#but the bit about ‘jewish state’ got me

[jewishbarbies]

was watching a clip of a convo between a pro palestine muslim man and an Israeli jewish man talking about the conflict, and a point was made that it hadn’t quite clicked for me was happening until then. to jews, saying israel is a “jewish state” 9/10 does NOT mean only a jewish state. there’s millions of non jews with Israeli citizenship as we speak and as far as i know no one is advocating to change that. but to online leftists, saying “jewish state” is akin to “christian nationalism”, and i personally think it has to do with the christian hegemony and cultural influence of christianity leftists pretend doesn’t exist. because they also think all zionists are just like christian zionists and accuse regular zionists of the things christian zionist speakers have been doing/saying as if it’s all the same thing. even in the bigotry against us we cannot separate from fucking christianity. the right hates us because we’re not christians and leftists hate us because, to them, we’re just christians in different churches.

[bijoumikhawal]

multiple Palestinian organizations have stated for decades they're against "dejudification" and even Hamas draws the distinction that not all Jews are Zionists and vice versa. "Im sure theres a version if antizionism that doesnt involve it-" its been a VERY common position among antizionists to not give a shit if Jews still live in Palestine so long as Palestinians are free, actually. There are Palestinian Jews, who call themselves Palestinian, actually. And whining that calling Israelis colonizers implies all Jews are foreign is fucking rich regarding the ideology that tries to force dual loyalty on everyone, and really fucking annoying considering European Jews have been fucking colonizing Mizrahi communities for a LONG time. All those Jewish French speaking schools in the MENA were founded because European Jews thought local Jews were backwards.

[odinsblog]

“I had a Zionist grandmother who grew up, she grew up in Poland, she was supposed to go to Israel to study. Her father had paid for her for the first year of tuition. And then in 1939, when she was in her last year of high school, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland.

She ended up for a couple of years in the Soviet-occupied part of Poland, which was how she ended up in Moscow. And by the time Germany occupied all of Poland. So then she spent the rest of her life living in Moscow.

And 45 years after the end of the war, dreaming of being able to go to Israel, but not being able to because she was now stuck in the Soviet Union. And so I think I was very infected by, infected in a non-derogatory sense, by my grandmother's dream of Israel. And I had my own dream of Israel growing up as a, as a Jewish kid who was bullied and beaten up and teased.

I just wanted to live in a country that, that was majority Jewish. I could not understand why my parents would want to go to the United States and live in another country where Jews are in the minority. My parents on the other hand just didn't want to be Jewish.

Like their only experience of being Jewish was being systematically discriminated against. They were both born during the Second World War, so they were second generation, utterly non-religious and separated from any Jewish tradition, except the tradition of being a targeted minority. So they just, they just wanted to go somewhere where they wouldn't be Jewish.

And so when I was 15, a year after we moved to the United States, I actually went to Israel planning to stay there and didn't. For a variety of reasons, but one of them was being confronted with, with what I found at the age of 15, a shockingly racist society.

So the first time I went to Israel was when I was 15, it was 1982. And then there was like an 18, 17 or 18 year gap.

And I started traveling to Israel regularly from 1999, 2000. And the first time I went back was to actually complete the research on the book about my grandmother's. So it's been a good 25 years that I've been coming back.

And I think Israel has undergone a lot of changes in that time. But no, I don't think that like the kind of Ashkenazi Sephardic racism that shocked me in 1982 has found subtler expressions. But politics of settlement have only been exacerbated.

And I still find them extremely painful to observe, especially because some of my beloved relatives are settlers.

I did visit them this last time I was in Israel, because I really wanted to see what it looked like for them.

I was compelled to go visit them because of a Facebook post that my cousin made. And just to give you an idea, I really hold these people very, very dear. But for years, I would go to Israel, Palestine and not tell them that I was there, because I kind of couldn't face them.

So it's been a number of years since I last saw them, a number of years since I went to that settlement. But my cousin had posted something on Facebook. It was a picture of her son playing the violin.

And she wrote, in one of the houses where they stayed in Gaza, there was a violin. He played for his soldiers and then put the violin back. And I found that post-heart-rending and eye-opening, the picture of him playing the violin was not from Gaza.

It was from earlier, but he had apparently told her about playing the violin in Gaza. And obviously she was worried about her son serving in Gaza and so she's posting about it. And she wants to assert that he is a good boy.

But also, entirely missing from that post and from her world view is that somebody lived in that house in Gaza. That violin belonged to somebody. Like, it was such an extraordinary example of the blindness that we were talking about a little bit earlier that I wanted to go visit them and kind of engage with that blindness more.

And I got a really good dose of blindness to the point where, and we had this incredible moment when we went walking around the settlement after Shabbat lunch. And we sort of got to this hilltop where there's a swing and there's a little free library.

And we're looking out on a Palestinian village. And I said, what are we looking at, to my cousin? And she was trying to get her bearings.

And she said, where are we looking? And she named another settlement, which was kind of, which was not on our line of sight. It was like this literal example of looking at an actual Palestinian village that she drives past every day.

And before the village was sealed off after October 7th, she used to get gas there. And she knows it exists. But somehow she, also it also doesn't enter her geography.

It is nameless.”

—Masha Gessen, the descendant of Holocaust survivors, discusses the dehumanization of Palestinians (part 2 of 3)

[matan4il]

Happy Pride month to all Jews and our true allies.

On this occasion, as someone who used to volunteer for the Jerusalem Open House (the gay community center) let me offer you a bit of info about our country's LGBTQ history (and correct some anti-Israel distortions).

This is Chaim (Herman) Cohen.

He was born in Germany in 1911, and came to Israel in 1930, to study torah at a yeshiva here. Inspired by his Jewish studies, he decided to turn to the study of law, returning to Germany for that goal and to get married. In 1933, with the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, he decided to move to Israel permanently. In that sense, he's considered a refugee and Holocaust survivor. His younger brother Leo was murdered by the Nazis.

In 1950, he was appointed Israel's attorney general. In this role, he came across an anti-sodomy law passed by the British Mandate in 1936 (which prohibited all oral and anal sex, including between two men), and which the State of Israel automatically inherited once it was founded in 1948 (source in Hebrew). First he wanted to cancel it, but his jurisdiction fell short of that. As it was within his authority to instruct the Israeli police and state prosecution to ignore it, he did so in 1953. He explained his instruction:

"I thought it was my duty not to uphold a law, which I saw as immoral. [...] And if you should ask, in what is the immorality of the law prohibiting intercourse between men, I will reply to you that such a law against any consenting and private contact between adults contradicts the freedom of man over his own body, and depriving this freedom is a grave infringement against one of the basic human rights."

For comparison's sake, in March 1952, Alan Turing (who saved countless lives for the UK and the allies during WWII) was brought to trial for homosexual consensual private acts, was convicted, and his security clearance was revoked.

In 1978, a special committee of the Knesset (Israel's parliament) recommended several changes to laws addressing various sexual acts, including a recommendation to cancel this anti-sodomy law. In 1980, Israel's first right wing government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, accepted the committee's recommendations with a corresponding bill (which eventually didn't pass). The bill was presented a second time in 1986, and was passed into law in 1988, decriminalizing same-sex intercourse in Israel (source in Hebrew).

