#it would never happen | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

perfectlyvalid49 · 9 months ago

Text

I am afraid as a Jew.

I know that we are on the “how dare you say we piss on the poor” piss poor reading comprehension website, but the vast, vast majority of my original post is about the antisemitism that I experience in my life today, and the antisemitism that my ancestors experienced before Israel became a state. Zionism has little impact on either. If you can’t tell the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, it may be that your anti-Zionism is antisemitic, whether you mean it to be or not.

You said that something didn’t sit right with you when you read my post, and I think that something is a part of you realizing that some of your behavior in your advocacy for Palestine is the sort of behavior that I and many other Jews view as antisemitic and you didn’t like that. The good news is that the discomfort you felt can lead to growth, but only if you let it.

I appreciate that you have Jewish friends, but the Jews that show up to pro-Palestinian marches are the sort who are the most tolerant of antisemitism, and the most likely to not call it out when they see it. The Jews who will not tolerate antisemitism have essentially been forced out of the pro-Palestine movement in the last six months for being “Zionists,” regardless of their actual political beliefs. Because of this, I’m not sure you are as educated on the subject matter as you think you are. I hope you will read this and that it will give you some things to think about, and maybe choose to learn more about.

In this post, if I am conflating Judaism and Zionism (and I think that’s happening more in your head than it is in the text), it is because the people who are attacking “Zionists” are attacking Jews. I don’t think the people who might hurt me are going to ask me my opinion on Israel before they strike, and in fact, I have seen people on this website call anti-Zionist Jews Zionists for doing something as simple as pointing out antisemitism, so even if they do ask, I will probably be found wanting.

In addition, there are more Christian Zionists in the United States than there are Jews in the world. And yet, I have not heard of a single Christian Zionist being attacked for their beliefs, nor are Christians routinely called upon to defend their views on Israel in the way that Jews are. Meanwhile, I have watched a non-Zionist Jew lie though his teeth to his six year old about why we all had to leave our synagogue so fast because “they hate us” is so, so hard to explain to a young child.

I’m actually going to ask you to answer your own question. Why would a post about JEWISH TRAUMA feel the need to mention the displacement of JEWS in Israel, but not the displacement in Gaza, a place where there are ZERO JEWS? Or am I not allowed to center myself and my people in a post about my experience of our communal pain? If not, could you imagine asking that of any other minority group?

I think that if you can call Gaza a concentration camp, you need to study up on either Gaza or the Holocaust. I am not saying that conditions there were good, nor am I saying that I think that they should have continued as they were. And I’m certainly not advocating for them continuing as they are. But to say the two are equivalent is like saying that Earth and Jupiter are both planets, so they are the same size. There are some key differences that you are missing. I made a quick chart.

The antisemitism of BDS is well documented. In particular it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because the House Representative from the district next to mine came to several synagogues in the area, claimed to be pro-Israel, and didn’t mention that BDS was part of her platform until after she was elected (literally, it was not on her website until after she was elected). I know that’s just the actions of one person, but that, in association with the movement’s antisemitic rhetoric, makes it worthy of inclusion on my list.

I went and googled a definition of apartheid, and got this from Cornell Law: “Apartheid refers to the implementation and maintenance of a system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights.” If Israel denies Arabs political and civil rights, how come Arabs serve at all levels of Israeli military and government, including sitting on their supreme court, holding office in the Knesset, and holding high ranking military positions? If your problem is with how Palestinians are treated, you must remember that Gaza and the West Bank are not actually a part of Israel (nor do they wish to be) and therefore the Palestinians living there do not live in Israel and are not Israeli citizens. Most countries have limits on what non-citizens can do, why should Israel be different? Palestinians should certainly be allowed to form their own country, and I’m in favor of a two state solution, myself. But it sounds like you don’t think Israel should exist. I’m curious as to why you’re in favor of Palestinian self-determination, but not Jewish self-determination.

It’s not genocide. Simply put, if Israel wanted to kill every man, woman and child in Gaza, there would have been no one left by the end of October. They would not have sent in ground troops, they would have just bombed them from the air. They would not have sent in aid, because why bother. The intent is to destroy Hamas, NOT the Palestinian people. Without the intent to destroy the Palestinian people, it’s war, and it’s terrible, but it’s not genocide. The fact that you either don’t understand that, or need to use the worst accusation possible to make your point is one of the reasons why I don’t think you’re as educated on the topic as you believe.

