#diaspora haters

[luvmesumus]

[qiu-yan]

arguing with other chinese fans in this fandom be like

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

honestly, I feel like Dave McKean's work elevated Neil Gaiman way more than the other way around and we don't distribute credit for that properly. I truly don't think--and, critically, never have thought--the early Sandman writing was so good that it would have gotten far without the heavy hitting art lending it such an air of respectability. McKean's work is so visually distinct still, let alone 20 years ago, let alone 30. "This is serious art for serious stories for serious people," those mixed media paintings say when they're surrounded by pen and ink put out on a brutal schedule. "I am a serious person with sophisticated tastes," the buyer says, given permission to be pretentious and smug as hell, which is very alluring to many people.

[secular-jew]

The Irish devil-singer actually wore a Keffiyeh in interviews and was one of the most antisemitic intolerant abusive assholes towards Eden of all the performers.

[spock-adoodledoo]

so this is what happens when i dont look at the yanqing tag in a while??? when did everyone start liking him lmao

ugh i have so much beef with jing yuan and yanqing's father son interpretation like, yes but also no; bc ive only ever seen fluff of them and no discussion of whether yanqing's a weapon or where he even came from, whether jing yuan should do something other than train yanqing so he can kill jing yuan when jy goes crazy from the abundance, like being honest with him about it etc

/j but like waaaaaa i hate when people put them into boxes it's soooooo annoying...... also yanqing + jing yuan father sonners always seem to put more focus on jing yuan and not yanqing; ie it makes jing yuan's character more interesting bc he's a father, not the other way around where yanqing is more interesting because he studies under/was adopted by the luofu general. it just bothers me as someone who enjoys reading abt the latter more .... glad that yunli (her design makes me shiver but thats another problem) is making yanqing less of a side character to jing yuan and more like his own person but idk the current plot of the wardance or whatever. if he loses again i swear to god i will smash the wall

tbh i wish there were more yqjy (or vice versa) shippers here because they could also be romantic imo. but sometimes ships give me too much tunnel vision and it's not strictly how i see their relationship... YARGH anyways i wish people understood nuance jfc

[therukurals]

The reclamation of such images appears to be Patel’s goal—one he shares with numerous Hindu leaders who have continued to battle Hindu nationalism. But the use of Hindu imagery as a call to violence, reminiscent of the Hindutva project, is central to Kid’s mission, resulting in narrative dissonance. In comparison, the movie’s villains only use Hinduism as a façade for violence and financial gain, rather than as a sincere fixture of their fanaticism. They represent Hindutva only in the abstract, echoing its power structures without its ideology. Kid, meanwhile, perhaps inadvertently, embodies it in both belief and action. In a key flashback, Rana—acting on Shakti’s orders—clears out Kid’s forest-adjacent village so the land can be used for industrial growth. This bears a striking resemblance to the Indian government’s recent attempts to evict thousands of Muslims along India’s Eastern border and millions of indigenous people from tribal lands. The BJP’s political opponents believe these land seizures are an attempt to transfer tribal resources to corporate allies, not unlike Shakti’s plan for Kid’s village. However, the metaphor is muddled. Rather than framing Kid’s community as an oppressed caste, religion, or tribe, the only visible culturally specific moment involves the villagers enjoying a marionette re-telling of the Ramayana, which is interrupted by incendiary violence. In the movie’s purview, Hinduism is under attack from something non-Hindu, or falsely Hindu, rather than from dangerous factions of Hinduism itself. This grants Kid permission to weaponize it freely, sans conflict or spiritual reckoning—a thematic tension the movie never reconciles.

[tianshiisdead]

My last post on the topic (forgive me for the recent repetitive malding I'll shut up after this)

>spreads rumors about a Chinese diaspo being linked to the gov

>called out for conflating Chinese diaspo with gov, shown proof the accusations were false, this is correctly called sinophobia (which manifests as conflating rando Chinese esp diaspo w gov as one mindless entity)

>'but what about gov!!!!'

