#nothing would be more jewish than that
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remembering when i died of alcohol poisoning and right after my journey into nothingness I had a vivid as fuck dream/vision where i ended up in what i assume was christian heaven and G-d and two angels were there and i said "im not supposed to be here" and then i just left. the reason i knew it was Christian heaven is bc it was plain, blinding white with zero decor. I dont know what the fuck that says about me or death but that shit was extremely jewish
#jewish#jumblr#that whole experience was just super jewish#i know when i had that dream I was most likely already resuscitated#but itd be funny as fuck if i lived just bc i was pissed off at g-d#nothing would be more jewish than that
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As good as the finale was I am still left in serious want for more storyline for the Tuskegee Airmen because wow they really got a quarter of an episode in ep8 and maybe 3 lines in this ep and we're supposed to be good?
We really should have had scenes with them across more episodes, and gotten at least a fraction of their story because the way they were shown really showed almost nothing
#there's also plenty of other issues#i saw someone talk much better about the jewish rep scenes we got in this ep than i ever could#but i was very uncomfortable with solomon being the one to help that nazi up#it was just unnecessary#like even if it was accurate it really felt out of place and bad#and im not the one to talk in depth about the tuskeegees either#that's not my place#but i am sincerely dissapointed because they featured heavily in the advertisements#and it feels wrong that they got advertised like their stories would be told when they didn't really do more than show a page of their stor#like i loved so much of the series#but it needed to be longer and it needed to cut C plots to benefit B plots#and they could have done more to do a perspective swap at various times more#so we wouldn't get stalled so much with the nothing going on at the pow camp so often and instead met any of the new guys after e5 really#dana rambles#mota#masters of the air#mota spoilers
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#really randomly fell down a weird rabbit hole today#i was watching the X-Files and finally felt like reading up on david duchovny#like i see u fellow slav what kind of slav are you#so i opened up his wikipedia article and saw that his dad was jewish and from ukraine and went like AHA WE ARE THE SAME#and just out of curiosity looked up the place he's from because im curious about jewish shtetls in the ukraine#because my whole family except my biological father is from several of them and i thought hey maybe they were neighbors#which they fucking are omg theyre just 20km apart#my greatgreatgrandma is from makhnivka which i even found articles and history about and how the jewish population grew & declined#even though i did not find any steinbergs in the archives#anyway when i read up on Berdychiv where duchovnys family is from it said#early settlement by the Chernyakhov Culture#which was an archeological culture between 200 and 500 CE existing at the same time as the roman empire#....... is this how i finally find out where my name is from??????? like?????????#i wish i knew so much more than i do#like i only found out that im not russian i was just born in russia like 7 years ago or so??? because my mom never tells me anything#all the information about my great great grandparents and where theyre from is from my grandma#and her dementia is really bad now and shes just angry and screams and calls people names#my russian is too bad to properly read up on stuff like that and theres barely anything in english or german#i just want to know idk#but genetic testing is too expensive and also very america centric and the only family i have in the us is super conservative#i had to block them on facebook when my grandma made me write to them once over 10 years agl#and i know a huge chunk of my grandmas family moved to israel too so i dont want anything to do with that either#although id be curious if it would actually find my half siblings i found out about also like 8 years ago#i just wish there were more archives and more people i could talk to about this#on my grandfathers side theres nothing really left#my grandfather passed suddenly and apparently before he did he took ALL THE FAMILY PHOTOS AND DOCUMENTS somewhere to maybe digitalise them#but we dont know where so theyre literally gone for ever#but his whole family was from kiev and is apparently named after this culture era#his dad was a higher up at a sugar factory and i still cant find anything#my grandma had so many cousins and they were so interconnected and knew so much and i literally just have my mom and no one else
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this is partially a critique on my part but even more of a critique on other online leftists' part since i notice a complete lack of attempts at putting oneself in others shoes- it shouldn't quite literally take learning you have x minority ethnicity in you to have sympathy and understanding for them.
