nazi dumbfuck

Being against murder and genocide is not a nazi ideology but go off I guess.

If anyone is nazi, it’s zionists.

Lets take a look:

In particular, the Nazis embraced the false idea that Jews were a separate and inferior race. - Israeli politicians have called palestinian children the “children off darkness” and israelis “the children of light”. Also, they’ve called Palestinians animals and not humans and therefore should be treated as such.

the Nazis referred to Jews as a “parasitic race.” - there is posters around Israel and on the internet created by Israelis where they compare palestinians to parasites - saying that they’re parasites to the israeli soil and needs to be removed.

Nazis wanted to separate Jews and Aryan Germans. They tried to force Jews to leave Germany. Not only do Israelis see Palestinians as animals, they’ve displaced 2 million Palestinians. Do you have any idea of what’s going on in Rafah rn?

Those whom the Nazis identified as non-Aryans (including Jews) were persecuted and discriminated against. Israelis have murdered 700.000 palestinians and removed their access to water, food and medical care. Israelis have been protesting by sitting in front of vehicles with medical equipment so gazans don’t get help. Israel have been dropping white phosphorus for 10 years so Palestinians either 1. Get burned. 2. Get killed by the water they drink that contains that white phosphorus. PS! White phosphorus is illegal but not when israelis do it🤡

the Nazis carried out forced sterilizations of certain groups whom they considered inferior.. lets swich our focus from Palestinians and lets take a look at the black people in Israel, lot of them ethiopians, that have been forced to sterilize themselves because israelis don’t want “black” in their jewish line. They want to keep it “clean” and not let black genes, especially not when those black people have converted and aren’t “real” jews. Do you remember who also wanted to keep their race clean? Does it sound familiar?

The Nazis believed that races were destined to wage war against each other. For them, war was a way for the Aryan race to gain land and resources. Specifically, the Nazis wanted to conquer territory in eastern Europe. They planned to remove, dominate, or murder the people who lived there. They believed that Aryan Germans should control this land because they were the supposed master race. Israelis believe that they are Gods chosen people and therefore owns that land. They have removed, dominated and murderer Palestinians who live there to take that land from them, claiming they are the superior race because God chose them. Therefore, they have every right to take that territory from the indigenous people.

Nazis also falsely claimed that all Jews were an existential threat to Germany and that they had to be destroyed. Israelis claim that this “war” will not be over until total victory - meaning until every Palestinian is dead or removed. They celebrated when north gaza looked like a desert, because the “parasites” who was a threath to Israel is now gone. And now Netanyahu is telling these parasites to leave Rafah, the claimed “safe space” or else they get murdered there too. And lets remember that Israelis don’t discriminate. They murder all Palestinians! Muslims, Christians, jews. All of them. And anyone who supports them.

And don’t even dare to say the Hamas because Israel never cared about Hamas nor did Hamas exist when this started. They have claimed that they need to murder children in order to prevent them from growing up and joining hamas. Children. Women. Elderly.

Bold of you to ask this anonymously, though.

[jewish-sideblog]

I think the important thing to note vis-a-vis Jews and whiteness is that white privilege is limited to white passing. I am far less likely to get pulled over by a white supremacist cop than a black person is. And if I do get pulled over, I am far less likely to be publically brutalized or killed.

But if a white supremacist cop catches me on a day I'm wearing a tichel or a kippah? Or if he spots the Tefilat Haderech charm on my dashboard? Or if he, you know, looks at my driver's licence and sees my name? You're kidding yourself if you think he'd let me off as easily as somebody he actually considers "white". There won't be a verbal warning. He'd throw any and every infraction he could at me.

There are Jews and people with Jewish ancestry who experience full and complete white privilege. But that requires leaving your Judaism behind. That requires a fair skin tone, a goyishe name, and often a culturally christian upbringing. It leaves no room for anybody who takes time off for Jewish holidays or refuses to work on Shabbat. It leaves no room for anybody who openly discusses their culture, faith, or ancestry.

