#how not to be antisemitic

[mental-mona]

Are you legitimately criticizing Israel or antisemitic? Questions to ask yourself:

What is antisemitism? | IHRA (holocaustremembrance.com) Let's start here. Does whatever you're saying, writing, or drawing go against the basic definition laid out here, or clearly fall into one of the examples given? If it does, you should almost certainly rethink your statement completely; even though this definition isn't legally binding, it's still a pretty darn good metric.

If you replace the word "Zionists/Israelis" in your statement with "Jews," does it sound antisemitic? ❌ If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck, even if it's wearing a dog costume. Your statement is antisemitic; please rethink it and probably also your general attitude.

Are you questioning the Jewish connection to Israel? ❌ Jews have an archaeologically confirmed, continuous history in Israel going back 3000 years. We pray for a return to Jerusalem and a rebuilt Holy Temple multiple times a day. Many of our religious practices are based around Israel's agricultural cycles. Even genetics supports our claim! It is our homeland, period, end of discussion. Claiming that we have no right to be there is antisemitic, except maybe if you also question the rights of other religious and/or ethnic groups to their homelands.

Are you implying that Israel should cease to exist? ❌ Would you say that about literally any other country that gained independence within the last century, regardless of demographics? If the answer is no, then saying it about Israel is antisemitic. If you want to see an independent Ukraine, Tibet, and/or Taiwan, you don't get to turn around and claim that specifically Jews aren't allowed self-determination. In any case, where precisely do you expect all the Jews currently living there, the majority of whom are from countries that persecuted them and/or outright expelled them, to go if Israel suddenly ceases to exist as a Jewish state? Hamas' charter explicitly calls for the genocide of Jews, and "from the river to the sea" Israel would be ethnically cleansed if they had their way.

Are you implying that all Jews are responsible for things happening in Israel? ❌ If so, this is antisemitic. Diaspora Jews don't have much if any influence over Israeli politics, and plenty of them disagree with various Israeli policies and politicians. The word "Jews" simply refers to an ethnoreligious group with tons of variation in beliefs and practices, not some kind of powerful monolith. If you don't blame Chinese immigrants for the genocide of Uyghurs or all Muslims for Islamist terrorism, you don't get to blame all Jews for whatever's going on in Israel.

Do you view all Israelis as legitimate military targets for rockets & attacks? ❌ Even if you're going with the theory that they're all culpable because they all served in the military, you're still way off base. 1) They don't actually all serve in the army, and 2) by that logic, all veterans in your country are legitimate targets for nationalistic attacks. I'm pretty sure you don't think that. Also, you're forgetting about children and foreign workers; there are few if any places on Earth where those would be considered legitimate military targets. Rockets, bombs, and bullets don't discriminate in who they hit. There have been many cases, including in the current war, where they've harmed Israeli Arabs!

(1/2 cuz Tumblr won't let me post it all in one go)

[noyatv]

think its best if we start reusing the term judenhass bc way too many arabs/people of arab descent are claiming that they “…can’t be antisemitic because their semitic”👉🥹👈

one cannot be “semitic” for that is a language group

[daughter-of-sapph0]

list of users gone because of scortched earth

partyjockers: for pointing out that there are hairy potty fans on staff and making the connection that it's the reason trans women keep getting flagged as mature

iamdealwithit: for pointing out that tumblr live literally steals your data and ip address and sells it to advertisers and the police back in December 29th of 2022, and was active up until seven hours ago today (September 5 2023) because that post started circulating again

both these people had the images from their post completely erased, their blogs completely wiped, and in partyjockers case the original post was wiped from the history of the site as well as any reblogs.

it's very strange that this has only happened twice to my knowledge and it only occurs when people point put staff's complete ineptitude and active malice towards it's userbase.

anyway screenshot this post just incase they start getting trigger happy. once is absolutely horrible censorship and should never fucking happen. twice sets a precedent that they will use this again.

[jellybeanium124]

to all the antisemites this hanukkah season acting like the world's greatest jewish allies: you might hear the phrase "a great miracle happened there" bandied around. in fact, the acronym for that phrase in hebrew is on every dreidel! yep every dreidel! where is the "there" being talked about?? don't worry about it :))) and in what country do the dreidels instead have the acronym for "a great miracle happened here" instead? don't worry about it :)))) and don't worry about the actual story of the holiday either or what it means :)))))) it's definitely not about the jews fighting off their oppressors in order to take back control of their homeland or anything :))))) nothing to do with jewish self-determination here no sirree :))) this is definitely a very easy holiday to enjoy if you hate israel with every bone in your body and hope it and everyone inside it dies horribly :))))) hanukkah definitely isn't inextricably linked to israel and the jewish connection with the land of israel as our homeland :)))