For comparison's sake, in 1990, there were still over 110 jurisdictions in the world criminalizing homosexuality in the world. In the 2020's, RIGHT NOW, there are over 60 that still do.

This is Dr. Doron Maizel (may his memory be a blessing) on the left, with his partner Adir Steiner.

Doron was an army doctor. He was married to a woman with whom he had 3 daughters, before coming out to her in the late 1970's, getting a divorce and eventually openly moving in with his partner Adir. They were together since 1983. Being open about his sexual orientation meant that while Doron was allowed to serve, the same notion that gay men are a security threat (which was applied to Alan Turing), and therefore can't be allowed to serve in top/secret posts in the army, was to stop the promotion that he was about to get. Doron went to visit Ariel Sharon (at the time, Israel's right wing Security Minister, who's in charge of the army) in the latter's private home. IDK what was said in that meeting, but after that, Adir underwent the security check that all partners of a high ranking army officer do, and then Doron got his promotion. When Doron passed away in 1991 from cancer, Adir demanded to be and was recognized as an army widower. Doron's official army commemoration page states, "Left behind a mother, three daughters, a brother and a boyfriend."

Here's Adir with Doron's picture during a 2012 interview:

In 1993, the army order that were meant to prevent Doron and other gay soldiers from serving in certain posts was officially canceled. In 1999, a soldier born as male asked to serve as a woman, because that's what she actually was (this would have made this soldier's service shorter, and in that sense "cost" the army). The request was accepted, and since then, trans soldiers serve in the gender they identify with.

The story of Israel's LGBTQ rights isn't only glitter and fairies. Just like I can talk about a lot of progress that the state made in equalizing our rights in many domains (because I have), I could also talk about the rights we still don't have (because I've done that, too). The situation here isn't perfect (though as far as I'm aware, it isn't anywhere in the world, there are at least a few rights denied to the queer community in every country I know of). But when I look at our history, I feel like Israel isn't just one of the more queer-friendly countries in the world, it was also at certain moments at the very forefront of the struggle to recognizing queer people as deserving of equal treatment.

Which is maybe the most instinctual reason for my fury at the form of the Israel's demonization using the false notion of "pink washing." It is DERANGED to think Chaim Cohen, in 1953, gave his pro-gay instruction in relation to an occupation that Israel wasn't being blamed of until after the Six Day War in 1967, and which didn't gain attention from the regular people (as opposed to foreign politicians, who didn't give a shit about Israel's record on gay rights) until the Derben Conference in 2000. Not to mention how the idea that having a good gay rights record is something a country can brag about is probably even younger than that conference.

The pink washing accusation is de-humanizing. It suggests that it can't be that Israelis simply have a set of values which happens to align with the west's when it comes to the gay community (or women's rights, or ecological awareness, or freedom of speech, or any of the other positives Israel has, which position it high in the Freedom Index, and which anti-Israel activists label "washing" with one color or another). No, the history of these fields in the Jewish state is all about what non-Jews will say about us! It's like you can't fathom that we have an existence of our own, and minds of our own, and desires and wants and struggles of our own, and not everything is centered about what you think of us.

And the source of this self-centered thinking seems to connect with an inability to accept the Jewish state as anything other than the ultimate evil. Because Israel has to be the supervillain of the story, then it can't have a single positive. Everything about it has to be black, otherwise that challenges the black and white narrative that's been developed to demonize the Jewish state. So if it is revealed that there's any domain in which Israel is actually doing good things, reflecting a respect for human rights or a closeness to the values that the anti-Israel crowd claims to uphold, then it must be just a cover up for how Israel treats the Palestinians.

Essentially, the pink/purple/green/whatever washing accusations are as insane and antisemitic, just like claiming that Jews have won so many Nobel Prizes (a reflection of how much our people have benefited humanity) to distract the world from all the non-Jewish kids we kill to use their blood to bake Passover matzos.

But it's actually worse. Because in the process of demonizing Israel, Israeli Arab and Palestinian queers get thrown under the bus, too. As a gay activist, I'm familiar with so many gay and trans Israeli Arabs who get to have a good life thanks to Israel's good gay rights record, who are aware that if the anti-Israel crowd is successful in de-legitimizing and destroying this state, they're fucked as well. I know a lot of gay and trans Palestinians, who only catch a break when they come to the Jerusalem Open House, or generally to Israel, the only place where they can be themselves safely. I know so many queer Palestinians who are scared for their lives because of the violent intolerance of their own families, society and governments. And all the western countries from which the anti-Israel people come from refuse them entry as refugees persecuted for their sexual orientation (yes, I have gay Palestinian friends who have tried, only to be turned down by country after country, no matter how "liberal" or "pro-Palestinian" they officially claim to be).

Meanwhile, gay Palestinians can get temporary asylum in Israel (please don't tell me it's "pink washing" again, when no one from the anti-Israel crowd will even acknowledge this fact) if they fear for their lives, it's just not a proper solution, because just like Palestinian terrorists can get into Israel, carry out an attack and murder innocent civilians, Palestinian homophobes can get inside as well, and murder the queer people who had fled here.

And just to make reality a tad more complex, you know how for the anti-Israel crowd, the worst of the worst of Israeli society, are the religious ("Fanatic! Extremist! Violent!") settlers? I know of more than one case where those religious settlers are the ones who are helping gay Palestinians, but here's one that made it into the Israeli news.

Life is just not black and white, human nature is complex, Israel is a country where human beings are more than just their stance on the conflict and whether foreigners agree with it or not, and the "pink washing accusation" black and white washes all our colors away, trying to reduce us into caricatures that fit into their simplistic, reductive narrative, so they can go on playing "white/western/outsider savior" to the "poor Palestinians" without actually caring about many of the poorest, most marginalized ones.

This vid isn't a representation of all gay Israeli Arabs, but it's def a voice you will not see acknowledged on the anti-Israel side:

Happy Pride to everyone seeing us, all of us, Israelis and Palestinians, queer and straight, with all of our humanity and complexity!

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

[doberbutts]

Genuine question: What do you think of the argument that very white-passing folks — even if they have black parents, grandparents, etc. — cannot call themselves black?

Personally I think whether or not you're black depends on your actual lived reality. My nephew is white passing. He's from the sister who is about the same tone as me, just a little lighter, and the same racial mixture of Irish and afronative, and his very German father. He's got white skin and blonde hair and blue eyes and genuinely if you didn't know that little boy was technically black you would not guess it.

However. He lives with his visibly black mother, his visibly black sister (same racial mix as him, she just got the darker genes), and their visibly black stepfather and visibly black stepsiblings. He's the odd man out, the lightest of the group, and the one that looks like he doesn't belong. And, when you see him next to his family... suddenly the white skin and blonde hair and blue eyes don't cut it for determining his whiteness, because you start to notice that he shares a whole lot of features with the darker skinned members of his family.

Like me, he's put his foot down about his blackness. If asked at school why he's white but his family is black, he will outright state that he's mixed race and that he is actually black and white just like his sister and mother. He's not wrong. He IS black and white and no small part Native, though I think the complexity of the last part is hard for him to grasp at his elementary school level understanding of race politics.

