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perfectlyvalid49 · 8 months ago

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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

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perfectlyvalid49 · 8 months ago

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So here’s the thing, I was going to take the time to go through this and refute it point by point in the hopes of changing your mind. And then I got to this:

“but they have (and likely still do) steal organs and tissue from Palestinians they have killed.”

With a link for evidence to Al Jazeera’s website. So, for one, that’s fucking blood libel, which has been used to get Jews killed since before Zionism existed, and two, Al Jazeera is Qatar’s state-run media outlet. Y’know, Qatar, whose government also issues textbooks that state that most Jews in the world believe in seeking world domination and that Judaism is an “invalid, perverted religion” and that the Torah teaches Jews to kill, steal, deceive, and engage in racial supremacy. If you can’t see that there might be some bias there, then your head is so far up your ass that you can see your own esophagus.

You may not consider yourself to be an antisemite, but you are one. That right there proves it. And I refuse to waste my time with you, so we’re just going to get out the bingo card.

Oh, so close to an actual bingo!

Other particularly egregious things that made me realize you’re not worth my time (speed round): • Comparing Zionism to Nazism – Holocaust inversion, which is antisemitic. • Citing Hamas, but anything from Israel is “Zionist narrative” – nope, no bias here. • “I don’t think that now, the time when antisemitism has spiked by hundreds of percent, and in part in reaction to people celebrating the deaths of over 1000 Jews, is the right time to center Jewish trauma – your own trauma.” Again, imagine saying this to any other minority group. You accuse me of conflating Judaism and Israel, but I, a non-Israeli Jew, can’t talk about my trauma because of what Israel is doing? Who is conflating the two now? • The Hague actually didn’t say it was genocide. They told Israel to provide aid (which it was already doing) and told Hamas to release the hostages (which it still has not done). South Africa is in political alliances with Israel’s enemies, and the UN as a body has consistently held Israel to a different, higher standard than any other country – but no, no bias here. • “Anyway, good for your representative. She sounds like the she has a conscience.” This is your statement about a person who deliberately withheld information from her constituents in order to get elected – that’s what you consider having a conscience? Lying in order to get your way? Makes me doubt the hell out of everything you’ve said about your personal experiences for sure. • Hitler was TRYING to eliminate every Jew on Earth. Israel is NOT TRYING to eliminate every Palestinian on Earth, or even in the territories it gained in 1967. If you can’t see the difference, it’s because you don’t want to. • Yes, evacuate the people, some of whom helped Hamas with their attack on October 7th, into Israel so they have free access to Israeli civilians. That sounds like a reasonable response to being attacked. Also, even if they did that then people like you would say “ethnic cleansing!” and be pissed at Israel anyway. • “I don't believe that any good can come from any religious ethnostate and certainly not one whose existence is reliant upon the ethnic cleaning and disenfranchisement of the indigenous people who have called that land home for thousands of years.” Fucking really? REALLY? Here’s a list of Muslim ethnostates that have ethnically cleansed their Jews (the majority of which fled as refugees to Israel) in the last 75 years: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syraa, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Morocco. Algeria, where are your Jews? There have been Jews in Iraq for over two thousand years, and their synagogues stand empty or destroyed today. Palestinian leadership has repeatedly expressed that Jews would not be welcome in a Palestinian Muslim ethnostate. It seems like you have different standards for the Jewish state than Muslim ones. I wonder why? (no I don’t, it’s antisemitism)

Map of the ethnic cleansing of Jews in MENA:

• “Jews can call their homeland wherever they come from.” That’s really interesting. Do you know how many times Jews in Europe have been told to “go back to where they came from?” They did. Now you’re mad about it. • You don’t get to define a group’s words and phrases for them. I have never, ever seen a Jew use it to mean anything other than solidarity in a time when we feel under attack. The only people who view it as a rallying cry for Palestinian oppression are people who are looking for a reason to attack Jews. And comparing it to a swastika is yet another example of holocaust inversion. • Ah yes, a ceasefire. I seem to recall there was one on October 6th and then something happened to break it. Can you remind me what that was? I’m sure it was those mean old nasty Israelis doing something terrible.