White privilege for Jews only works until people find out we're Jewish. Often, what that means is that white privilege only works for pale-skinned Jews who have distanced themselves from being Jewish.

[doberbutts]

I’m wondering if you have thoughts on James Baldwin’s “open letter to the born again”? I’m struggling a bit with what his point is in that piece; it feels kinda dismissive on Jewish zionists agency in creation of Israel? But I may be missing parts or not getting things

The text in question.

And the segment I think anon is struggling with:

I know what I am talking about: my grandfather never got the promised “forty acres, and a mule,” the Indians who survived that holocaust are either on reservations or dying in the streets, and not a single treaty between the United States and the Indian was ever honored. That is quite a record.

Jews and Palestinians know of broken promises. From the time of the Balfour Declaration (during World War I) Palestine was under five British mandates, and England promised the land back and forth to the Arabs or the Jews, depending on which horse seemed to be in the lead. The Zionists—as distinguished from the people known as Jews—using, as someone put it, the “available political machinery,’’ i.e., colonialism, e.g., the British Empire—promised the British that, if the territory were given to them, the British Empire would be safe forever.

But absolutely no one cared about the Jews, and it is worth observing that non-Jewish Zionists are very frequently anti-Semitic. The white Americans responsible for sending black slaves to Liberia (where they are still slaving for the Firestone Rubber Plantation) did not do this to set them free. They despised them, and they wanted to get rid of them. Lincoln’s intention was not to “free” the slaves but to “destabilize” the Confederate Government by giving their slaves reason to “defect.” The Emancipation Proclamation freed, precisely, those slaves who were not under the authority of the President of what could not yet be insured as a Union.

It has always astounded me that no one appears to be able to make the connection between Franco’s Spain, for example, and the Spanish Inquisition; the role of the Christian church or—to be brutally precise, the Catholic Church—in the history of Europe, and the fate of the Jews; and the role of the Jews in Christendom and the discovery of America. For the discovery of America coincided with the Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Does no one see the connection between The Merchant of Venice and The Pawnbroker? In both of these works, as though no time had passed, the Jew is portrayed as doing the Christian’s usurious dirty work. The first white man I ever saw was the Jewish manager who arrived to collect the rent, and he collected the rent because he did not own the building. I never, in fact, saw any of the people who owned any of the buildings in which we scrubbed and suffered for so long, until I was a grown man and famous. None of them were Jews.

And I was not stupid: the grocer and the druggist were Jews, for example, and they were very very nice to me, and to us. The cops were white. The city was white. The threat was white, and God was white, Not for even a single split second in my life did the despicable, utterly cowardly accusation that “the Jews killed Christ’’ reverberate. I knew a murderer when I saw one, and the people who were trying to kilI me were not Jews.

But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests. This is what is becoming clear (I must say that it was always clear to me). The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of “divide and rule” and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.

Finally: there is absolutely—repeat: absolutely—no hope of establishing peace in what Europe so arrogantly calls the Middle East (how in the world would Europe know? having so dismally failed to find a passage to India) without dealing with the Palestinians. The collapse of the Shah of Iran not only revealed the depth of the pious Carter’s concern for “human rights,” it also revealed who supplied oil to Israel, and to whom Israel supplied arms. It happened to be, to spell it out, white South Africa.

Well. The Jew, in America, is a white man. He has to be, since I am a black man, and, as he supposes, his only protection against the fate which drove him to America. But he is still doing the Christian’s dirty work, and black men know it.

My friend, Mr. Andrew Young, out of tremendous love and courage, and with a silent, irreproachable, indescribable nobility, has attempted to ward off a holocaust, and I proclaim him a hero, betrayed by cowards.