??? Truly harassing cn diaspo online and feeding violence against cn diaspo in English spaces and the virulent racism against Chinese and ppl who look like us in the west will get you so far politically, China cares so much about randos who don't even have Chinese passports! Bringing up the gov when you've been charged with racism against a Chinese individual translates to 'Chinese people are their gov and my racism against them and harm against them is justified because of it'. There's no other interpretation. You can say what you want, but your end point is that you are okay with and support Chinese diaspo communities facing racialized violence. The gov topic was laid to rest when your accusations were PROVED WRONG, unless you think Chinese diaspo should in fact have to answer for their gov based purely on race and dont get to protest when people spread provably false rumours about them. If you want to complain about depictions or politics you can do it without falsely implicating the Chinese person in question just because she correctly identified the provably flase accusations as driven by sinophobia, ie conflating her with a state she has fuck all to do with. Thanks! That's all.

[traitimdoithay]

there's no whiplash greater than seeing a funny yugioh post and then realizing that x*ran is the person who made it

[jewishbarbies]

“Rashida isn’t antisemitic!” lmao

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-781331

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/13/politics/rashida-tlaib-holocaust-comments/index.html

https://nypost.com/2023/11/02/news/how-rashida-tlaib-became-the-biggest-jew-hater-in-congress/

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3654510-house-democrat-slams-tlaib-for-antisemitic-remarks-on-israel/

and these are like. bare minimum examples. don’t even cover shit she’s posted for years on social media. doesn’t cover the likelihood that some of her funding has come from h/m/s.

also to your racist moron loser anon - she’s not a “Semite,” that’s not a term, antisemitism is only about Jews!

just this shit alone is enough to tell you everything you need to know about what kind of person this woman is, and this was back in 2019:

it’s that same ignorant bullshit of “jews are european and only came to the middle east to steal land in 1948”. like. can you read? are you capable? okay, then pick up a fucking book for once in your life and log out of fucking twitter.

[germiyahu]

"If you describe a horrific and detailed act of racism committed by an IDF soldier or a Kahanist or other anti Arab extremist (say Baruch Goldstein's massacre), you'll find that a huge majority of Jews condemn him, his philosophy, his actions, denounce him and consider him a poor practitioner of Judaism"

No they don't, that's the whole fucking point.

Whenever IDF soldiers kill Palestinians the only reaction from Israelis you would get is them bringing up how military service is mandatory in Israel so you can't be mad at the soldier, how this is an extremely complex two-sided "conflict" where both sides are equally wrong and equally victims, how everything is the fault of the entire government of Hamas and Bibi (but just Bibi, they will never hold anyone else in the government accountable) and gaslighting people into believing that this is an isolated incident that doesn't normally happen and that the Israeli committing the crime will actually face any type of justice.

And this assuming that they would even acknowledge a crime has been committed instead of calling it "blood libel" and using what happens as a segue to talk about anti-semitism even more.

So you clearly don't know any Jews because Baruch Goldstein is one of the least controversial figures in Jewish history to condemn. Like, he probably has defenders in Israel but they're definitely a pretty small minority, and you'd be very hard pressed to find any diaspora Jews who approve of his crimes.

And aside from that, because yes people do defend the IDF when they are presented with similarly horrific sounding stories... but look what happens, most of these stories turn out to be exaggerated or completely false to begin with! This isn't about starry-eyed Jewish supremacy vs Muslims just doing an oopsie and they had good reasons for it, this is about truth. That's the key element. It's a little ridiculous to whine that Jews won't full throatedly condemn bombing a hospital and killing 500 people when that turned out to be a lie!

Baruch Goldstein was a terrorist, he factually provably committed horrific crimes. Osama Bin Laden was also a terrorist, he factually provably orchestrated horrific crimes. If you ask the average Jew to defend the former, they'd be equally as uncomfortable as if you asked the average Muslim to defend the latter. There are always going to be braindead terrorism fanboys in both groups, duh. I'm talking about the average person.

And here you are, deciding that no, the average Jew is a savage devotee to terrorism and genocide, just like every other Jew Hater online. It's becoming a bit stale. See that last part in particular, this is about a deep envious rage you feel that Jewish people "get away" with doing/thinking/saying "The Bad Thing" and you feel a need to bring them down a peg. You frame a very real thing (like blood libel is not trivial and Jewish people do not actually talk about it frivolously), as a privilege, a cheat code. You're jealous because you probably belong to a demographic that can't "milk" it's own historic oppression and tragedy, so you feel that Jews shouldn't "get" to.