#i started understanding native people more when even the possibility of me having ntv american in me was presented to me#heres an idea: ACTUALLY TRY TO VISUALIZE WHAT SHIT WOULD BE LIKE IF YOU WERE IN STEAD OF DOING NOTHING#yes. yes. you will 'never fully comprehend' blah blah blah but im sure you've had enough experiences being treated lesser than#to be able to put yourself in other peoples shoes long enough to understand the complex ways of how shit negatively effects people#pretend that you are jewish (in your brain not irl if you're not. this is a thought exercise.) and now tell me what you think should#happen to jewish ppl in israel. and wait- i mean ACTUALLY think about it. dont shit out the most buzzwordsy shit you can think of#to make yourself feel and Look Cool to your followers. basically im asking you to do method acting here. i want you to go THAT far#to understand bc its apparently what needs to be done for you to understand.#bc if you're actually doing this thought exercise and you're actually educated on why theres jewish ppl in israel to begin with#(hint: they were forced out of other countries) you're not going to then be like 'yeah its fine to kill all jewish ppl in israel' you just#WONT come to that conclusion if you're being honest.#also i bet plenty a yall havent even gotten dna tests so far all you know you COULD have ashkenazi in you!#so you need to internalize that and try to act the way you think someone put in that situation would act to understand better.#also obviously all the while listening to jewish people while you're at it.
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i wish there was hebrew school for adults :( i'd do anything to have gotten a jewish education and live a jewish childhood, even if i'd decided later on that i didn't believe in god
#vurr.txt#i just. i feel like such a fake jew all the time!!#i dont have the knowledge or the community or the history#my family does! but i dont :(#and with my brainfog its incredibly hard to like. remember anything i learn about judaism#sucks!#there has to be a term for this right#like how transracial (THE NON RADQUEER ONE) refers to people raised outside their culture#what would it be called when ur mom became an atheist and was disowned by the jewish side of her family#so you only got basically a surface-level understanding of hanukkah and nothing else#despite mom going to hebrew school i know more about christianity than i do about judaism! and it SUCKS
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it's time for my yearly chanukah merchandise ratings! how are there always so many to choose from. as always, this year is a doozy and I am as bitter as ever lmao
this was quite literally labeled "hanukkah cone tree." gee I wonder which winter holiday is The One With The Trees. surely it's the jewish one with all the fire. let's make it blue and white just in case. 4/10 there is no excuse for this
why are the chairs so far apart. why is there nobody there. why are there so many grapes. what even are those green things. why is there soup. will the mysteries never cease. 7/10 purely because it's pretty
I for one welcome our jewish alien cousins. not sure what this has to do with chanukah but I want to hear about jewish life on mars so 8/10 friends come in out of the cold and have a latke with me
the more I looked at this, the worse it got. there's a literal christmas tree and tinsel but oh it's got blue lights so it's fine. and as we all know, children regularly hold fully lit candle menorahs with mittens while going door to door during a snowstorm. I guess who are we to stifle a child's latent desire for arson. 5/10 somebody save that poor dying kitten
this poor magen dovid is being forcefully converted to christianity and we need to help it. quick somebody put this on a sufganiyot stack. 4/10 we all know the intended target audience isn't interfaith families okay
do I even have to say it. please just. just stop. get One (1) Jew to weigh on your hanukkah products, I beg you. -392928373/10 walmart owes me a personal apology for making me see this with my own two eyeballs
I spent a full five minutes staring at this shirt desperately trying to make it make sense. I shouldn't have bothered. it's worse than the hebrew could ever be. 2/10 amposzu zusach mezchamal to you too
congratulations, once again you wrote gibberish. this says nothing. it's not chanukah, it's not happy holidays, it's nothing. the letters on the dreidel are an ACRONYM people! there's an order! 3/10 it's antisemitic that this has over 4,000 sales (thank you @quartzfox for sending this to me. now you all have to see it too.)