For context: Andrew Young, considered the right hand of MLK Jr, had a longstanding and occasionally fraught relationship with the Jewish community. He stepped down from Congress shortly after being forced to choose between voicing support for Palestine and continuing to work towards black-jewish interests by his constituents and fellow politicians, as he felt very strongly about supporting both. This was a fairly unpopular move. While I don't believe he ever called himself Jewish by the strictest sense, he was actively involved in Jewish communities and the known "white" ancestry within him is a Polish Jew in his great grandparents.

To be honest, I don't really see much a problem with this as I think it fairly closely matches up not only with my understanding of the history of this problem but also my own country's part in it as well as my personal feelings on it decades later. It pretty blatantly says that Zionism is utilizing a machination of white supremist colonism due to the extensive history of antisemitism and having had the ancestral land dangled in front of them like bait on a hook from the British Empire, which owned Palestine at the time. It also goes on to say that many Zionists aren't even Jewish and are antisemitic in nature, but are Christians happy to get rid of as many Jews as possible and how that tracks due to the Christian church's millennia-deep history of antisemitism.

I don't think it lets anyone off the hook. I think it pretty much flat out says this is a problem caused first and foremost by white Christians who hate Jews and Arabs alike and have a vested interest in getting the two populations to fight because it'll be easier to kill off just the one group instead of both of them, if one ends up eradicating the other. It even talks about the friction between the black community and the Jewish community, what caused it, what drives it, how that friction in itself is a tool of white supremacy to hurt us both.

[personnage-neutre]

British-Mandate Palestine in Land of Black Gold, 1939-1950

The story that would become Tintin in the Land of Black Gold did not only undergo one of the most turbulent publication histories of any Tintin album, it was also was subject to some of the greatest revisions. In both cases, real-life events were to blame: the Second World War cut it off prematurely, and the revisions stemmed from Hergé's original decision to embroil Tintin in the conflict in Palestine during British mandate rule. Over the years, what promised to be a specifically politically engaged album like The Blue Lotus or King Ottokar's Scepter was transformed into a more generalized parable about the power of access to oil, and the earlier versions have been relegated to archive editions of the series.

Originally Black Gold was the story that followed King Ottokar's Scepter in Le Petit Vingtième; this first incomplete version was not collected in an album. After Prisoners of the Sun finished, Hergé returned to the story for the Journal Tintin, redrawing and completing it. That version did become an album, in 1950, and stood for twenty years until Methuen, the British publisher of Tintin, requested that the story be overhauled. The publisher claimed that the references to the conflict preceding the declaration of the state of Israel were too outdated for the then-current reader; I also suspect they preferred that their audience not be reminded of that period of British imperial history. However it may be, Hergé agreed, and a new, scrubbed version, the one published today as the 15th album of the main series, was released in 1971.

This post tracks references to Palestine and the depiction of conflict there across three serial versions of Black Gold and the 1950 album. When possible (which is not often), I include some analysis why certain changes may have been made.

First serial version in Le Petit Vingtième, Sept. 28, 1939-May 9, 1940 (incomplete)

(My main source for historical information is the Encyclopedia Britannica.)

After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, its territories in the Middle East were divided between victorious Britain and France despite the resistance of regional leaders who sought an independent state. At the same time, the 1917 Balfour Declaration had expressed some support for the Zionist project of establishing a home for the Jewish people on Palestinian land. In 1922, Britain took administrative control of Palestine under the authority of the League of Nations in a decision that incorporated the Balfour Declaration's promise of a "Jewish National Home." This, too, was opposed by the native Arab people and their leaders, who rejected the Zionist claim to the land and still agitated for independence.