But this is the real world, where exaggerating the alleged crimes of Jews is demonstrably linked with an increase in antisemitic rhetoric (check), harassment of Jews and Jewish institutions (check), and even violence (they just thwarted a planned terrorist attack in Brooklyn, very much the last roadblock to a liberated Palestine).

Anyway my point was that if you zoom out to more and more abstract concepts, a greater percentage of both Jewish and Muslim populations will probably support them. And I think it's telling that "a Jewish state founded on war and large violent population transfers" has a higher moral burden on it than "a Muslim state founded on war and large violent population transfers."

Ask a Muslim if they support "Pakistan exists" and how many would disagree? Realistically? But you dare act disgusted and shocked that a similar number and percentage of Jews support "Israel exists"? My entire question is why "This is a country that has done bad things and it exists amid ethnic conflict" is even on par with "this niche cult within a giant religion (literally they admitted to it) did a massacre on civilians."

If that's the moral equivalence then we're done here. I'm not playing games like that.

[jewish-vents]

I’m gonna be completely honest, as an Israeli in the Diaspora I really do feel like a lot, like a LOT, of Jews in the UK and US don’t properly care about us. Even the ones who don’t hate us just seem all too happy to throw us under the bus, or not call out casual anti-Israel bias or hatred towards Israelis because the people doing it are standing up for American/British Jews. Like, I’m in the UK, and I can say definitely that there’s a lot of like fourth gen Jews here who really do look down on Israelis, even if it’s just a casual thing and not proper hatred towards us.

I’m so tired of having to hear all the time ‘I’ve never even been to Israel’ ‘I’m not even a Zionist’ and whatever else. Like, good for you I guess. My family have been there since the thirties, am I more deserving of harassment now? A lot of non-Israelis don’t really realise the one-up they have over us with leftist Jew haters, like sometimes it really does feel like they don’t even realise how they’re stepping on our heads and pushing us down to get their approval. Like we’re their safety net in the worst possible way for us. I’m really trying to not be angry because I know things are hard, but I just can’t help feeling so bitter.

(before anyone clowns on this I just want to clarify, obviously this doesn’t go for every American or British Jews. It’s just a pattern I’ve noticed where a lot of people who have been in these countries for generations and don’t have family in Israel use that fact as a way to prop themselves up to seem better to Jew hating leftists, even if they don’t realise they’re doing it. Like the reason I just used the US and the UK and not included France is because the Jews there tend to have a lot of Israeli family and don’t pull this stuff nearly as much. It’s a very specific thing to these countries and while it’s talked about with Israelis, not so much in the wider Jewish community. Also I’m not trying to say that non-Israelis aren’t having it rough right now, it is really dangerous in these countries and I’m not denying that. But a lot of these people have a certain amount of room that Israelis in the diaspora, who’re facing the same conditions, don’t as much. I hate that I have to clarify that, but oh well. This rant is the same size as the original vent too lol)

.

[briebysabs]

Like white women, cishet ww specifically I’m severely disappointed but not surprised. Y’all continue to be spineless and fucking dumb.

But deadass, these upcoming four years Imma need the Latino/Hispanic community to sit at the round table and really figure yourselves out. I know every race got that number of people that just hate themselves. But the self-hatred is deep within y’all, rooted inside I am speechless this many of y’all went red.

My brother in Christ Trump has been y’all biggest hater for almost a decade. Whatever he does, whatever Project 2025 bullets he got loaded next year YALL ARE THE FIRST IN LINE GETTING POPPED.

When will people understand (and this goes for the AA-African diaspora discourse as well) racists do not care where you’re from. You cannot say oh I’m Cuban not Mexican so I’m safe. They hear your accent, they see your last name, they look at your skin and automatically put you in a box.

Fuck coming legally, fuck being a “model minority” they don’t give a fuck about you. Black people have been saying this but the rest of y’all still in denial. The white status will never come. You will never get their approval so support each other, support your community. Please stop hating yourselves like this oh my god.

