#how to debate jewish hate

[o0katiekins0o]

Klingons are a diaspora. They're an empire that span multiple planets with multiple environments. Their history is long and full of expansion and conquest- which inevitably creates cultural differences.

Included in their history are plagues and genetic and surgical manipulation that created physical differences.

That's how this guy is Klingon

And this guy is Klingon

And this guy is klingon

And this babe is also Klingon

Klingon identity as a diaspora is kind of the whole point of the story of the Klingons. What does it mean to be Klingon?

The rallying cry of the Klingon armies during the war with the Federation is "Remain Klingon".

What does that mean? Do they even know?

Is Klingon a racial or cultural identity?

Those are questions B'elanna Torres and Alexander Rozhenko are asking themselves all the time.

Can you convert to Klingon?

Curzon Dax and the alternate timeline "Sons of Mogh" seem to indicate you potentially can.

The planet of integrated Romulan and Klingons managing to strike a balance between both cultures was such a shock to Worf because hate and mistrust for Romulans had been such an integral part of his concept of Klingon identity that it made him ask new questions about himself.

If hating Romulans is not essential to Klingon identity, then what is Klingon identity?

Worf being biologically Klingon and culturally Jewish, I think, was meant to drive home the point that, like the Jewish people, Klingons are a diaspora and not a monlith.

And arguing about which Klingons are "real" ones is kind of funny because it's replicating the same debates the Klingons are having amongst themselves without even realizing it.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

I feel like JK Rowling’s decision to use her money to start an anti-trans hate group is emblematic of everything that is wrong and terrifying and fucked up these days.

She wrote an anti-fascist allegory that helped me, a little Jewish girl, understand the Holocaust in a safe, comfortable way that none of the adults in my life were truly capable of.

And now she’s a violent bigot pushing fascist ideology.

I don’t understand how we got from the optimism of the Obama years and the heights of #metoo to this….state of things in the 2020s.

Was I skipping around NYC in a millennial haze while the rest of the country was being radicalized? Was I dreamily walking home along Central Park while the rest of the country lost its mind over 8 years of a black President?

I want so badly to understand how not just the US, but the “Western” world got here. Or maybe it’s not supposed to be understood. Maybe the answer is that Putin saw a moment of reckoning, leapt on it, and has done a rly good job fulfilling Krushchev’s vision.

It’s the inability to understand, that scares me. Beyond morals and ethics and winning online debates, I’m a historian and it frightens that I can’t fully grasp the moment I’m living in.

NOTE: I’m not interested in having any debates about Joanne or her boy wizard books. This is an emotional reflection post, not an invitation to fight over her pre-radicalization White British Lady nonsense or whatever the fuck.

[baroque-hashem]

I like to argue about Judaism as much as the next Jew, but that debate is not the most important part of Judaism.

You know what is?-- Living a good, Jewish life.

And what is a Jewish life? What is required of us?

The prophet Micah said this: "You have been told what is good: only to do justice, to love goodness, and to walk modestly." (Micah 6:8)

The Rabbi Hillel put it this way: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to another. That is the whole Torah, the rest its interpretation, now go study." (Talmud, Shabbat 31a:6)

In other words--Be a mentsh! Be a good person! You can debate about how to observe Shabbat all you want but at your core what is most important is not hurting others.

Don't be a putz. Be a mentsh. That's it.

[the-library-alcove]

Annotated Debate Between Hen Mazzig and Kei Pritsker

Source

Full text and commentary under the cut, original annotations done on Google Docs here, being shared here on tumblr due to some people being unable to see the comments.