I want to know your definition of Zionism. My definition (one of the more common ones among people who identify as Zionist) is the right for Jews to have a self-determined state in the area now known as Israel, their indigenous homeland. Why should anyone with a conscience be against that? What part is morally objectionable? If you object to only the location, where should their homeland be, if not their land of origin?

Why do you think so many of those words were in quotes. The right hates the “other”, but I put other in quotes because people on the right will decide they don’t like you, and then work out how you fit into the category of “other” regardless of whether you’re different or not. Similarly, the left hates “privileged/elite/oppressors” IN QUOTES because people on the left will decide they don’t like you and then work out how you fit into the category of “privileged/elite/oppressors.” In this case, if you are Jewish and therefore a member of a minority with a history of oppression that goes back thousands of years, you will get called an “oppressor” by the left so that they can give themselves moral permission to attack you. I have a problem with actual oppressors, but the left has shown that they don’t believe that words have meaning. Holocaust, oppressor, apartheid, genocide – all of these words have definitions, and the definitions are being ignored so that the left has mean words to use against Israel. Until I can believe that the left is using words in a meaningful way, I will not hate a group just because the left says I should. You should consider doing the same.

You say that “the most egregious act of antisemitism since the 40s is the State of Israel conducting ethnic cleansing, massacres, apartheid, occupation, shoot-to-kill policy, theft of homes and land, and latest of all: genocide under the banner of the star of David.” That’s not Jew-hatred. That’s not antisemitism. That’s the excuse that people use for their antisemitism though. If you and others like you can’t help coming after Jews in the Diaspora as “oppressors” because of the actions of Israel, that’s not Israel’s fault. That’s the fault of the people who choose to be shitty to Jews “because Israel!” If a person can understand how attacking a Chinese American isn’t an appropriate response to the crimes committed by the Chinese government, but they can’t understand why attacking a Jewish American isn’t an appropriate response to the crimes committed by the Israeli government, then the problem is that the person is antisemitic and looking for an excuse.

If every oppressed person has the right to fight back, then you should be happy to know that there’s a long history of Jewish oppression in the MENA area. Consider the 1948 war the act of the Jewish people fighting off their oppressors and founding a new state where they could be free. Does that narrative make you feel better about Israel? It’s what you seem to be indicating that you want. Or is that narrative only ok if it’s the Jews being overthrown? Why might that be?

There are no laws in the United States aiming to reduce the rights of Jews or harm Jews right now. Two years ago, women in the United States had a constitutional right to abortions. Things change, and they can change quickly. And do you know where else there were no laws aiming to reduce the rights of Jews? Germany in 1930. The Jews have a long cultural memory, and part of the reason for that is because we ALWAYS need to run eventually, and so we need to remember what it looks like when it’s time to go. I think that if you don’t understand that every place that Jews have lived for the last 2000 years has been safe right up until it wasn’t, then you missed out on one of the major points of my post. Maybe read it again for understanding instead of just trying to find bits of it that you want to use to talk about how Zionists are terrible.

Not that I should have to defend my statements to you, and it’s really nitpicky for you to call it out, but here is a list of people I “know” in Israel:

My penpal from middle school – it’s been at least 20 years since we last wrote.

A handful of Israelis that I follow – I’ve even had positive interactions with some of them on Tumblr!

Some cousins on my mom’s side. They’re like fourth cousins and we’ve never met. But I know they exist! I don’t know if they know I exist.

My husband’s cousin’s wife’s family – we’ve met once, at my husband’s cousin’s wedding in 2009.

Does that explain how I can have family and acquaintances in Israel, but not consider any of them close (a clause that you very conveniently cut off in your quote)? I don’t talk to them, I’m not kept up to date of their activities. If something bad has happened to them, I haven’t been informed. Their existence hasn’t impacted the trauma that I was writing about.