[rotzaprachim]

i don’t think Jews should have to extend grace to people who engage in Holocaust denial. I don’t think people should engage in Holocaust denial no matter their politics. I think Jews have a right to be angry and cut off contact with those who do engage in Holocaust denial, no matter their politics. I’m so fucking angry we’re at this line I’m the goddamn sand and antisemitism is this rampant

[hilacopter]

conflating diaspora jews with the actions of the israeli government is not okay, yes, but have you considered it's not okay to conflate israeli jews with them either

[silly-jewish-vents]

Begging, screaming, pleading with gentiles to use Hashem, G-d, or The Tetragrammaton to refer to the Jewish god specifically. Being academic or whatever nonsense you’re using to rationalize it is no excuse to butcher the pronunciation of a name that is not meant to be spoken by the culture you’re referring to. You’re not being academic. You’re just being a jerk.

Edit/additional notes for clarification: this is specifically talking about attempted pronunciations/spellings of the Tetragrammaton in areas like Academia or in conversations about Judaism centered around Jews. This is not about in terms of a religious context such as church or mosque.

The spelling of G-d with a dash instead of an o is my personal comfort level for this post. For anyone for whom that isnt their custom that isnt an issue and they can absolutely use an oh and spell out G-d fully. I chose not to for this post. I may choose to spell it out in the future.

There is technically an argument to be made for exceptionally early israelite history like canaanite era usage. Personally still makes me and others uncomfortable and feels weird. That argument does not apply to temple or onward Jewish history era.

[noyatv]

quick language lesson, buddy!

goy/goyim=non-jews

the k-word= a slur

goy/goyim is not a slur, calling jews the k-word is, in fact, extremely antisemitic

חוזר כמו בומרנג

something i dont think goyim can understand is how fundamentally different i feel from who i was before october 7th. the way i view myself, the world, community, people in general, and especially other jews has completely changed

[doberbutts]

Thank you for defending Nazis. They're just little guys. Just misunderstood, with genuine grievances. I noticed you accidentally forgot to defend child rapists. Dumb commies like you are all the same 🙄

Piss on the poor! Also I'm not a commie and never claimed to be one.

[hanmegumi]

LMAO

edit: turning off reblogs because some of the people that are reblogging are extremely fucking moronic. holy shit

[gingerswagfreckles]

Btw if you blatantly lie about Israel or the war in Gaza and someone calls you out for lying they are not in fact "defending Israel" they are calling you out for spreading mis or disinformation. In case that wasn't clear.

[leunusualsuspect]

I’m so fucking tired of people being like

“Oh well a bunch of Zionists reblogged this, no more reblogging”

“Zionists are reblogging this. Suspicious.”

Do.

You.

Guys.

HEAR YOURSELVES?

This isn’t something that makes a damn lick of sense without the thought terminating cliche that “Zionists writ large support all actions of the state of Israel and the melting of Palestinian lives”

But who is a Zionist? Is it a person who labels themselves as such? Are they a Jew who is merely standing for their people? Because this shit is exactly how persecutors of Jewish people in the past operate. People were kicked out of their homes for being labeled “Zionists”. Had their property seized for being “Zionists”. Were POGROMED for being “Zionists”.

You don’t find it odd that so many people who do label themselves as Zionists are lock step with progressive politics in English speaking countries, and especially in the US? You don’t think that’s the least bit curious?

Hashem give me the fucking strength to handle the refusal to “talk to your neighbor”of these goyishe lunatics.

And BEFORE you jump down my motherfucking throat, I’m a non-Zionist only because the state of Israel exists. It’s here. Zionist dream realized. So I needn’t declare myself for an ideology that has ostensibly achieved its goal. But you must acknowledge that this choice of label is not how most Jews view Zionism. Hell, I still question it myself.

But if you choose to label me a Zionist because I want peace and coexistence for all peoples with historical, ethnic, cultural and religious ties to the land we refer to as Israel-Palestine and recognize the complete and utter impossibility of kicking anyone out, then fine.

Be a fool.

Feed the dogs of war.

Spare me your “I love Jews” michegas.

I’m eating another latke and holding my community and real allies tighter.

And just so you all understand this in English:

May all of your teeth fall out save the one that aches.

Shmucks.

[lawbreaker13]

It’s actually insane how some of you justify your antisemitism. And yes, this time I’m specifically talking about being anti-Israel.

When Israel is attacked by Hamas, it’s their fault for retaliating. When is Israel is attacked by Iran, it’s ok because it’s retaliation. When Israel calls out the UN for being unhelpful, they’re getting what they deserve. When Israel asks the UN to step up, it’s a sad cry for help.