At the time when Hergé was writing Black Gold, the tension between the three parties in Palestine had flared into the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt. Nazi persecution of European Jews had greatly increased migration to Palestine, and Zionists were calling for an independent Jewish state there; Palestinian Arabs saw large-scale Jewish immigration and especially land transfers as an existential threat since the establishment of the mandate, resented the lack of representation they had in the governing of the territory, and still sought independence as an Arab state; and the British, having tried variously and unsuccessfully to please both sides by restricting or raising immigration and proposing new council structures, found themselves the target of both. While the fighting was mainly British attempts to quell the rebelling Arab population, radical Zionist organizations were also carrying out attacks on Arabs and, to a lesser extent, the British. Especially relevant to Black Gold, as will be seen below, is the fact that a common strategy of the Arab fighters was to blow up the pipeline leading to Haifa.

p. 14 (album: p. 7), p. 27 (album: p. 14): The original destination of the Speedol Star is Caïffa (Haifa), a real city in Palestine, instead of the fictional Khemkhâh (Khemikhal in English), Khemed.

p. 30-34 (p. 15-17): Tintin's kidnapping progresses rather differently than in the 1971 album version. Arrested by the British police as a drug-smuggler, members of the Zionist faction mistake him for one of their agents (the only other man in the world with that haircut) and attempt to seize him back, but quickly realize their mistake. They are stopped by a roadblock and held up by members of the Arab faction, who also mistake Tintin for the same agent and capture only him. The original attackers are then arrested by the British and interrogated. The Thompsons, tempted by the £2000 reward, set out to search for Tintin's new captors.

p. 37-38 (p. 17-18): Tintin is taken to Sheik Bab El Ehr, who also realizes he has the wrong man, but refuses to let Tintin go for fear that he'll betray their position to the British. A British biplane buzzes the camp and drops leaflets.

The joke about Bab El Ehr's men not knowing how to read is only in the 1971 album; originally he takes the leaflets seriously, threatening to have any man who reads one shot. On the next page, Tintin surreptitiously takes a leaflet from a stack while the Sheik's back is turned, a detail present in all serial versions but never followed up on in any of them; it's unclear what Hergé was planning to do with it, if anything.

Starting on p. 40 and continuing until the end of publication, the recap of the story in the header mentions that "Tintin and the detectives travel to Palestine." Earlier pages, starting p. 16, repeat that the destination of the Speedol Star is Caïffa.

p. 56 (p. 27): Dr. Müller, aided by Arab rebels, blows up a pipeline. Tintin witnesses it, but is caught and apparently about to be killed... and then the story abruptly ends. On May 10, 1940, the Nazis enter Belgium, and Le Vingtième Siècle is shut down by the German occupier along with the rest of the Belgian press. Hergé reappears four months later in the occupier-run Le Soir with a new story, The Crab with the Golden Claws, dropping his politically sensitive subject and German villain.

Second serial version in Coeurs Vaillants, June 9, 1940-Dec. 29, 1940, and La Voix de l'Ouest, June 1, 1945-May 5, 1946 (incomplete)

Coeurs Vaillants, another right-wing Catholic children's magazine, began the French serialization of the Petit Vingtième's Land of Black Gold exactly a month after the last issue of the PV appeared and less than a week before the Nazis entered Paris. Originally based in the capital, the magazine moved its operations to Lyon, in unoccupied Vichy France, and continued to publish the story until the end of the year, cutting it short slightly before the first version does. With that context, the main interest of this version lies mainly in the crude censorship imposed on it.

It was also Coeurs Vaillants that coined the album's eventual title - the story had been serialized in the PV under the generic title of "Les nouvelles aventures de Tintin et Milou," as were The Black Island and The Broken Ear.

Issue no. 42: The Speedol Star arrives at Haifa once again.

no. 44: The Jewish name "Finkelstein" is changed to the French name "Durand." The remark about "ces satanés Arabes" ("those blasted Arabs") is completely erased and its balloon converted into a cloud(?). All edits are clearly done by the magazine after receiving the plates.

no. 45: Every instance of the word "juif" ("Jew") is erased, leaving blank spaces in the balloons; every instance of the word "arabe" ("Arab") is replaced with "rebelle" ("rebel"). If it's an attempt to obscure the setting of the story, it's a very clumsy one; Hergé's drawings are so clearly stereotyped that any reader of 1940 would surely be able to fill in the missing words themselves.

