#jewish currents

[fiercynn]

“The settlers come wearing soldiers’ clothes, which is a new strategy.”

Since the war started, there have been more and more daily attacks by settlers against the people living in Masafer Yatta [a region of rural hamlets in the south of the occupied West Bank]. We are just farmers, many of us living in caves and tents. I am 18 years old, and I have lived here all my life. We have no way to defend ourselves from the settlers, who are fully armed thanks to [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir. They feel that now is their chance. The war is happening, and they have the green light to kill any Palestinian they see. They feel that no one is going to care about these people in Masafer Yatta. They come with the army’s protection from the settlement of Havat Ma’on, just five minutes from my village of Tuwani. They attack people’s sheep and demolish their tents and raid their homes. They attacked my family in our house: They came in and shot at my dad. Luckily he survived, but they broke his hand by hitting him with the butt of a gun. On Friday, they shot my cousin, who is still in the hospital. The settlers come wearing soldiers’ clothes, which is a new strategy; my dad only recognized them as settlers because they were the same people who attacked him last year. The settlers and the army are now controlling all the land around Tuwani. They planted an Israeli flag in the high mountains nearby, and they have blocked all the routes in and out of the area. They don’t even allow us to access our donkeys, or to give them food or water. They’re saying this is state land and it’s a war. It’s dangerous to leave the town. Some people are trying to travel through the mountains, because they need to reach hospitals, or to reach markets to get food and water. But the way through the mountains is bumpy, and they get shot at. No one can sleep at night; we are afraid that the settlers will come and burn down our homes. [x]

— Luna (pseudonym), as told to Amos; Tuwani; October 17th

[bfpnola]

definitely a longer piece so these excerpts are far from showcasing everything this piece has to offer! read the whole thing on your own time, and in general, just check out jewish currents, an educational, leftist, anti-zionist jewish magazine!

Every August, the township of Edison, New Jersey—where one in five residents is of Indian origin—holds a parade to celebrate India’s Independence Day. In 2022, a long line of floats rolled through the streets, decked out in images of Hindu deities and colorful advertisements for local businesses. People cheered from the sidelines or joined the cavalcade, dancing to pulsing Bollywood music. In the middle of the procession came another kind of vehicle: A wheel loader, which looks like a small bulldozer, rumbled along the route bearing an image of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi aloft in its bucket. For South Asian Muslims, the meaning of the addition was hard to miss. A few months earlier, during the month of Ramadan, Indian government officials had sent bulldozers into Delhi’s Muslim neighborhoods, where they damaged a mosque and leveled homes and storefronts. The Washington Post called the bulldozer “a polarizing symbol of state power under Narendra Modi,” whose ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is increasingly enacting a program of Hindu supremacy and Muslim subjugation. In the weeks after the parade, one Muslim resident of Edison, who is of Indian origin, told The New York Times that he understood the bulldozer much as Jews would a swastika or Black Americans would a Klansman’s hood. Its inclusion underscored the parade’s other nods to the ideology known as Hindutva, which seeks to transform India into an ethnonationalist Hindu state. The event’s grand marshal was the BJP’s national spokesperson, Sambit Patra, who flew in from India. Other invitees were affiliated with the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the international arm of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary force Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), of which Modi is a longtime member.

...

On December 6th, 1992, a mob of 150,000 Hindus, many of whom were affiliated with the paramilitary group the RSS, gathered at the Babri Masjid, a centuries-old mosque that is one of the most contested sacred sites in the world. Over the preceding century, far-right Hindus had claimed that the mosque, located in the North Indian city of Ayodhya, was built not only upon the site where the Hindu deity Ram was born but atop the foundations of a demolished Hindu temple. The RSS and its affiliates had been campaigning to, in the words of a BJP minister, correct the “historical mistake” of the mosque’s existence, a task the mob completed that December afternoon. “They climbed on top of the domes and tombs,” one witness told NPR. “They were carrying hammers and these three-pronged spears from Hindu scripture. They started hacking at the mosque. By night, it was destroyed.” The demolition sparked riots that lasted months and killed an estimated 2,000 people across the country.