But what is his reality? Well, when he's with his white father, or my white (passing) mother, he's white. Until he opens his mouth to defend his sister or his mother or a friend of his from racism, at which point said racist's eyes laser-focus on every minute detail of his face to pick out the non-European features covered in pale skin.

This is honestly pretty similar to how a Jewish friend of mine describes her experience, how she is white until she opens her mouth to say something positive about Judiasm or negative about antisemitism, at which point every possible Jewish feature on her face comes under intense scrutiny and her white status is revoked immediately. It's also why I'm always on this "antisemitism 🤝 antiblackness" thing.

I also have a Hungarian friend who is equally peeved at the flattening of racial nuance, as he and his family consider themselves mixed race and Eurasian and not just white, however he has had equal amount of people hurting him for his more blatantly Asian features as he's had people telling him he never experiences racism because he's a white European. Similarly, his reality is that he's white until he says something that doesn't align with white supremacy's rules on white opinion and white behavior, at which point every single Asian feature he has is used as punishment against him.

It's not to say that my nephew, my Jewish friend, or my Hungarian friend don't benefit from their perceived whiteness. They do, in fact! My nephew again is a bit young to have this conversation, but my friends have also discussed with me how they have seen that perception occasionally give them a boost as they move through life. And how, if they would want to keep that boost, they'd have to lean into the concept of whiteness and erase a significant portion of their identities in the process.

This is also spoken about at length by Natives forced to assimilate and intermarry with white people to "breed out the savage", as it were. And I know of lightskinned, though imo not white passing, black people who have discussed the same thing. This even is discussed by people in the Irish, Italian, Greek, and Polish diaspora here in the US- how their current status of "white" came at the cost of not only erasing huge portions of their own culture and history but also practically requires them to lean into white supremacy in order to continue to reap the benefits of white privilege, and how the cost is so much higher than the gain especially when you understand that it doesn't work. You can be One Of The Good Ones all you like and someone dedicated to racism is still going to hate you even once you've gotten rid of all the obvious poc.

To put it simply, these aren't new conversations and I'm never going to be anywhere remotely close to "white-passing" so it's sort of a moot point for me. It's not my reality. But I think listening to those who have lived it is better for gaining a more solid understanding. I don't think that my nephew is wrong to call himself black or mixed black. It's technically true, he came out of a black woman. I also think he is going to have a very different life from his sister, from his mother, from his stepfather and stepsiblings, from his black extended family.

I think rejection from the black community would only hurt him, because he is growing up surrounded by black people in a black family learning black culture, so someone telling him that he shares the same features and DNA but his skin is too light to find community there is just hurtful. Who does it help? Who does it protect? To tell a little kid that he can't call himself part of his own family?

[qtkat]

experiments tainted by valium ⋆·˚ ༘ *

gender: not specified

pairing: sheldon cooper x reader

word count: 1739 (short n’ sweet)

notes: i haven’t published anything i’ve written in a while and i’ve been a bit stuck with my other projects so i thought i’d mix it up! it’s pretty obvious but this is set in s2e1 when sheldon comes home after howard gives him valium lmao. i really just wrote this for me tbh so if you read this i hope you enjoy xx <3

just thinking about how happy sheldon is when he sees you standing in the door of his apartment, having already forgotten howard’s existence as his eyes meet yours. he stumbles into the apartment, letting out a drawn out and high-pitched “hey!”

they -his eyes- look a little clouded over to you, and you raise a brow incredulously at your jewish friend who’s standing next to him, while simultaneously trying to get your very tall friend to stand up straight on his own. “there she is! my ole’ neighbor turned temporary roommate,” sheldon continues while stumbling past you, taking small steps through the room, looking around a little bewildered.

glaring sleepily, your eyes in two slits, you cross your arms at howard. “what did you do?” you asked a little confused as to why sheldon got dumped back here when he was the one who wanted to move out in the first place.

sighing while keeping his eyes on sheldon howard began to explain, “koothrappali dumped him on me and he couldn’t get to sleep, so i gave him a glass of warm milk with a handful of my mom’s valium in it.” he said as if this happened standardly.

now both of your eyebrows were up at your hairline and you looked at howard with wide eyes, leaned forward a little. “and he still wouldn’t shut up, so— tag, you’re it!” he finishes by unceremoniously dropping sheldon’s bag onto the floor and immediately making his way down the stairs.

you looked after him for a second before looking back towards the beanstalk of a man now leaning on his desk with a hand propped up onto his hip. “i’m back” he sing-song’ed happily, letting a rare smile peek through in his drugged state.

you close the door with a sigh and start walking towards the living room in tandem with sheldon. “not like i even knew why you left in the first place” you reply dryly, but as per usual he doesn’t pick up on it and just lowers himself onto the chair’s armrest. “i can’t tell you” he replies, piquing your interest.

now the gears in your head started turning, maybe still a little groggily since you’d just gotten woken up by your drugged neighbor and annoyed friend, but they were moving. you needed to know what made him leave, you knew he hated change so it was either something really serious or something really stupid. your undergrad in psychology should probably help you get to the core of it.

you take a seat opposite him on the living room’s coffee table and look up at him, “why not?” you inquired softly, “i promised penny,” he breathed out, breaking eye contact and letting his head fall back a bit.

“you promised penny what?” you could feel yourself getting closer, subconsciously leaning forward a bit so you could hear anything coming out of his mouth, since he didn’t have a very right grasp on what would and wouldn’t.

“i wouldn’t tell you the secret.” he mumbled, but you heard it nonetheless. he let himself fall back into the chair and you would’ve laughed if you weren’t currently on a personal mission to find out what penny was telling sheldon behind your back. “shh!” he interjected the silence with a finger on his lips, looking at you with wide-blown eyes.

you stood up and took a seat on the brown chair next to his now and tried keeping his attention on you while you moved, batting your eyes at him sickly sweet while he moved to sit upright, you placed your hand on his chair’s armrest. “what secret, shelly?”

he turned now to look at you seriously, a pout on his face that made something in the back of your mind scream adorable but which you pushed away leveling his stare with one of your own.

you hoped the use of his nickname would make him trust you more and tell him the secret, but apparently it worked a bit too well and you skipped straight towards the family secrets instead. “mom smokes in the car,” he pauses and you give him a confounded look, brows furrowed. “jesus is okay with it but we can’t tell dad.” he shakes his head at the last part, making you heave a sigh and drop your head in your hands.

you wouldn’t give up yet, however. “not that one dear, the other secret.” you tried getting him back on track but this just resulted in him lowering his voice an octave and whisper-yelling “i’m batman!” while shushing your ‘no’s afterward once more.

“sheldon come on! work with me here.” you moved your chair closer to his and looked him straight in the eye. “you said that penny told you a secret, will you tell me it shelley?” you begged, putting on your best puppy dog eyes with scrunched eyebrows combo and started smiling when he threw his head back with a sigh. “alright i’ll tell you,” he replied, making you celebrate silently with yourself, “but you can’t tell leonard.” you nodded happily along with him.

“my lips are sealed” you smiled out, sitting up a bit straighter, ready for the secret that made sheldon want to move out. “penny lied about finishing community college, because she’s afraid she’s not smart enough for leonard.” he finishes by looking at his hand and moving it around in his field of vision.

you kept looking at him, a little disappointed that was all. “and.. that’s it?” you asked, and he looked back at you, leaving his hand alone again. “i drank milk that tasted funny,” he said, making you come back to your senses and give him an apologetic smile.