Anyway, Am Yisrael Chai refers to the people of Israel – a name that Jews have called themselves for centuries prior to the founding of the state. In fact, the state was named for the people – “We are the people of Israel, so we will name our state Israel,” not, “Hey we named this place Israel for no apparent reason, I guess we’re the people of Israel now.” If you don’t know that, it tells me that you’re REALLY not as educated on the topic as you ‘re trying to make yourself sound. And given that there’s already been an extensive conversation about why people who don’t know what Am Yisrael Chai means jumping in to this post to attack Israel is antisemitic, in the comments section ON THIS POST, I don’t feel like going over the whole thing again. Either read the link, or accept this TL;DR on it: If you read a post about antisemitism and feel the need to redirect focus to Israel, you’re being antisemitic.

And honestly, reading through your response, the whole thing seems in bad faith. You’ve either deliberately missed the point, or given the worst possible faith reading to everything I wrote, and then came on to my post about how antisemitism is upsetting (deliberately on a joyous holiday) to talk about why you don’t like Israel, and how you think that things would be better for me if I were a Good Jew and just denounced Israel and the 40% of the Jewish population that lives there. I will not throw my own people under the bus to be kept as a favored pet for as long as I am willing to agree with you. There were Jews that did that in Nazi Germany, and they were killed just as surely as the Jews who did not. There were Jews who did that in Soviet Russia and it got them deported to Siberia just as surely as the Jews who did not.

Frankly, for someone who is so uneducated in Jewish history, I find your tone in this post condescending, and I find your claims of “I’m not antisemitic, I’m just an anti-Zionist,” to ring incredibly false. I think that at best, you’ve been drinking Hamasnik propaganda Kool-Aid at your pro-Palestinian marches and don’t realize how much false or biased information you’ve been told, and I think that more likely, you live in the West and have not interrogated just how much antisemitism is just present in Western culture and therefore present in you. Like I said at the top, I hope that you will maybe do some research involving conflicting viewpoints to your own and maybe learn something about Judaism before you hop on another post to lecture a Jew about something you don’t understand.

On being Jewish, and traumatized (It’s been 5 months and I want to talk):

Judaism is a joyous religion. So much of our daily practice is to focus us on the things that are good. I know that there’s a joke that all our holidays can be summed up as “they tried to kill us. We survived – let’s eat!”, and you might think that holidays focused on attempts at killing us might be somber, but they’re really not. Most are celebrated in the sense of, “we’re still here, let’s have a party!” When I think about practicing Judaism, the things I think about make me happy.

But I think a lot of non-Jews don’t necessarily see Judaism the same way. I think in part it’s because we do like to kvetch, but I think a lot of it is because from the outside it’s harder to see the joy, and very easy to see the long history of suffering that has been enacted on the Jewish people. From the inside, it’s very much, “we’re still here, let’s party” and from the outside it’s, “how many times have they tried to kill you? Why are you celebrating? They tried to KILL YOU!”

And I want to start with that because a lot of the rest of this is going to be negative. And I don’t want people to read it and wonder why I still want to be Jewish. I want to be Jewish because it makes me happy. My problem isn’t with being Jewish, it’s with how Jews are treated.

What I really wanted to write about is being Jewish and the trauma that’s involved with that right now.

First, I want to talk about Israeli Jews. I can’t say much here because I’m not Israeli, nor do I have any close friends or family that are Israeli. But if I’m going to be talking about the trauma Jews are experiencing right now, I can’t not mention the fact that Israeli Jews (and Israelis that aren’t Jewish as well, but that’s not my focus here) are dealing with massive amounts of it right now. It’s a tiny country – virtually everyone has a friend or family member that was killed or kidnapped, or knows someone who does. Thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel in the last few months – think about the fact that the Iron Dome exists and why it needs to. Terror attacks are ongoing; I feel like there’s been at least one every week since October. Thousands of people are displaced from their homes, either because of the rocket fire, or because their homes and communities were physically destroyed in the largest pogrom in recent history – the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust ended. If that’s not trauma inducing, I don’t know what is.

And there is, of course, the generational trauma. And I think Jewish generational trauma is interesting because it’s so layered. Because it’s not just the result of one trauma passed down through the generations. Every 50-100 years, antisemitism intensifies, and so very frequently the people experiencing a traumatic event were already suffering from the generational trauma that their grandparents or great grandparents lived through. And those elders were holding the generational trauma from the time before that. And so on.