now these are CUTE. and the dreidel letters are in the correct order too, which is unfortunately impressive. 10/10 no notes, it has cats, would wear
(previous years 1, 2, 3)
#you know the downside of making this post every year is that.#i then have to crawl through the worst of Holiday Internet#to bring you all the Prime Selection#so you're welcome lmao#i do it so you don't have to 🫡#enjoy this year's ratings!#chanukah#hanukkah#ratings
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“why are jews so mad about stuff that happened hundreds of years ago” it’s because the timeline of antisemitism on wikipedia looks like this:
some centuries have their own separate articles. here’s the decade leading up to the creation of the term “anti-semitism” from the nineteenth century article:
so like. i think anyone with a brain can understand why jews are pissed off. and if your knee jerk reaction to learning about the history of antisemitism is to ask “what did the jews do?” nothing. the convenient lie is that jews have been persecuted throughout the centuries because of some inherent malignancy or evil disposition. the truth is more simple: people hate jews. and the truth is also more complex: people would rather believe jews are worth hating than confront the shame they themselves feel upon learning about the long history of antisemitic violence around the world. and the longer that shame exists, the more corrosive it becomes.
and what do human beings do when they feel ashamed? they project that feeling onto others. they may even blame the source of that shame, even if that source wasn’t the cause. rinse and repeat. it’s a very, very old cycle. just like how antisemitism is a very, very old cycle. not sure what the exact point of this post is, but i would love to stop seeing goyim dismiss jewish anger and trauma and grief for five minutes.
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How to spot Liberal Zionist Propaganda 101
This post is by no means exhaustive at all. There are many Liberal Zionist talking points but these are just some of the most common ones. While on the surface they seem a little naive and hopeful at best, they are very much harmful. If you claim to be an ally to Palestinians, this post is primarily for you!
For starters, liberal Zionists will often try to both-sides the issue of Palestine, talk about how it's complicated, they'll claim that the conflict hurts both Israelis and Palestinians, how the only way forward is one where Jews and Arabs "just need to get along," amongst other things. They also often like to centre themselves, even when acknowledging Palestinians as the victims of Israel or this "conflict." From time to time, they also like to engage in tokenising certain Palestinians whose views tend to more or less align with theirs. Here are some common arguments you may hear from them:
1. Any form of justifying Israel's existence or claiming that the only solution is two states
It does not really need to be said why justifying Israel's existence is harmful but justifying its continued existence also means legitimising Israel's land theft, its expulsions of Palestinians, and its ongoing harm to Palestinians and other populations. Reducing any sorts of “solutions” into a binary is unhelpful. Needless to say, a 2ss would not even address any legitimate concerns Palestinian have, such as the right of return, and would only legitimise Israel’s colonialism. Talking about a two-state solution also implies that the root of the conflict lies in Palestinians not having their own state rather than being an occupied people. It is very much also possible to construct a paradigm where Jews and Palestinians both live together on the same land as equal citizens that doesn't involve two separate states, much less an ethnostate.
2. Security for Israel could only come through peace
This is a similar talking point to the one above. Not only does it centre Israeli safety and security above Palestinian liberation but it mistakenly assumes that once Israel makes peace with Palestinians, it'll achieve security. The reality, however, is that Israel's imagined security has quite often come at the expense of peace. In fact, "peace" has just acted as nothing more than a smoke-screen for Israel to carry out its expansionist policies, particularly in the West Bank. When liberal Zionists talk about peace juxtaposed with Israeli security, they're talking about attaining a negative peace rather than a positive one.
3. Israelis are not their government.
This point does nothing to actually help Palestinians. It is also an incredibly tone-deaf thing to say when Israel has targeted many Palestinian civilians by having alleged proximity to Hamas, such as being family members of militants or leaders (inc. children!), civil servants in a Hamas-led government, or even any male above the age of 15 they consider to be a potential combatant! It also deliberately erases Israeli civilians' support of and culpability in Israel's actions towards Palestinians.
4. Netanyahu and/or the Israeli right are the source of conflict.
While it is true that things have gotten inadvertently worse under Israel's various right-wing governments, they are not the source of conflict, but rather a product of extremist nationalism and Jewish supremacy perpetuated by the system. Both the 1967 occupations and settlements were undertaken under centre-left governments in Israel, and Israeli policy under non-right wing governments has been just as harmful towards Palestinians and has paved the way for where we are today. Blaming Netanyahu just also obscures the violent nature of Israel's military occupation over Palestinians which long precede him coming into power.