Fuck you too. You’re an antisemite in denial, and your ideal world will lead to yet another genocide of Jews. And you’ll call it righteous and feel good about yourself because those bad oppressors will have gotten what you think they deserve and your bloodlust will be satisfied until you find another group who you think deserves it. You can deny that all you want, but we know what to look for because we've seen it before. There is no difference between you and a Nazi that thought that the Jews had to die because they were oppressing the German people.

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

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

Am Yisrael Chai.

#judenhasshole #if you think that the Palestinians would be kind or even fair to the Jews in Israel if they were to gain control of the government #you are woefully under-educated about the history of Jews in the Middle East

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perfectlyvalid49 · 8 months ago

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"You don't have facts," says the person citing Al Jazeera and repeating modern variations of centuries old conspiracy theories.

My response was written during my lunch break. I have sources and facts, but not the time to dig them up for you. I have a full time job, two kids and at most two hours of free time a day. I'm not going to spend them on you, when you won't listen to what I have to say anyway.

I don't believe what's happening to Palestinians now is good or correct. I would be perfectly happy if the war stopped immediately, the hostages were returned and everyone in the area could find a way to share the land and live in peace. I do not think it would be easy, nor do I think it will happen anytime soon, but it is what I want.

What you seem to be advocating for will result in either 1) the genocide of Jews living in Israel (a goal stated in Hamas's founding charter), 2) the ethnic cleansing of Jews living in Israel (they manage to get the fuck out before the new government takes control), or 3) (and this is the best case scenario) Jews in Israel being treated similarly to or worse than the way Palestinians are treated now (a return to dhimmi status, where Jews have limited rights and virtually no protection under the law). Anyone with a grasp of the history of the region, or the way Jews are treated in the countries I listed above, can easily predict that outcome.

If this conversation is to continue, you need to defend why you think one of those outcomes are ok. Don't tell me they won't happen, when looking at every Muslim majority country in the region tells me otherwise. If you can't do that in your next response, you will earn the honor of being the first person who has been so antisemitic that I use the block button.

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

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

Am Yisrael Chai.

#sorry you don't get to out expert me based solely on biased news articles that have been debunked #especially when you display a clear lack of knowledge about the very important history of the conflict #I have a policy of not blocking antisemites with the hope that they'll see something that will help them start to overcome their Jew hatred #but this one is too far gone - I don't think anyone can save them #Judenhasshole

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perfectlyvalid49 · 8 months ago

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Oh! Ok, I get it now. I’m gonna say something, and you’re going to want to take it as an insult, and I don’t mean it that way, so please bear with me:

You’re ignorant.

And I genuinely don’t mean that as an insult. No one can know everything, and there’s nothing wrong with needing to learn more about a topic. But if this is the first time you’ve encountered the phrase “am Yisrael chai” that’s a pretty good indicator that you really, REALLY don’t know a lot about the Jewish people, and you need to learn A LOT before you start speaking about Jewish topics.

And if you’re not willing to learn? Then you need to be quiet.

The good news is that there’s actually a good number of Jews on tumblr that are generally willing to answer any questions that seem to be asked in good faith. I’m one of them. I don’t in really think you’re coming from a place of good faith though and here’s why: you felt the need to machine translate (a famously inaccurate way to translate stuff) “am Yisrael chai” instead of just googling it. Because when you google it, you get this:

A few clicks and you probably could have gotten all the context you needed, but given that it seems like that’s too much for you, “am Yisrael chai” means “the people of Israel (or the Jewish people) live,” “Am Yisrael” has been used to refer to Jewish people since long before the State of Israel existed, in case you want to get prickly about it. This is part of that homework you need to do before you speak. The phrase is used to express the sentiment, “we have suffered antisemitism for thousands of years, but we are still here while the empires that persecuted us mostly no longer are.” In the context of my post, it was an affirmation that even though I am scared for my safety right now, we will endure this, and come out the other side.