“d’you need me to help you get to bed?” you offered, making him scrunch his eyebrows at you in distaste. “don’t be silly, i want to stay up with you.” he stated, catching you by surprise.

you knew sheldon didn’t dislike you, he said hi to you at work, he let you eat dinner at his house, hell- he even let you stay there right now while the apartment manager was fixing your broken window. but evading his rigorous sleep schedule? that made you stop in your tracks a bit. “wha- uh- why?” you tried to speak, sputtering out a response to keep him awake.

he let his head fall back again, his eyes closed and a smile took over his face — it was honestly a bit freaky, but mostly just endearing. “you are very endearing when you’re half asleep” he mumbles out, letting his words linger in the air a bit. your eyes are blown wide and you try to find a response, but you only manage to open and close your mouth like a fish on dry land.

his eyes open and he lets his head loll to the side, looking at you with a dopey expression on his face, “and you called me shelley,” he said. you’d never heard his voice so soft, so without ridicule, it was weird and it made your insides warm. “usually no one can call me that.” he continued, your face slowly heating up in what you assumed was embarrassment.

“but you’re inexplicable y/n.” he sits up a little straighter now, eyes still a little glazed over but determined nonetheless. “anyone else calls me shelley, i don’t like it, but when you do, i do. when someone else needs a place to stay i don’t want them here, but when you do, i do.” he explains softly, trying to reason with himself.

you know you shouldn’t listen to him right now, it’s late and you’re both tired — and more importantly he’s on drugs, but you can’t help but want to grab this moment with him, scared there won’t be any more chances to shoot your shot with the stoic man.

“sheldon?” you ask, but he shakes his head in that disappointed way you’re so used to and corrects you.“shelley.” he interjects matter of factly, and you continue. “alright- shelley, can i preform an experiment?” you ask, shifting a little closer towards him again. he thinks on it for a second before snickering like a kid and and smiling your way. “i love experiments!” he cheered.

“alright” you begin, shifting a little in your seat. “take note of how you’re feeling right now- physically.” you instruct and he nods along. there’s a small pause before he motions with his hand for you to continue.“my data suggests,” you take a deep breath, this is it, “that this would make your heartbeat increase.” you state as he looks at you confused. “my heartbe-” he starts but is cut off by your lips on his, your eyes sewn tightly shut, not wanting to see his reaction just yet.

you stay like that for a moment, unmoving and a little rigid but feeling his soft lips on yours, then you move away, eyes still closed. a couple beats of silence pass before sheldon lets out a “woah” which makes you open one eye cautiously. his eyes are blown wide and his cheeks have a little bit of a blush spreading along their surface, his hand is placed over his heart and he looks at you wordlessly, mouth hanging open slightly.

both of you blink at each other and you swallow a little loudly. you clear your throat a little, “was my hypothesis correct, shelley?” you ask softly, your voice raw with emotion as the man before you just nods in shell-shock. “i believe so,” he stutters out meekly, hand still gripping his pajama shirt.

“well, then why don’t you ponder the implications this has on its field while i.. go..” you rasp out, trying to make this make sense to sheldon’s impossible brain, which seemed a success at his small nod and now finally closed mouth.

you stand up fast and make your way towards leonard’s room where your air mattress resided because even if sheldon wasn’t home people ‘aren’t supposed to be in his room’ and you closed the door softly behind you, leaving a star-struck physicist alone in his living room looking at the empty chair before him, trying to sort out feelings he’d never felt before.

he looked towards leonard’s door and back towards where you’d been sitting just moments before, his stomach fluttering as he thought back to his first kiss from just seconds ago.

“oh dear”

[johannestevans]

had a Great experience the other day where i was at a trans event and started talking to this woman who was also Jewish, and so we were talking about like, Jewish movies and gender roles in different Jewish and Ashkenazi spaces and antisemitism and like, broader philosophical concepts and it was genuinely really nice

and at some point this other girl came over and mentioned wanting to be a cop, and when she was resolutely shut down by everyone else in the social circle, she started dropping "fun facts" about hitler's regime

such as that "hitler didn't really hate jews, his second in command, himmler, did, and he led the whole thing. hitler was just the face of it" and then at some point said something like "you know, people say even churchill was kind of racist"

and i was like. "yeah. churchill did multiple genocides and also hated jewish people."

and she replied, "yeah. makes you think that no one's actually good, doesn't it?"

and i went, "no. that's a very cowardly position to take, i would posit, by someone too lazy or too spineless to make an effort to be "good", as you say."

and that shut her up for a bit

and then the conversation moved on a bit more, and got onto the topic of israel, and she said something vaguely to the effect of like. jewish voices where she - to her credit, i do believe unintentionally - implied that a Jewish group were Zionist when they weren't, they were just Jewish

and i corrected her, and she went "well, yeah. Israelis aren't real Jews anyway"

and i said, "can you tell me what you mean by that?"

and she said, "well, like. loads of jews oppose israel actually being and having a state, right? like that's part of the scripture, and has been for ages. and loads of israelis are just americans and they're just racist"

and so then i like. explained that yes, when it came to the formation of israel, many Jews opposed it because jews aren't meant to have their own state until after the coming of the messiah, and also that yes, a lot of criticism of israel should rightly be made as to the way it's colonial in its nature and its desire to form a white jewish ethnostate

eugenics have always been part of the israeli mentality, not merely in wanting to be like, broadly white, but also in the ideology around israelis being "super Jews", and a large part of this came as israel tried to establish itself as a more positive territory worldwide through the '60s when it was pushing itself as a tourist destination

many orientalist tropes were taken on, the positive ones, israeli women being presented as desirable and exotic, israeli men as strong and lethal; the focus on the IDF and krav maga and the depiction of palestinians and other arabs as monsters they're triumphing over, the push to define israelis as having a "middle easten" identity when the choice was made to take over palestine over various other locations around the world, in part to legitimise the israeli identity by establishing it as a literal homecoming, and attempting to redefine Jews coming to israel as a return to their indigenous roots

but to say that by virtue of being israelis no israeli jew is a "real jew" is a pretty thorny area, because "jewish" has always been a religion and an ethnicity, and a complexedly policed and examined one. israeli jews will often claim that non-israeli jews or particularly anti-Zionist jews aren't real jews, and that kind of attitude of attempting to delegitimise the other group's identity rather than grappling with the actual harms of their politics or identities is not like. valuable

and then i was telling her a little bit about the history of like. not only the constructed israeli identity, but also forms of racism within the jewish communities - pushing forward modern hebrew whilst pushing back yiddish, ladino, and other jewish languages, because languages associated with poverty, the shtetl, the shoah, or with being too brown or too foreign, undercut the "super jew" idea, even without getting into israeli treatment of ethiopian jews and other Black and darker skinned jews

and i was just like. i don't care that you're bored, i don't care that this is more complicated than you cared for, bc like. attitudes that end up dismissing all jews as supporting the state of israel and therefore evil, or like. atttiudes where you end up really racialising and getting into ethnic condemnations of jews without understanding the history or implications of what you're saying are a large thing of what makes leftist and queer spaces feel so unsafe for jewish people across the board

and i was then like. "do you understand that the modern state of israel has always wanted people to believe that nowhere but a state run by jews is safe for the jewish people? that when you make even leftist and anti-zionist jews feel unsafe in leftist spaces, that's what some israelis want, in the hopes that that lonely experience of antisemitism will be harmful enough to have them go to zionist spaces instead?"