5. Netanyahu and Hamas are two sides of the same coin
I don't think I've seen any allies give validity to this claim but it's an extremely reductionist claim and is sort of similar to the one above. Groups like Hamas are merely a response to the Israeli occupation while Netanyahu is a byproduct of it. While some Israelis may see Hamas or their actions as an "obstacle to peace," Israel's actions and policies long pre-date Hamas and how Israel is currently responding to Hamas is no different to how Israel has engaged with Palestinian militant groups in the past, regardless of political affiliations or political goals. It is also important to note that Hamas has agreed to the establishment of a state along 1967 borders while Netanyahu aims to prolong the occupation and empower the settler movement (some of whom are part of his coalition government) as much as possible.
6. Israel is not a settler-colonial state.
While it is indisputable that Jews have historical connections to Palestine, that doesn’t automatically make you Indigenous or negate Israeli settler-colonialism. Colonialism in particular describes a relationship of exploitation. There are many cases of this, but we most clearly see this in the West Bank where Israel exploits natural resources on occupied Palestinian territory for its own political and economic gains. In terms of settler-colonialism, it is widely known that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to make way for Jewish refugees and migrants to the new state of Israel, and is still actively facilitating Jewish migration to Israel today while denying Palestinians their right of return.
7. (X) doesn't help Palestinians.
It is not up to anyone to determine whether certain tactics or strategies are helpful or not. This point only seeks to discredit pro-Palestine organising. Only Palestinians get to decide what is actually helpful for the cause or not.
8. Any sort of Hamas-blaming.
On the surface it may seem like there’s nothing wrong with this, but this point is often harmful and usually lends itself to right-wing talking points because its objective is to deflect blame away from Israel. Certain arguments blaming Hamas also aim to minimise Palestinian suffering perpetuated by Israel. It also paints Israeli violence as retaliatory to Palestinian violence which only obfuscates Israel’s (and by extension, the US’) role in its state military apparatus and the differing power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians. In other contexts, this point seeks to also legitimise certain opposition, such as the Palestinian Authority. Hamas-blaming also tends to sometimes lead to racist diatribes about Palestinians and their culture.
9. Al-Jazeera is not a credible news source.
Al Jazeera is a news source like any other. It has varying editorial policies and therefore will have equally good reporting on certain issues while having terrible reporting on others. The difference is that Al-Jazeera's news on Palestine is credible because it comes directly from their Palestinian reporters on the ground and first-hand eyewitness accounts. Western news sources are no more or less credible than al-Jazeera. Compare this to CNN, NYT, and any other Western news sources where Palestinian voices are often entirely missing from the narrative.
10. Overemphasis of antisemitism on the left
Antisemitism is a real issue and has the potential to fester in left circles if not directly addressed head on. Combatting antisemitism is extremely important, however, it is not an issue exclusive to the left. There is also a double standard in that no one expects Zionists to call out Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. Certain accusations of "antisemitism" also seek to distract from what's going on in Palestine by making it about Jewish comfort and feelings. Combatting antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism etc is always important as the basis of good politics.
Last but not least, be wary of native collaborators or any sort of normalisers! They are Palestinians or Arabs who try very hard to appeal to Western liberal consensus and can end up perpetuating a lot of harm to the cause and/or other activists. You will know them when you see them.