no. 47: The eleven panels comprising the incident with the British plane are deleted altogether. Tintin is ignored when he asks if he can leave. Tintin again takes a leaflet, but now they seem to have appeared out of nowhere. Most likely the magazine, which loudly and frequently proclaimed its admiration for Pétain during its Vichy residency, was wary of portraying the British Army in any way that could be construed as positive - or even of portraying the British Army at all. However, the police in the beginning are still clearly British, right down to their "Good Bye"s and "All Right"s.

no. 52: Another instance of "arabes" changed to "rebelles." At six pages short of where the Vingtième publication stopped, this is the last page published in Coeurs Vaillants. In 1945, following the Liberation, it began publishing the story again from the beginning, but the magazine was quickly shut down by the government for having existed during the Occupation. The publication of Black Gold was then moved to a similar, smaller paper, La Voix de l'Ouest, but only made it as far as the Thompsons setting off into the desert to look for Tintin. Despite being published after the Liberation, it keeps all of the dialogue edits from Coeurs Vaillants.

Third serial version in the Journal Tintin, Sept. 16, 1948-Feb. 23, 1950, and first album version, 1950

Eight years later, having just finished the extensive serialization of Le Temple du Soleil but not yet ready to begin the research-heavy Moon books, Hergé decides to redraw and complete the story, naming it simply L'or noir (Black Gold). Swiss magazine L'Echo Illustré also runs this version, with no apparent changes, from 1949-1950. Fighting had broken out afresh between Palestinians and Zionist settlers following the UN Partition Plan proposing the creation of the state of Israel at the end of 1947 and was still in full swing when the story restarted. The British had withdrawn in May 1948 (on the same day as the declaration of the state of Israel) but are still present in the story, setting it slightly behind the times.

The 1948 serial was compiled into an album with a few minor changes and new colors in 1950; curiously, the album is actually more specific than the serial in its references to the conflict in Palestine. This is also the version that the 1963 RTF radio adaptation of Black Gold is based on.

p. 7, p. 14 (1948): The Speedol Star's destination is still Caïffa. Neither the word "Palestine" nor "Israel" is mentioned, either in the strip itself or in the weekly recap in the header, for the whole story.

p. 7, p. 14 (1950): Same destination, but the spelling is finally corrected to "Haïfa" in the 1950 version. The Thompsons are now looking for spies aboard the Speedol Star instead of drug-smugglers. The sailor with binoculars also now specifies that the patrol boat coming to meet them is from "la Navy." Earlier versions had the sailor express surprise at the police coming aboard; in the album he concludes, very logically, that surveillance has been upped because of the tense international situation, though he doesn't mention the internal conflict in the country. The 1971 version keeps that line.

p. 15-17: Tintin's kidnappings play out the same way as in the first version, except that the Zionist agent's name has been changed from "Finkelstein" to "Salomon Goldstein." According to Philippe Goddin, the agent originally got his name from a certain René Finkelstein who worked at Coeurs Vaillants. Goddin doesn't speculate on why it was changed; however, at the end of the 1940s Hergé was having issues with Coeurs Vaillants, as the French edition of the Journal Tintin (launched 1948) was to become the only publisher of Tintin in France, depriving CV of one of its major draws. It's not impossible, though there's no real proof, that Hergé's retraction of Finkelstein was just a petty blow in that struggle.

In the 1950 album, what Tintin and the Thompsons are framed for changes from drug-smuggling to espionage: instead of cocaine, there are unspecified "documents" in their luggage. It's not clear who the original owners of the documents were spying for. The 1971 album splits the difference, with the detectives again caught with cocaine but Tintin with documents.

p. 17: The 1950 album is the first and only version to explicitly name Tintin's first kidnappers as members of the Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group that targeted both the British occupier and Palestinian Arabs between 1931 and 1948 and was later absorbed into the then newly-formed IDF.