and she really did seem to have a moment of. oh.

because like. fucking yeah, babe. obviously.

but it's just so exhausting bc i went from some really fun and exciting conversations about jewish cinema and antisemitism on the screen and like. jewish gender and gender roles and how they relate to diff experiences of being racialised or pushed into an underclass

and then i had to pivot into giving some ABCs of not talking like a fucking nazi to some goyische 4channers

and i know that being pushed out of a space like this is likely to radicalise the nazi cop girl more, that it's better for her to be in a trans space and be told some of her opinions are shitty and harmful than to be like, excluded and then made to seek out even more racist spaces to exist in, but it's just like. shit. it's just really shit

like it's great to care about your leftist politics but sometimes your reading needs to be more than like. your specific hyperfixation/special interest anarchist who took part in fucking pogroms

[alexaloraetheris]

Lookie what I got in the Tumblr classifieds today:

I was sceptical, but it's a real article. You can find the full thing here. It's by Igor Goldkind, Neil's publicist at one point (for Violent Causes), so even if the bias wasn't immediately obvious, it's also clearly stated.

And it literally starts off like this:

Off to a great start, we are.

This bit made me question the legitimacy immediately:

I'll summarize the rest: he talks about knowing Gaiman since the 80s, how charismatic he is, how he introduced him to a lot of big names, how he was 'ahead of the curve when it came to gender sexuality' (the article is also full of typos and general grammatical errors) in making Sandman. He goes on and on about how much of a positive impact Gaiman has made across many demographics, emphasizing trans people.

Once he's done singing Gaiman's praises (80% of the article), you get this:

Ah. Calling the women attention seeking whores and saying rape isn't real if you're in a relationship, couched in very nice terms. Classic.

Then he does something I should have seen coming:

'It was all a misunderstanding, folks, can we just apologize to each other and move on?'

He acknowledges he made mistakes, and that he tries to fix them and move past them, and yet refuses to entertain the idea that Gaiman might have done anything out of malice, and anything he did do, couldn't warrant being dragged through the public like this (I agree with him on that for different reasons).

He ends with this:

(I have admittedly cherry picked the parts that stood out to me, read the full article for context)

Thoughts:

So, start to finish, this has the air of damage control. I did get the feeling Goldkind was sincere, though maybe he's just a better writer than I give him credit for. Maybe this is his honest to god oppinion. If he's really that close to Gaiman, I can believe he simply doesn't WANT to believe his friend capable of something like that. To be scrupulously fair, when I first heard the accusations (and about the Tortoise Media that published it) I at first assumed it was an antisemitic attack against an openly Jewish author, because come on, accusing THE Neil Gaiman of SA?

Nobody wanted to believe it.

The denial stage didn't last past the second publication. This guy is still there, I think, and is hoping it will blow over if everyone apologises and shakes hands on stage.

Too late for that buddy.

[fromgoy2joy]

Here is the scene -

Shabbat dinner at a rabbi’s house with all the college kids from different schools in the area immersed in discussion. Spaghetti lines up high on each plate with a minimal serving of droopy artichoke. The rabbi made an announcement at the beginning of the meal that calories don’t work on Shabbat and we’re eating for two souls :

A girl I hadn’t met before- Dawn- was discussing the lawsuit set against her school for antisemitism. This is very common nowadays so I was nodding along, twirling noodle around my fork.

My friend , who we will call Duck, shook his head. “I’m lucky.” He stabbed a piece of artichoke. “My school is administratively failing, so that’s the focus. Not the world falling to crap.”

I nod along, eying the challah on the other side of the table.

“Joy, have you experienced anything?” Dawn asked, politely. I know she would’ve loved me to say “oh nothing! We’re actually beloved there!” But that wasn’t the case.

“Oh- uh! “ I jolted up. “No more than the usual.”

“Well,” Dawn peered at me. “What’s your ‘usual’?”

“Ah,” I took the moment to think. “Oh. Well. I started my conversion journey in October and all my freshman first semester friends cut me off because that made me complicit in genocide.”

Both of their eyes widened at me. “Oh G-d,” Dawn put down her fork. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh don’t worry about it! You live, you learn.” I waved my hand. “Let’s see. Oh, oof, there was the time a Jewish kid got beat up and nearly thrown into traffic at a protest -“

“Really!?”

“Oh yeah,” I twirled spaghetti. “Our antisemitism teach in was canceled because we are “genocide colonizers” and it got dangerous to host. A professor made an entire class defend Hamas for a final paper,”

“No fucking way.” Duck breathed.

I shrugged. “Apparently, it was an 1800s philosophy class.” My two friends squawked before I continued. “We’ve got the cliche of ‘resistance is justified’ but I don’t think that’s anything unique-“

“You understand that’s still bad, right?” Dawn interrupted. I felt caught off guard, and answered slowly.

“Yeah of course. It’s just kinda lame. Lack of originality. There’s a bit more. Oh!” I snapped my fingers. “The Nazi thing!”

Dawn and Duck are both staring at me, in a daze. I felt like a commercial, head buzzing with so many examples that I wanted to say “but wait , there’s more!”

But instead of a free water bottle to go with whatever infomercial contraption there is, instead it was a long list of ways my life is passively and actively in danger.”

“I’m so sorry, Joy.” Duck began. Dawn nodded slightly. “I had no idea it was this bad. I was at a conference recently, and a lot of the talk was how bad your university has gotten. You guys might actually be the worst in the state.”

There are things I know logically. Like that I should eat more than 1.65 meals a day, that what I’ve been experiencing isn’t normal.

But it was Shabbat, my heart was as light as it could be, and I was here in my beloved community. I twisted my face into a grim smile. “Huh. Celebrity moment! Now, could you pass the challah?”

(I got like five extra pieces, so, you know! Perks to Jew hate!

Jokes, jokes.)

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

I'm not the only person who's had the misfortune of seeing discourse claiming that Wendy is Zionist Propaganda, right? Like, I get keeping a critical eye on stuff Paramount makes 'cuz of that one pro-Israel statement they released a while back, but... Wade's family is *Jewish,* not *Israeli.* I can't say I'm not a bit worried that people are unable or unwilling to tell the difference...

From what i can tell– and, again, I'm goy, take my opinion with a grain of salt– there is literally only one (1) line that's a little sketch. All the rest of it is literally just the family... being Jewish and existing as Jewish people. The only line that was a lil yikes was when they mention that the mom used to be a "krav maga" instructor, specifically mentioning it's an Israeli martial art– whether it was for the IOF or regular self-defense training isn't stated. That was a little concerning, but me and the server did look it up and the show was written in 2022 and filmed in April 2023, so it wasn't a line added in response to, er, current events or anything. Maybe in poor taste but probably not added maliciously. Keeping the line in the scene with current events in mind was a shitty thing to do, definitely, though, not gonna deny that.