And that’s the post that you decided to derail with “but, Israel!” And to be clear, again, the only time I brought up the state of Israel is to mention that the people there are scared too, and to mention some of the reasons why. That’s not an invitation to talk about their government. I put it in the tags of my last reply, but I guess it bears repeating: Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel is one of the points in the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism. Responding to a post about Jews in the diaspora and Israel having trauma responses to antisemitism with a condemnation of the Israeli government is doing that. That IS antisemitic.

As for being chill? This is chill. I responded to your post with an explanation of why I found it inappropriate and how your behavior was antisemitic, even if you didn’t intend it to be. I then said that if you wanted to discuss your points further, I would be happy to do so, just not on this post. I am having a shitty week in a shitty month in a shitty year, and if I did not want to be chill, you’d be suffering from third degree burns from the heat of my response.

As a counter proposal, I will continue to be chill, and you should perhaps take some time to learn about Judaism from actual sources and not just what tumblr tells you before you continue to make a fool out of yourself.

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

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

Am Yisrael Chai.

#antisemitism #judenhasshole #was calling it antisemitic the not chill part?#if your feelings are hurt because I'm calling you out on being antisemitic #how do you think I feel when you come onto my post with antisemitism?

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perfectlyvalid49 · 8 months ago

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I’m sorry you’re getting sick of the responses to this post. To be honest, I’d rather your responses not be on it either. I’m hoping that if nothing else comes of this, you’ll at least think twice before jumping in to Jumblr with your lukewarm antisemitic takes.

I will say this as a person with a degree in linguistics, who has had to do translation work in Spanish, German, Latin, Old English, Middle English, and Mandarin – machine translation is great until it isn’t, and when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. There’s a whole YouTube channel devoted to running songs through Google Translate and back again and singing the ridiculous results. I’ll link to my favorite: I’ll Make a Man out of You from Disney’s Mulan. In general, if something is pretty clearly a slogan of some sort, a Google search is going to be a better friend than a straight translation, especially because machine translation almost never handles idiom well.

You say I’ve been a shit to you? Can you tell me what I did? I really did think that I was being pretty chill on the whole given that your participation in this conversation basically started with you walking into my house and taking a dump in the living room. I’ve certainly been kinder that most of the other responses to you that I’ve seen. I called you a fool because you saw something you didn’t understand and instead of asking a question, you decided to try to speak with authority while not comprehending the topic at hand. And you were antisemitic while doing it. What else would we call that but foolish?

As for the third degree burns comment, it was a joke that obviously didn’t land playing on the dual meanings of chill – “relaxed” and “cold” vs not-chill being “aggressive” and “hot”. My previous posts have been made with a pretty tight grip on my temper, as I am actually pretty annoyed with you at this point, but my anger would be burning a lot hotter if I let it, and that was the point I was trying to make.

Given that you’re not appreciative of all of the work that I’ve been doing to keep it civil though, that this thread is a pain in your rear, and that you’re not interested in whatever this is, I feel like a block is probably incoming. So, I’m gonna earn it.

I don’t think we agree on what’s going on, actually. I think the global rise in antisemitism is a tragedy, you seem to think it’s an invitation to join in. I think that best case scenario you have a ton of antisemitic biases that you have yet to examine, and the worst case scenario is that you’re a raging anti-Semite who has learned how to hide it behind appropriate turns of phrase to make it acceptable. Given that you have refused to apologize for being antisemitic, even when multiple Jewish people have confirmed that, yes, your behavior is antisemitic, I’m inclined to think that you’re closer to the latter than the former.

I’m sure that you don’t like being called antisemitic. I don’t particularly care. I don’t want to have to deal with anti-Semites on my posts. Neither of us is happy today. If you don’t want to be called antisemitic, DON’T BE ANTISEMITIC. If a Jewish person, or in this case if multiple Jewish people, tell you, “hey, that’s antisemitic, can you stop?” The appropriate response is, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” And then you stop. That’s how you get people to stop calling you antisemitic. That’s not what you did. You doubled down, and tried to goy-slpain (And before you try to get into it, “goy” is not a slur, it just means non-Jew) to Jewish people that we were wrong. Can you not see how that might provoke a reaction?