#palestine#israel#liberal zionism#other palestinians feel free to add onto this whether it be other points or anything else
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this particular corner of the discourse is always a hot mess because all the following are true at once:
some Jewish people absolutely call any criticism of the State of Israel or support for Palestinians antisemitic
some people who are already deeply antisemitic use Palestinian liberation as a fig leaf so they can say and do horrible things they wanted to say and do anyway
(a non-zero number of these people also hate Palestinians and would love nothing more than to see both communities turn on each other and destroy each other forever)
antisemitism is deeply woven into Western culture and many people who are not particularly consciously antisemitic can stumble into antisemitic rhetoric if they're not careful
like so many -isms, part of how antisemitism functions is dismissing any Jewish claims of antisemitism as overblown/hysterical/not real/unimportant
some Jewish people very much do want to shift the conversation to focus on antisemitism specifically so people talk and think less about Palestinian liberation
so at the same time, you have an uptick in genuine antisemitism, some of which is heartfelt and some of which is accidental (which, imo, require different responses — treating someone accidentally reflects back our culture's ambient subtextual antisemitism like a committed neo-Nazi is usually counterproductive, and vice versa), and also an uptick in people drawing attention to antisemitism, by which some of them mean genuine anti-Jewish stuff and some of them mean anything that isn't full support for the political agenda of a specific state, and all of these people are using essentially the same words to mean very different things and round and round the discourse wheel spins and it is just generally a miserable time for all involved
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all the people saying stuff abt the deli being fives name
i dont think its his name, but i also think its a missed opportunity to do something fun
like. fives name has been a tua mystery since day 1, why doesnt he have a name, was it his choice, if so why stick to five, how were the others given names and is that why five didnt get one etc etc
and none of those questions have been answered within the show (they have been answered outside of it but the statements of the creators often conflict with whats actually seen in the show.. so not reliable info basically). so there is an opportunity here to do what we did with ben in s3 - show how much five changes across timelines.
and in one sense, they could be making a statement here. five, unlike ben, is commanded more by nature than nurture. he always ends up the same regardless of his circumstances.
but given the general lack of care seen this season i generally think that the deli and the fives are more so a display of a lack of attention. the reason they all wear the same suit and have the same hairstyle, and are all the same age with the same appearance, its the same reason five doesnt change outfits after 7 years in the subway. the creators didnt care.
so i think that this would have been a really interesting opportunity to explore who five could have been. bring back old five, show us apocalypse five, toddler five with older fives looking after them, fives who got to have a family of their own and fives who were never a part of reginald's adopted children at all. irish fives and american fives, maybe even jewish fives if we follow aidan's faith/ethnicity (?).
we could have seen fives at different stages, fives from s1 and s2 and s3. we could have seen how five from the phoenix academy could butt heads with five from the umbrella academy over whose siblings deserve to live more. we could have seen founder five, missing arm and all, before he founds the commission. five from the comics could have made a cameo.
we could have had fives with different names. fives who grew up in the academy and did choose names. fives who were named by their birth mother. max could have been a five name, along with a thousand other names, and it could have shown that fives name isnt about him needing a name but instead how his family has affected him and how he sees himself.
instead we got.. basically nothing
this post is not about brisket five hes perfectly wonderful as is
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i feel like i should change zeros actual name... since I didn't know Isaac was a hebrew name... and dont wanna convey the wrong message... but goddamn does "isaac charles winslow" roll off the tongue.
#when i say it in a medieval announcer voice it just. sounds so right. best if you roll your r a bit too on charles.#my ocs#zero#ik realistically it shouldnt matter- but i have some conspiracy brained people in my life who stalk me on here and i dont want#any conservative for even a second to come under some delusion that zero has nothing to do with them and has something to do w jewish ppl#bc i promise he has EVERYTHING to do with specifically christian conservatives.#im sure my siblings and father would love to pretend hes just a metaphor for my mom and gma. im sure thats what they so badly#want to believe is the case. but guys. i promise. hes WAY more inspired by yall :^) LMAO#controlling physically abusive nature? my dad.#weird manipulative shit and convincing people to hate me? my sister.#and if you know me i probably dont need to explain how hes like my brother and also dont want to bc its disturbing.#treating animals like creatures they get to control and own and treat however? all of them#tendency to threaten violence to you specifically if they're abusing you to shut you up? all of them#mom might have some issues but quite frankly most of the issues she had im 95% sure she accidentally absorbed from my dad#maybe not the emotional expression issues but everything else? yeah...#and struggling with expressing emotions doesnt make her the most evil person on earth.#personally id rather be around someone who struggles to express their emotions than someone who might try to start a fight with me#to prove im actually a man#just saying.