And because it happens so regularly, there’s always someone in the community that remembers the last time. We are never allowed the luxury of imagining that we are safe. We know what happened before, and we know that it happened again and again and again. And so we know that it only makes sense to assume it will happen in the future. The trauma response is valid. I live in America because my great grandparents lived in Russia and they knew when it was time to get the hell out in the 1900s. And the reason they knew that is because their grandparents remembered the results of the blood libels in the 1850s. How can we heal when the scar tissue keeps us safe?

I look around now and wonder if we’ll need to run. We have a plan. I repeat, my family has a plan for what to do if we need to flee the country due to religious persecution. How can that possibly be normal? And yet, all the Jewish families I know have similar plans. It is normal if you’re Jewish. Every once in a while I see someone who isn’t Jewish talk about making plans to leave because they’re LGBTQ or some other minority and the question always seems to be, “should I make a plan?” It astounds me every time. The Jewish answer is that you need to have a plan and the only question is, “when should I act?” Sometimes our Jewish friends discuss it at play dates. Where will you go? What are the triggers to leave? No one wants to go any earlier then they have to. Everyone knows what the price of holding off too long might be.

I want to keep my children safe. When do I induct them into the club? When do I let my sweet, innocent kids know that some people will hate them for being Jewish? When do I teach them the skills my parents and grandparents taught me? How to pass as white, how to pass as Christian, knowing when to keep your mouth shut about what you believe. When do I tell them about the Holocaust and teach them the game “would this person hide me?” How hard do I have to work to remind them that while you want to believe that a person would hide you, statistically, most people you know would not have? Who is this more traumatic for? Them, to learn that there is hatred in the world and it is directed at them, or me, to have to drive some of the innocence out of my own children’s eyes in order to make sure they are prepared to meet the reality of the world?

And the reality of the world is that it is FULL of antisemitism. There’s a lot of…I guess I’d call it mild antisemitism that’s always present that you just kinda learn to ignore. It’s the sort of stuff that non-Jews might not even recognize as antisemitic until you explain it to them, just little micro-aggressions that you do your best to ignore because you know that the people doing it don’t necessarily mean it, it’s just the culture we live in. It can still hurt though. I like to compare it to a bruise: you can mostly ignore it, but every once in a while something (more blatant antisemitism) will put a bit to much pressure on it and you remember that you were already hurting this whole time.

On top of the background antisemitism, there’s more intense stuff. And usually the most intense, mask off antisemitism comes from the right. This makes sense, in that a lot of right politics are essentially about hating the “other” and what are Jews if not Western civilizations oldest type of “other”? On the one hand, I’ve always been fortunate enough to live in relatively liberal areas so this sort of antisemitism has felt far away and impersonal – they hate everybody, and I’m just part of everybody. On the other hand, until recently I’ve always considered this the most dangerous source of antisemitism. This is the antisemitism that leads to hate crimes, that leads to synagogue shootings. This is the reason why my synagogue is built so that there is a long driveway before you can even see the building, and that driveway is filled with police on the high holidays. This is the reason why my husband and I were scared to hang a mezuzah in our first apartment (and second, and third). For a long time, this was the antisemitism that made me afraid.

But the left has a problem with antisemitism too. And it has always been there. Where the right hates the “other”, the left hates the “privileged/elite/oppressors.” It’s the exact same thing, just dressed up with different words. They all mean “other” and “other” means “Jew.” It hurts more coming from the left though. A lot of Jewish philosophy leans left. A lot of Jews lean left. So when the left decides to hate us, it isn’t a random stranger, it’s a friend, and it feels like a betrayal.

One of the people I follow works for Yad Vashem, and a few weeks ago she mentioned a video they have with testimonies from people who came to Israel after Kristallnacht, with an unofficial title of “The blow came from within.” The idea is that to non-German Jews, the Holocaust was something done by strangers. It was still terrible, but it is easier to bear the hate of a stranger – it’s not personal. But to German Jews, the Holocaust was a betrayal. It wasn’t done by strangers, it was done by coworkers, and neighbors and people they thought were friends. It was done by people who knew them, and still looked at them and said, “less than human.” And because of this sense of betrayal, German survivors, or Germans who managed to get out before they got rounded up, had a very different experience than other Holocaust victims.

