#danger to jews

[eretzyisrael]

by Joanna Tokarska Bakir

As it turned out though, 8 October proved to be worse than 7 October, because it was then that the campaign of denial began. Western academics, artists and activists, some under the banner of justice and humanitarianism, others devoid of any banner, rushed to explain how the whole attack was simply armed resistance, and not genocide,[vi] even though Palestinian terrorists had killed everyone in their path.

The American writer Najma Sharif tweeted sneeringly: ‘What did y’all think decolonisation meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers!’[vii] Former minister Yannis Varoufakis, leader of the Greek left, declared that it was not Hamas, but ‘Europeans’, who were the criminals[viii]. Furthermore, in a joint statement, 35 organisations from the University of Harvard placed all the blame for the massacre on one actor – Israel of course.[ix] While attendees of the ill-fated rave party were still hiding in bushes from the terrorists, the New York section of the Democratic Socialists of America and the anti-Zionist organisation the Jewish Voice for Peace held a rally on Times Square in support of ‘Gaza’. [x] Susan Sarandon, the unforgettable star of Thelma and Louise, spoke at the next demo, and expressed satisfaction that Jews were finally ‘getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country’.[xi]

Meanwhile, a photograph went viral of a man paragliding over the Gaza barrier on 7 October so as to take part in the massacre. The image was shared by the Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter and Jodie Dean, a political theorist from Hobart College. The latter viewed the event as ‘exhilarating’.[xii] ‘And what do you stand for? For liberation, or for Zionism and imperialism?’ she asked.[xiii] The creators of the posters that were put up across New York got straight to the point: ‘Zionism = terrorism’.[xiv]

The terrorists themselves seemed somewhat disorientated by the unexpected outpouring of sympathy, and they published contradictory statements. Some claimed that no hostages had been taken, because Muslims do not wage war against civilians.[xv] Others declared that there are no civilians in Israel, because all the Jewish inhabitants were occupiers[xvi].

All this took place amidst the deafening silence of humanitarian and progressive organisations, who in the wake of the murder of George Floyd or the outbreak of war in Ukraine had issued statements around the clock.[xvii]

Slogans such as ‘Queers for Palestine’ drew comparisons with the little dog from Moominland Midwinter who longs to be with real wolves in the woods.

Go back to Poland

The slogan ‘Go back to Poland’ was tested by Lebanon’s Hezbollah following Hamas’s attack,[xviii] and a couple of months later it spread to the placards of American students protesting against the war in Gaza.[xix] Confronted by the fact that their postulates conformed to the definition of colonialism – dictating a situation overseas at someone else’s expense – the students superciliously shrugged their shoulders.

They had clearly never been exposed to the view that at the time of the creation of Israel, the majority of Jews were refugees, and Palestine was their haven (refugium), established by UN resolution no. 181 in 1947. This concept did not conform to the narrative about settler colonisers, and the same could be said about the traumatised kibbutzniks, peers of Hanna Krall from the orphanage in Otwock such as Lili Szynowłoga, who had miraculously survived the war by hiding in the cemetery in the town of Chęciny.[xx]

In Stanford, the first sit-in was held in mid-October, so before Israel entered Gaza. The young participants were angry and resolute: in their bid to justify the violence of the liberators, they cited Franz Fannon,[xxi] likened Hamas to Nelson Mandela, and compared the massacre of the kibbutzniks to Ukrainian self-defence in the war with Russia. In fact, Hamas and Hezbollah flags were few and far between at the New York demonstrations in early November, but soon the Columbia students announced that ‘We are Hamas’, while also championing such slogans as ‘By any means necessary’, ‘Globalize intifada’, ‘Abolish the settler state’ and ‘Glory to our martyrs’.[xxii] The red, upturned triangle that is used by terrorists to denote their aims started to appear on Jewish institutions (for example the Brooklyn Museum).[xxiii] One day, passengers on the New York subway heard something that Polish Jews remembered from 1968: “Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist. (…) This is your chance to get out.’[xxiv]

At Stanford, students were only let into the building if they recited the words ‘Fuck Israel, free Palestine’.[xxv] There were calls for boycotts of Israel – academic and others; these slogans had been launched by the anti-Israel movement Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, which had been prohibited by Trump, but which now found itself back in action. Recently, it gained official support from the American Anthropological Association, an organisation of specialists that nevertheless had vehemently opposed the movement for many years (i.e. when the serving president was the daughter of one of the survivors of the Jedwabne Pogrom).[xxvi]

The reality I have described thus far might seem like a clumsy imitation of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. The next installment is, however, more of a dark satire on universities – factories of the world’s greatest minds – as if straight from the movie The Social Network.