“But I wasn’t being antisemitic, I was just – ” Shut up. Yes you were. Just because you don’t recognize something as antisemitic doesn’t mean it isn’t, it just means you’re woefully uneducated about something that you can’t seem to stay quiet about. I don’t want you to be able to continue to claim ignorance though, so let’s make a list of the antisemitic shit I saw from you today.

Derailed a post about antisemitism with a “but, Israel!” – already discussed, ad nauseum

Putting Judaism on a pedestal - this is called philosemitism and it’s also incredibly hurtful to Jewish people – still just as othering as being hateful, but now we’re not allowed to complain about it because how can we complain about you liking us?

Claiming that Israel is the one who has broken ceasefires (that was Hamas. Repeatedly), paired with complaints about hospital bombings (done by both sides, including Palestinians bombing their own hospital), and mentioning dead Palestinian children – in combination, this works to paint Israel as being particularly bloodthirsty, which is an antisemitic talking point. There are ways to discuss these things. This wasn’t it.

“Germany currently considers anti-Zionism to be antisemitism. Israel has a fascism problem” – this isn’t necessarily antisemitic, but holy non-sequitur, Batman! And there are readings of this that are antisemitic – that Jews or Israel control the German government. Consider that Germany has a somewhat unique experience with antisemitism in that they were taken to task for it in a way that no other government ever has been. Maybe they know something you’re refusing to acknowledge.

“Zionist bullshit” Zionism is a Jewish political movement, and a conversation to be had amongst Jews. As a non-Jew, your opinion is about as welcome as a white boy’s at a Black Panther meeting. There are ways to be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic, but given that you are being antisemitic in other ways, you don’t qualify.

Israel is a colonial project – Israel is a land back movement come to fruition. To be a colony, you need to be colonized for an empire – to which empire does Israel belong? To be a colonizer you must be a foreigner – Jewish ties to the land of Israel go back to before Palestinians identified as a group, before Islam, before Christianity. The archeological record of Jews in Israel goes back for 3,000 years. Show me another group of colonizers that can say the same about the land they’ve colonized.

Israel is to blame for the rise in antisemitism – Really? And all the other countries that are slipping into fascism are also seeing a rise in attacks against their people as well? People from Hungary and Turkey and the United States are also getting attacked for their fascist governments? No? So we’re both holding Israel to a higher standard than other countries (antisemitic) and victim blaming the Jews for their own suffering. I hope I don’t have to explain why that’s shitty. Also, if that’s your excuse for the rise in antisemitism, why did it rise before Israel existed? It couldn’t possibly be that we see spikes in antisemitism every 50-100 years regularly for centuries if not millennia, and this one showed up just like clockwork.

Relatedly, the belief that Israel represents all Jews is also antisemitic. And ridiculous. It’s like saying that England represents all Anglicans.

I am absolutely positive given what you’ve expressed above, you probably have other antisemitic views that you haven’t expressed here. That’s for you to unpack. You can either figure it out and stop, if that’s what you want, or you can use Israel as an excuse to be a raging anti-Semite as so many others are already doing. I can’t choose for you, but if you choose the latter, I hope it continues to bring you exactly as much joy as it has today.

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

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

Am Yisrael Chai.

#antisemitism #judenhasshole #I did put it in the tags of the original post that if you showed up and were antisemitic I would bite you #I don't know what people expected

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perfectlyvalid49 · 8 months ago

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After reading this, the question I have is why did you make it as a response to my post?

It isn’t really in conversation with what I said, it would stand on its own just fine. If you wanted to make sure the same audience saw it, you could have tagged it #Jumblr. If you wanted to make sure I saw it, you could have just @ed me.

So the only thing I can think of is that you read a 20 paragraph essay on the pain felt by a Jew in the diaspora that spends exactly one paragraph talking about Israel, and mentions twice that I am not very personally connected to the country, and thought, “the response this needs is a complete derailment so I can talk about how much Israel sucks.”