And I feel like a lot of left leaning Jews are having a similar experience now. People that we’ve marched with or organized with, or even just mutuals that we’ve thought of as friends are now going on about how Jews are evil. They repeat antisemitic talking points from the Nazis and from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and when we point out that those ideas have only led to Jewish death in the past they don’t care. And if someone you thought of as a friend thinks of you this way, what do you think a stranger might think? Might do?

The Jews are fucking terrified. I’ve seen a post going around that basically wonders if this was what it was like for our ancestors – when things got bad enough to see what was coming but before it was too late to run? And we can see what’s coming. History tells us that they way people are talking and acting only leads to one place. I’m a millennial – when I was a kid the grandparents at my synagogue made sure the kids knew – this is what it looked like before, this is what you need to watch out for, this is when you need to run. I wonder where to run to. It feels like nowhere is safe.

I feel like I’ve been lucky in all this. I don’t live in Israel. I have family and acquaintances who do, but no one I’m particularly close to. Everyone I know in real life has either been sane or at least silent about all of this (the internet has been significantly worse, but when it comes to hate, the internet is always worse). I live in a relatively liberal area – there’s always been antisemitism around anyway, but it’s mostly just been swastikas on flyers, or people advocating for BDS, not anything that’s made me actually worry for my safety. But in the last 5 months there have been bomb threats at my synagogue, and just last week a kid got beat up for being Jewish at our local high school. He doesn’t want to report it. He’s worried it will make it worse.

I bought a Magen David to wear in November. At the time it seemed like the best way to fight antisemitism was to be visibly Jewish, to show that we’re just normal people like everyone else. Plus, I figured that if me being Jewish was going to be a problem for someone, then I would make it a problem right away and not waste time. I’ve worn it almost constantly since, but the one time I took it off was when I burnt my finger in December and had to go to urgent care. I didn’t think about it too much when I did it, but I thought about it for a long time after – I didn’t feel good about having made that choice.

The conclusion I came to is that the training that my elders had been so careful to instill in me kicked in. I was hurt, and scared, and the voice inside my head that sounds like my grandmother said, “don’t give them a reason to be bad to you. Fight when you’re well, but for now – survive.” It still felt cowardly, but it was also a connection to my ancestors who heeded the same voice well enough to survive. And it enrages me that that voice has been necessary in the past. And it enrages me that things are bad enough now that my instinct is that I need to hide who I am to receive appropriate medical care.

I wish I had some sort of final thought to tie this all together other than, “this sucks and I hate it,” but I really don’t. I could call for people to examine their antisemitic biases, but I’m not foolish enough to think that this will reach the people who need to do so. I could wish for a future where everything I’ve talked about here exists only in history books, and the Jewish experience is no longer tied to feeling this pain, but that’s basically wishing for the moshiach, and I’m not going to hold my breath.

I guess I’ll end it with the thought that through all of this hate and pain and fear, we’re still here. And we’re still joyful as well. As much as so many people have tried over literally THOUSANDS of years to eradicate us, I’m still here, I’m still Jewish, and being Jewish still makes me happy.

Am Yisrael Chai.

#antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #judenhasshole #the Iron Dome exists because the number of terrorist missiles shot at Israeli civilian targets would be unacceptable in any other country #but there is extreme pressure from the global community for Israel to not counterattack against the people shooting them #so the Iron Dome is how it keeps it’s citizens safe when the world demands that they just accept these attacks without retaliation #holding Israel to a standard that no other country is held to #that’s antisemitic #could you imagine living in Arizona and every few days Mexico sent missiles to attack Phoenix #and the people there being like ‘yeah it’s part of life – we get alerts on our phone when we need to take cover’#it would never happen #but that’s what’s being asked of Israel #'the Palestinians wouldn't attack if they weren't so oppressed!'#there are a lot of oppressed people in the world #very few of them choose to solve their problems by attacking civilians taking hostages and raping women #at least give the people who make that choice the dignity of being held responsible for their own actions

1K notes · View notes