‘We don’t want no two states! We want all of ’48!’ chanted Stanford students, calling for a return to the situation prior to Israel’s 1948 war of independence (which was started, like the wars of 1967 and 1973, by Israel’s Arab neighbours who, rejecting the previously mentioned UN resolution and the creation of Jewish and Palestinian states, attacked the former, but did not win).[xxvii]

‘We are Stanford University! We control things!’ – shouted young Americans in keffiyehs. They covered their faces, so as not to jeopardise their future careers. The creator of the idea of civil disobedience, Henry David Thoreau, believed that the condition for carrying out such defiance was voluntary submission to the resulting penalty, but this notion was considered ridiculously out of date by the protesters.

Worse than Again

I observed all this while in the US, where I spent the last academic year. My vantage point could be called privileged, considering that I was based at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, but that autumn, it was one of the more unfortunate places to be.

Although school groups bustled to and fro outside the museum, which adjoins the National Mall, the building seemed deserted in early October, and its lifts, which had been designed to bring to mind gas chambers, broke down more than usual.

The black cloud that hovered over the institution following the events of 7 October was expressed in a vigil in honour of those who had been killed or abducted by Hamas. A handful of pale, elderly Holocaust survivors took part. For the first time in the history of the museum, only the initials of those who attended the vigil were provided, due to security fears, but the situation gave the impression that the participants were culprits, not victims.

The official optimism that had been part of the museum’s mission for several decades disintegrated when social media started to swarm with unfriendly statements in the aftermath of 7 October. Suddenly, Jews found themselves on the wrong side. Rywka, a relative of Kielce Pogrom-survivor Anszel Pinkusewicz[xxviii], was on duty answering the constantly ringing telephone, but when the situation became completely unbearable, she started to consider handing in her notice. In November, things got even worse, when pictures of Hamas’s hostages were torn down under the cover of night. The fact that the institution was in crisis was plain to see: within just a few hours of the attack taking place, the museum’s main exhibition, with its motto ‘Never Again’, became painfully outdated. When clips from terrorists’ bodycams were uploaded onto the net, old symbols such as cattle trucks transporting Jews to Auschwitz receded far into the distance. Something had begun that Henry Grynberg had described as ‘Worse than Again’,[xxix] and the hallmark of this was the deafening silence in which it took place.

[genderoutlaws]

Am Yisrael Chai

the jewish people Will outlive the fascist state of Israel that bastardizes our religion G-d Bless

[secular-jew]

Something's just rotten in Canberra!

[woman-respecter]

the white americans/canadians/australians etc who say jews need to go “back where they came from” in the name of decolonization or whatever should ALSO have to go back where their family is from. move to the uk. eat the beans on toast and like it.

[lilyvalerieorchard]

Extra reminder that Lily Orchard and Mikalia befriended a Neo-Nazi over their hatred of queer, marginalized creators. Especially Rebecca Sugar, a non-binary, bisexual Jewish woman decended from Holocaust survivours

[creekfiend]

I just really need ppl to integrate the fact that Jews being explicitly racialized and violently targeted for elimination under white supremacy is in fact the reason this is all happening to begin with so perhaps rhetoric which conflates is with the group of people who have been ethnically cleansing and genociding us for centuries is like, not the hottest thing to do idk

[jewreallythinkthat]

Ok so ... Today's absolutely fucking batshit post that I had to read with my own two eyes

We all know Mohamed Hadid is a foaming at the mouth antisemite but this is a new level.

Let's start with the caption:

1. The implication all Jews are American? Insane, untrue, erasing all Jewish history in Israel which dates back to before the Arabization of the middle east.

2. No one has a single percent of Semite in them because Semite is not a race, it's an obsolete term for a family of languages (including both Hebrew and Arabic) however I need to specify that "Antisemitism" was coined as a term specifically about Jew hate. That's what it means, it's actually nothing to do with the language Hebrew at all, it was an attempt to sciencify "judenhass" and make it sound acceptable.

Now to the post itself:

3. If you demand an end to colonialism, boy have I got something to explain about why the official language of Morocco, a country the width of a continent away from the Arabian Peninsula is Moroccan Arabic... Or to be honest, the reason that Arabs are the main demographic anywhere outside the Arabian Peninsula where they originally came from. I understand that peoples migrate but that involves moving from one place to another, not expanding our and literally colonising everything around you. The Arab conquests of the MENA region are a well documented part of history...

4. Demanding a ceasefire is all well and good but we are all aware that we will never be going back to the status quo of before - which frankly is all a ceasefire with no actual work done to rebuild and move towards peace will do. A ceasefire neccestiates thought on what happens next. This is not to say people shouldn't be advocating for an cease to the fighting, they should, this all needs to end. What people have to also do is also be discussing what happens next. The old status quo was unsustainable, and with the mounting evidence that Gazans who worked in Israel helped with the planning of Black Saturday, we will never again see the relations between the people in southern Israel and those in Gaza go "back to normal".