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A Jewish prayer shawl worn by Levi Simon, a British man fighting for the Israeli army in Gaza who filmed himself rummaging through women’s underwear in an abandoned Palestinian home, belonged to a celebrated Holocaust survivor who warned of the dangers of hatred and racism. Social media footage posted in November shows Simon wearing the shawl, known as a tallit, in a building in Gaza. “This tallit I am wearing belonged to a Holocaust survivor by the name of Zigi. I am right now inside of Gaza writing ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again,” Simon says in the clip, drawing a Star of David and writing the Hebrew phrase meaning “the people of Israel live” on the wall. According to the accompanying text, the tallit was donated by the family of Zigi Shipper, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other Nazi camps from Lodz, Poland, who moved to the UK after the Second World War and died last January aged 93. But a close friend and fellow survivor told Middle East Eye he believed Shipper would have been "astounded and upset" to learn of the way in which his tallit had been used in Gaza. “He would have been as heartbroken as I am because neither of us imagined anything like that would be witnessed by us,” Manfred Goldberg, who met Shipper in 1944 when both were working as slave labourers at a camp in modern-day Poland, told MEE. Asked whether he would have been concerned by the conduct of Israeli forces, Goldberg added: “How can you ask such a question? Who is not upset? Zigi was a very outspoken person. He made a lot more noise than I did. He would have been beside himself.” [...] “Zigi and I had an unbreakable bond because of our experience in the camps. I know him better than I know more or less any person on earth,” said Goldberg. In his later life, Shipper was renowned for his decades of work promoting awareness of the Holocaust in countless talks to schoolchildren and through media interviews. In 2017, he was among 112 Holocaust survivors whose testimonies were recorded as part of a United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial project. “I want young people to know, especially young people, what happened because of racism and most importantly, hatred,” Shipper has been quoted as saying by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
and, more on what simon has been posting . . .
In one clip, Simon waves an Israeli flag in a school where, he says, “they teach terrorism”, adding: “We’re here, we’re here to stay, we’re not going to take your terror, and they’re going to start teaching Hebrew in this school soon." In another clip, he says he is going through “terrorist houses” looking for guns and explosives and then opens a drawer and starts pulling out and displaying women’s underwear, which he describes as "exotic lingerie".
. . . full article on MEE (26 Jan 2024)
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I have thoughts in regards to That Photo of Shani Louk receiving an award.
But first, I'd like to address something I've seen in our community about how the situation has been handled.
Many people I've seen have been sharing their anger and pain in regards to the photo and the award, rightfully so. However, many of these people have shared those thoughts alongside That Photo. While I understand the intent of this, I'd like to just ask for people to not do that.
Do not distribute That Photo in any way, please.
Shani Louk's family has asked for that photo not to be shared. Her family has asked for her to be remembered for her life, not her death.
Instead, I encourage you to share your views alongside a photo of Shani from her life. Share her as she lived, not as she died.
Let Shani's memory be who she was, not what was done to her.
Now, I know there's little I can say about the photo and award that hadn't already been said. I'd like to talk about it anyway.
First and foremost, receiving an award for photographing a woman being subjected to the worst a person can endure is disgusting. That award was given for taking a picture of a woman who has been raped and killed, and of her body continuing to be violated and paraded around. Not for protecting her, not for intervening, not for doing anything to help anyone.
Additionally, as I mentioned before, Shani's family has asked for that photo not to be spread around, and the resurgence in publicity that this photo is getting as a result is a direct blow to the family's wishes.
In that photo, for the purpose of that photo, Shani is used as little more than a prop. It is dehumanizing and violating. It is beyond that, but I cannot even come up with words to articulate how horrible it is.
I'm sure we've all heard the phrase, "people love dead Jews" at this point. This photo receiving a major award is simply confirmation of this. This photo, a photo of a dead Jewish woman, receiving such a highly esteemed award, proves this. I am sick to my stomach just writing about it.
There is nothing about that photo that would merit an award and it tramples upon Shani's memory and dehumanizes her even further than she already has been.
In protest of that award, I encourage you to share photos of her that aren't of her lowest moment.
Share photos of her life, share photos of her art. Do not share photos of her death.