And to be explicitly clear – when a Jew says, “hey, my synagogue in Minnesota received a bomb threat, and I’m worried that I’ll have to move due to antisemitic violence,” and your response is, “yeah, but Israel sucks,” that is antisemitic. To say that Israel is an elephant in the room in a response to a discussion about the pain caused by antisemitism is to imply that Israel’s existence/actions somehow justify the antisemitism. If you want to know why people conflate antizionism with antisemitism, it’s because of actions exactly like this one.

And you can have these opinions! I don’t agree with all of them, but you’re allowed to have them. Having them isn’t necessarily antisemitic (though some of them do head into the territory of antisemitic talking points). But putting them on a reblog of a post about the pain that antisemitism is causing is antisemitic. And it’s just incredibly tone deaf in a way that’s hurtful.

I guess, to try to understand, let’s flip the situation. If and American Muslim made a post about the pain caused in their own life by Islamophobia, would you reblog it with, “those are valid issues, but what we really need to talk about is Hamas’s attack on October 7th.” Is it a fair thing to want to talk about? Yes. Is it correct to bring it up as a response in this way? Absolutely the fuck not.

If you want to talk about Israel’s shift into far right politics over the last 20 or so years, we can. If you want to talk about the reasons that may have happened, we can. If you want to talk about what we can do as non-Israelis to support a shift to more liberal politics and policies in Israel, we can. If you want to have a philosophical debate about Zionism (though, if as you say you do not have a connection to Judaism, you may need to do some homework first), we can.

But not here. Not as a response to this post. You say you stand against antisemitism. You can’t do that effectively until you learn to separate conversations about Judaism from conversations about Israel. Until then, you’re only going to hurt more people than you help.

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

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

Am Yisrael Chai.

#antisemitism #I will happily go on for hours about how much Bibi and the Likud party suck #but this is not the place #pro tip #if someone is talking about being Jewish and your urge is to say 'BuT wHaT aBoUt IsRaEl?'#that's antisemitic #literally #'Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel' is one of the points in IHRA's working definition of antisemitis #possible Judenhasshole

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perfectlyvalid49 · 8 months ago

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I asked because I genuinely work actually very hard to be kind online. I bite my tongue a lot. I go back and delete harsher sentiments a lot. So, if you feel that I was being unkind, I want to know what I did so I can avoid it in the future. From my perspective, the only mean thing I’ve done is point out where you’ve been antisemitic. And that wasn’t mean, it was truthful, even if you didn’t like it. If it was something else, I want to know.

I didn’t say it was a good joke, or a new joke. I often try to break tension with a little levity, and as I’ve said, it obviously didn’t work in this case.

I don’t want to earn a block, but in my experience, when I explain to someone how they’re being antisemitic and they don’t want to hear it, eventually I get blocked. I figured that as long as it was incoming, I could spend a little less time on sparing your feelings. I wouldn’t hold out hope that this can be productive, as I don’t think either one of us is going to change our opinion.

If you don’t know what am Yisrael chai means, then I can’t assume you know what goy means. I would not list it as the third thing anyone ever learns, and “goy is a slur” is a talking point that I’ve definitely seen repeated in the last few months. Given that we’ve established that I think you’re woefully undereducated, I’m going to over explain rather than assume you know what I’m talking about.

I know that elsewhere you’ve said you don’t believe that you’re the arbiter of antisemitism, but multiple Jews have told you in the last day that you’ve been antisemitic, many (myself included) taking the time to explain exactly what you’ve done that was antisemitic, and why, and you’ve refused to acknowledge that if multiple Jews are telling you something is antisemitic, then it is. Instead, you’ve tried to explain to us why you’re right actually. That is an antisemitic action in and of itself. Actions speak louder than words. Saying you’re against antisemitism while being antisemitic is exactly the same as saying, “I’m not homophobic! I just don’t want those filthy queers around my kids.” No one with half a braincell is going to believe the first half of the statement. So when you say you think antisemitism is abhorrent, no one believes you. If you did, you’d stop being antisemitic. Or you’d offer a better apology than, “I wasn’t at 100% and I don’t think I communicated well.” You communicated just fine. We understood you.