[spacelazarwolf]

hmmmmmmm i’m real fucking tired of jew haters lying abt me!

let's break this down, shall we?

white trans mascs like spacelazarwolf have no issue calling indigenous people "bone chillingly disturbing" for disagreeing with them.

actually i called what you said antisemitic, because it was. i called what i've witnessed from gentiles in general bone-chillingly disturbing and cruel, and that i've witnessed so much ignorance, hostility, and bloodlust from gentiles. because i keep seeing posts celebrating the massacre that happened on the 7th, and i keep getting anons that tell me "hitler missed one", "the world would be better off without your ilk", "we should have gotten rid of you all ages ago", "die zionists rats *nose emoji*", and a lot of very graphic descriptions of how they would like to rape and kill me. one user, blatantly on their blog, openly said that someone should kill me, and someone said they knew where i lived and could make that happen. that's not disagreeing with me. that is bloodlust.

they pretend to care about racism when trans women engage in it, but have zero issue jumping right to demonic stereotypes about indigenous people who dare to point out that their support of israel is supporting genocide.

hey asshole. I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT YOU.

also. I HAVE BEEN OPEN ABOUT MY CRITICISM OF ISRAEL, MY REFUSAL TO SUPPORT IT AS A STATE, AND MY BELIEF THAT WHAT THEY'RE DOING IS GENOCIDE. YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

literally just blatantly lying about a jew's opinion on israel so you can harass and demonize them is, i hate to tell you, antisemitic.

these so called "anti-semitic rants" were me saying jewish people can survive without israel and do not need to colonize or genocide another group of people to survive.

let's give some of the highlights of your posts:

"while you're here hand-wringing about the safety of israelis and spreading the white supremacist lie that they must be in israel to be safe, israel secured its continued existence by just now murdering 500+ parients and doctors under the excuse of 'well hamas is violent and is hiding in there"

'handwringing' do you mean mourning the deaths of peace activists and children? also if you've read literally any of my other posts on the matter, you know i literally talk about how zionists institutions and leadership use jewish safety and antisemitism in the diaspora to bolster support for a jewish state. pointing this out isn't agreeing with it when you do it, why is it when i do it? what could the difference possibly be??

also, there has been no confirmation on who caused the hospital bombing. there are many reports that it was a misfire by one of the groups in gaza, and those are still being investigated. regardless of who fired it, it's still a tragedy. it's still hundreds of innocent lives lost. and it does not change the fact that the lives lost on the 7th were also a tragedy. using this devastating loss of palestinian life as a bludgeon against a diaspora jew for having the audacity to mourn dead jews is disgusting.

"[you] only bring up jewish people of color to argue that israel is actually not a racist project because israel is the only thing stopping jewish people from being exterminated."

literally just lying.

"jewish people in israel are behaving as and acting as white supremacist colonizers of color"

thanks for literally just outright saying that you think the problem is jews, not the state of israel.

"colonizers globally are constantly killing kids"

and therefore the israeli children who died don't matter? are you expecting jewish people to choose between their nieces and nephews and innocent palestinian children who are killed in gaza?

"[spacelazarwolf has] ranted and raved that without israel existing, the jewish people would be genocided. he's appropriated the struggle of indigenous and black people abroad to cry that jewish people aren't welcome in countries like the us, despite living in the us and benefiting from his whiteness and the oppression of indigenous and black people as many other white jewish people do"

i think you've made it pretty clear you're totally fine lying about what i've actually said regarding israel, but the idea that jews are "appropriating the struggle of indigenous and black people abroad" when we talk about experiencing antisemitism in the countries we live in is so???????????? also you make it really clear in this snippet that your issue isn't with israel but with jews in general.

"white jewish people...have been able to exist in relative safety for decades in european countries"

are you actually fucking insane.

"israel's existence has made things more dangerous for jewish people in the middle east and north africa because these are areas that HISTORICALLY had co-existence between religious groups"

nice historical revisionism! swana was safer than christian countries for sure, but it's SO clear to me that you know absolutely nothing about the history of the jews of swana.

"he and israel supporters like him are constantly distracting from the war crimes and terrorism ISRAEL IS COMMITTING by handwringing perpetually about 'but violence is bad and hamas is bad for being violent, the only good palestinians are the ones that are quiet and don't fight back against us when we kill their kids"

sorry, who's "we"? are diaspora jews killing kids? or do you just equate every single jew in the diaspora to israel? also, yet more blatantly lying and claiming i support israel when i repeatedly have stated i haven't! but it's much more convenient to claim i have, because then you can say that i kill kids!

there's a bunch of other times you repeat the lie that i support israel and "advocate for the continued existence of a settler colonizer state and lying and claiming it's the only way for jewish people to be safe" but i won't include all of those bc this post would be VERY long.