Commentators include myself, @strangestructures, and several others.

~~~~

Hen Mazzig: My name is Hen Mazzig. I’m an Israeli author, activist, advocate and founder of the Tel Aviv Institute. I was born and raised in Israel. My family came from Iraq and North Africa and I live in London today with my partner. He is not Jewish. My focus is on Jewish advocacy and fighting antisemitism and hate online in all its forms.

Kei Pritsker: I’m Kei Pritsker. I’m co-director of The Encampments. I’m a journalist with Breakthrough News.

(Here is Kei's Canary Mission profile; https://canarymission.org/individual/Kei_Pritsker)

HM: I was just interested in your background, Kei.

KP: I mean I’m a journalist, I’m a student activist. I was involved in the Palestinian student groups. This is an issue I’ve been involved in heavily for a big period of my life.

(Kei refuses to give any personal background, sticking solely to professional, in contrast to how Hen gives both his personal and professional background in relation to this conflict.

Yeah, I tried to look him up online and there's nothing about him. I could confirm that he's been involved in anti-Israel activism since at least 2017 (source: canary mission), so at least he's right that it's been a big period, not just since oct. 7.)

HM: Got it, OK sorry.

I want to start with a current event; we’ve had a couple in the past few weeks that speak to both your areas of expertise. First with the Mahmoud Khalil arrest and deportation proceedings, and then the Mohsen Mahdawi case more recently. I wonder if each of you can describe how you feel about both cases. Kei, this in your wheelhouse, maybe you can start.

KP: Ya, I mean it was really horrifying to wake up to that news of Mahmoud being arrested. Our team found out like everyone else just on social media or news notifications. Having known him this was particularly devastating. But the way I see this is as something that really reflects the success of the encampments movement and the Palestine movement. The reason this is happening — the reason Mahmoud was arrested — his only crime is speaking out against the genocide and speaking in support of the Palestinian people.

(False; while Trump was doing it in a hamfisted way, there's no question that Mahmoud was in violation of the terms of his green card by supporting terrorist organizations and supporting attacking citizens. Also, Genocide Canard counter is at 1.)

And he is now being abducted.

(This language is conflation between a man held in detention but still able to communicate, and the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas)

The reason for it is Israel knows they’ve lost the narrative, they’ve lost the battle of ideas, they’ve lost the argument, and the encampment movement really proved they’ve lost the next generation.

("Israel controls the US government" Canard--presenting the crackdown as being done at the instigation and direction of the Israeli government, as if Trump wouldn't do it on his own for his own reasons)

Because of this they’ve resorted to the last tool in their toolbox, which is essentially repression, censorship. This is why there’s such a concerted effort from the Trump administration to ban pro-Palestine speech, to ban freedom of expression. I can’t even think of a country you get deported for criticizing in the United States besides Israel.

(Also that they are trying to in some way center the Palestine situation in the USA context. When they say that is only in the USA that there is this "repression" against speaking for Palestine)

So while it was initially very shocking it really seems now this is a concerted effort to criminalize speaking out for Palestine.

(Continued "Israel Controls the US Government" Canard, plus "We're just criticizing the Israeli government!" downplaying of their actions.)

Because the mood and the consciousness in the U.S. has changed so much. There was a poll that came out recently that showed that for the first time in decades American perceptions of Israel are majority negative.

(If it's the poll that's been circulating on tumblr, I looked at the numbers and posted a more detailed analysis (https://www.tumblr.com/strangestructures/782103564186189824/that-is-definitely-concerning-however-the?source=share), and the truth is still that across all age groups, there are more people with a favorable opinion of Israel than a negative one. And a lot of people, especially in the younger cohort (18-24), simply don't care.)

This is because of the work of the pro-Palestine movement and people seeing what Israel is about in the last two years and learning about the history of Zionism. People are starting to wake up to what it really is and I think they’ve lost the narrative and now they’re resorting to abductions, and it’s shameful and disgusting and I think it will blow back in their face.

Hen, what do you make both of what Kei is saying and the actions the administration has taken in recent weeks?

HM: Yeah, no it’s absolutely ridiculous to hear this response from Kei to be honest. I think that using words like abducted — we know what being abducted is; my family members and friends have been abducted on October 7 by Hamas, a terrorist group, that had been celebrated by the same people presented in this film.

(I want to add to this and note how Khalil is getting to write Op-Eds for newspapers, while hostages held by Hamas get used for propaganda videos)

And to speak to us about how the Trump administration is being controlled by Israel — somehow Israel is infiltrating America while with the encampments on college campuses, specifically campuses that have been bankrolled by Qatar, funders of Hamas gave billions of dollars to those American universities and in the last few years we’ve seen the radicalization of these students.

(Kei ignores and don't mention this point. I don't know if is because he knows or because he knows that even mentioning it is going to make him look bad)

While I’m personally not a supporter of Trump or these tactics of taking people and deporting them, I think we should be very mindful of the words that we’re using. And I think [pro-Palestine activists] know what they’re doing. The reason that they’re framing it this way is to equate the students that have spent 18 months making the lives of Jewish students a living hell, that’s why they intentionally exclude from the movie any voice of Jewish students. 

[And portraying the Jewish students at the encampments] equates to “we’re not racists, we have some Black folks we can push forward.” Kanye West was quoted as saying that slavery was a choice. Is he a voice for the Black community? Of course not. No one would argue that. But here we are with encampments taking a fringe minority of American Jews that do not represent the American Jewish community which by and large is Zionist. Over 90 percent of American Jews describe a positive feeling toward Israel according to Pew Research. 

So this whole, really, charade — it’s a way to mask a lot of hatred and turn it against us, as if we’re to blame for their arrests or attacks on Jewish students who are fearing for their lives. In the encampments you hear calls like “al-Qassam’s next target.” Mahmoud Khalil has links to Hamas. The Instagram page of one of these anti-Israel groups at Columbia activating their page just moments before the attacks on Oct 7. The leader of Iran is sending them praises, Ali Khamenei saying, “I’m so proud of what you’re doing.”

(This, exactly; he's not being deported for "protesting Israel", he's being deported for supporting terrorists.

Also add that when is convenient they ignore that they received Iran's support. They probably try to clean themselves as an effort of making propaganda against them.)

I mean I would be ashamed. I would not be saying this is a success. I don’t even know how they can hold both arguments in their heads, to say “we are being silenced ” while we’re seeing this everywhere in the media, from The New York Times to CNN to BBC, everyone is covering it as if it’s the only conflict that ever happened in the world, as if it’s the only war, while in Sudan or in Darfur — I don’t want to get into whataboutism so I won’t even name the countries that are having far worse human rights violations that are getting zero attention. 

So I think the question here is why are we talking about those students that have used hate speech against Jews specifically for over 18 months as being the targets but not speaking of actual victims of deportation? Why are we talking about privileged students at Columbia that can afford hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend those universities and they’re becoming the victim? It’s very bizarre to me.

Kei, what do you make of Hen’s assertion that in your movie pro-Israel Jewish voices were not platformed, and that conversely some of the backgrounds of pro-Palestinian activists were played down?

KP: Hen, did you watch our film? 

HM: Absolutely.

KP: Yeah I mean so there’s a whole scene dedicated to the pro-Israel presence at these encampments and how these pro-Israel students would go up to the encampments and tell people “you should be raped, I hope you’re raped,” “you should be killed, if you went to Gaza you’d be killed—

(So no actual reporting on pro-Israel Jews, no discussion, just one scene of them shouting at the encampments. Though I do admit this went too far.)

HM [sarcastically]: Raped? Why would they use this example?

KP: —for being gay.” There was also this lynch mob, the pro-Israel lynch mob that descended on UCLA and actually dragged students out of the encampments and beat them bloody and also fired fireworks into the encampments, which very well can kill people. You know, we did show both sides.

("Show both sides" = "cherry pick one example")

We showed what pro-Israel students said to the pro-Palestine side and we also showed the non-Zionist pro-Palestine Jewish students as well because quite frankly the media coverage you’re talking about — Hen you said the media coverage of the encampments was wall-to-wall coverage. You’re right but the coverage was 100 percent slanted in favor of Israel.

(Bullshit; media biases have been consistently in favor of Hamas on the Left.  Also, "Jews control the media" canard.)

All the coverage was talking about alleged antisemitism, people being attacked and “oh my god it’s these dens of violence.”

(Supposedly the fact that there is a reporting in antisemitism that there is in the encampments it make is automatically pro-Israel because is against the movement. This is a false equivalence.)

Not only was there no truth to that, not only was there no video of that shown which, by the way, in the October 8 film there’s no video or evidence shown of any Jewish students being attacked.

(Funny, I've seen plenty of videos of people from these encampments attacking Jews, threatening them, or otherwise engaging in violence--typically while having their faces covered.

There's also the whole "not letting jews get to class" by putting the encampments in the way thing. Not sure to what extent blocking someone's path counts as violence, but...)

The evidence they put forward of antisemitism was people saying “Free Palestine” or “From the River to the Sea.” Yes the media coverage was wall to wall — obsessing over antisemitism that didn’t exist.

(Jews don't get to define antisemitism canard, plus the whole denial of a hostile environment.)

The purpose of putting our film out was to balance the unfair coverage of the media — which by the way was coming from people who never stepped foot in an encampment. I was there, I lived in the Columbia encampment for 12 days. Hen, the reason I live in the United States is because on my father’s side my grandparents were kicked out of Ukraine because of antisemitic pogroms.

(See, this would have been something to mention back at the start, Kei.  But your choice of words are interesting, because it makes it very clear that you weren't raised as a Jew, and the closest Jewish connection you can claim is two generations back.)

If I saw real antisemitism there I would have left, I would have covered it, I would have said something about it. I didn’t see it at all. 

(This isn't Real antisemitism Canard)

What we wanted to cover was the anti-Zionist Jewish students, which is a growing phenomenon, thousands, tens of thousands, millions of young Jews in the United States

(eyeroll There aren't "millions of young Jews" in the entire world, just as a matter of demographics.  Unless you're somehow claiming that every Jew under 30 is an "antizionist", then mathematically can't be, and that's before we even get into the fact that the number of antizionist Jews is somewhere in the ballpark of at most one million Jews.  at most, being under ten percent of fifteen million people. So this is the "Silent Moral Majority" logical fallacy.

They also seem to not realize that when centering in the anti-Zionist jews they are not showing a jewish perspective because the other parts of the group, the ones that don't have an opinion or are zionist, are not considered for the film and also banned from the encampments.)

are realizing their Judaism doesn’t have to be tied to Jewish ultranationalism,

(Redefining zionism canard)

or a Jewish ethnostate

(ethnostate canard)

that kills people, that bombs hospitals, that bombs schools

(falling for Hamas' policy of why they use human shields the way they do)

and says that Palestinians have no right to live in their country of origin.

(Generalizing the opinions of the Israeli far-right as being the common one from the in all Israelis)

Jews are reacting to that en masse. So that’s my goal. To balance out the narrative which was completely skewed by the mainstream media.

("Jews control the media" canard)

We put something out and let the students speak for themselves.

Hen, Kei is making the point that there was a lot of vilification happening of these students, whether from the media or elected officials. What would your response to that be? And particularly in terms of Jewish protesters, we see in the film scenes of Jewish students who are actively practicing their Judaism in the encampments,

(I'm sure they exist, but I also can't help but think about the JVP "seder plate" and "sukkah". In general, the way Judaism is practiced in the camp feels very performative, and in many cases it's quite noticeable that these are people for whom practicing Judaism is unusual, either because they are disconnected from their community or because they are not actually Jews.)

and who are making a case for being Jewish without the state of Israel. How should we be looking at them in your view?

HM: Ya. I mean there are anti-Zionist Jews that exist in the world. For some reason they receive the majority of the representation in this film. That is my issue. The majority of American Jews are Zionists and you can add another seven million Jews in Israel. So you can say it’s a “growing phenomenon” but there are a lot of “growing phenomena” that are still very small and not representative. It’s like saying Caitlyn Jenner speaks for all trans women. No one would make this argument but here we are able to tokenize a minority, a fringe community, and weaponize it against us. It’s not because they care about Jews and wants Jews to be represented. It’s that they hate us so much that they’re doing this and gaslighting us. I’m sorry I’m getting passionate but it’s really I feel like they’re living in a different universe. I’ve seen the videos on these campuses — not the encampments because for some reason I’m not allowed there — but I’ve seen the violence in the videos of these young Jewish students that send them to me and they’re afraid for their safety. They kidnapped a janitor that was not even Jewish in Columbia.

(This is ignored by Kei and doesn't try to refute it.)

For anyone to say there was not antisemitism in the encampments is completely ludicrous. They weren’t saying support Palestine, they were calling for support for Hamas. 

Even the October 8 film that Kei was mentioning there were clips of protesters saying they were Hamas, a terrorist organization that brutalized and killed over 1,000 Israelis on October 7 — kidnapped, killed babies, raped people. That’s why a lot of Jewish students were so upset and were calling out the rape of young girls that came back from Hamas captivity and testified about rape. We have recorded testimony of rape from a former hostage, Amit Soussana, and instead of engaging with that she was gaslighted and told she was lying. I’m sure that’s where those comments came from about rape. They are terrible comments. But I also think we need to recognize the pain Jewish students are going through. So if it’s true that someone said that someone should be raped, and I don’t know if it really happened, but if it happened I think it’s horrible and I also think it’s horrible to tell Jewish women they weren’t raped, and to deny it and say that Jews aren’t in danger when their dorms are being vandalized and the chants of “Zionists Get Out” when we know the majority of Jews are Zionists. How do you expect them to feel? Most Jews believe in Israel’s right to exist — that’s what Zionism is. So this chant is coded hate against Jews. 