The destruction of the Babri Masjid was arguably Hindu nationalism’s greatest triumph to date. Since its establishment in 1925, the RSS—whose founders sought what one of them called a “military regeneration of the Hindus,” inspired by Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Nazi “race pride”—had been a marginal presence in India: Its members held no elected office, and it was temporarily designated a terrorist organization after one of its affiliates shot and killed Mohandas Gandhi in 1948. But the leveling of the Babri Masjid activated a virulently ethnonationalist base and paved the way for three decades of Hindutva ascendance. In 1998, the BJP formed a government for the first time; in 2014, it returned to power, winning a staggering 282 out of 543 seats in parliament and propelling Modi into India’s highest office. Since then, journalist Samanth Subramanian notes, all of the country’s governmental and civil society institutions “have been pressured to fall in line” with a Hindutva agenda—a phenomenon on full display in 2019, when the Supreme Court of India awarded the land where the Babri Masjid once stood to a government run by the very Hindu nationalists who illegally destroyed it. (Modi has since laid a foundation stone for a new Ram temple in Ayodhya, an event that a prominent RSS activist celebrated with a billboard in Times Square.) The Ayodhya verdict came in the same year that Modi stripped constitutional protections from residents of the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir and passed a law that creates a fast track to citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants, laying the groundwork for a religious test for Indian nationality. Under Modi, “the Hinduization of India is almost complete,” as journalist Yasmeen Serhan has written in The Atlantic.

To achieve its goals, the RSS has worked via a dense network of organizations that call themselves the “Sangh Parivar” (“joint family”) of Hindu nationalism. The BJP, which holds more seats in the Indian parliament than every other party combined, is the Sangh’s electoral face. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is the movement’s cultural wing, responsible for “Hinduizing” Indian society at the grassroots level. The Bajrang Dal is the project’s militant arm, which enforces Hindu supremacy through violence. Dozens of other organizations contribute money and platforms to the Sangh. The sheer number of groups affords the Sangh what human rights activist Pranay Somayajula has referred to as a “tactical politics of plausible deniability,” in which the many degrees of separation between the governing elements and their vigilante partners shields the former from backlash. This explains how, until 2018, the CIA could describe the VHP and Bajrang Dal as “militant religious organizations”—a designation that applies to non-electoral groups exerting political pressure—even as successive US governments have maintained a warm relationship with their parliamentary counterpart, the BJP.

...

The most extreme figures in the Hindu nationalist and Zionist movements were especially frank about the nature of their partnership: “Whether you call them Palestinians, Afghans, or Pakistanis, the root of the problem for Hindus and Jews is Islam,” Bajrang Dal affiliate Rohit Vyasmaan told The New York Times of his friendly relationship with Mike Guzofsky, a member of a violent militant group connected to the infamous Jewish supremacist Meir Kahane’s Kach Party.

...

In 2003, Gary Ackerman—a Jewish former congressman who was awarded India’s third-highest civilian honor for helping to found the Congressional Caucus on India—told a gathering of AJC and AIPAC representatives and their Indian counterparts that “Israel [is] surrounded by 120 million Muslims,” while “India has 120 million [within].” Tom Lantos, another Jewish member of the caucus, likewise enjoined the two communities to collaborate: “We are drawn together by mindless, vicious, fanatic, Islamic terrorism.”

[indizombie]

The data on anti-Hindu hate crimes undermine the contention that bigotry against Hindus is on the rise. In a recent article, HfHR co-founder Raju Rajagopal points out that of the 35 groups included in the FBI’s hate crimes database, Hindus were less likely to experience hatred than all but Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Muslims are eight times more likely [to experience hate than Hindus are], Jews are 12 times more likely and Sikhs are 128 times,” Rajagopal wrote. (The HAF see this as evidence of underreporting, which they hope to solve by working with law enforcement and “empowering the Hindu American community to recognize, confront, and report Hinduphobia,” Shukla told Jewish Currents.) HfHR notes on its website that though “Hindus globally face varying levels of discrimination,” the data categorically do not support “the notion of systemic Hinduphobia in the United States.” Truschke agreed that the very concept of Hinduphobia seemed “designed to take individual cases and assert a structural problem.” The goal, Sippy argued, is to “cultivate a narrative of Hindu victimization that is robust enough to justify contemporary atrocities.”