But the lines that I'm specifically seeing people bitch about are... the ones about Jewish people having suffered in the past? Which. Yeah guys. They have. A lot. They're not talking about Palestine they're talking about, like, the one shit billion times the Jewish people have been displaced, oppressed, etc. In a few minutes they're talking about the forty-year-time-out in the desert after Moses's fuckup. A good chunk of Jewish holidays can be boiled down to "they tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat." Saying "Jewish people suffered in the past" is not zionist propaganda, it's. literally true.

Adam Pally is actually Jewish, and probably either requested the character details or it was added with him as an inspo. I think people are just on edge cause Paramount has showed support for Isr-el in the past. We just got news a few hours ago that the CEO of Paramount just got kicked, though, so maybe we have hope for a change?

[hero-israel]

Hi. I want to preface this by mentioning I am a non Jewish supporter of Israel and of the Jewish people, but I have some serious questions that really bother me and make me rethink my position.

Reading up on the beginning of the Zionist movement and its leaders, I cannot help but think, how can they simply ignore that there are already people there, or that said people would be alright with becoming a minority? Did they really think Arabs and arabised people living there would just be alright with it?

I do believe that Jews are indigenous to the land and that it’s only just that they have their homeland back, but I think the way they went about it was wrong. It’s not the fault of the people living there that Romans exiled them after all. Some Zionists leaders admitted that the only way to establish a state was against the will of the native population and that some ethnic cleansing is necessary to achieve it.

I want to support Israel but I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that many innocent people who lived there for generations were kicked out after the lands were bought by Zionists, or ended up ethnically cleansed in the civil war even if they didn’t participate in the hostilities. It feels morally inconsistent to me to just ignore this or brush it aside.

What is your view on all of this?

My view is that it's fine to believe exactly what you said - "the Jews are indigenous, it's only just that they have their homeland back, but the way they went about it was wrong." Nothing in that construction justifies hatred or violence against Jews or Israelis, nor does it prevent building a better future for Palestinians.

Israel exists. It houses half the world's Jewish population and a majority of all Jewish children, mostly descendants of refugees from obliterated communities in the MENA or Europe (more the former). Those political realities matter far more than an essay debate published in 1928. You may have already encountered people who try to relitigate the Civil War by pointing out that Abraham Lincoln unlawfully suspended habeas corpus and didn't even really like black people anyway, so instead of a gruesome and devastating war led by a morally compromised man it would have been better to allow the South to gradually phase out slavery on its own, that it should have happened some other way. Well, it DIDN'T happen some other way, it happened and people well into the 21st century need to move on with life. If anyone in the world had an excuse to cling to bitterness forever, it would be the Jews of Israel vis-a-vis Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Poland and Russia and Germany. So why are the Jews of Israel able to move on with having relationships with all those countries that persecuted and destroyed them? And if they can do it, shouldn't casual observers half a world away do it?

By all means, read up on early Zionist history, see what the ideas were and how they had to change when exposed to real events (and also see how they were specifically opposed to population removal). Some, like Martin Buber, urged a binational state formed cooperatively with Arabs. Ze'ev Jabotinsky warned that Arabs would never accept large numbers of Jews as their equals and that promises of shared wealth were a fantasy, therefore Jews would need to demonstrate military power and win respect and negotiations that way. Albert Einstein had initially hoped for a binational state, but once history happened the way it did, he accepted - and loved - the Israel that he got.

I also think you should look a bit more deeply into just why so many people departed Palestine in 1948, and just how many generations had passed since their own ancestors had in turn immigrated there.

Whatever you may read about the 1920s, or 1940s, you will find nothing that justifies hatred, harassment, violence, or genocide against Jewish people at any place or time, including Israel today. If you truly are a supporter of the Jewish people as you claim to be - and we would be happy to have you - by all means look at the true toll of history and keep speaking up for our protection and our lives.

[lovelaurs]

hey could you write a mcd Zane x little sister reader who also never got attention as a kid pls 🙏

AN UNDERSTANDING | part 1

you can find part 2 here!

pairing : mcd priest zane x gn reader synopsis : you enter the church of o'khasis in search of some solace, and find yourself within the confession booth. after living a life of being the neglected youngest sibling, you vent your frustrations to the mysterious church member on duty. but as you continue talking, the advice the person gives you seems almost... personal, and a bond begins to grow. tags : past neglect mention, trauma bonding, confession (as in the booth kind), advice, verbal comfort, slight (sacrligious?) romance word count : 1.2k a/n : first off, i'd like to mention that i am jewish, so if this fic is in any way innacurate, that is why! i decided, "hey, maybe i should delve more into the concept of priest zane a bit more for sillies!". so... here we are! if there is anything offensive about this at all, please tell me and i will change it! it is not in my intent! - also, i'd like to mention that even though the request said "sister", this is in fact gender neutral, as i have stated in my rules that i will not write gendered readers! do not be upset at this.

MASTERLIST

You couldn’t help the frown on your face as you walked to the massive church ahead.

O’khasis was widely known for being the most religious village out there, so it was just your luck that you lived within the confines of the walls.

Almost as lucky as being the neglected fourth born to your family.

That was why you came here; in hopes of speaking to a member of the church to help seek out some sort of solace within your life.

As you pushed open the door to the holy building, you quickly noticed a nun nearby, packing up for the day.

“Um, excuse me, miss?” You asked as you approached the woman. She turned to look at you with curiosity. “I’m here for the confession booth. Is there any chance I could speak to someone?”

She shook her head with a sigh, as someone exited a room nearby, silently praying to themself as they weeped. “I’m afraid you just missed the cut off, hun. That was the last member for today.”

“Oh. I see…” The disappointed look on your face must have been evident considering her hurried followed up words.

“But- We open tomorrow at seven if you wish to seek an audience with one of our esteemed Higher Ups!” She gave a warm smile, hoping to cheer you up.

You nodded, beginning to turn away and go back to your lousy packed house. “Thank you, and I’m sorry for wasting your time-”

Before you could finish your farewell, the door in which the previous person had left had creaked open.

“Relax, Sister Clarice. I do not mind taking in another lost soul.” The voice had sent shivers down your spine as they spoke, and it seemed the same for Sister Clarice as well, who looked almost nervous to be referred to by the Higher Up. “Come now, do not be afraid to share your troubles with me.”

You took one look at Sister Clarice, who nodded in agreement, before you walked over to the room the confession booth was held in.

As you opened the door, you noticed the room was empty, only seeing the door to the confession booth closed as you entered.

I guess this Higher Up valued their privacy.

You slowly walked towards the confession booth as you heard a deep chuckle. “Do not worry, I don’t bite.”

Okay, well that just made you more nervous.

You gulped as you stepped into the wooden box, situating yourself in the cramped space before turning to the little hole provided.

As the wooden plank slides over, you once again heard that chilling deep voice, instead this time from the other side.

“Go on, child of Irene, what is it your mind struggles with?”

The question was so simple, and yet your response was so… complicated. What if they didn’t understand your grief, your struggles, your pain?

“It’s been a recurring thing ever since I was born.” You began. “I was born the youngest sibling, which in some families would garner me more attention… but in my family, all it garnered was neglect.”