Kei, you’re privileged enough not to feel intimidated, good for you. The majority of Jewish students that I know and have spoken to, the majority of Jews in America, have a completely different experience than you. So it’s great you’re able to be a part of a tiny, tiny piece of the Jewish community and you take this and put your energy into presenting something but it’s just not the truth and it’s not reality and it’s completely whitewashing the violence and the hate that has been documented over and over again. You can see it anywhere, anyone can Google it, I don’t even need to cite it because there’s so much of it.

KP: if you’re saying there was violence that took place, tell me what happened.

(Hen gave specific citations and examples, so this qualifies as a goalpost move.  "No violence occurred."  "Yes it did, here are some specific examples."  "Give me more examples.")

HM: Oh you think if you put a sign that says “al-Qassam’s next target” is that an issue for you or is that something legitimate? Is that a call for violence or not?

KP: Sorry, well you said someone was attacked. Who got attacked?

HM: I’ll find you some — I mean everyone can Google all of those cases but yeah there were Jewish students that were attacked. In Los Angeles I remember the bloody face of the student that was attacked.

KP: Yeah those were students in the Palestine encampment. It’s in our film; did you watch our film? Those students in the Palestine encampment that were ripped out and beaten by a Zionist mob and they fired fireworks into the UCLA encampments.

(Double standard of the violence only committed against the encampment are the ones that should be critize.)

That was pro-Israel violence. Those were pro-Israel people that beat up pro-Palestinian students. Who were the Jewish students who were attacked again?

HM: Do you think that calling to kill Jewish students is ok? That’s not attack, that’s not violence for you?

KP: I don’t agree with it. But it’s speech. It’s not violence.

(This is coming from the same ideology that views misgendering someone as an act of violence, but apparently saying someone is a terrorist group's next target is just "free speech".  Please note the parallel with the same sort of behavior on the Right.)

HM: Oh it’s speech? To call someone to be killed is speech Kei? Are you serious?

KP: I don’t agree with it. But you said someone was attacked.

HM: I’m sending links, don’t worry, I’m sending links. Here you go. [Links appear in chat.] This is one link to an incident with two Jewish students at DePaul. Don’t worry I’ll get you all the links and all the sources.

If I can distill what you both are saying a little. There seemed to be incidents that everyone here would agree are troubling. Telling a Jewish student they’re al-Qassam’s next target or to go back to Poland is not the kind of speech I think we can all agree should be used. Kei I guess the question as I hear it from Hen is whether you feel this was the norm, the culture, or this was anomalous or outside the encampment.

KP: So that’s exactly what I’m saying. Hen is kind of proving my point with the articles he’s sending. These articles are not from the encampments. I’m not speaking for every single person that has ever said “Free Palestine” in their life. I’m just saying the attacks he’s alleged weren’t attacks that took place at the encampments. [Looks at chat]. I mean you’re just spamming—

(Goalpost move; "Show me violence" shows violence  "these cases aren't valid because I have moved the goalposts, and you're spamming anyway, because these aren't valid evidence since I've moved the goalpost."

The goal post moved is the one of Violence on the Campus to violence in the encampments. Kei or he didn't remembered Hen point or he didn't heard it)

HM: Sorry, I’m sending too many examples of attacks on Jews.

KP: No, I mean you said a Jewish student was attacked.

HM: I said Jewish students were attacked. There were attacks of Jewish students in their dorms, there was an example of Jews in California attacked outside a synagogue. You say it wasn’t part of the encampment, it’s hard to identify when they have masks on. But this type of spirit is the one that is leading to violence against Jews. if you want to tell me that Jews were not attacked then we have a different issue and I mean you live in a different reality.

KP: So again what I’m saying is there were not attacks on Jewish students in encampments and none of these [links] are examples of that.

("I wonder why there are no attacks on a minority in a space that isn't allowed inside of it")

HM: Because they weren’t allowed in.

KP: And moreover there’s ample evidence of pro-Israel students attacking the encampments. I’m not speaking for every single protest that there was no bad conduct. I think we can all agree that anyone being attacked — that violence is not acceptable, that we shouldn’t be attacking people for their opinions. What I’m saying is that someone saying “from the river to the sea” — it’s in our film, a whistleblower who worked for Columbia and logged these cases of alleged antisemitism and a lot of it was people saying that or wearing a keffiyeh to class.

("Tu quque" fallacy, goalpost move, and several other fallacies--"there isn't any violence on his side, but even if there is, the Zionists do it too!  And besides, there hasn't been any violence inside of the encampments, and any examples of violence outside are downplayed and presented as "alleged antisemitism" or people chanting slogans or wearing a keffiyah, so the real violence is coming from the Zionists!")

These are not antisemitic things, these are people calling for an end to a 75-year occupation and humans rights abuses that have been condemned worldwide.

("Israel itself is illegitimate" canard)

It’s legitimate speech against — ironically — an actual violent occupation that’s happening in Palestine. 

Like that’s the thing that gets me — everyone keeps talking about “Jewish students feel unsafe because they see flags waving.”

(I mean, given the behavior they regularly see from people carrying these flags, yeah, it makes sense. I also feel concerned when I see a Palestinian flag waving these days, and I'm not even Jewish!

Also says a lot, because there have been repeated instances of people aligned with Kai saying that the Israeli flag makes Palestinians feel "unsafe".  So rules for thee but not for me, etc.

Oh yeah, didn't think about that. The reaction to the Israeli flag is a good example, for me, of the "Israel is ontologically evil" thing.)

Meanwhile the students are protesting an actual situation where entire cities are being wiped off the face of the earth.

(Exaggeration, and also falling for Hamas' human shields policy again)

Hen you have yet to say anything about that fact — you talk about the students on these campuses as privileged or whatever or people feeling unsafe walking to their dorms, but what about the fact that Israel has destroyed every single university in Gaza?

(Stripping context of this, along with the other accusations, to demonize Israel, instead of acknowledging that the reason for the destruction is because Hamas uses civilian infrastructure as shields.  But stated like this, it's this narrative that Israel just blows up hospitals, schools, and other civilian infrastructure just because they can out of simple cruelty, instead of "they have to because terrorists are using them as shields")

That’s what our film is about.

(I mean, as far as I understand the film is not about Gaza directly, but about anti-Israel activism at American universities, which is exactly what the discussion has been about. So yeah, definitely moving the goalposts.)

What do you have to say about that? What do you have to say about the safety of the Palestinian students?

HM: Ya I’ll speak about this in a second. I just want to point out that i did not say there were peaceful signs that triggered Jewish students. It was a student holding a sign that said “al-Qassam’s next target” with an arrow pointing to the Jewish student. Of course there was no violence in the encampments — the encampments were closed to Jewish students—

KP: —No that’s not true, there were Jewish students in the Columbia encampment in our film—

("We have tokens that we trot out to defend ourselves against accusations of bigotry!")

HM: —if i can finish my sentence. They were closed for Jewish students that would not sign off and say that they hate half of the world’s Jewish population in Israel.

(Kei ignores and doesn't engage in this part even to deny it. Also he ignores that a member of a minority is expressing how he is perceiving those attacks. That is a double standard.)

If they’re not going to say it they’re not going to get in. That’s why the attacks didn’t happen in the encampments — because there was no one to challenge [organizers]. They closed them down and made sure it would be a sterile area for Jews — not all Jews, the 90 percent of Jews that are Zionists in America. And for those students in the encampments — I mean I heard those testimonies of them not having humanitarian aid or getting enough food and I found it a bit bizarre. For someone who is advocating for peace for both Israelis and Palestinians and has been for years now, as someone who spent five years as a humanitarian officer working on building hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank and Hebron and Ramallah and building schools for Palestinians, it’s been part of my work so I’m deeply committed to promoting peace through building bridges this way. The situation in Gaza is horrific, it’s absolutely horrific. It’s been horrific since October 7 when the world was silent about what happened and it’s been horrific since then. 

You can quote Anthony Blinken saying that the protests around the world are part of what emboldened Hamas. Hamas continues to hold hostages, continues to oppress Palestinians in Gaza, and while according to what Kei is describing is one of the worst situations ever and yet they still refuse to release the hostages, they still refuse to end it. You know if they released the hostages there would not be justification to continue this war; this war would be over. We haven’t heard anyone in the encampments actually say this. “Why don’t you call for the release of the hostages,” someone asked them. They said “well, you know it goes without saying.” But everything else you need to say and  this fact you conveniently ignore?

If the hostages would be released the war would be over. Women have been raped in Gaza by Hamas and they haven’t said a word about it. Well they have said a word about it — they said you shouldn’t believe those Israeli women and said that those babies deserve to be killed because they live in Israel. While ignoring far worse human rights violations and getting praised from the Supreme Leader of Iran, one of the most brutal countries in the world for gay people. But they haven’t protested for those gay people, for gay Iranians, they haven’t said a word about them. They have an issue with Israel because according to what Kei is saying it’s an ethnostate. Show me another country in the Middle East that isn’t an ethnostate. But what type of ethnicity are we talking about? It is the Jewish one or the Arab one? My family is from Iraq and Tunisia, we have the same ethnicity. 

One last thing — this movie would have much more credibility if they didn’t have someone like Macklemore producing it. Someone who engaged in antisemitism and wore a Jewish nose and had Jewface on at a concert and he took up the Palestinian cause and is producing movies. Just very interesting why you’d be OK with someone that engaged in antisemitism to be the face of this movie. Would you be OK with someone that engaged in racism to be the face of a movie about the Black community?

KP: What’s this Macklemore issue?

(Out of all the things Hen said, Kei only concentrates on the one that affects him personally.)

HM: Why, it’s not a part of your film?

KP: I don’t know, what’s your issue with Macklemore?

HM: I’m asking if it’s a part of your film.

KP: If what’s a part of my film?

If Macklemore produced the film. He was an ep, yes?

KP: Ya he’s the executive producer.

HM: Yeah, so he has been criticized by the Jewish community for wearing a caricature of a Jewish nose onstage and Jewish beard and engaging in antisemitism to the point that he had to issue a public apology [in 2014] for what he did on stage in front of thousands of people.

KP: So I mean I actually didn’t know about this and just looked it up briefly and it looks like he apologized for it. It sounds like he made a mistake and I believe in people’s capacity to grow and apologize. As long as I’ve known him I’ve not gotten the sense he has an antisemitic bone in his body.

(And who are you that gets to decide that, Kei, as someone who is apparently outside of the Jewish community?)

He’s always talking to Jews and he’s been very outspoken about the issue of Palestine, that’s why we brought him on. Because he was someone who was outspoken after the genocide

(Genocide canard counter 2)

began, at great risk to his own career.

(I feel like the people defending Israel are at greater risk of being ostracized in creative communities, which destroys careers. But there were a few cases of people going too far and losing their jobs, so now anyone who "supports Palestine" is a potential martyr. And that's what they want to be, martyrs, because it puts them front and center and shows what good people they are.

Is this a form of getting the consequences out of proportion and center more in the "persecution" of the Pro-Palestine side than in the real numbers?)

So that’s why we chose him, and you know I can’t speak to anyone’s past but it sounds like— 

HM: I’m sorry, I’m sorry to interrupt it’s just really important that we point it out, Macklemore wore a long nose onstage with a Hasidic outfit and marked the Jewish community. This is directly leading to violence against Jews and we know that. Kei be honest, would you accept someone that used blackface?

KP: No, no of course not. But it looks like he apologized.

(You don't even know the details, but "it looks like he apologized" is enough. Great, I can do anything I want as long as I give a token apology!)

HM: Would you accept someone if they apologized, would you take them as a producer, if someone used blackface?

KP: I mean again, some people have the capacity to change. And if he knows he did something wrong then that’s OK. I wasn’t aware of it.

(Gotta love the double standard.  "Blackface is verboten but Jewface is okay if they've changed.")

If I can, I think the subtext of Hen’s question here if I’m understanding correctly is whether having Macklemore on the film coupled with the lack of hostage emphasis, whether that adds up to an antisemitic strain and not just an anti-Zionist strain, is that what you mean Hen?

KP: I just think this idea if he made a mistake and he apologized and Hen you’re making him out to be this raging antisemite.

(Again, who are you to say that he isn't? You're not Jewish, Kei.)

[On the hostages], there are Palestinian hostages. Israel imprisons tens of thousands of Palestinians every year — administratively detains them without charges. Children as young as 12 for throwing rocks at armed vehicles. I think if we’re talking about hostages we should talk about releasing hostages on all sides.

(So... acts of violence are okay, so long as the targets can shoot back, eh?

This is a double standard that or the Israeli are capable of defend themselves so they are valid targets?)

I mean I don’t understand the implication, you’re saying the students are antisemitic for not talking about Israel hostages but it would never be asked of the pro-Israel side to talk about the 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

(It's interesting how just a few lines ago, "Israel is imprisoning tens of thousands of Palestinians every year for no reason", then gives a reason, and then says that there's only ten thousand.  What happened to the previous years' batches? I'm bringing this up not just to point out Kei's routine goalpost moving, but also to point out that he also routinely exaggerates and inflates numbers, percentages, and groups as part of appeals to emotion, while, in contrast, Hen gives specific details, which are then ignored)

We’re not asking Hen to justify these things. I don’t know why the students are being made to speak about 200 Israeli hostages.

("See, they don't count, because they're not as human as Palestinians, and we don't have consistent principles that say that any hostages are bad.  And I think that people kidnapped from their beds and babies are morally equivalent to people who are assaulting others with intent to injure or kill."

Also, I'm pretty sure that if I had the choice, I'd rather spend a year as a prisoner in Israel than a month as a hostage in Palestine. A prisoner and a hostage are not the same thing!)

Hen what would you say to that?

HM: Just to clarify, the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners — hostages, as he calls them — they have committed crimes and are held in Israeli prisons, right? And they get family visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross. I’ve actually facilitated many of those visits. And the ICRC goes and makes sure they’re being treated well. In fact in the latest hostage release eight Palestinian prisoners refused to go back to Gaza because they’ve enjoyed their treatment in these prisons more than they— 

KP: That’s absurd.