Your initial addition was not antisemitic because it was unclear and rambly. It was antisemitic because you felt the need to respond to a Jew in the diaspora who was not talking about Israel with a rant about Israel. Regardless of what you meant, and any misunderstandings we might have had, it wasn’t an appropriate time to say what you said. Your refusal to understand this is a problem.

We could talk for a long time about the efforts Israel takes to protect Palestinian civilians, the horrors of urban warfare in general, how that’s made worse by Hamas deliberately using civilian infrastructure as military assets, how Israel has actually killed fewer Palestinians than would be expected when comparing to other similar situations, at great risk to it’s own soldiers, and how even for all of that it should still do better. Claiming that they’re bloodthirsty though is antisemitic. But you’ve already proven that you won’t listen to what you don’t want to hear, so I don’t expect that conversation to go anywhere.

Let me make the non-sequitur more clear: “Germany is arresting people for disagreeing with a political movement I find objectionable. Israel is fascist.” The two countries are unrelated. Jumping from one to the other was the non-sequitor, B did not flow from A. You did put a paragraph break in to separate them, but the way they stand next to each other makes it seem like they should be related, or like you think they’re related – Germany is doing a thing because of Israel. Israel is the root of a German problem. The Jews are the root of Germany’s problems. None of these are big jumps based on how you said what you said. The subtext was there whether you intended it or not.

You’re right, Palestinians do have thoughts on Zionism that need to be heard. Unless I’m deeply mistaken though, you’re not Palestinian. And you’ve already proven that you don’t have the informational background to participate meaningfully in the conversation. Specifically, it was developed as an answer to the question, “How do we deal with the global rise in antisemitism?” Your only skin in the game is to be a shining example of why the question is as relevant today as it was when the movement was founded in the 1800s.

Are you arguing that Israel is a colony of the United States? Or the British Empire? Or both? In any case, that’s factually false. The British actually imposed harsh restrictions on Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine while they were still in control of the land. I’m not denying the Nakba, but will you acknowledge that an equivalent number of Jews have been displaced from their homes in MENA counties due to Arab persecution? Or does it only matter when it happens to Palestinians? Or does it only NOT matter when it happens to Jews, you antisemite?

As for a historical connection to the land, there is a difference between an empire wanting to regain lost territory, and a native people who were displaced by empire wanting to return home. Like there’s a difference between Italy making the claim that Turkey should be and Italian province because of all of the Roman ruins there (absurd), and a Native American claiming the land that their ancestors were forcibly removed from. Does indigenousness expire? If so when? There are a lot of native rights groups that might be interested in your answer. Can we use that number and say that if Israel waits that long the Palestinians no longer have a claim to that land? Or is this once again, a special, antisemitic, standard for Jews and Jews alone?

I straight up skipped the other hot conflicts because I didn’t want to wind up arguing about them as well. We clearly have more than enough going on already. And you’re right, the countries that we both mentioned are getting flack for their fascism. But people of Hungarian decent (or Russian or Turkish) are not on the receiving end of a multi-hundreds % increase in hate crimes against them. That’s special for the Jews – that’s antisemitism. And I think that it’s interesting that you say here that individual Russians aren’t culpable for Putin’s actions, when you decided that you needed to jump in on a post about my (an individual Jew’s) post about my experiences, with an indictment of Israel. Are individuals to be harassed for the actions of world leaders/governments or no? Or is it ok if they’re Jewish, you fucking antisemite?

If you still think after everything I’ve said, and everything that everyone else has said, that your crime here is “being unclear and rambly on the internet when I should be more attentive" and not being a raging antisemite, then you are beyond help. Or maybe @the-library-alcove was right and your head is just full of dandelion fluff. At this point, you’re not just ignorant (not meant as an insult), you’re choosing ignorance (definitely meant as an insult.) I hope one day you will be forced to gain understanding. I don’t believe it can be done in a way that is pleasant for you.

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

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

Am Yisrael Chai.

#antisemitism #judenhasshole #My favorite curse comes from a video game - may you learn #I don't think this person ever will

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