You paused as the voice hummed, listening intently to your story.

“I’ve never been the focus of… well, anything. Even my day of birth was more-or-less about my older siblings instead.” You took a deep breath in as you recounted the day. “My parents always focused on my oldest sibling the most, working on helping them harness their craft and knowledge in order to succeed in their name-sake. But, the younger the child was, the less attention we would get. And me being the youngest? Well… I ended up forgotten by the end of the day.”

You allowed yourself to pause, hoping that maybe the church member on the other side would have something to say.

It was quiet for but a moment before the deep vibrato of their voice filled the air.

“I have actually experienced– sorry, heard such things before from others.” They cleared their throat, taking a second of pause. “It seems to be… an often occurrence in which parents would favor their eldest over their youngest.” They paused, before whispering to themself, “Even if the younger child is clearly superior to the elder.”

You couldn’t help but tilt your head at the muttering from the other booth. What did they say?

Again, they cleared their throat, before hesitating to speak.

When they did speak, it seemed to be more of a surprising response indeed.

“I do not wish to break the confidentiality that is my own life, but… I too have experienced this as well.” You raised your eyebrow at the comment. Them? A Higher Up at the Church of O’Khasis? What could they have suffered? 

“My… father tended to ignore me for many years. He always praised and pushed forward my older brother, always seemingly ignoring his other child; me.” And yet again, he began whispering to himself, “The bastard of a child, Vylad, doesn’t count… he never did.” He coughed before continuing. “It wasn’t until I took the reins of my own life into my hands that I finally felt free.”

When you entered this box, you weren’t exactly expecting advice, but more-so a verdict on if you were sinful in the way you did not completely adore your parents. The fact that you’re getting a relatable side back from whoever this was… it meant a lot. Being able to relate to someone in power felt helpful.

“I’m suggesting you work hard to pave your own destiny in life. Prove your parents wrong, and show them that they aren’t holding you back.” Their voice sounded almost softer, not the same grand deep voice you originally were greeted with. “Grow stronger and more powerful than them, so that one day you can overtake their lead.” Okay, maybe this is getting a bit too personal for them. What the hell was this going.

“So… I should carve my own path and prove myself greater than my parents ever thought?” You asked. “Precisely.”

You swallowed deeply, gripping your hands into fists. “Forgive me for saying this, but… you come from a place of wealth. That’s easier for you to say since you’re given more opportunities, even though some less than your older sibling.” You felt sweat pool at your forehead, who were you to question someone of the Church of O’Khasis within the church itself? “I am in no means able to simply make a name for myself without my family’s help…”

“Then allow me to help.” You could hear the opposite side’s door open, footsteps signaling them exiting the booth. “Come out, my dear.”

You hesitantly reached for the handle, slowly opening the wooden door. As you stepped out into the room, your eyes immediately widened as you realized to whom you have been speaking to.

Zane Ro’Meave, the Great Priest of O’Khasis.

Oh my Irene what have you done.

He approached you slowly, his hands held behind his back as he smirked, looking you up and down.

He brought his hand to his chin, seemingly pondering something. “Hm… I could see this working.”

Your nervousness grew even more so at the comment.

It wasn’t until he kneeled in front of you, taking your hand in his and kissing it that your heart started beating even more rapidly, your face flushing with color.

“How would you like a place amongst my staff?”

@lovelaurs, 2024. do not repost this work in any way!

[patiann345]

I'm flabbergasted, I'm shocked, I'm disappointed, and frankly? I'm indignant.

In a series with so, so very little in terms of representation in canon, a series that had what I THOUGHT was 2-3 confirmed POC (we'll get to that 2-3 bit btw), 1 Jewish man, a handful of women who's writing is hit-or-miss, and no queer characters because according to one of the creators "their identities don't matter"... (Tell that to the straight characters like Henry, Thomas, Allison, Susie, Linda who's not even a character and didn't need to exist in the first place-)

Preview for that graphic novel dropped! Spoilers!!

Norman Polk is white.

I'm. astonished. For the record, because I know someone will likely bring it up, I am aware that there was never a point in the series where it was ever actually confirmed that Norman was a black man. But it was very much the consensus for most people that he was coded to be POC. To see this is just.. it's disheartening.

Dreams Come to Life seemingly (egg on my face for thinking Norman was black ig???) had 3 POC characters; Norman, Thomas, and Jacob. This was... maybe changed to 2 later on, as JDS went back on coding Thomas as a black man (an announcement they made in a Discord server of all things?? Never publically???) which they may have gone back on again later since the wiki (not official, for the record) recognizes him as black.

3 characters, and we're now down to possibly one; I say possibly because it depends on how Thomas is represented in this book. If he's black, we've got 2. If he's white?

One. One character who's never made an appearance in the games; only in spinoff material in a book. One.

In the simplest way I can put it, I'm upset. There's lots more I can talk about here; how I think this opening is a disservice and bastardization of the original writing for cutting so much out, how while it can look worse (I've read a good handful of fnaf books I KNOW it can look worse) I can't say it really looks any good, how Buddy looks like he's 12, how the yellows are garish and piss-looking. But what has me the most upset is Norman, because he was 1 of 2-3 POC characters, out of a cast of dozens upon dozens. And sure, there could be more. But we only had 3 confirmed. Maybe 2.

And now we may be down to one.

I actually spoke with my partner a few nights ago about how nervous I was about the graphic novel. Because of how the cover looked, I wasn't expecting anything great. But I knew there was a chance they'd double down and be like 'Nope, actually Thomas is white, always was' I was anticipating that, and I still am. And I looked at them and told them something roughly along the lines of- "I can live with them making Thomas white, cause of them trying to back-peddle once, I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't know how I'd handle them whitewashing Norman."

I still don't know how to handle it. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. People have done amazing designs of Norman for AUs and personal headcanons. Hell, all the staff really. And a majority of them, you'll find, are black. Almost everyone thought he was black. Not this pale Afton knock-off (seriously his hair looks greasy as hell, I know it's a stylization of the lighting but it looks gross)

I'm just throwing my thoughts out here for anyone who cares. Maybe most people won't mind, and fine. Again, it wasn't stated, it was seemingly coding, but clearly, we were wrong because he's paler than the fucking moon. But this is upsetting. This is genuinely upsetting to see. We have so little rep in this series, and the number is somehow dwindling.

What. the Fuck.

[matan4il]

Hello. Can I ask why everybody is calling Israel a "colonial" state? Because it annoys me very much when I see that for three main reasons:

1. My country was a former member of the British colonial rule. Do you know what happens when a country gets colonised? Every bit of the wealth generated went to the Crown, every political decision had to be approved by the Crown, laborers were exploited as much as possible, my people were directly under the orders from a British Monarch who actively hated them. The economy was in shambles after we got independence. As far as I know, since the state of Israel was created, it does not answer to any foreign country (the UN is not a country). How is this a European 'colony'?

2. Most(All?) people who immigrated to Israel were refugees. If Jewish people living in Europe did not have any ties to the land of Israel and were completely 100% European, why were most of them killed horrifically during the Holocaust for not being the right race? Why does nobody talk about the expulsion of Jews from the surrounding Arab countries? Where should these people go?