("I haven't heard about it so it can't be true.")

HM: — that’s not a lot. But it’s a reminder they’re not hostages and to frame them this way is just meant to do one thing and that’s to — 

KP: Sorry, I think they probably didn’t want to go back because Israel destroyed Gaza.

(Calls it absurd and then tries to reinterpret it in his favor.)

HM: Interesting, so they’d rather stay a hostage? No Israel hostage wanted to stay in the tunnels. That’s the difference.

KP: Yes, because Israel is the one responsible for killing many of the hostages.

(Ah yes, the "Israel kills it owns people" canard.)

If Netanyahu and Israel cared so much about the hostages they wouldn’t be carpet-bombing the place where the hostages are being held.

("Carpet bombing" canard.  If Israel was actually carpet bombing the Strip, the death toll would be orders of magnitude higher.)

HM: Kei, have you been to Gaza?

KP: What?

HM: Have you been to Gaza? Have you been to a war in your life? 

KP: No but I don’t need to go to Gaza— 

("The information I've vaguely absorbed is enough for me to know everything.")

HM: So don’t say people are being killed [by Israelis]. You know each time a hostage has been killed it’s a tragedy that crushes all of us. And also civilians. Any civilians dying in this war. It’s horrific to all of us. But for you to use that, to weaponize it against me to say “your army kills hostages.”

KP: How am I weaponizing?

HM: Those hostages should not have been kidnapped by Hamas. Those hostages should not have been taken from their beds by Hamas and held in tunnels and babies should not have been kidnapped from their beds with their mothers and the women should not have been taken from her bed and raped in the Gaza tunnels. The fact that you don’t speak about it is the issue when you focus on Gaza.

KP: So here’s the reality, and it’s something the protesters have been trying to point out, that this didn’t start on October 7.

(Trying to downplay the atrocity of the 7/10 with the crimes of Israel from before as that justifies it.)

HM: When did it start? When my family was forced out of Iraq in 1941? When?

KP: I mean you can go back 100 years to the First Zionist Congress. You could go back even further.

HM: So when?

KP: So the one thing I want to point out is the premise of your film is this whole war, this genocide,

(Genocide canard counter 3)

started on October 7, on October 8.

(which is interesting, because Israel didn't respond militarily inside the Strip for weeks afterward.  The only response on those days were from people like Kai, celebrating and throwing parties. Remember that one professor who said, on October 15th, that the attack was exhilarating and that anyone who disagreed wasn't human?)

But the genocide in Gaza started in 2007 when Israel imposed a full naval, ground and air blockade on Gaza.

(So, eighteen years of genocide, in which time the population tripled?  Can I trade?  I'll exchange 4 years of genocide with a 90% death rate for 18 years where the population balloons!)

HM: They have a border with Egypt.

KP: Let me finish.

HM: They have a border with Egypt. How did Israel enforce a blockade? Because Israel is supposed to be better? Oh, so you hold Israel accountable but not Egypt.

KP: No I criticize Egypt.

HM: Oh have you protested? I haven’t seen a single sign about Egypt, not even one. Not even in your film.

KP: Because the film wasn’t about the protests. 

(Double standard with "we criticize Egypt also" but our main concern is Israel.)

HM: Oh it was about Israel.

KP: We’re absolutely critical of the Egyptian government. But hold on let me finish. In 2007 Israel imposed a full blockade of the Gaza Strip, controlling everything that goes in and out.

(Yes, because Hamas started using the Strip as a base to attack Israel with, using anything they could get their hands on.)

This policy has been described as being akin to an open-air concentration camp, and not for no reason.

(Holocaust Inversion.

I always wonder since when this is a open concentration camp and how are they supposed to be being exterminated, by dying of hunger or by the hand of Hamas?)

There was an Israeli minister of the Knesset who once joked that Israel is putting the Gazans on a diet, and what he was referring to was that Israel controls the flow of food into Gaza so much so that they can actually calculate the caloric intake of the people there.

(I find it telling that this speech is worthy of condemnation (and it is) but telling someone that they're the next murder target of a terrorist organization is "free speech".

Double standard also because this is used without even considering the time when it was said, but when someone points out the "Curse upon the Jews" of Hamas this considered outdated.)

The genocide in Gaza started long before October 7.

(Genocide canard counter 5)

There was a UN report written in 2018 saying that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020. Before October 7, 95 percent of the water in Gaza was unfit for human consumption; the average Palestinian in Gaza got four hours of electricity.

(Gee, I wonder why?  Is it because Hamas trashed all of the infrastructure in order to repurpose it into rockets?  Oh wait, it is!

Also, I still don't understand why Israel is supposed to be responsible for water and electricity in Gaza, a region they completely left, despite the amount of humanitarian aid Gaza gets.

Because these people think that Gaza is an "open-air concentration camp" and is thus under Israel's complete panopticon and control.)

If you put people in an open-air concentration camp why should we be surprised they try to break out?

(That wasn't trying to break out, that was a killing spree.

Says a lot about their mindset, doesn't it?

They want to clean this saying that a good chunk of the hostages were killed by Israel and that the members of Hamas that really killed someone are a minority, downplaying it.)

Just to quickly clarify, Hen was not involved in the film October 8; there may be some confusion because Debra Messing who’s on his show was an executive producer. But to amplify Kei’s point, Hen, the idea from pro-Palestinian activists that this didn’t start on October 7 but long before — some say 1967 [when Israel captured territory and borders were redrawn] or 1948 — and October 7 was not a beginning but a culmination, how do you respond to that?

KP: This is Israel’s policy and of course collective punishment is a crime against humanity. Regardless of what you think about Hamas or what their role is, to starve two million people because they had an election [in 2007] and elected a government you don’t like is a crime against humanity.

(Good thing that, according to multiple sources, including the UN, there was never famine conditions inside the Strip!)

HM: That we “don’t like.” Do you think Hamas was elected democratically? Come on.

KP: They were. There were international observers that went there and oversaw the election, whether you like it or not is not really the question.

(It was only an election in all the time that Hamas has been in power. And then they said it has been Israel fault that Hamas has been in power this long.)

HM: That’s why there’s a war. Because we don’t like an election.

KP: My point if you leave people in a condition like that, why are we acting so shocked when they decide to break out?

(No, because they keep sending rockets to Israel.

Even before this, the rockets were just the status quo, like the weather.  The war was because Hamas invaded and went on a mass murder campaign.)

Were they supposed to just sit there and accept that and say “this is my new lot in life, I’m just going to live this way, I’m never going to question it, I’m never going to do anything about it? We’re just supposed to sit there and take it?”

(Double standard, Palestine can do anything they want in retaliation but the rockets that the Israeli receive they should do nothing.)

HM: No, so we’re supposed to sit there and take it when 1,200 people are being killed— 

KP: You’re collectively punishing—

HM: That’s what you’re saying though. You’re saying that we should take it.

KP: You’re collectively punishing everyone in Gaza.

HM: You’re saying we should take it, that we should allow them, because we don’t understand what it’s like to have borders, and if you have borders you should be allowed to go and take hostages.

KP: You are collectively punishing the people of Gaza for a crime they didn’t commit. Literally for having an election.

(Ignoring Hen point and doubling down in his version that what happened in 7/10 should not have formed a reaction like that and downplaying that is because they don't like Hamas)

HM: No. No, the war is not punishment. There’s a war because of October 7. Because of the massacre of 1,200 people in one day.

KP: No there’s a war because Israel is enforcing a genocidal blockade policy in Gaza.

(Genocide canard count 6)

HM: You are supporting 1,200 people being killed and a baby being choked to death— 

KP: You’re supporting 200,000 people being killed—

(Even Hamas isn't claiming that number; why do you want another 150,000 people dead, Kei?)

Guys, I understand the passion on both sides. If we can—

HM: I have passion because I’m connected to it. It’s my family that is on the line. It’s my friends that have been killed. That’s why I’m passionate. I’m not sure—

KP: It doesn’t matter if it’s your family.

(At this point, I think that Kai has made it abundantly clear where he stands--and where his ideology stands--regarding the worth of Jewish lives to them.  I.e. Nothing.

Also being indirectly showing support to Hamas even if is contradictory.)

HM: It doesn’t matter if it’s my family?! Are you insane? No, I’m sorry Steve, I can’t— 

OK, Hen, guys, let’s bring it back — I think we all feel understandably heated, we all have stakes in this, and, again, passion. I appreciate that. Let’s bring it back to some U.S. policy. [Long pause.] So we talked a lot about the Khalil and other incidents but there’s obviously a lot going on on campuses now. We’re seeing the Trump administration take action against Harvard and Columbia in the name of antisemitism, and I want to ask both of you just in terms of this policy now, how should we feel about it? Whether it will do any good? Because I think that’s what we can all hope for is to live more peacefully, I think we can all agree with that. Hen why don’t you start and talk a little bit about what you think of this approach.

HM: I need a minute. So let him go first [goes camera-off].

KP: So again, this policy is reflective of the larger crisis here for the Trump administration, for the military-industrial complex, for Zionism, for Israel, which is that they have lost the argument especially among the younger generation.

(Is that the "Jews control the government" canard again?  Oh yes, yes it is!

Also, having looked over this whole thing again... this is almost word-for-word what he said at the beginning.  This isn't a considered statement, it's a catechism--basically a rote answer delivered without thought.)

The pro-Israel side is trying to put forward this increasingly paranoid conspiracy theory that the reason this is happening is because everyone in the world is an antisemite, that the United Nations is antisemitic, that the ICJ is antisemitic, that The New York Times is antisemitic, that Human Rights Watch is antisemitic, that Amnesty International is antisemitic, that Harvard University is antisemitic, that Columbia is antisemitic, that students are antisemitic.

(Well, of course you're not going to believe it, Kei, but we can give evidence of antisemitism at all of those organizations--often from their own internal documentation.)

But I actually think the reality is that it’s not that everyone is irrationally hateful all of a sudden against Jews.

(Again, who are you to decide what counts as antisemitism, Kei?

"...all of a sudden" as if antisemitism isn't millennia old

Don't you know that antisemitism was invented by the Nazis in 1933 and was ended by the Allies in 1945!  /s)

I think it’s that people are sick and tired of watching babies incinerated in their cribs,

(and I wonder how you saw video of that?  Who took the video, who uploaded it, and who edited it?  Which conflict did it come from? Oh, also, Blood Libel canard)

of watching people’s livelihoods destroyed, of watching entire families, entire bloodlines, wiped out.

(Unless they're Israelis, apparently)

I think people don’t like genocide.

(Genocide Canard counter 7)

And I think people are sick and tired of watching their government send money and weapons and 2,000-pound missiles to be dropped on apartment complexes and journalists.

(again with the "Israel is cruel and bombing just for shits and giggles and wanton cruelty" canard.

They really should learn why it is dangerous being a war reporter in general. Do they really think that a certification is like a force field or similar?

Don't forget that a lot of Hamas militants actively seek out being "independent journalists" in order to use that as a shield.)

Hen talks about journalists. This has actually been the deadliest conflict for journalists ever.

(Because they're all terrorists moonlighting as journalists; that's been shown repeatedly.)

Israel doesn’t want that truth out.

Kei, can I ask you just on that previous score. You mentioned a lot of organizations. I don’t want to get into specific ones but people on the right say that there is something endemic to left-wing organizations that can be antisemitic. Do you think that’s true? Clearly there are people on the right and far-right who have problems with antisemitism, I just wrote about some of them. But is is true on the left, with the pro-Palestine movement? I’ll mention this example because Hen just tweeted about it, that the suspect who tried to burn Josh Shapiro’s house down cited the Free Palestine movement. The argument is there’s a normalization that’s happening that says it’s OK to be antisemitic and can lead people like the suspect which, if he did what was alleged, to do something terrible. Is this a problem in your view in the Free Palestine movement?

KP: So with the Josh Shapiro incident, if you look at the video [the suspect] is clearly mentally ill.

("There is no systemic antisemitism on the Left.  Everyone who is antisemitic is having a mental health crisis.  There is no war in Bah Sing Se."

Also, you can look at a short video of someone and diagnose them with "mental illness". And mental illness leads directly to hate and violence against minorities, even if there's no hate against said minorities in society at large, because mentally ill people develop their hate out of thin air and are not influenced by society at large. And of course, there's the whole "mentally ill people are scary and violent" thing, which is not directly related to Israel / antisemitism, but I still found it worth pointing out. Mentally ill people are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.)

He has never posted about Palestine before. The idea that he’s some Palestinian activist is ridiculous. I think he probably has mental issues. I don’t think he has anything to do with the Palestinian movement.

("No True Palestinian activist would do this!")

So you’re not concerned about normalization of antisemitic rhetoric.

KP: Well again, what Hen is doing is making a false equivalency between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

("Jews don't get to define antisemitism, only outsiders do.")

There’s growing anti-Israel sentiment in the United States which is true but to say that this has led to attacks on Jews I think is wrong. And a lot of the incidents, if you look at the ADL’s report on antisemitism, a lot of the antisemitic incidents being reported are just people speaking out in support of Palestine or wearing a keffiyeh or saying Free Palestine. That’s not antisemitism.

("Jews call everything antisemitism, and I don't understand micro-aggressions or hostile environments when they're targeting Jews."

They also put the ADL as being blindly Pro-Israel and with Trump government.)

Hen, what would you say to that, to the idea that tying antisemitism to an anti-Zionist movement is a false equivalency.

HM: Yeah. First I’ll quote the person that wanted to burn Josh Shapiro’s family alive. He said “I have said for years, years before October 7, that I favor a two-state solution, Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully side by side, being able to determine their own future and their own destiny,” that’s what he said to reporters just yesterday. To me it sounds like a legitimate call for peace and co-existence. But that made him go and try to burn down a Jewish family and Jewish governor. So there’s a lot of semantics here that are being thrown around. Since October 7 antisemitic incidents in America have reached an all-time high — yes, even statements about Palestine like the one I cited led this person to go and try to burn an entire Jewish family alive. I think there is a problem of antisemitism on both the left and the right and I think the fact that Kei didn’t even know that Macklemore has used Jewface — they would never touch someone who engaged in racism or homophobia but when it comes to antisemitism it’s such an afterthought that you didn’t even know about it, it wasn’t even an issue.