Aparna Gopalan, ‘The Hindu nationalists using the pro-Israel playbook’, Jewish Currents

[hero-israel]

do you think there can be a reconciliation between being a Marxist or leftist and also not hating Israel? I use to feel so safe in leftist spaces, and while I don’t anymore I miss that connection. I still agree with the majority of my politics and I am sympathetic to socialism/communism. But I don’t think there’s space for me to do so or if I am doing a disservice to the Jewish people (I’m not Jewish or Israeli) by “siding” with an obvious anti Jewish group. Or would my position as a leftie who supports Israel strengthen my argument ? I’ve been told my support for Israel as a non Jew is very important, and I’m wondering if the same is applied here. I don’t think the crazy people who are anti Israel will change their minds, but will it be worth it ? Or am I wasting my time even putting myself in these spaces. What would be wise for me to do? Completely distance myself from the left and stick w holding my same views, or say I’m a leftie Israel supporter?

That is a very good question!

If there is any way for you to square the circle of being a pro-Israel Leftist, that would be quite helpful; I assure you there are many Jews who are "naturally" left-wing / Marxist but can't bear to engage because of the prominent antisemitism within those movements. There was a huge, ugly crack-up about this within the DSA, and another in the pages of Dissent Magazine and "Jewish" Currents. Perhaps seeing someone else speak up in that regard would encourage them. JVP is universally understood to be anti-Israel and antisemitic - they are a lost cause - but maybe the DSA could be steered back towards a humanitarian approach? Maybe just a sub-branch of them? Just a thought; please don't put yourself at risk. The best way you can be an advocate for Jewish people is to be an advocate for Jewish people - which is different from opening yourself up to fights from all sides.

Perhaps search up any involvement with your preferred issues among members of left-wing Zionist groups like Hashomer Hatzair, Habonim Dror, or ARZA. You might actually fit in better with the Israeli Meretz political party, but I doubt there are opportunities to get involved with it in America. EDIT: And certainly check out A Land For All!

I myself have never disagreed with Chuck Schumer about anything, so I'm not the best source on where to participate in truly left-wing or socialist groups. Would certainly appreciate reader input on this.

No matter what your decision - thank you for standing up for us!

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

Tl;dr: the writers and editors of Jewish Currents are communists who need to re-read Marx, who don’t and don’t want to deal with the politics of Israel and Palestine

[confusedlamp]

Examining the ADL’s Antisemitism Audit

"After our reassessment, the ADL’s data still shows that organized white nationalism was responsible for more incidents in 2023 than every year since 2017, and that there is a clear correlation between antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ organizing (we found that over 350 incidents of the 813 coded as “anti-LGBTQ” last year were also coded as antisemitic or associated with white nationalist groups). It also shows that some people do wrap antisemitic views in the language of Palestine solidarity—for example, on November 22nd a man yelled “Free Palestine” while throwing a rock at an Orthodox Jewish man in Williamsburg, a type of encounter that shows up occasionally in the data—but that very few of the verifiably antisemitic items tracked actually took place at rallies and events organized by prominent Palestine advocacy groups. Far more frequently, anti-Zionist rhetoric that was also antisemitic appeared at actions by white nationalist groups: For example, on October 28th, the far-right National Justice Party (NJP) held a rally that featured signs with slogans such as “No More Jewish Wars.” On the whole, when we examined the unambiguous cases of antisemitism, we found that the most frequently identified sources—noted in nearly 1,200 incidents—were groups that are part of the white nationalist movement, such as the NJP, Patriot Front, the Goyim Defense League (GDL), Blood Tribe, and White Lives Matter."

https://jewishcurrents.org/examining-the-adls-antisemitism-audit

[alanshemper]

I just saw a post on my dash that was uncritical of the ADL, so I'm posting this again

[readingsquotes]