It is notable that the depiction of the conflict remains exactly the same as in earlier versions, despite the vast changes in the international situation between 1939 and 1948. At the same time, the broad lines of the conflict in Palestine had changed little since before the war. Is the story still meant to be set in its original pre-war context? None of the announcements preceding its re-release in the Journal mention that it's a recycled story, and many of its readers would have been too young to remember its first run - many, but not all, as a few letter responses show. The cars and planes are updated, but when Bob de Moor was sent out to find references for the 1971 redraw, he specifically chose a tanker from 1939 for the Speedol Star. Also, the nonspecific threats of world war that characterize the first ten pages of the album remain even in the 1971 album, though their immediate link to reality had disappeared by 1948.

The 1948 recontextualization also somewhat obscures the role of Müller, which was very straightforward in the original version: he's a German agent trying to cut off his enemy Britain's access to oil while also undermining its colonial rule of the region - Britain and Germany had already declared war on each other when the first version began publication. It was consistent with the character, as well; a goal of Müller's in The Black Island (1937-1938) was to destabilize the British economy with his counterfeit money.

p. 19: The only change is that the British biplane has been upgraded to a British Spitfire. In the 1971 album, it remains recognizably a Spitfire but carries Khemedian livery. Bab El Ehr's enemy is still "les Anglais."

p. 36-38: Having passed the point where the first publication had stopped, the original context begins to disappear. The Zionist presence is entirely gone, making way for the intra-Arab power struggle that is the sole focus of the final album. However, in this case, the struggle between Bab El Ehr and Ben Kalish Ezab is not a proxy war between two competing oil companies but over the continued British presence in this ambiguous nation (see below), with the Emir allowing a British company access to his oil while the Sheik, "a fanatic," only wants to "force the English to leave the country." Predictably, given the publication context, the reader is intended to side with the pro-English forces, though no actual sign of a British - or even non-Arab - presence will appear from here on.

To return to the question of Müller: here, under the assumed English-sounding name of Professor Smith, he is representing non-British oil companies in the region while secretly directing sabotage on oil infrastructure, both by encouraging the destruction of pipelines and by using his "Formula Fourteen" to render oil stores useless. Once again, his motivations are much clearer as a German agent in a pre-war context; the 1948 version has him simply be the tool of that classic early Cold War BD villain, a carefully unspecified "grande puissance étrangère" ("great foreign power").

p. 41: The Emir sends Tintin to the fictional city of Wadesdah, "on the coast." Where are we? The Emir's kingdom won't be named until the 1971 album. Palestine fades into a generalized Middle East during the crossing of the desert, the two held together only by Bab El Ehr's struggle against the British in both territories. While the 1971 redraw was the ultimate erasure of the story's original context, it's clear that Hergé had already put it to the side as early as 1948.

As the story transitioned from a specific to a fictional context while attempting to maintain a coherent plot, it was forced to contort and contradict itself; it's not really surprising, then, that Hergé told Numa Sadoul he found the 1971 revised storyline "much simpler, therefore better." Sadoul lightly challenges him on it, however, bringing up Blue Lotus as an example of a technically outdated album that Hergé never considered de-politicizing. It seems to me the difference is that while the real-life political resonance of Blue Lotus is essential to its story all the way through, the only completed version of Black Gold abandons its link to reality around the halfway mark, making the redraw possible and, from Hergé's point of view, even desirable. It also betrays the short-sighted attitude of both Hergé then and Methuen later that partition and the declaration of Israel had simply settled the question of Palestine for good, an attitude that was mistaken then and is mistaken now.

[jewish-vents]

I lost my best friend of 25 years over this conflict. She was being purposely cagey about it because she didn't want to lose me, and knew she would. On the 7th itself when I turned to my best friend to help me through my grief and terror she just said "I'm not the right person to discuss this with. I'm getting on a plane. Can't talk. Bye."