Maybe I’ll speak briefly about what I’m doing with And They’re Jewish. Because what’s striking to me is the contrast between The Encampments and my project, the whole notion that it’s something they’re not even related to — Kei said it doesn’t matter if you’re related to it — but I am related, I am a person invested in it, and the difference between his film and my series is that the film shows Jewish identity through the lens of political rage, through chants, through erasure, through deciding for Jews what is and isn’t antisemitism. It’s very political, and Jews are just a background noise at best or the villains at worst. But And They’re Jewish centers joy, creativity, diversity, humanity. And it reminds people that Jews are not just headlines or symbols in someone else’s protests; we’re real, complicated, vibrant people. And I think the world needs more of that right now. Because this sort of dehumanization that we’re seeing from the encampments and other causes is directly leading to violence against us, and there are reports after reports, study after study, that show how dehumanization of Jews is leading to violence against us, that led to the worst genocide in modern history of six million Jews.

And that’s our fear today — that this dehumanization, this afterthought about Jewish identity and the way we’re being portrayed by this [pro-Palestine] movement, even if it’s just in the guise of “we’re just speaking about Zionism; we’re just speaking about seven million Jews in Israel that we think should be killed, not all Jews,” it doesn’t matter, it harms real Jews, it’s how a 70-year-old Jewish guy was beaten to death in California at a protest, it’s how we ended up with Josh Shapiro’s house being burned, it’s how we end up with so much violence in this country against us, it’s how we end up being gaslighted about the horrific brutality of October 7.

Thanks Hen, I’m glad you talked about the show, and Kei, I’m glad we spoke about the movie. I hope you each continue to watch each other’s work and we all watch work even from people we don’t agree with. We have time for one last question, so I’ll ask each of you this: What’s something you would like to see change on your own side? Something thought about or done differently. Hen let’s start with you.

HM: I’d like to see more voices from the pro-Israel camp speaking up for Palestinian civilians. I think it’s important that we speak about suffering on both sides and that we humanize both Israelis and Palestinians and we make sure we’re focusing on people as human beings and not just as pawns in some dystopian story.

(Kei ignores this)

That we’re seeing real human beings. I hope Israelis and Palestinians will be seen on both sides.

Thank you for that Hen. Kei, same question. Anything you’d like to see done or handled differently on your end of things?

KP: Yeah, I think there are a lot of people in the U.S. that are being legitimately propagandized or lied to about who the Palestinians are and are being told the same narrative that they were told after 9/11, “a lot of Muslims are violent, that they’re hateful people and the Palestinians are our enemy that Lebanese people are our enemy.”

(American-centric glasses for the conflict, and not bothering to examine any deeper.)

But the reality is our enemy is the military industrial complex, it’s the generals, it’s these politicians who sell us on these wars. I would like the Palestine movement to really engage with more debate with these people who are coming forward and supporting Israel because I think a lot of them are being misled about who Arabs and Muslims and Palestinians are.

(Honestly, Kei, if you're an example of the level of good faith debate coming from your movement...)

Thank you for that Kei. A good note to end on from both of you. I think more understanding about who we all are is a good thing. Before we go I just want to give you guys credit. Usually with this conflict people are chanting behind barricades or talking to their followers and not engaging with another side. I know things got heated and there may be some raw feelings. That’s understandable. I hope everyone takes a minute to takes care of themselves. And then feels good about what they did. Not everyone is willing to sit here and have these conversations — hard as they are, important as they are. So thanks to both of you. I hope we can continue talking, and listening.

[cultkinkcoven]

anyways guys so the hot take of the week is that religious people are offended by demonolatry.

I can’t believe I have to say this but yes, Jews, Christians , Muslims, and all other people from organized monotheistic religions are probably going to be offended by you worshiping demons in general. Crazy concept but yes. Religious people get upset when they see people worshipping or working with demons they believe are evil. If you are concerned with the negative opinion of religious people, keep your practice a secret. It’s what we’ve been doing for centuries. The worship of these demons has never been popular or encouraged. That’s how demons work. They have specifically been demonized, working with them is more controversial than working with pagan Gods who have not been demonized. No it is not fair, that’s simply the way it is.

Regardless of who you are working with or where they come from, you will always be practicing an alternative form of spirituality if you are working with demons. You will always be subject to ridicule for it.

In the last couple posts I’ve made about this, people gotten so over consumed with the logistical claims I was making about the religions of Judaism, Christianity etc. that my main point was completely lost. It’s not my place to speak as a Jewish person, so I’m going to speak only as a demonolater and my experience. I’m still debating deleting that post because the point seems to have flown over everyone’s heads.

So I’m just going to be as direct as possible. Yes. Religious people have always and likely will always be offended by demonolatry regardless of what demon you’re working with.

If you’re using a name that was used by a religion to identify a negative spirit, you are very likely going to offend that religion by using that name and seeking them out. It’s up to you to decide if you care that your practice is offensive to others, because it always will be. The only way to work around actually appropriating any of these religions is to make these demons your own. Just as they encountered and documented these spirits, pagans and demonolaters can do the same, discover their own names, and use them to identify these spirits. In the very short conversation I had with (L*lit) on this subject, she was very excited about the idea. Many goetic demons don’t even use the names documented in the Lesser Key because they were recorded by people who did not respect them. Prince Cerberus never allows me to call him Naberius.

Of course these spirits don’t give the slightest bit of a shit whether your practice offends the church. Nor do they care if you use a Hebrew name. But humans care, and if a religion is asking us not to use the word they invented then okay. That’s easy to work around. We’re still going to be worshiping these demons.

Satanists, Luciferians, and all those who walk the left hand path have never been regarded positively by Christianity. They will never understand why we do what we do and how we benefit from it. This has always and likely will always be the case.

Lucifer isn’t going to abandon his cult because Catholics have a problem with his worship. Nor are the followers of Asmodeus going to stop worshiping him because Jews don’t like it. This is what demonolatry is.

At the end of the day, you will offend someone. That’s the reality of the left hand path. You will be hated and you will be used as a negative example. These energies have been demonized and so will you. If that’s too anxiety inducing for you, demonolatry might not be the path for you. This has never been a popular path for a reason. Demonolatry has never been about pleasing the church.

There’s 1000 other things that I do that are offensive to religious people. I find the accounts of ancient Christian magis and other religious people to be valuable because of the information they provided on these spirits. They were the only accounts of these spirits that have actually survived. But I have no interest in appeasing the beliefs of these magis, or really anyone else but myself.

So yeah. I can’t believe “demon worshippers are offensive to religious people regardless of which demon they are worshipping” was my most controversial take of 2025 so far, but yeah. It is what it is.

[jewish-joy]

I have been… biting my tongue from saying things. 

Partially because I’m not “really Jewish” (on the way to it via conversion), and because I didn’t want this blog to be political. 

But I realize I want this page to be a safe space. If anyone takes issue with what I’m about to say, I don’t want them on this page. 

I joined the college jewish community very shortly after 10/7 and was immediately welcomed in. There was no separation between me and the girl who had gone to orthodox shul all her life and was the head of the state youth group. I was told explicitly  “you are one of us. And together, we are mourning. We have lost our people and so have you.” 

Still I felt no authority to speak on things as insidious as antisemitism until recently. But how many times do you have to experience an antisemitic incident until you get to stand up? 

Six. The answer is six. 

Since explicitly aligning myself with Jewishness, I have lost friends who told me I have “dual loyalties” in so many words. I’ve been ostracized in events because we were singled out . I’ve been followed back to my dorm room from events by people hurling genocide accusations at me- white girls wearing keffiyahs who don't know anything about the Nakba when I try to connect with them about how awful it was.

My face was used in a local “fight jew hate” campaign” where I’m in a group of people with clearly middle eastern descent. But what circulated around my campus was my blonde hair and blue eyes, with people using laughing emojis.

“This is who we’re supposed to be defending!? Bitch please! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣” 

(Which is perfectly ironic because they singled out the person who wasn't ethnically Jewish and focused on her. )

Campus security and the disciplinary office knows me quite well from all the reports I've filed whether for me or other people.

I leave campus for breaks. Even though I’m returning to my highly Catholic conservative family, I breathe a sigh of relief. I don't have to look over my shoulder constantly or check myself in the surroundings I'm in. I already feel the dread about returning in January.

What hurts is the blindness- the lack of nuance- that is being given. Every single Jewish person at my school is not a self described zionist, other than that they acknowledge Jewish indignity to the land, and that there was a reason for the creation of Israel- not even justification in the current state or the matter it came about.

But they- and we- shouldn't have to prove ourselves. We shouldn't be debating if we should fundraise for Gazans (we are) in case someone accuses us of "lying about our intentions" or if we'd be pointed out as "the good jews!" They shouldn't have to have a tab open on their computer for Israeli passports, even though they desperately don't want to leave the United States. I shouldn't have to wonder whenever I'm at a synagogue "If I get killed here in a terrorist attack before being immersed in the mikvah, will I get a Catholic or Jewish funeral?"

But that never mattered. Our voices never did. Unless the antisemitism came from a high school dropout neo-nazi with a shaved head and swastika jacket, it's never going to matter.

I will never forget- even as I advocate for Palestinians, call for a ceasefire, and donate. Or any other cause where I'll be marching besides these activists I can never call well meaning.

I could go on and on about it. But I won't be able to write it out in this post.

All I know is when the counsel of rabbis ask me if I'm ready to be apart of an unpopular group, I'm going to have to fight myself from laughing at the question

[mariacallous]

Yesterday’s violent attack in Boulder, Colorado, at a weekly Jewish-community gathering to support the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, left eight people hospitalized. One of the victims is a Holocaust survivor, according to a local rabbi. Jewish leaders nationwide are demanding greater government action to protect the community, which is still reeling just two weeks after the killing in Washington, D.C., of two young staff of the Israeli embassy, gunned down outside an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee.

The anti-Semitic motivation of these attacks is clear. Such homicidal hate crimes have no justification; indeed, their collateral damage is to destroy the space for any reasonable debate about how Israel has conducted its war in Gaza. The two attacks are linked not only by their motivation, but by their horrific, performative intimacy. Terrorism always aims to shock with the gruesomeness of bloody murder—one thinks of the Islamic State decapitation videos. Yet terrorism typically wields the threat of random violence, the notion that any innocent might be caught in its vortex of cruelty. These attacks are different because they were directed very specifically at people the attacker took to be Jewish. Their intimacy was precisely intended to inflict horror on a particular community and imply that no Jew could be innocent.

In Boulder, the suspect in police custody has been charged with a federal hate crime. He has been named as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, and used a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to burn his victims. He reportedly yelled “Free Palestine!” during the attack. The attacker’s method had an improvised yet theatrical quality; even if its symbolism was not consciously intended, the effort to incinerate Jews has a hideous historical echo.

In the case of the D.C. attack, the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, drove from Chicago to the Capital Jewish Museum. There, he allegedly found and killed two Israeli embassy staff—according to reports, shooting his victims multiple times like a mob executioner. Authorities say the suspect also chanted “Free, free Palestine” when he was detained, adding, “I did it for Gaza.”

Pervasive anti-Semitism is what enables attackers to believe that they are striking back at Israel by trying to kill any Jew, anywhere. This hateful mindset assigns responsibility for specific Israeli policies to Jewish people all over the world. Jews thus stand condemned purely for being Jewish. This is a sure tell of anti-Semitic unreason—given that neither American Jews, nor Israelis themselves, are of one mind on anything, let alone the Netanyahu government’s Gaza policy.

The Colorado victims were meeting in support of hostages taken by Hamas. The D.C. victims were working to advance their embassy’s diplomatic mission. Both sets of people belonged to the best traditions of dialogue and peaceful advocacy, the absolute opposite of irrational hate. The personal, proximate violence that these attackers used was designed to create a spectacle that makes all Jewish Americans feel vulnerable.

Both alleged perpetrators pointedly had no intention of trying to escape from the scene of these crimes. The attacker in D.C., after all, concluded his attack by going into the Capital Jewish Museum, where people aided him, thinking that he was seeking refuge from the violence outside; he was detained only after he identified himself as the assailant and yelled pro-Palestinian slogans. The Boulder suspect was easily detained after witnesses identified him to arriving authorities. The premise of these attackers’ grotesque performance is that killing Jews, any Jews, is justified and good. Terrorism usually seeks to cloak its hate in a higher cause. But these recent attacks dispense with the pretense. “Free Palestine,” in the mouth of these attackers, is a threat of extermination, the expression of an eliminationist project. With the horrible intimacy of their point-blank shooting or flamethrower immolation, the perpetrators appear to think they have begun that project. Although a graphic description of these attacks—a fleeing victim hunted down or burned alive—may risk the crimes’ glorification or mimicry, their qualitative horror should not be glossed over.

As far as we know, these assailants are not part of a larger terrorist scheme. The “lone wolf” phenomenon makes preventing this kind of violence more difficult; with no organizational footprint for intelligence services to track, nothing in the profile of either suspect raises any obvious flag that would have provided a possible warning of such an attack. Buttressing support and protections for the Jewish community is important, but will be imperfect. The solution is simply to delegitimize, constantly and forcefully, these acts—without qualification or broader discussion. Public discourse must maintain a strong distinction between what Israel does and who Jews are. To do otherwise is to side with this terror.

[ngage2003]

Alright. So, here is a fun question.

What the fuck is up with Brian's/"Hoody's" continuous use of religious-coded phrasing?