"israel supporters are really out here arguing that palestinians need to hold hands with their genociders and forgive them and find peace - completely ignoring that for centuries there was peace between religious groups in the region and israel destroyed it"

goyim being embarrassingly ignorant of jewish history outside of a warped view of the holocaust? i am shocked!

"the supposed civilians attacked turned out to be iof soldiers so yeah actually it's fucked for you to say. they shouldn't attack people who colonize and massacre palestinian people for their day job"

blatantly supporting the massacre of 1,300 israelis, including children.

"all they can do is fight back or die, while israelis grab their passport and fly back to the us or some other european country and wait for israel to finish their genocide so they can go back"

feel like i don't need to explain why. this is conspiracy theory levels of antisemitic.

"the crying and bellyaching that if the jewish people don't have israel, they'll have to go back to countries that are hostile to them is not one i have sympathy for"

yeah we know you don't have sympathy for jews, that's very clear.

"jewish people, black people, and indigenous people all still live there and survive and fight back and thrive in solidarity together. and they DON'T participate in genocide against other groups of people"

yet again making the blatant assertion that it is JEWS who are committing genocide, and not the israeli government. also let's not pretend that. there's always been perfect solidarity between our communities. jews have not always been the best allies to indigenous people and black people, and vice versa.

"there are other places to turn to if you had any interest in NOT participating in western hegemonic white supremacy. but instead of staying and fighting and existing and thriving with other marginalized people who are at HIGHER risk than you in these countries, you argue that somehow jewish people should be exempt from this work that every other marginalized community does"

shouldn't have to point out that i don't argue that, but also this is, again, conspiracy theory levels of fucked up.

"bonkers to watch israel-supporters screaming and crying that if they don't colonize and genocide palestinians then jewish people can't safely exist"

yikes.

"if it were remotely true, israelis wouldn't have pulled out their dual citizenship passports and gone back to europe and the us to wait at a distance for their government to finish the genocide they started in 1948"

again, yikes.

there is a choice outside colonization - you can just fucking leave and go back to your home countries that are welcoming you with open arms cuz you still have dual citizenship. you don't have to commit genocide colonize people to exist."

more yikes.

"spacelazarwolf really wants to try and argue that they can't stop colonizing palestine cuz if they do, they have to go back to - checks notes - countries where a ton of people still live"

who is "they"?

"for some reason [spacelazarwolf] thinks that to avoid going through [genocide], jewish people need to be allowed to commit genocide themselves and eradicate palestinians"

once again lying abt me, and also openly saying that they believe it is jews who are committing genocide.

"fucking bonkers that he thinks he somehow has the right to commit genocide and colonize to avoid the situation other jewish people, indigenous people, and black people worldwide find themselves in. cowardly bitch baby behavior actually. like i'm sorry lots of other groups of colonized people, who have been subject to genocide and violence, and racism and are still undergoing it, has managed to NOT colonize other groups of people for their own gain."

bc jews are just inherently more evil than other marginalized ppl, right? we're just more prone to being selfish and hurting people? we're just sniveling whiny bitch babies who will turn around and stab you in the back, right?

"screaming and crying that 'we need to be allowed to genocide palestinians or otherwise we have to go back to the us, where we as white jewish people never have to actually deal with the things indigenous and black people there do' is disgusting genocidal behavior. the thought of actually being in solidarity with colonized people is repulsive to people like spacelazarwolf - that's why they all seek to justify colonial projects instead."

again, conspiracy theory levels of fucked.

at no point do i engage in anti-semitism. all i ever criticize is israel.

don't feel like i need to point out that this is not true.

he has repeatedly stated that israel has to exist, otherwise jewish people have to go back to the us, where indigenous people are being genocided.

cool lie! also fucked up thing to say!

i've said nothing about jewish pain and trauma. in fact, i have said on numerous occasions that jewish pain and trauma are very real and that they DO NOT justify. colonization.

mmmmmmmmmm nah. "whiny little bitch babies" is not saying that "jewish pain and trauma are very real." also oops you accidentally did dual loyalty again.

but spacelazarwolf is so rabidly racist he immediately began fearmongering about the bloodlust savage knocking at his door trying to kill him.

i'm on desktop or i would include that mike wazowski standing meme bc genuinely what the fuck.