CAPTIVITY IS A CONSTITUTIVE PART of Palestinian life under occupation. Prior to Hamas’s attack on October 7th, Israel incarcerated more than 5,200 Palestinians—most of them residents of the West Bank and East Jerusalem—across two dozen prisons and detention centers. Some West Bank residents are incarcerated due to a still-operant military order issued following the 1967 War that effectively criminalized civic activities (e.g. gatherings of more than ten people without a permit, distributing political materials, displaying flags) as “incitement and hostile propaganda actions.” There are currently hundreds of such military orders, which criminalize anything that might be construed as resistance to the occupation. This surfeit of activities made illegal for Palestinians authorizes mass imprisonment: According to a recent estimate by the United Nations, one million Palestinians have at one time been incarcerated by Israel, “including tens of thousands of children.” One in five Palestinians, and two in five Palestinian men, have been arrested at some point in their lives, and, as of 2021, more than 100 Palestinian children faced up to 20 years in prison for throwing stones. Not all who are arrested face charges. Israel often and increasingly makes use of “administrative detention,” a relic of the British Mandate era, which allows for indefinite incarceration without a charge or trial, ostensibly for the purpose of gathering evidence. It was a hallmark of apartheid South Africa and has been used to repress opposition in Egypt, England, India, the United States, and elsewhere, especially in the context of anti-immigration and “counter-terrorism” programs. “Since March 2002, not a single month has gone by without Israel holding at least 100 Palestinians in administrative detention,” the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem notes; often the number is much higher. Prior to October 7th, more than 20% of Palestinian prisoners were administrative detainees; 233 of the 300 Palestinians on Israel’s release list negotiated last week were administrative detainees, Al Jazeera noted. According to the Palestinian prisoner organization Addameer, imprisoned Palestinians report being beaten, threatened, strip searched, and denied healthcare and contact with their families. Palestinians currently incarcerated, as well as those freed in recent days, report that conditions have worsened since October 7th. Meanwhile, even as this prisoner release proceeds, Israel continues to ramp up arrests: As of Tuesday, 180 Palestinian prisoners have been released as part of the ceasefire exchange, but during the same period, it arrested Palestinians at nearly the same rate. Today, more than 7,000 Palestinians are incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Nowhere is Israel’s carceral regime clearer than in Gaza, the 140-square-mile area often described as an “open-air prison.” Gaza’s residents, now an estimated 2.2 million people—80% of whom are refugees or descendents of refugees forced to flee in the mass expulsions surrounding the founding of the State of Israel that Palestinians call the Nakba—have been hemmed in by a land, air, and sea blockade since 2006. As with Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli prisons, who for years have waged hunger strikes, protested, and written about the horrors of incarceration, Gazans have struggled mightily against their confinement. In 2018–19, they held weekly nonviolent protests at the border under the name Great March of Return. Israel responded with brutal violence, killing 260 people and wounding 20,000 others, many of whom were permanently disabled. A week into Israel’s current assault on Gaza, Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the co-founders of the Great March of Return, wrote an impassioned plea in The Nation, calling for the world to “help us tear down the wall, end our imprisonment, and fulfill our dreams of liberation.” On October 24th, an Israeli airstrike severely wounded Artema and killed five members of his family, including his 13-year-old son.

The Abolitionist Logic of “Everyone for Everyone” A call from the families of hostages contains the seed of true safety. Dan Berger December 1, 2023

[fiercynn]

On October 11th, four days after Hamas’s attack and Israel’s declaration of war, thousands of Gazan workers logged on to the blue-and-white-colored defense ministry app Al Munaseq (“the coordinator”) to find that Israeli authorities had revoked their work permits, stripping them of their legal status. The change meant that these workers could no longer remain in Israel, but they also could not return home to Gaza, which Israel had placed under a hermetic siege and constant bombardment. “Our situation is very difficult right now,” Saleh, a Gazan who usually works in Jaffa, told Jewish Currents, using a pseudonym for fear of further retaliation. The permit revocation was ordered by the Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, and came without any explanation or instruction. And just hours after the permits were revoked, Israeli authorities began detaining the now-illegal workers. By October 17th, 4,000 workers had been detained without trial to check if they “helped Hamas in planning the massacre, ” according to Israel’s Channel 12. Jessica Montell, the executive director of Israeli human rights organization HaMoked, told Jewish Currents that the arrest campaign is “unprecedented in both scope and lack of transparency,” noting that “overnight, thousands of people who had Israeli work permits became illegal aliens and have been rounded up.” Each of these moves is illegal under international law and a “prohibited act of vengeance against the workers,” according to a letter five Israeli human rights organizations sent to Israel’s defense minister, attorney general, and head of COGAT on October 12th. [x]