I would love a ceasefire but we need to talk about what happens next in the same conversation. To ignore that is at best naïve and at worst, willfully ignorant because just stopping and Israel withdrawing will do nothing to help rebuild because we all know that everyone will lose interest if that happens, as has happened over and over again.

5. It's well known that Jews are indigenous to Israel and the ancient kingdom of Judea. It's literally in the etymology of the world. Now, obviously multiple groups can be indiginous to one area, but length of time residing there is not a marker of indiginunity, it's literally a childlike playground tactic. Straight up rewriting history... We all know how bad that is.

Mohamed Hadid has over a million followers. His daughters have a total of 130 million. They can post misinformation and almost ten times the number of Jews who exist in the world will see it. This is so dangerous and frankly this level of deranged lying on the internet does not nothing to help end the war, it just puts Jews outside of Israel more at risk. We are being murdered in the streets, in our places of work and everyone is cheering it on.

The irony of people applauding the murder of Jews calling us neo-nazis is not lost on me and it's unreal that we aren't even allowed to stand up to it. Let's be very blunt here, if you are justifying the slaughter of Jews, who's the real nazi?

An additional Edit:

There will never be a ceasefire without release of the hostages and bodies kidnapped into Gaza. Like it's so stupid to think otherwise. Especially with Hamas currently refusing to give a list of who is still alive (they said they couldn't give a list until they knew the terms of a ceasefire which clearly means they COULD do it, but they are choosing not to)

[tiredandsleepyaf]

I don’t think goyim realize that it’s not uncommon for Jewish people to be forcibly assimilated into other cultures. It’s not uncommon for antisemitic goyim to date or marry Jews, even though they hate them for being Jewish. It’s not uncommon for antisemitic goyim to abuse their Jewish family members. It’s not uncommon for antisemitic goyim to marry into Jewish families, cut Jewish children off from their culture, and teach them to hate themselves. Keep that in mind when you’re talking about how safe your country is for Jews and when you’re justifying your own antisemitism. Because right now I fear for any Jewish person who ends up dating or is unfortunate enough to have to be in proximity to some of you goyim who are cheering at Jewish death, labeling all Jews as untrustworthy, and mocking Jews for being afraid of rising antisemitism.

[sjbattleangel]

It's both baffling and rage-inducing that Lily claims adventure fantasy shows are "ruining animation." No the hell they're not, chica! It's elitist snobs like you that are ruining animation with you wanting all cartoons to be slice of life, coffee shop fluff and holding LGBTQ+ creators under a microscope, only to tear them down due to your rabid, parasocial hatred of them! And you hate these creators so much as people, you will lie about them "getting off to torture porn", "romanticizing incest", "fetishizing abuse" and "hugging Nazis", just so you can get them kicked out of the industry, all so you could have less competition. No, Lily! The only one who "gets off to torture porn", "romanticizes sister-to-sister incest" and "fetishizes abuse" is you. The only ones who love "hugging Nazis" are you and Mikalia. That's all it ever was: Pure projection.

[laineystein]

My safta never trusted goyim. To the point that she straight up did not like them. And when she left Russia to live with us in America she practically did it kicking and screaming because she didn’t want to continue living in a place surrounded by so many goyim. She’d make comments and my brothers and I would all snicker because she’d say ridiculous things about how all of the goyim hated us and how they’d all sell us out if they could. It all seemed so extreme.

I’m not laughing anymore.

My safta was absolutely right. She’d seen the violence that comes from the indifference of goyim and she was merely warning us.

You all hate us and I trust none of you.

[brick-van-dyke]

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.

[homosandhomies]

just want to stress this point: being critical of the israeli government is not antisemitic. HOWEVER, if you choose to blatantly ignore why israel is so important to the jewish people and how significant it is to our history and culture, THAT is antisemitic.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I absolutely adore how safe I feel in my offline (and, to an extent, online) jewish spaces. What I don't adore is why I only really feel safe in those spaces (jew hatred is so vapid)

[secular-jew]

What changed?

[gingerswagfreckles]

Every day on this website people log on and hate women.

[lilyvalerieorchard]

Hey Lily. I know you're reading this so answer me:

If you're a champion of progress and truly cared about social justice, why did you and Mikalia befriend a Neo-Nazi?

I'm serious. Why?

Why is that you two hate Rebecca Sugar, a queer Jewish woman descended from Holocaust survivors, so much that you were willing to throw yourselves in with a Neo-Nazi, who claims "Hitler wasn't such a bad guy, just to get back at her?

What did Rebecca Sugar ever do to you?

Where did Rebecca Sugar hurt you?