Here are some photos I am choosing to share:
You can find these photos online, there's a whole Instagram account dedicated to sharing photos of her life. The first and last photos are from an article about her art being put up in an exhibition. These photos are out there, just find and share them please.
May her memory be a blessing and may it be protected from further desecration.
#jumblr#jewish#judaism#proud israeli#israel solidarity#opinion#antisemitism#jew#shani louk#israel#oct 7th
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The Jewish definition of Zionism is very different than the popular definition of Zionism. For Jews, Zionism has its roots in a 3,000 year old tradition of wishing to return to our homeland. I would argue that while the political Zionist movement is not integral to Judaism, Zionism, by its Jewish definition is. You do not have Judaism without Israel. Jews traditionally call themselves and the land they come from Israel.
To be a Jew and call yourself antizionist, you must necessarily isolate yourself from your community. You believe that your community has been brainwashed en masse by “Zionism.” You stop going to community events because they’re too “Zionist.” You try to create your own way to mark Judaism without Israel but it falls flat and meaningless, breaking from the tradition of thousands of years of ancestors who yearned for Zion and who each slowly helped create Judaism as we know it today. You either have to be in denial about harm to your community or you have to accept it on some level. You have to be okay with throwing the majority of your own people under the bus, and definitely at least all Israelis. You have to deal with people who tell you your own history with half truths, who know nothing about your culture and have no respect for it.
I called myself antizionist for several years as a teenager, and this coincided with a complete removal from my community and a stark stop to my education about Jewish history and peoplehood. When I re-engaged, the more I learned about Judaism and Jewish history the more “Zionist” (in the Jewish sense not the popular political sense) I became. Within a few months of actually dealing with antizionist activists, I stopped calling myself an antizionist, because I realized very quickly that I was being tokenized and that for all the people around me claimed to know, they were deeply ignorant about anything to do with my culture and people. When I left my on campus group they replaced me with another token Jew almost immediately. When he fucked off they found another one, whom they weaponized against my campus Jewish community to try and evict our Jewish student centre.
So don’t you dare talk to me about the Jews in the encampment protests. Just don’t.
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Israel is a nation founded on and sustained by settler-colonial violence, whether the Haganah and Irgun militias in 1948 or their descendants, the Israeli Defense Forces, Mossad, and Shin Bet. Without the massacres, without the trails of tears leading to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan, Israel would not exist. Settler violence in the name of Jewish supremacy is both Zionism’s original sin and its operative logic. From the left flank of Zionism (represented by figures like Yigal Allon, leader of the Israeli Labor Party) to the right (like Menachem Begin, commander of the Irgun Militia and future Likud Prime Minister), the founders of Israel were united in their designs on historic Palestine and beyond. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, declared in 1937, “We shall spread in the whole country in the course of time . . . [the partition] is only an arrangement for the next twenty-five to thirty years.” The dreams of early Zionist leaders live on in the settlers who terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank and push their settlements ever-deeper into what they call Judea and Samaria, or the “Land of Israel.” To today’s liberal Zionists, this is a deeply inconvenient historiography. After all, the Zionist colonization of the West Bank is widely condemned, and the International Court of Justice recently found that Israel’s fifty-seven-year-long occupation and settlement of the West Bank is illegal under international law. For decades, liberal Zionist writers have attempted to portray the West Bank settlers and their benefactors as the bastardization of a sacred ideal, rather than what they more truthfully represent: the bare, exposed soul of Zionist settler colonialism, without reservation, without media training, without hasbara; pure, unadulterated violence, biblical racism, greed, and theft. The settlers are, if nothing else, remarkably honest about the nature of the Zionist project. By cordoning them off as aberrations to be rebuked, the intent of liberal Zionist commentators is to reclaim the legitimacy of Israel via controlled demolition. This manifests in what the academic Kerry Sinahan recently described as “critical counter-insurgency,” a mode of commentary and reporting which is designed to “to rescue Zionism, rather than Palestinians, from the rubble of Israeli destruction.” Counterinsurgent critique is a means of controlling the narrative and constricting the spectrum of political possibilities. If the Zionists themselves set the parameters for acceptable criticism of Israel, they can ensure it serves their interest—and that it doesn’t go too far, to the rational end point of anti-colonial resistance.