anyway, i have no doubt that their support palestinians is genuine. that's great. but it is also incredibly clear that they hate jews, and that is going to be a huge detriment to their activism for palestinians, and they're not the only one this is happening with. people need to figure that shit out on their own instead of harassing and lying about jews online and perpetuating this kind of violently antisemitic rhetoric. bc this is like beyond fucked. i am tired of gentiles blatantly lying abt me so they can get away with saying horrendously antisemitic things to and about me. get your fucking shit together.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Phyllis Chesler

The White House issued a joint statement on Aug. 16 from the United States, Egypt and Qatar about a hostage and ceasefire deal. Missing from those in agreement are Israel, Iran and its proxy armies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Are these folks completely crazy? Egypt is the very country that refused to offer the slightest shelter to Gazan civilians who wished to escape—the same country that greedily profited for years from the weaponized, underground tunnels built by Iran/Hamas. Qatar? Iran’s paymaster and Taliban supporter does not bring clean hands to this statement. Who are they to have any say in this matter? America? Don’t even get me started. A “ceasefire?” In exchange for what? What if there are only two Israeli hostages left alive; is that sufficient to justify a “ceasefire?” Israel cannot afford to free another 1,000 Palestinian Islamist terrorists in order to ransom another Gilad Shalit. Last time, senior Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was one of those Israel released. See where that got us. Also, the phrase “ceasefire” is a delusion; it is no guarantee that Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah will not commit massacres again and again, as they’ve sworn to do. “Ceasefire” is as empty a term as the “two-state solution,” which the Palestinians have rejected time and again. Recently, journalist David Remnick spent 13 pages in The New Yorker on a too-positive portrait of the sadistic psychopath, Sinwar, whom even Remnick admits is hero-worshipped by the Gazans; even Remnick concedes that Hamas soldiers fight dressed as civilians and that the civilians support Hamas. Remnick portrays only the Israelis in a negative light, quoting only a handful of left-wing Israelis whose specialty is criticizing their own country. There are no civilians in Gaza. With some very endangered and silent exceptions, they are all Hamasniks, all Jew-haters in their very bones. OK, I get it. Israel screwed up beyond belief in not trusting the military intelligence they had before Oct. 7, maybe also by choosing a policy of “mowing the lawn” instead of launching a pre-emptive attack against Hamas and Iran long before now. But here we are. The entire world has propagated the filthiest lies against Israel and is now condemning the small nation for daring to fight back. Enough! If I were the Emperor of Ice Cream, I would launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities; institute a death penalty in Israel; and execute in battle every single fighter affiliated with Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, etc., fighter. These suggestions are not out of bloodthirsty revenge. They are to demonstrate to our enemies that Israel is here to stay. It’s not going anywhere. Israel is strong enough and savvy enough to play by the rules of the Arab street—and not only by the “higher” ethical standards of defenseless, Diaspora Jews. Israel must be victorious in order for the 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and the Sunni Arab states to succeed. And succeed they must.

[eretzyisrael]

by Phyllis Chesler

How could so much rabid and vulgar Jew-hatred suddenly erupt everywhere? Did someone flick a switch that unleashed millions of haters programmed to disrupt public meetings, graduation ceremonies, legislative sessions, and singing and athletic contests? To block streets, schools and bridges? To smash windows, deface synagogues and kosher or Israeli restaurants, and publish false narratives about Israel and the Palestinians all over the world?

I’ve been asking myself this question ever since Oct. 7. Today, I may have something of an answer.

This worldwide non-stop attack on the world’s Jews did not happen when the U.N. passed its infamous resolution equating Zionism with racism in the 1970s. It did not occur after Palestinian terrorists bombed synagogues, hijacked planes and murdered Israeli athletes at the Olympics. Nor when Arab countries launched attack after attack on Israel, subjecting it to countless wars.

It did not even happen when Palestinian terrorists blew up Israeli civilians on buses and stabbed, car-rammed and shot Israeli civilians to death on Israeli streets. Nor did it happen after Iranian proxies launched rockets at the Jewish state, sent flotillas of armed assassins in the name of “peace” and declared their intention to exterminate the Jews once and for all.

Despite incredible losses, Israel rose triumphantly each time.

Here’s what’s different now:

First, back then, the well-funded and well-organized media and university assault on Israel had not yet indoctrinated three or four generations of Westerners.