⟦Note: I am Jewish and not that familiar with a ton of Catholicism, and am mostly just going crazy here. Don't take my theory too seriously unless you agree with me in which case do.⟧

⟦Also, content warning: graphic verbiage towards the end, also heavy religious discussion, duh. (Also maybe sacrilege?)⟧

What I mean specifically is his use of the term "Deluge" in one of his videos, the association between himself and the word "Advocate," and most importantly, him calling the face connected to the Operator "The Ark."

Footnote: Face as in the center of the Ark is the "mouth" of the Operator, (in other words, how it eats) and the Ark as a whole is the closest thing we see to a representation of what it is, an unfathomable monster, like a face can be seen as a representation of a person/personhood.

These names are on first read are just seemingly randomly chosen, but I think there is some small sense here, if a bit abstractly. Based on comic 3.5 of Marble Hornets, ToTheArk, we know Brian is stuck talking in codes, so lets try to unravel this one.

Lets start with the simplest.

】 Advocate

Brian calls himself "Advocate" in relation to an old video of himself where he is talking to Alex, but due to the glitchiness on the video I believe you could kind of take this as a general statement about himself. Regardless, what the hell does that mean?

When we use the term "advocate" in plain speech, it means a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy, but there are specific ties with it under Catholicism. There is variation depending on what translation you use of course, but one example of religious use is in one title of Christ as "our Advocate with the Father" (I John 2:1). Another is how the word advocate is used in relation to the Holy Spirit, (John 14:16,) as another advocate to more or less "help [humanity] and be with [them] forever".

"Ok, cool I guess," you say, "but uh what does that have to do with Marble Hornets?"

Well! While Jesus is off having a Phoenix Wright case with God/being god's messenger pigeon for humanity, Brian is helping someone himself! Specifically, he is helping Jay, the person all the ToTheArk videos are for, for the most part. He is quite literally guiding him around, what for we could debate, but he clearly has his own abstract chess game going on and leading Jay by a metaphorical carrot on a stick is part of it.

I believe this is why Brian calls himself the Advocate. He is with not only Jay but also Jessica, while also being on the former's side, (he doesn't want him dead like the Operator does at least,) and also helping and/or guiding him. I mean, he gets him out of his house before Alex burns it down, as example, and he gives Jay the name of the Operator, along with hints that Alex is dangerous/doesn't exactly have his best intentions. Hell! In Entry 78, if you're comfortable jumping that far ahead, he even gives Jay a knife to free himself with, and his camera back. This of course accidentally leads to Jay's death, but I don't think Brian wanted that to be honest, not with how he hates Alex and the Operator. Brian is just unfortunately human rather than actual divinity, and probably couldn't plan for that.

Let's move on.

2.】 The Deluge

This one is in my opinion the least clear, which is why I stuck it in the middle, but I am still going to give it a shot.

The "Deluge" video is a ToTheArk video where we see a flashing light, weird audio, and then the words, "watching you," along with the description being "///". Purportedly, if you speed up and reverse the audio, it is saying "Alex" over and over again. Combining it with the ending words, we get "Alex [is] Watching You."

What is the Deluge in Catholicism though? Well, simply put its the Great Flood, specifically that really swag one (/sarcastic tone) that God summons for 40 days and nights to drown everyone for being too sinful or whatever, except for his favorite boy, Noah, and his family, who are inside a big boat. Awesome. Cool. Makes sense.

We could get up in the semantics about the "ark" of Noah and "ToTheArk" but A) I have a whole chapter on ToTheArk and The Ark, and B) I personally believe the Ark is named for the Ark of the Covenant so lets just scrap that idea.

Instead, I believe that in this part, Brian is making a comparison between Alex and the Deluge. After all, Alex did kill the cast of Marble Hornets in kind of rapid fire succession like a quickly rising Deluge would, all except for Jay who he had emotional ties to. (And Tim but Tim's survival is complicated and isn't purposeful.)

"Wait!" You cry, "how do you know that Alex killed everyone in rapid fire succession??"

Well, technically I don't, but I do know he tried to kill like 3 of his friends in literally the same 24 hours, which would make sense as if the extremely close cast of Marble Hornets noticed other people were missing and they were last seen with Alex, that would get suspicious, but I digress. All of these killings take place in the hospital in my opinion, where the Operator seemingly has some power, or at least is able to appear more regularly like other places in Rosswood and Alex's house.

First of these was the least successful, Tim, who Alex led to the hospital in Entry 56 and then beat into unconsciousness with a stick that is canonically a pipe based on cast commentary. We see him (or in my opinion, Masky,) scrambling around at night then, using the camera to find his way in the dark, before hiding against a wall. It is very likely to me that he stayed here over night. There are some strange parts of the tape though, like Alex being randomly in the hospital at night, as if he was looking for Tim for some reason.

Regardless, there is then Brian in Entry 51, who is led to the hospital before the Operator snatches Alex away for a moment. (In my opinion probably to Operatorture him a bit because he was hesitant to kill Brian because he actually knows him as a friend (Entry 84) but whatever, coughs.) Brian then wanders around the hospital with Alex's camera before finding Tim huddled up against a wall, much to his confusion, before the Operator shows up and some weirdness happens and Brian dies while Tim/Masky disappears.

Now, we have seen Masky go to the Hospital after Operator encounters seemingly to cope, so maybe this was coincidence, but there is some dialogue in Entry 51 that makes me believe this isn't, especially based on Entry 22, where we see Alex seemingly leading Seth either to his death by the Operator in a strange dilapidated building at night. (Hey, that sounds a bit familiar?) That dialogue is :

Brian: Where’s Seth at? Alex: Uh, we came out here yesterday and he wasn’t feeling too good so he just stayed home today.

Hey that is convenient. You brought him here yesterday and now he just magically isn't feeling good.

In my opinion it is kind of obvious here that Alex probably killed Seth and Brian along with trying to kill Tim after merely finding a convenient place to do so. This was all in the span of 24 hours or less, kind of much like a certain flood might.

This moment is definitely a subversion though, (as use of christian imagery often is in Marble Hornets) as rather than the Flood being a tool of God to destroy the wickedness of men or whatever, Alex is becoming a tool of the Operator to feed it.

And finally, 3.】 The Ark

Wooo Boy. The Ark. Ok. okOkOKOK.

Now, we all know what Brian named the face/mouth of the Operator "The Ark," but what IS the Ark in Catholicism? Maybe you're raising your hand right now and saying "ah that thing Noah went on" and you are technically correct but also wrong. There is a far more important Ark in Catholicism than that one.

Lets talk about the Ark of the Covenant real quick, specifically what it represents rather than solely that fun little golden box, as much as I would love to talk about it and the arks of synagogues.

Ok so I am probably going to mangle some theology but stick with me. There are two Arks of the Covenant in Catholicism, the one of the Old Testament, (the first book of Christian canon which more or less covers backstory,) and the New Testament, which is more or less Jesus's teachings.

Sidenote: The Old Testament is NOT the same as the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible. The former is one scripture while the latter is technically three, and even if it shares some similarities with the Torah, (the first part of the Tanakh,) the two are pretty different and both have their own wildly differently translations and cultures around them.

The Old Testament's covenant is of similar design to that of Judaism's, being a symbol of the covenant between God and his followers, built by the holiest of man's hands but carrying divinity in the form of the commandments within it.

The Ark of the Covenant of the New Testament though is a bit different, as it is Mary.

She literally carries the covenant between God and man, the connection between him and his followers. She builds it inside her, acting as both carrier and partial creator to this firm bridge.

I believe, Brian gave the Ark its name, because in a sense, it is its own sort of womb.

The Ark is a close off yet impossibly living environment, one that bridges between our reality and the true center of whatever it and the Operator are. It feeds by leeching off of the world outside it, reaching through Rosswood and growing and gorging. Much like the natural parasitic nature of an embryo or fetus to its mother, it is tied to our world, dependent on it, dependent on us even as it warps and robs people of themselves.

Whatever is beyond the Ark, it is something as unfathomably monstrous as divinity, a holy tapeworm that siphons off nutrients from our world, warps it to fit its needs, literally shifting around the land to get closer to satiating its hunger, apathetic to the rules and limits of our world.

-

Even as we get to this answer though, we still technically haven't answered our original question.

Why is Brian of all people using this continuous religious-coded phrasing?

Well, this I believe in part has to do with how the Ark feeds. It is as much stomach as it is womb, digesting you slowly, acidity peeling back your layers until it eventually gets to your core, your most fundamental beliefs and self.

Alex's core was Jay in a sense, which is why he refused to kill him, at least until the Ark and Operator fully broke him down at the end of season 2, at which point he fell apart completely as a person in season 3. (I.E. he stopped shaving, he didn't get new glasses when Brian knocked off and presumably broke his in Entry 67, he started constantly corrupting film.)

Brian's core is still in tact though, even with how ruined he is by the Ark and Operator, left only able to speak in codes.

I think Brian was raised with a strong sense of wrong and right. It is also why he becomes so obsessed with Alex dying, with Jay surviving, with taking on this great burden of playing this complicated chess game against this paranatural entity and stopping all this. Right and wrong were simply taught to him at a very young age, ingrained into him, and his compassion and empathy, (the things that led to him goading Tim into helping because Alex needed actors and inviting Alex to dinner because he was lonely,) were torn away by the Ark.

I think his moral compass could in part be so strong be due to, or at least in conjunction with, the fact he was raised religiously. I think he probably strayed a bit from his religion in College as most people do, but it is still something integral to him, something at his core that he knows even when nothing else is making sense.

This is not to say I think Brian is still religious now, (I doubt you could look into the center of the Ark and still be religious honestly,) but it is why he clings to religious metaphor in the middle of all his strange codes.

That is my headcanon.

Thank you for reading.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the ABC News debate stage with a mission: trigger a Trump meltdown.

She succeeded.

Former President Donald Trump had a mission too: control yourself.

He failed.

Trump lost his cool over and over. Goaded by predictable provocations, he succumbed again and again.

Trump was pushed into broken-sentence monologues—and even an all-out attack on the 2020 election outcome. He repeated crazy stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and was backwards-looking, personal, emotional, defensive, and frequently incomprehensible.

Harris hit pain point after pain point: Trump’s bankruptcies, the disdain of generals who had served with him, the boredom and early exits of crowds at his shrinking rallies. Every hit was followed by an ouch. Trump’s counterpunches flailed and missed. Harris met them with smiling mockery and cool amusement. The debate was often a battle of eyelids: Harris’s opened wide, Trump’s squinting and tightening.

Harris’s debate prep seemed to have concentrated on psychology as much as on policy. She drove Trump and trapped him and baited him—and it worked every time.

Trump exited the stage leaving uncertain voters still uncertain about whether or not he’d sign a national abortion ban. He left them certain that he did not want Ukraine to win its war of self-defense. He accused Harris of hating Israel but then never bothered to say any words of his own in support of the Jewish state’s war of self-defense against Hamas terrorism. In his confusion and reactiveness, he seemed to have forgotten any debate strategy he might have had.

Something every woman watching the debate probably noticed: Trump could not bring himself to say the name of the serving vice president, his opponent for the presidency. For him, Harris was just a pronoun: a nameless, identity-less “she,” “her,” “you.” It’s said that narcissists cope with ego injury by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the person who inflicted the hurt. If so, that might explain Trump’s behavior. Harris bruised his feelings, and Trump reacted by shutting his eyes and pretending that Harris had no existence of her own independent of President Joe Biden, whose name Trump was somehow able to speak.

Hemmed, harried, and humiliated, Trump lost his footing and his grip. He never got around to making an affirmative case for himself. If any viewer was nostalgic for the early Trump economy before its collapse in his final year in office, that viewer must have been disappointed. If a viewer wanted a conservative policy message, any conservative policy message, that viewer must have been disappointed. When asked whether he had yet developed a health-care plan after a decade in politics, Trump could reply only that he had “concepts of a plan.”

Almost from the start, Harris was in control. She had better moments and worse ones, but she was human where Trump was feral. She had warm words for political opponents such as John McCain and Dick Cheney; Trump had warm words for nobody other than Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian strongman whom Trump praised for praising Trump. It was an all-points beatdown, and no less a beating because Trump inflicted so much of it on himself.

At a minimum, this display will put an end to the Trump claim that Harris is a witless nonentity unqualified to engage in debate. Harris met Trump face-to-face before tens of millions of witnesses. She dominated and crushed him, using as her principal tools her self-command and her shrewd insight into the ex-president’s psychic, moral, and intellectual weaknesses.

Will it matter that Harris so decisively won? How can it not? But it may matter more that Trump so abjectly lost to a competitor for whom he could not utter a syllable of respect.

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

goyim who say that "antizionism is not antisemitic", or believes all jews have to be vehemently antizionist, are absolutely antisemitic. I'm talking about the original, true definition of zionism (the jewish right to self determination) and not political/revisionist zionism used by the israeli government. i hate what the israeli government has turned zionism into and even though revisionist zionism is technically a real form of zionism i think it makes a joke out of the other branches bc it throws a lot of core ideals out of the window. zionism is about building a safe place for jews in eretz israel, not trying to conquer as much shit as possible.

if a goy thinks jews have to antizionist then that alienates a huge part of the community. most jews i know are zionists to varying degrees. we believe we have a right to our ancestral homeland, and that we are allowed to connect to the history we have in israel regardless of where we live. I may be wrong about most jews being zionists! I'm sephardic and i interact mostly with other sephardim and some mizrahim. However, most jews are ashkenazim and im not close enough with any of them to know their opinions on zionism or im not aware that they are ashkenazi.

goyim cannot be against a sizable chunk of the jewish population without being antisemitic. it sounds ridiculous to say "i support this group but only if they disagree with that core belief that many of them have!" in order to talk about jewish people from an outside perspective then goys need to learn what defines us.