And she left me to burn

I probably should have known it then. She told me she didn't want to talk about it because I might think she's antisemitic, as that's the pressing thing when the world just declared it's intent to hunt and kill me in horrible ways.

"I can't relate but I support you, but please don't talk about it with me."

How is that support?

And how could I talk about anything else?

And then she changes the subject to someone saying something minor to her at work which set her into a crying fit, because she makes it a priority to tell me she bursts into tears 4 times a day every day so I can't ever have too strong of a negative emotion or it will set her off.

And then she told me she loves me but she can't say she likes Jews because "I haven't met all the other Jews." As though she'd ever say that to a Black friend about their entire people. She is the Most Progressive, you see, she is Very Aware Of Her White Privilege and stuff. She works with immigrants and would sooner jump off a bridge than give off a whiff of bigotry towards them.

But I'm a Jew.

She finally tells me she doesn't support Israeli striking back because there's children being hit. She hasn't seen any evidence to justify Israel's response. I ask to show her some. She refuses. You see she gets to have her uninformed opinion, gets the luxury of staying that way, she can just change the subject, I'm The Jew, that's my Jewish business.

My pain has always been her concern but not when it's Jew-related. I'm to hide that lest she burst into tears.

I gradually stop talking to her. She sends me anxious messages saying "I'm not sure if I can even ask how you are or if that's any of my business"

This from the woman who purposely made it not her business, DEMANDED it not be her business, and now she sniffing around like a hungry dog after telling me to just ignore it, that it's just online, that I should **uwu** watch my cortisol **uwu**

You need cortisol, I say, when you're being hunted. Sometimes cortisol is called for. She starts crying. How could I say that. She can't talk about this. It's too much for her. My cortisol is just too much for her. So now I have to shut up, because she's crying.

No one hunting her but she's crying

It felt like she was just hoping to wait around, have her private antisemitism, like she could hide her eyes from me, like I couldn't read her judging silence and her quiet insistence that though she admittedly knew nothing she certainly knew better than ME what was right. And if we get close, boom. Tears.

I felt so talked down to and invalidated. When I brought this up she said "I validate you" like that's a magic spell, you can just say the magic words AND that will cure neglect.

I finally blew up at her and of course there was big manipulative tears because how DARE I think she might have bigotry and how DARE I draw away from her after she made it clear she had no interest in my pain, after she tried so so so hard to hide it and used all the gentle parenting language she learned in her DEI courses to placate me, the Hysterical Jew.

I will always hate myself for apologizing to her for being angry, for my big violent emotions she would have preferred to ignore until I get over my weird Jewish thing, so I can get back to being the person she can subtly look down on and be holier than, and so she can cry to me, and cry, and cry, and cry, because someone gave her a minor correction at work and not because she's being hunted for being a Jew.

We should be able to disagree about politics, she says. We can't disagree about my existence and basic safety, I say. You don't deserve to be bathed in hate, get offline, she says.

They vandalized my synagogue. They attacked my friend's daughter on campus. That's awful, she says. I don't support that. Anyway, at work today -

We don't talk anymore. Haven't for months. Don't know if we ever will again. I've been angry at her every day. I feel like I let her get away with it. She gets to go out into the world feeling like she's right and Israel is evil and she used to have a Jewish friend who turned out to be craaaazy, it's terrible what Zionism does to those people. I'm sure she'll get clout at her super leftist workplace where she can never be progressive enough. Where she helps put DEI policies in schools and libraries that treat antisemitism as though it's a non-problem.

I'm just another oppressor-class Jew to her. Couldn't center her over my Jew Issues

I'm so angry at her and so angry at myself for not handling it better, for holding back, for indulging her crocodile tears and handling her with kid gloves, for not calling her out for manipulating me into muting my truth and thinking I'm so dumb that she could just refuse to address it, like I wouldn't know, for expecting me to just "get over" my people being slaughtered, for needing her and then sticking around long after she left me to die

.