Second, on Oct. 7, perhaps for the first time, Israel looked genuinely vulnerable. This rendered both Israelis and Jews everywhere fair game.

It’s as simple as that.

Once the terrible sight of Israeli blood, of charred and/or raped Israeli corpses, was broadcast the world over, the haters knew it was possible to chase the Jews down, to try to destroy us yet again. Who would protect us? The IDF was under the most profound siege on Israel’s northern and southern borders and in its historical heartland in Judea and Samaria.

Diaspora Jewry was seen as safe because Israel was militarily, economically, culturally, scientifically and technologically strong. Israel led the world in counterterrorism and was the only country in the Middle East that protects all religions, not just Judaism.

Israel’s strength meant that left-wing Diaspora Jews who loudly criticized Israel’s every imperfection and failure, and right-wing Diaspora Jews who kept supporting Israel no matter what, were safe because Israel existed. Israelis who excel at dissenting politics and are geniuses at criticizing their government were also kept relatively safe because Israel was and was seen as strong. Without this, we would all be subject to the historically endless pogroms and persecutions that have characterized Jewish existence in both the Muslim and the Christian world.

Things have changed. Israel looks vulnerable and the Jew-haters have been emboldened as a result.

So, if Diaspora Jews and our Christian, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim friends the world over want to help both the Jews and the West to defeat barbarism, they must strengthen the IDF in every way. These precious young men and women are on the front line fighting for civilization. However imperfect Israeli and American leaders and political systems may be, they are far better than those of Iran, China, Russia, Turkey, Afghanistan and North Korea.

Now is the time to act. I am urging you, imploring you, to do so.

Send money to the IDF and Israel’s ambulance and medical services. Volunteer as physicians and physical therapists, nurses, harvesters, fruit pickers and compassionate caregivers. Stand with pro-Israel demonstrators. Attend your local city council meetings, write articles for and letters to newspapers. Sue schools for harassing and chasing Jewish students away. Work to end the poisoned curriculum that has turned students into Jew-hating zombies.

This work may take decades to complete. Begin it today. And whatever you choose to do, never stop.

The fate of the world is in your hands

[steveyockey]

I love the Haggadah, the guidebook to the Passover seder, because it's one of the few Jewish texts that embraces imagery, and because its imagery has evolved to reflect the perspectives of particular periods and communities. One section in particular, the Four Sons (updated to Four Children) frames various approaches to questioning and answering the Passover narrative. They each embody types: the Wise Child, the Wicked Child, the Simple Child, and the Child Who Does Not Know How To Ask. It's the representations of the Wicked Child that fascinate me. The Wicked Child is said to cut himself off from the community, and in turn the community is obligated to ostracize him. He is what we might call a “self-hater." For hundreds of years, Haggadot in Europe depicted the Wicked Child as a warrior, his uniform updated for the region and era in which the story was retold. It was a point of Diasporic pride that Jews and war—and, by extension, Jews and empire—were incompatible. Not just incompatible: mutually exclusive. Judaism was fundamentally opposed to tyranny and all its trappings. Soldiers were intrinsically wicked, their armaments signifiers of depravity.

Then, after 1948, this imagery was reversed, and the uniform vanished. Not only was it no longer acceptable to depict the Wicked Child as a soldier; it was now often the Wise Child, typically the hero, who'd get that role—depicted as an Israeli soldier, of course. There are Israeli Haggadot with soldiers everywhere, not just among the Sons. And not just Haggadot; some of my favorite Rosh Hashanah cards involve soldiers, tanks, gunships, and aircraft carriers. "Have a sweet New Year, also here's a hand grenade!" It's almost a parody of the traditional antipathy for warriors, and a brutal denial of what used to be intrinsic to Judaism. I know Zionists will read this differently—pre-state Jews feared armies because they had no sovereignty, we need our own nukes, etc. The gleaning I take is that neither culture nor self-imagery is static. Contexts change, authenticity is subjective, culture is fluid. The one constant is that the Haggadah itself, and everything it represents, is our cultural firmament, and it is everybody's. Imagery, tradition, family, history, narrative: they're all part of the ever-morphing palette of art.

Who knows, maybe one day we'll stop policing legitimacy based on conformity to twentieth-century dualities etched in stone. In the meantime, we have comics.

Eli Valley, Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel (2017)