- jonathan shamir for jewish currents on october 19, 2023

[indizombie]

Anti-Hindutva groups like HfHR, Sadhana, and Students Against Hindutva Ideology are experimenting with reclaiming Hinduism itself from the Hindu right. HfHR hosts events that reinterpret Hindu tradition through a liberationist lens, such as “Holi against Hindutva,” a gathering that transformed the Hindu “festival of colors” into a day of political education. The group has also retrieved an expansive pantheon of Hindu deities traditionally patronized by queer communities, Dalits, women, and others excluded by the Hindutva project. HfHR has even reinterpreted the idea of Ram rajya, or Ram’s kingdom—a mythological time of divine justice, which the Hindu right has long used to denote the coming of a purely Hindu India—to symbolize something similar to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community,” a vision of a just, anti-racist society. Hindutva organizations may have positioned themselves as the representatives of the US Hindu diaspora, but Mandalaparthy said that groups like HfHR are contesting for space: “We have intentionally tried to go wherever the Hindu right groups are, so that there’s not just one Hindu voice.”

Aparna Gopalan, ‘The Hindu nationalists using the pro-Israel playbook’, Jewish Currents

[hero-israel]

I haven’t read the Jewish Currents article about how the Iron Dome isn’t a defensive system (nor do I plan to) but I did read a Twitter thread by JC’s editor in chief defending/explaining the article. Apparently the gist is that as the Iron Dome renders the conflict relatively costless for Israel, they have no serious incentive to come to the negotiating table to end the conflict, and I would actually agree with that statement.

However, the next part is that antizionists should therefore lobby against the US funding the Iron Dome so as to make “costs” more equal, therefore bringing Israel to the negotiating table faster and saving lives in the long run. Aside from that being a fundamentally ghoulish argument (the word “costs” is doing a LOT there), I’m not sure if history of how Israel reacts to threats to its people would bear this thesis out. If the Iron Dome could no longer function, I would suspect that the IDF would glass Gaza before Israel would come to the negotiating table.

I read the same thread, and yes, it was Jewish Currents - already established as quite comfortable with physical violence against Jews - going full 6MWE. They cheer at funerals as happily as Westboro Baptist, just now with a bagel tray. "The mass killings and brutality are ultimately humane, as it will lead to surrender and peace" is literally what ISIS always said about itself.

And yes, what these antizionist shitlords have never understood is that nobody is allowed to kill Jews, for any cause or purpose. Israel will defend itself by any means. Hoping for more Jewish deaths in a way that would provoke more desperate retaliation and more Palestinian deaths is probably a big hit on the email list of their Brooklyn vegan co-op. White leftists want to keep fighting to the last dead Arab.

[sbahour]

My dear Israeli journalist friend, Amira, is one of the few people who has my absolute R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

“Amira Hass Is Still Angry” from @Jewish Currents

[wearenotjustnumbers2]

Important for people who are still stuck accusing people of antisemitism when they say genocide is actually not right.

[alanshemper]

As Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza enters its 11th day, communication between the besieged enclave and the outside world is quickly becoming impossible. “Given the scale of Israel’s assault—which U.N. experts have warned amounts to ‘collective punishment’ in violation of international law—journalists are facing unprecedented challenges in obtaining and sharing information,” The Washington Post reported on October 16th. These obstacles are reflected in the three dispatches from Gaza collected here. The first, which was written when Israel had just announced it would cut off water and electricity to the Strip, was sent to us via email on October 9th, accompanied by instructions for how to proceed “in case I am unable to reply because we are out of electricity, or because I am martyred.” One week later, written communication was no longer feasible, and the latter two dispatches came in as strings of WhatsApp voice messages on October 16th.

[sayruq]