3. People also seem to forget that governments can be stupid. Just because they are the ruling party does not mean they're capable of making sound decisions for their people. Even a non-colonial government makes bad decisions. If you can separate Trump from the rest of the US, why can't you do the same for Israel?

I do not want to reduce the suffering of the Palestinian civilians. However using the wrong terminology is not the way to help these people. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm really tired of this 'colonizer' takes.

(I hope I made my point clear as English is not my first language?)

Hi, lovely Nonnie!

Please, your English is great! I would have never guessed you're not a native speaker. :D

And you are absolutely right about every single point. Also, my heart goes out to you! I'm so sorry that your people have also suffered due to colonialism. I'm sending you BIG hugs!

Colonialism is what destroyed my people. After our homeland was repeatedly colonized, the Roman colonizers went even further than previous regimes, and expelled most of our ancestors from this land (a small Jewish minority wasn't, and that's why there has been a documented continuous Jewish presence in Israel for over 3,000 years). The expelled Jews became a spread out minority in other countries. With such small numbers in each country, it was easy to vilify us, we were vulnerable to every attack, with hardly anyone defending us, and no real option to defend ourselves. The Holocaust happening to us is directly linked to this way that we were forced to exist for almost 2,000 years in the diaspora.

Meanwhile, our land continued to be repeatedly colonized by different regimes. Each one did exactly as you said, exploited our country for their own benefit. The Ottomans, as just one example, cut off so many trees to build the Hejaz railway (which connected today's Syria to today's Saudi Arabia for the purpose of Muslim pilgrimage to the Saudi mosques), that the Land of Israel went through a desertification process. When Jews started returning in substantial numbers (because in small ones, there were always individual Jews who tried returning to our ancestral land), we did exactly what native populations try to do, restore the land, through continued research and development, to its pre-colonized state.

That's on top of the fact that, as you mentioned, we don't answer to or serve any European (or western) country. Colonies serve a metropole, but there is none for Israel. It's just our country. It's just the place where we live, even when it's incredibly difficult, because it's our ancestral homeland, which we've returned to, after our ancestors prayed for that for almost 2,000 years.

You're also spot on about the fact, that Jews were always discriminated against and persecuted in every country in the diaspora (with a few exceptions in South East Asia, the most important one being India). We were treated that way precisely because there was a historic recollection that we are foreigners. That we were south west Asians, living as a minority in countries that never truly wanted us, like Norway, or Spain, or Morocco. That's why it was so easy to kill us in the Holocaust. That's why it was so easy to expel us from Arab countries. Because we were never truly accepted by the locals.

But even after expulsions and surviving the Holocaust, there are so many places in the world Jews could have turned to! Places where there would be less resistance to us forming a country. Yet, the overwhelming majority of Jews rejected such suggestions. If they hadn't, then we would have truly been colonizers. But that's not what we yearned for. We always dreamed of returning to our homeland, so eventually it became evident to everyone that there's only one real option for a Jewish state, and that is in the Jewish ancestral land.

The reason why people claim that Jews are colonizers of their own land (some deny all historic ties Jews have to Israel, despite every piece of evidence to the contrary, while others acknowledge the Jewish history of Israel and the continued Jewish presence there, but claim that it's been so long ago, it doesn't count anymore. I've never seen any other native group being told that there's a time limit on their native rights. Have you?) is because it allows a narrative that once again vilifies Jews.

When the worst thing Jews could have been was of an evil religion, they described us as evil in religious terms (accusing us of having killed Jesus, and accusing us of using the blood of non-Jewish kids to bake a special kind of bread meant for religious purpose). When the worst thing Jews could have been was of an evil race, they described us as evil in racial terms (describing us as being sub-human, and accusing us of wanting to take over the world, to destroy it for the rest of the human race). Now that de-colonization is such a powerful (rightfully so) narrative, the worst thing Jews can be is evil colonizers... So guess what we're suddenly described as? Evil colonizers, who plot, steal, abuse and genocide another population (when in reality we consented to coexist with it 76 years ago).

I hope that sort of answers it? Basically, it's the newest form of the same age old antisemitism. Find the worst thing Jews can currently be, and depict them as that.

Thank you for seeing past the vilification! It means a lot. I'm sending you lots of love! xoxox

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

[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.

[sophie-frm-mars]

Hi Sophie! In light of the genocide in Palestine and the conspiracies around it, do you have any thoughts on how to avoid conspiracy thought?

You pointed out in Conspiracy on the Left that conspiracists will often switch from using language that recognizes incentives and structures, to language that indicates direct malice and intent. I've seen this in real time with Zionism where people will stop using it as a term to describe the ideology and actions of Israel and America (economic and military interests, the historical inertia of the british empire, the interest of capital and western nations using Israel as a base in the Middle East), to using it as a placeholder for jews (people accusing individual people (usually american) of attempting to silence voices with media platforms)

I was gonna say I find this one really straightforward, but at the same time I myself have actually rushed into condemnations of Israel that gave too much leniency to antisemitic ideas, so there probably is a bit more to it. I'll get to it

Firstly, the straightforward part of it is that there are jews all around the world who absolutely fucking despise israel and its genocidal project, so even saying "Israel doesn't represent jews" is too mild. Israel actively denies citizenship to ethiopian jews for instance. I think the main thing is to recognise it for what it is - an outpost of imperialist white supremacy in the Middle East - and to recognise Zionism as a primarily American and imperial core phenomenon rather than a jewish one.

Once you have those ideas down it's pretty easy to separate it out because assuming that any jewish person or org supports Israel just because they're jewish is clearly antisemitic. But here's the rub, Israel uses jewish identity as a shield to justify its actions. At the same time that there are illegal settlers literally giving interviews saying "I describe myself as a fascist" the Israeli state claims that Hamas reads Mein Kampf and that Palestinians are literal Nazis. Not only that but Israeli statesmen use references to things like Amalek to signal their genocidal intentions, basically using the cultural references of Judaism to simultaneously hide behind and also attack.

Where I fell into something antisemitic was when I found out about the IDF cumjacker squad, the guys who go out to get the semen of Israel's fallen dead. the Jizzrael Defence Force if you will. Someone who was talking about it said that the justification had some kind of origin in the hebrew bible and I parroted this without thinking until a jewish friend pulled me up on it. There was no source and there was frankly no reason to repeat it even if it had been true, right? but I got carried away. The reality is that the cumjacker battalion exists for the same reason as sterilisation & organ harvesting programs, because Israel is a Starship-Troopers-Ass fascist nightmare state that sees the bodies of the pure and good as essential to the domination of the future and the bodies of the impure and wrong as wretched at worse and resources at best.

How I think we can avoid the trap of sharing these rhetorical points is by remembering what Israel's relationship to judaism is, which is primarily as a shield. "Shoot and Cry" is the phrase to remember. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said "We can forgive them for killing our children but we can never forgive them for making us kill theirs". This bogus remorse over their genocide of palestinians (because they understand genocide because of the holocaust, see?) and constant preemptive counterattack (Amalek attacked Israel first, see) is the place where Israel touches base with jewish identity, but if you can't see any benefit to Israel's strategy in association with jewish identity, it's likely someone is just trying to say The Jews instead of Israel or repeating the talking point of someone who is.