there's also two main options when a goy believes jews must be antizionist. they either know the true definition of zionism or they have no fucking clue what it actually is (yet still think they do). in the first case, theyre clearly against an important belief of jewish ppl, which as I said before, is antisemitic. in the second one, they are speaking for the jewish community without learning our history, which is also antisemitic. you cannot make decisions for a community you are not part of ESPECIALLY if you dont know shit about them.

it is very, very important that goyim learn about the jews before saying shit about us. expecting us to be against our right to self determination is complete fuckery. believing that we all have to agree on a complex topic is laughable. debate and arguments are a crucial part of our lives, and goyim should not attempt to take that away from us. we can't fuckin agree on what to flavor our rice with sometimes, much less an issue as complex as zionism. even though a lot of jews are zionists we still have our own unique opinions that may differ greatly from other zionists. we also recognize that antizionist jews are valid and they tend to feel the same about us.

zionism is simply our right to self determination and our right to be connected to israel, whether its an emotional connection or we actually live there. i also firmly believe in everyone's right to self determination, including palestine. i don't think that jews are the only ones who deserve that right. all groups that have been displaced or are currently being displaced are allowed to connect to their homeland however they wish. it doesn't matter if the displacement was yesterday or a thousand years ago.

if you're jewish id love to hear your opinion on this. if you're a goy, please sit back and listen. it is not your place to decide how jews should interpret our own history.

[o-uncle-newt]

The Incredible Shrinking Wimsey

As alluded to in my previous post from earlier today...

Okay, so there is a pretty common thing you see from people, whether they like Gaudy Night or hate it, which is this idea that Sayers made Wimsey taller and/or hotter over time- as, some say, she fell more and deeper in love with him. The "hotter" I think is debatable, though I fall on the side of not- IMO his actual physical description remains very consistent over time, with him being described as having a "high beaked profile" as late as Busman's Honeymoon, and his personal character traits/manners and wealth/title/intelligence do a lot of work for him in terms of attractiveness to women. (The strongest counterargument to this point is probably Murder Must Advertise in which he's somehow crazy attractive to multiple women while undercover- presumably that's a combination of the manners, intelligence, and... macho pond diving ability? Not really my favorite Sayers book tbh. We'll get back to it.)

But it's VERY easy to refute the "taller" allegation, and in fact when you try to you notice something weird- that Wimsey may arguably get SHORTER over the course of the books and then yoyo back.

Do we care about continuity?

Sayers and continuity, I will say, is weird. I love how she remembers incredibly clearly that she had Abrahams the cartoonishly Jewish jeweler show Wimsey a ruby engagement ring in an earlier short story and has Abrahams sell him that very ring in Busman's Honeymoon (in fact I love it enough that I wrote a missing scene fic about it). I also perversely love how she has Harriet de-age by about three years for literally no reason and how, to make the scenario for Busman's Honeymoon work, she transfers her upbringing from the city (as made clear in Have His Carcase) to the country. It's like she cares more about some things than others, and the things she cares about are the vibes. I respect that, because her vibes are generally impeccable.

And that's why I think that it's actually pretty important that Sayers may actually shrink Wimsey to make a point, and important to point out to people that she very much does not make him taller, certainly not in a bid to emphasize his attractiveness. So let's go through the known stats (and if I'm missing anything, please comment to add!):

A) When you google "Lord Peter Wimsey height" you get that he is of "average height." I refuse to word search all the books until I find the exact reference for this but I don't doubt it's there somewhere.

B) In Whose Body?, Wimsey is described as "rather a small man, but not undersized," in comparison to if he'd been "six foot three." Vague but definitely he's not meant to be tall per se.

C) In Clouds of Witness, as Wimsey and Parker are trying to figure out whether "No. 10" could have gotten over the wall, Wimsey says that he's five foot nine. This is unambiguous- he says it straight out. (Parker, in contrast, is six feet.)

D) In Murder Must Advertise, Wimsey is stated to be too short to be a Metropolitan Police officer. This is VERY often pulled out as an example of how short he is, but the real question is what it actually means. In doing some online searching, I got anywhere between 5'7 and 5'10 as the potential required height (with 5'10 being the height as listed in the Lord Peter Wimsey Companion). HOWEVER, I believe that the required height at the time would be somewhere between 5'8 and 5'9, as expressed in this Parliamentary record. If someone can find a better reference point, please share! But in the meantime it would seem that Wimsey may be shorter than 5'9, his previously listed height in Clouds of Witness.

E) Gaudy Night is a FASCINATING one, so I'm going to divide it into two parts. One is the part that people tend to pull out, in my opinion wrongly, to indicate that Wimsey got taller. The other is the part that makes me even more convinced that Sayers shrank him.

E1) It's sometimes said that Wimsey clearly got taller because Harriet "can see him in a crowd." Let me pull out the quote:

Scanning those sacred precincts, therefore, from without the pale, Harriet became aware that the local colour included a pair of slim shoulders tailored to swooning-point and carrying a well-known parrot profile, thrown into prominence by the acute backward slant of a pale-grey topper. A froth of summer hats billowed about this apparition, so that it resembled a slightly grotesque but expensive orchid in a bouquet of roses.

Nothing about him being tall and visible, just about his hat being tall and visible and his face being seen underneath it! And he may well be taller than the women he's surrounded by, but at anywhere between 5'7 and 5'9 (as established above) he most likely would be, given that men tend to be taller than women- which we'll return to below. There is no indication from here that Wimsey is meant to be shown as tall.

E2) More tellingly, there's the famous line closer to the end of the book:

"Bless the man, if he hasn't taken my gown instead of his own! Oh, well, it doesn't matter. We're much of a height and mine's pretty wide on the shoulders, so it's exactly the same thing."

I can't easily find the average height of an English woman in the 1930s, but after reading a bunch of different sites and articles and such and extrapolating, I get a general impression of between 5'1 and 5'4. For context, the average height of an English woman now is apparently 5'3-5'4, and while immigration from developing countries may affect that, average heights worldwide still seem to have overall increased since the start of the 20th century, if not necessarily by massive margins. These days, the countries that have the tallest average height for women have it at about 5'6/5'7, as far as I can tell.

We don't get a tremendous amount of vital statistics about Harriet Vane. Wimsey describes her as "long limbed" in Busman's Honeymoon, which presumably implies tall (though could also just say something about her proportions), but at the same time she is never, to my knowledge, remarked upon by any other character to be of any kind of exceptional height. This is subjective, of course, but from experience (as a shortie whose sister is six inches taller), once a woman is about 5'9 people start making comments, so let's assume that she's tallish but not notably Tall. 5'7 or 5'8 would work at the upper end of that, which is the height we established from Murder Must Advertise for Wimsey, as it happens!

Obviously, Harriet may not be EXACTLY the same height as Wimsey- but we know that she can't be that much shorter from the above quote. Here's an indication, though, that she may even be shorter than 5'7- the fact that she's around the same height as Annie, who is described as of medium height. We deduce this from two places at least- Lord Saint George says that the woman he saw at Shrewsbury is "about your height or a bit less" to Harriet, and Miss Pyke observes that the dress on the dummy is for a woman of "medium height." While as Gherkins notes Annie may be a bit shorter than Harriet, "medium height" in the context of women's clothing would, given height tendencies, be shorter than "medium height" for a man like Wimsey. So even if Harriet is taller than Annie, and relatively tall for a woman, for her to be both "medium height" and about the same height as Wimsey he'd have to be on the short side.

And, finally,

F) In Busman's Honeymoon, we're told that "[Wimsey's] height was a sensitive point with him" and then that he is... five foot nine. Just the same as he'd been in Clouds of Witness.

All this to say- it seems pretty clear to me that Wimsey starts off about 5'9, a perfectly respectable male height, and either stays that way or gets even shorter, depending on how you look at it. 5'9 a perfectly respectable male height while not being considered tall per se, at least in Europe. Wimsey also (as he's often described) being very slim would contribute perhaps to him seeming a bit smaller than he is.

So why does Wimsey shrink? I like to think that I've made the case for it that he does, and the reason why I emphasize it (rather than, as in my previous post, just yelling about him not growing) is because it's hard not to imagine that she very much did it to make a point.

Murder Must Advertise, as alluded to above, I think is partly a function of a certain kind of action-novel laziness rather than a statement about Wimsey as a person, to be honest. "Death Bredon" is a rogue, and rogues have women fall for them and use it. By showing that Wimsey is able to attract so many women as Death Bredon, without the advantages of name, title, money, and manners (or at least, his usual kind of manners), and also without height, Sayers conveys his charm. Again, I don't find it particularly convincing, but I do find it interesting that much of the charm and mystery that gets Dian de Momerie, at least, interested in "Death Bredon" is based on his athleticism and nimbleness, which actually are helped by his comparatively small and slim stature. A taller man may not have managed that dive into a pond in the same way...

Gaudy Night... well, I mean, that's the one that is basically all narrated by Harriet, who is falling/has fallen in love with Wimsey. She's naturally going to be biased, and her biases and blind spots are basically the structure around which the book is constructed. The whole book is constructed around how Harriet sees Wimsey, and so the fact that they are the same height, that Wimsey is significantly shorter (for example) than Reggie Pomfret, that Wimsey's self defense classes with Harriet focus on skill and using the other person's strength to compensate for being small yourself, that Wimsey get Harriet to accept his proposal by putting his head down and making himself smaller... the whole book is about Harriet seeing Wimsey as equal to her so him being specifically physically small relative to other men in a way that will not overpower her is very relevant. (In marked contrast, incidentally, to AS Byatt's Possession, about which I've written a long screed about how much I hate its approach to male/female dynamics as relate, among other things, to size.)

All of this is less important to be spelled out in Busman's Honeymoon, at which point they're married already and Harriet feels good about it, all things being equal. So Wimsey can safely go back to being 5'9 again. As, indeed, he pretty much always was.

[fmluder24]

The X Files Loves Dead Jews (Part 7/7): Fox and the Ferengi: On Reclamation

All other meta on the topic can be found here.

At the end of the book People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn pivots from a book that has lingered on the worst suffering of Jewish history and people’s shameless exploitation of it and concludes with a celebration of living Jews in the form of doing Talmud study. 

Faced with a canon that is stuffed full of tropes around dead Jews, how can we, especially as Jews, find a way to still engage with the show? This meta segment will look at one way in which some fans chose to do so. Some fans chose to take a caricature around whom these dead Jew tropes swirl and make him into a living embodiment of Jewish joy.

Randomfoggytiger wrote a meta on Jewish Fox Mulder that, as you can probably tell at this point, I really didn’t care for. It basically went over a pretty basic interpretation of Jewish laws around who counts as a Jew and then gathered evidence for and against the head canon, although RFT stated after she wasn’t trying to prove or disprove anything. A lot of what she brought up frankly shouldn’t count IMO. Scully’s hallucination of his funeral in “Field Trip,” or the funeral she planned in S8, really don’t say anything about his own self-conception. There was also a detour into the autopsy he arranged for Teena in S7, which really has nothing to do with whether or not he is Jewish, as sometimes burial customs are not followed for a variety of reasons, especially by assimilated Jews. The only things I will concede is that yeah, his dad has a Christian funeral, and yeah, he cries in a church at the end of “Conduit.” These don’t matter to me because they have no bearing on how I think about his Jewishness.

The crux of the issue is that RFT and a lot of non-Jewish (but some Jewish people, we’re not a monolith) fans think of the head canon as being something that begs the question of whether or not Mulder is literally Jewish in terms of heritage or observance. The thing is, in canon, he is honestly not intended to be Jewish. He is, however, intended to be to quote my last meta, “rich, elite, cheap, self-hating, nebbish, Holocaust victim, Cabal-born, Nazi-hunted, antisemite-targeted, ‘true’ God-hated and ‘true’ God-hating [and] Yiddish-knowing.” That is to say, they shoveled a lot of (mostly negative) tropes around how Jews are written into Mulder, mostly in ways that characterize him as a victim or as all-powerful to flesh out his Jesusness. He isn’t Jewish per se, but he is The Jew metaphorically as he exists in the culturally Christian imagination. If they were writing a Jewish character, they would write exactly the same character, just with a circumcision or an IBS joke or two.

When I at least talk about Jewish Fox Mulder, I’m not talking about Jewishness in the way that I would talk about the Jewishness of Toby Ziegler from The West Wing or Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex Girlfriend. I’m talking about Jewishness the way I would talk about, and do talk about, the Jewishness of the Ferengi. 

What are the Ferengi?

The Ferengi are a Star Trek species of money-loving, legalistic, yarmulke-wearing, big-nosed, big-eared, short, sexist goblins that show up in several of the Star Trek series. Some people “debate” whether or not they are supposed to be a Jewish caricature, but I don’t take such debates seriously. They are. 

Something that may surprise outsiders to the Jewish world is that there is a contingent of Jewish Trekkies who love the Ferengi, especially the more nuanced, fleshed-out versions that we see in Deep Space Nine. That series, which had a lot of Jews on the writing team, explicitly blends in Jewish ethics into the Ferengi to soften their edges a little. (The Ferengi follow pikuach nefesh, or the teaching that you can break Jewish, or in this case Ferengi, law to save a life.) In my weekly Talmud study group where we are reviewing Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of Our Fathers) line by line, it’s pretty common for us to get off track drawing comparisons to the canonical 286 Rules of Acquisition that are the basis for Ferengi society. This is done with joy.

When some of us look at the Ferengi, rather than feeling anger over how Star Trek sees us, we decide to embrace them. Everything bad you can say about them is something people have said about us Jews for millennia. We can love them anyway, just like we can love ourselves despite such hate. In fact, maybe we can even love them because of the ways in which they are stereotypical. Cuz hey, some of us do love money, and do have big noses, and meet stereotypes, and I love us anyway. 

Similarly, I can love Fox Mulder despite and at the end because of, the ways in which he is a walking caricature. Yeah, he is rich but cheap and has a big nose that he kinda hates and yeah, people target him in public with antisemitism, and yeah, he’s a bit of an effeminate pervert, and yeah, he’s got major, seemingly mutual, beef with the Christian God. What about it? Everything you can hate about him (and everything the writers seem to have hated about Duchovny, frankly) is something people hate about Jews, to the point of trying to kill us. To love him is to love ourselves. 