THEY CAN’T ATTACK, THEY CAN’T DEFEND, THEY CAN’T ASK FOR HELP, THEY CAN’T CONDEMN TERRORISTS, WHAT CAN THEY DO?? BE BLOWN TO BITS??? IS THAT WHAT YOU���RE WAITING FOR? WHAT MAKES ISRAEL SO SPECIAL??

It is no coincidence that Israel can’t do anything right and that it houses 7 million Jewish refugees. It’s the oldest excuse in the book. “It’s just the zionists!” Israeli children are children, too. They have no better of a concept of Zionism than you, and yours is scarce. Zionism IS LITERALLY ABOUT JEWS.

Just say you won’t be happy until half the world’s Jews are dead. It’s a lot better to be an antisemite when you’re comfortable with your identity.

[thebluestcowboy]

“bro I know we’re saying hateful shit about jewish people but i promise it’s justified this time bro. Yeah i know I said the same thing about the well poisoning and the death of jesus and all the other stuff but I promise it’s actually for a righteous cause this time bro. Just one more outbreak of antisemitic violence and everything will work out bro i promise it’s for real this time bro you can trust me”

[it-was-me-zion]

“it doesn’t matter what zionism ACTUALLY is because it's being used to justify horrible crimes-“ ok well antizionism is being used to justify hunting down jews in the streets. so where does that leave us exactly.

[nachobsns]

Hello - I was impressed and extremely relieved by what you wrote in the post about the cult mentality of the Left RE Israel and accusations of genocide. You mentioned that you bought into the mindset until recently. If it's all right for me to ask, what was it that helped you break out of it? (Please feel free to delete/ignore if you'd rather not answer!)

thank you!! and no worries about asking— i think i put something in my pinned post about how people are welcome to send asks about this stuff, although my story isn’t super interesting. i fell down the typical online rabbithole, a couple weeks after october 7; i knew what had happened, at least vaguely, but the posts trickling onto my dash were all about the (undeniably tragic) loss of life in gaza, with little to no acknowledgment of the hamas atrocities that had started the war, so my narrative was pretty one-sided from the beginning. it just continued to snowball as the months went on and people became more radicalized, calling into question the reality of the 10/7 attacks and the humanity of all israelis. i never went all the way down the pipeline to full-on endorsing hamas or justifying their attacks, at least on a personal level, thank god, but i would reblog other people’s posts referring to hamas as a “resistance movement” and calls to boycott starbucks and mcdonald’s and condemnation of the “zionist media” etc etc etc. what pulled me out of it wasn’t any one thing— if someone had directly called me on my flawed logic and antisemitic biases while i was in this mindset, i doubt it would have done much, just reinforced my belief that i was on the “right side of history” and zionists were aggressors who couldn’t be reasoned with. it was mostly just passive observance and a slow exposure to other perspectives. i’m pretty sure the first post that led me to question my thinking was an ask on jewish-vents, which popped up on my dash in like, late july. this led me down another rabbithole, first scouring every single post on jewish-vents, then moving on to more popular jewish blogs that i had seen on “zionist blocklists” (applesauce42069, xclowniex, and spacelazarwolf were probably some of the blogs that influenced me the most, though i told myself i was just hate-scrolling at first, lol). i felt incredibly guilty seeing all the harm the movement i was a part of had caused to random jews and israelis just trying to live their lives and i realized how it went against everything i believed about how minority groups should be treated. from there, the aspect of actually undoing my thinking and changing my behavior for the better still took several weeks. denial of jewish indigenity to the levant in the face of tantamount archeological and cultural evidence was the first to go, as well as any ambiguity in my feelings about hamas. after that, it’s mostly been a slow process of redefining the idf’s actions from a “genocide” to a “war.” i still believe that what’s happening in gaza is unconscionable and horrific, and that too many innocent civilians have died, but i also understand how difficult it is to fight against a terrorist group that systematically embeds itself in civilian populations, and that the ratio of militant to civilian deaths is incredibly low compared to most urban warfare. i quietly deleted my old blog in early august— if i had directly engaged in harassment against jews, i likely would have kept it to make amends to the harmed parties and put a face to my actions, but as was, i had just contributed to the larger atmosphere of antisemitism on this site, and i felt uncomfortable knowing that i had a blog full of sentiments that no longer matched my values and beliefs. i decided i would be better if i took my endorsement out of the equation entirely, because when you’re looking through the notes of a post, it obviously doesn’t matter if someone who’s reblogged it no longer agrees with what was said— their notes still count as tacit approval, and i did not want approval of this “activism” attached to my online presence. i still have unwanted kneejerk reactions that crop up sometimes, particularly around the fundraiser posts from people “in gaza”; even though i know logically that they have all the markers of scams, there is still a part of me that really wants to believe i could help.