3 September 2024
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saw a post that gave me an eye twitch so i’m gonna break it down and analyze it bc i feel like it exemplifies a lot of what’s wrong with gentile discourse on i/p rn.
1. yeah, it is awful that zionist institutions and leadership use jewish trauma to justify why diaspora jews should unquestioningly support the current state of israel, regardless of the atrocities it commits against palestinians.
2. "israel is not your bube who survived the shoah" i don't know how to explain to you how fucking callous this sentence is.
3. for better or worse, israel did save jewish people. nearly a million jews from the swana region and 24,000 from ethiopia fled there after experiencing extreme violence and discrimination. you really think america or europe would have taken in a million black and brown jews? have you seen the current state of immigration?
4. "how do you argue with someone when their idea of israel is so rooted in their family trauma?" you don't. you validate their fears, make them feel heard, and then you offer them alternatives. the vast majority of diaspora support for israel is based in fear of persecution and eradication. if you offer real, legitimate solutions for the safety of diaspora jews, i guarantee you will be a thousand times more successful than just screaming at them and telling them "who fucking cares about your holocaust survivor bubbe????"
5. "how do you possibly tell them that the holocaust isn't relevant?" you don't, because it is. nearly 500,000 holocaust survivors moved to or were sent to israel after the shoah. some did not have a choice of where they were sent, some tried to go back to where they were living before but had no money and gentiles had taken their houses and belongings so they had nowhere to go, many faced violence upon trying to return to their hometowns in the form of pogroms, several countries turned them away. you cannot say the holocaust is not relevant to the current israeli population because gentiles in the diaspora are the reason they're there.
6. "i'm so tired of centering jewish identity in discussions over a nation state." are you stupid? genuinely, are you stupid? do you really not see how jewish identity and the history of the jewish people factor into a state with a fucking star of david on the flag that was founded after a genocide of 6 million jews that the rest of the world didn't want to deal with? seriously? no, jews in the diaspora are not responsible for the actions of the israeli government. we aren't more loyal to israel than we are to wherever we're living. but to say that israel has nothing to do with the jewish people is frankly laughable.
7. "how do you say that without sounding invalidating? like that just sounds horrible and antisemitic." that's because it is. you are being horrible and antisemitic.
edited to add: NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER?????????????????????????????? HELLO??????????????????????????
so please for the love of fuck educate yourself on the history of the jewish people and the history of the state of israel before making stupid ass posts like this. israel didn't manifest out of nowhere, it didn't come from "jewish supremacy" it came from hundreds of thousands of jews who were at their wit's fucking end with antisemitism in the diaspora, and from britain's colonization and imperialism paired with it's complete and total disregard for anyone who wasn't racially and culturally white. the monster that is modern day political zionism is a creation of the world's own making. people have been posting a lot about hamas being a response to 70+ years of israeli occupation, violence, and apartheid, but don't seem to understand that israel is a response to 3000+ years of persecution, expulsion, and genocide. the massacres and terror committed by hamas don't take into account the wellbeing of palestinians, and the oppression and violence perpetuated by the israeli government don't take into account the wellbeing of jews in israel or in the diaspora.
nothing will change if gentiles in the diaspora do not take responsibility for the rest of the world's role in the creation of israel. research your country, learn about how they treated their jews (not just during the holocaust but from the moment there were jews in your country), talk to your local jewish population, ask how you and organizations you are part of can help keep the diaspora safe for jews. because as an american jew, i don't want to move to israel. the government is borderline fascist, non ashki non orthodox jews are often seen as second class citizens, i don't speak the language, and my life is here. a lot of diaspora jews feel this way. but every time i see another group of nazis at a rally or get another bomb threat at my synagogue and look to see which country would be safest to move to as a trans person and as a jew, the only answer is israel, which is exactly what zionist institutions and leadership are counting on. if you want that to change, you and your community have to change it.
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