Unlike the Ferengi in DS9, Mulder gets all the bad parts of a Jew and none of the joy. So a lot of us write head canons and fics and make jokes that make him into a literal Jewish guy who is an atheist sure (like 62% of American Jews), but likes Jewish food and Jewish traditions and lives Jewish values. We can give him the good parts of being a Jew (and I promise you, my reader, there are many), through the power of fic. Some people take this instinct in a slightly different direction and make Scully a convert to Judaism, and while I don’t personally HC it, it is an equally valid way to fix CC’s mistake.

In addition to the desire to give him Jewish joy, we can see American Jewish history and identity struggles in him. Many Jewish Philes and I have talked about this and here’s a quote from my mutual @onehandkilling on why the head canon speaks to them:

jewish mulder speaks to me because i recognize a lot of my familys story in him. my grandfather is jewish but my dad and therefore my siblings amd i were raised catholic. we have all been affected by antisemitism, and since i converted back i have even experienced some from within my assimilated family. mulder looks to me how i felt before i embraced my judaism, and how many ppl from assimilated families (from any culture) exprience the bad parts of marginalization and none of the joy of the culture your family tried to abandon

This theme around assimilation and how it only gets you so far is something a lot of people feel drawn to with Mulder. I wrote my fic “Won’t Fight Alone” about the paradox of trying to pass for a non-Jew after reading the book Leaving the Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History by Todd M. Endelman to explore exactly this. 

In addition to being a fuck you to reclaim stereotypes and to seeing Jewish American identity in his family assimilating and going so far as to try to fit in with a bunch of Nazis, only to have their son experience non-stop antisemitism, there is also an embrace of Jewish values. One of these values is his tenacity in the face of opposition. To quote from a Jewcy article that takes Mulder’s Judaism to be obvious, while stating out loud it doesn’t matter if he was literally Protestant or not:

“It’s worth noting that most of the moments that make Mulder’s Judaism (partial or not) explicit are adversarial in nature, emerging from other characters defining Mulder by attacking him. Considering that Mulder’s entire character is based on his antagonistic relationships with the government and those attempting to dissuade him from his quest for the truth, there’s something that connects Mulder even more to Judaism than whatever religious rituals he happens to participate in.”

He is stiff-necked, which is to say stubborn in the face of extreme adversity. This adversarial nature extends to how he thinks of God in the show. He resists his Nazi father God stand in, CSM. He struggles with the Christian God as Scully understands him. He confronts The Writer in “Post-Modern Prometheus” and demands a happy ending from him. This is all related to the modern Jewish value of wrestling with God. In the Torah, Jacob wrestles with a creature that is sometimes referred to as a man, and sometimes  God, but normally understood to be an angel. He holds on until he gets a blessing from the mysterious figure who says ”Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” Mulder similarly is stubborn as hell in the face of creatures stronger than him and consistently earns their blessings. 

He is committed to social justice, in a way that is admittedly white*-savior-esque and copaganda. He has a soft spot for the down trodden and the little guy and regularly sticks up for victims of color in the face of a much more apathetic Scully, to be frank. He feels deeply for other people in their suffering, which is another modern American Jewish value that is rooted in our tradition. From Exodus 23:9, ”You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Mulder is a mensch at the end of the day, despite his flaws. He is honest, compassionate, nerdy, and fundamentally wants a better world for all the downtrodden in the world. What is more Jewish than that?

Jewish Fox Mulder is at the end of the day a way to see living Jewish identity, culture, humor, resiliency and values in a show that prefers us dead. Prefers using our corpses as puppets for cheap sci-fi shlock to convey ultimate victimhood and ultimate power simultaneously. But we can bring those corpses back to life in the world of the show, like Mulder, by giving Mulder a living Jewish identity. And what better Jew trick is there than that?

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading!

[unsolicited-opinions]

Many have been talking about the way that much of the the Muslim community in Australia has sought to defend the behavior of two Muslim NSW Health nurses on Bankstown, deflect accountability, and excuse inexcusable ethical failings.

These images (from this article), for example, are all over Twitter:

Haviv Rettig Gur's words echo my own thoughts and fears, but I worry that he and I both may be falling into Islamophobia. Haviv writes:

What if there really is a problem in the Muslim world, a crisis of modernity, of equality and democracy, minorities hounded into nonexistence, systematic oppression of women, rampant antisemitism? And what if this deep crisis is being carried into the West by Muslim diasporas?

I mean...he's asking the same question I'm asking lately, but his phrasing feels awfully similar to Tucker Carlson's "just asking questions," doesn't it? That makes me feel uneasy. I admire Haviv's work. I think he's intellectually honest and genuinely insightful. I don't think he's motivated by bigotry and I don't think he hates Muslims, but this phrasing and framing leaves me feeling uncomfortable.

Hend Amry, a Libyan-American who currently lives in Qatar, responds to Haviv:

just asking questions while I wipe them out

Haviv:

I’m wiping out Islam? That’s your answer? I admire Islam, I first seriously encountered it via medieval Jewish philosophers. I know a bit about the vast diversity it contains. And now, knowing that, reread the tweet and answer the actual point.

Hend Amry:

“What if there really is a problem in the Jewish world, a crisis of modernity, of equality and democracy, minorities hounded into nonexistence, systematic oppression of women, rampant Islamophobia? And what if this deep crisis is being carried into the West by Jewish diasporas?” We know what a Nazi sounds like, changing the subject doesn’t change it.

The false equivalence and Holocaust inversion lost her this argument.

Haviv Rettig Gur:

How dull and racist. Yes, let’s compare Muslims to Jews on this point. The greatest fights among Jews today are about Jewish mistakes and misdeeds. Jewish forums have been intensely debating Gaza for 17 months. How many Muslim forums and institutions have debated Muslim violence? Meanwhile, Jews everywhere are constantly told, often by Muslims, that they must distance themselves from other Jews or be deemed complicit. Jews everywhere have become legitimate targets for harassment on this point. Muslims are not similarly required to fret about the crimes happening within and in the name of their religion. (Many do, but they’re a small minority.) And to ask of them to criticize or distance themselves is deemed racist by the likes of Hend. This started as a comment on those murder-encouraging Australian nurses. What do we think? Did their own community respond as the Australian Jewish community would have responded in their shoes?

Haviv has what I think is a legitimate point, but perhaps he has missed the fact that some Muslim groups in Australia did respond with firm condemnation:

From SBS:

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Perth said the nurses' comments "not only violate the sanctity of human life, but also fundamentally contradict the teachings". [Full statement here] Imam Syed Wadood Janud of Perth's Nasir Mosque said the comments were "factually contradictory to what Islam teaches about the afterlife". "Islam teaches respect, compassion, and justice for all humanity, and such vile remarks have no place in our faith," he said in a statement. In the same statement, Ata Ul Hadi, a senior resident doctor at Armadale Health Service, said he was shocked that healthcare professionals could hold "such insensitive ideas about human life". "As a Muslim, I have a deep regard for the struggles, pains, and vulnerabilities of my patients. I strive every day to go above and beyond to ease their suffering," he said. "How anyone in the health sector could see their duty any differently is incomprehensible." The statement reiterated Islam is a religion of "peace, compassion and respect for all humanity", and said the community stands against hatred, bigotry and discrimination. Imam Kamran Tahir of Adelaide's largest mosque, Mahmood Mosque, was also critical. "The comments made by the nurses are completely against the teachings of Islam. Service to mankind is the essence of Islam," he said. "The fundamental qualities that we must all acquire to serve mankind are love for humanity and kindness in our hearts for others." ...

A joint statement by 24 Hazara [Afghan ethnic group] community organisations said the alleged threats against patients were "abhorrent" and that all individuals "deserve compassionate and equitable treatment" from healthcare providers. "These comments are deeply disturbing and fly in the face of everything we stand for as a community," the organisations said in a statement. "We believe in the inherent dignity and worth of every human being, regardless of their ethnicity or religion." The statement also said Hazara organisations were "particularly saddened" to learn that one of the nurses, Ahmad Rashad Nadir, had come to Australia from Afghanistan. It said that individual's comments "do not reflect the values of diaspora communities from Afghanistan." "Our community has always valued inclusivity and understanding," a spokesperson said. "This incident does not represent who we are."

Haviv is correct that if the roles were reversed, the international Jewish community would be nearly monolithic in its fierce condemnation of any Jewish clinicians who threatened patients based on religion, national origin, or ethnicity.

The Muslim world, however, is not monolithic. As Haviv himself wrote: "I admire Islam, I first seriously encountered it via medieval Jewish philosophers. I know a bit about the vast diversity it contains."

Muslim groups which seek to excuse Ahmad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, groups who suggest the international reaction of revulsion to their behavior is inappropriate or driven by Islamophobia should be cordially invited to perform anatomically impossible feats of self-buggery - but that's not who all Australian Muslims are and it seems to me that we'd do well to support and amplify the Muslim voices who so clearly, without reservation, condemn their co-religionists' disgusting behavior.

These Muslim communities should not just be embraced as allies of Australia's Jews, but of all people everywhere who treasure liberal values and secular pluralism.

[theangelshavethephonebox]

I don't want to start discourse so I'm hoping people don't feel the need to add on here, but, my thoughts are basically: The New Doctor Who Episode Was Pretty Good, Actually, maybe y'all just don't like nuance.

Rant under the cut.

I feel exhausted seeing this argued again and again, like there's any kind of real debate to be had. Genocide is bad. Terrorism is bad. These are statements that can and do coexist - and nowhere do they coexist more strongly than in Juno Dawson's pretty damn neat story.

I have - and will write that bit up properly - commented in other places on the wonderfulness of the camp, the insanity of the reveal, the really quite in character emotional reaction from the Doctor and the really quite out of character writing for Belinda. Apparently, Juno didn't receive much information about Belinda before writing so, I don't hold that last bit against her. But anyway, I won't rehash all that here. What I want to talk about - shocker! - is the fandom's reaction to politics.

The politics in this episode were not "Israel bad, Palestine good" or vice versa; this was a complicated, nuanced, and emotionally driven dive into profiting off of colonialism, into the weapons industrial complex, into the anger of oppressed communities and the way that even what we celebrate and find joy in can be turned into a symbol of hatred. How people in the same community have diverging views on how to combat their oppression.

Say it with me now: nuance is not the enemy. We can handle some nuance.

Or at least, I thought we could before I saw the way people are talking about this episode. There are many different ways to interpret what meant what, but I think Juno's intent was for the Hellions to represent oppressed communities using aspects of Jewish and Palestinian oppression to draw those comparisons, and for the Corporation to act as the objectively evil colonialist complex that profits from causing harm, and yet has ties to something that is supposed to celebrate unity and people from all over coming together to make art with one another... Drawing on the real-world war profiteering, and on the Israeli companies profiting from sacked and stolen Palestinian land, to make us see that connection.

I think if people focused on the bigger picture of this allegory, they'd maybe be having a better time discussing this one. We could be having fun talking about the Rani and instead we're out here acting like Doctor Who supports Israel now, or hates Jews now, or any number of other ridiculous things I've seen people say about this episode. Look, a trans woman writing about the pain of something your community holds dear being supported by the very thing that threatens to destroy that community!!! Isn't it amazing that these stories are getting to be told? Take my hand. Keep an open mind. Think about other perspectives and interpretations of elements of this story. Nuance is not the enemy.

Anyway, enough politics - can we talk about how frickin cool it was that RTD got Graham Norton himself on an episode about Eurovision?? Because yeah. That rocked. Now, that is all - go back to your Rani discourse, if you so choose. The only discourse I care about is if the new Rani is hot or super hot. Doctor Who isn't too woke or not woke enough or failing to condemn genocide or failing to condemn terrorism. Not today, anyway. It's full of hot people and pretty colours and cool stories, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

[eretzyisrael]

María Rivera Maulucci, a professor of Urban Studies at Barnard, spoke out against the arrests.

“The root of word education means to lead out, but how are we leading our students out? In zip ties. Where are we leading students out? To buses? To police stations?” she told the crowd, according to the blog.

Comments such as that — and the general support for the anti-Israel students — left Rory Lancman, the senior counsel of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, lamenting his alma mater.

3Columbia University’s faculty is facing backlash after their decision to back students at the anti-Israel demonstration on campus was denounced as “grotesque” by members of New York’s Jewish community.Getty Images

“It’s grotesque that we have professors who can’t discern the difference between hateful, discriminatory and violent rhetoric that violates the university’s anti-discrimination policies and terrorizes a segment of the university community and reasoned free speech and debate,” said Lancman, whose legal advocacy groups works to battle antisemitism.

“What you’re witnessing at Columbia is the anti-Zionist, antisemitic movement at its core.”

Lancman described the protesters as wannabe “fascists” who were trying to get their way “through harassment, intimidation and violence.”

Several Columbia graduate students, who only gave their first names, also questioned the professors’ support for the student protesters.

“I don’t think it was a smart thing for them to do,” Dana, 34, told the Post.

3Professors appeared on the school’s steps to support the right of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” to take over campus space and denounce the administration’s decision to have protesters arrested.REUTERS

“The professors siding with them, basically that tells me, ‘OK Columbia is not a place of discourse, it is not [a] place where you can peacefully argue. It’s a place that sides with a very specific student body.'”

Ali, 26, a transfer student from Tel Aviv University, said the faculty walkout made it clear that the professors were not just endorsing the protest at Columbia, but were actively taking part as well.

“There was no reason to believe that they weren’t part of the protest. They joined the movement because they came out and joined the protest,” Ali said.

He added that the protesters at Columbia have “made no effort to distance themselves from pro-terrorism positions,” calling the demonstrations “disturbing.”

Omer, another graduate student who was putting up pictures of the remaining hostages kidnapped by Hamas, said he was also troubled by the professors’ walkout.