#reblog to fight antisemitism

[infiniteglitterfall]

Uggghhh, what is UP with Canada?!

In Vancouver, the Schara Tzedeck synagogue's windows were smashed on April 19th.

In Toronto on April 19, five windows at the Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue were smashed with a hammer.

In Toronto on April 26, someone set a sign on fire at Beth Tikvah Synagogue....

....And again on April 28.

In Toronto in May, Jewish community members started escorting a kid to school because he was being bullied by peers who told him, "We're going to do to you what Hamas did to Israel," pushed him, kicked him, threw stones at him, and told him, "we need to kill you." This had been going on for six months. (His family had gone to both the school and police repeatedly at this point and it had only escalated; the kids throwing stones at him on the way to school was new.)

In Toronto on May 17th, Kehillat Shaarei Torah's windows were smashed again.

On May 25th before dawn, two people shot at Bais Chaya Muska, a Jewish girls' school in Toronto.

On May 29th, in the middle of the night, someone shot at the Belz Yeshiva Ketana school in Montreal.

In Vancouver on May 30, someone poured fuel on the doors of the Schara Tzedeck synagogue, then firebombed them.

In an article on June 7, Rabbi Lisa Grushcow of Emanu-El-Beth Sholom synagogue in Montreal said people have yelled “Hitler was right!” and “Jew!” at her congregants as they arrive for Shabbat services and that Jewish kids are being bullied in local schools.

On June 1 in Toronto, a man smashed the window of the Anshei Minsk synagogue with a rock.

On June 3 in Kitchener, someone smashed the front door of Beth Jacob synagogue.

On June 19th in Montreal, three small bullet-like holes were somehow made in the windows of Falafel Yoni. (I don't know, all the articles go out of their way to say they don't know WHAT made the holes.) Falafel Yoni is owned by a Jewish man who was born in Israel, and has appeared on boycott lists despite the owner never having said anything political about Israel.

On the same day, down the street from Falafel Yoni, someone smashed the windows of a nearby gym whose co-owner is Jewish and had also been born in Israel.

On June 30 in Toronto, someone threw stones at the Pride of Israel synagogue, then at Kehillat Shaarei Torah, smashing windows (again) in the latter.

On the weekend of July 27th, a father and son in Toronto were arrested for planning a terrorist attack and murder on behalf of ISIL, which is wild.

On July 29th, someone torched a bus belonging to the Bobov Hassidic school in Toronto.

And smashed the windows of a DIFFERENT Jewish school in Toronto, Leo Baeck Jewish Day School, and set it on fire.

On July 31 in Toronto, guess which synagogue had three signs set on fire? That's right: Kehillat Shaarei Torah.

Plus one sign set afire at Toronto's Temple Sinai Congregation the same night, presumably by the same arsonist, who might even have been the stone-hurler of June 30.

There are probably ones I missed. Just putting this list together took like three hours, though. I kept having to go, "Wait, surely that can't be the same synagogue AGAIN" and "they only mention the closest major intersection, which one was this?!" and "that can't be a different one, how many windows did they smash??" and go look for more sources. Plus a couple of articles were giving conflicting dates for one of the incidents.

And nobody ever gives actual dates, they just say shit like, "Blah blah blah was reported Monday...." so I have to look at the article date and then look at a damn calendar.

I went back as far as April because everything I found was referring to earlier incidents. Back to April. February and March were relatively quiet, at least in the news. Although interestingly, February is when the most hate crimes in Toronto had been reported, at least as of ... oh, I see.

As of March.

On the bright side, I did discover that Kehillat Shaarei Torah consistently has great jokes on its sign.

[matan4il]

It shouldn’t be this heartbreaking to be a Jew online.

(in case anyone misses this point, which I think is very important: it takes more than reblogging a “Happy Passover” post to be an actual ally to Jews online. Education is vital)

[batboyblog]

People, lets call them Goyim, seem to really struggle with this so here we go

JEWS GET TO DEFINE WHO IS A JEW

All the different branches/movements of organized Judaism generally agree on who is and who is not a Jew. There are slight difference around patrilineal Jews, but generally speaking there is agreement.

all Jewish movements also agree that becoming a Jew is a process, that takes time, and involves the guidance of a Rabbi, no Jewish movement believes that just saying "I'm Jewish" is enough, no Jewish movement believes in self conversion.

if there's a debate about who's Jewish or if someone is or isn't Jewish, thats a debate for Jews to have between us.

if a Jew or more important a lot of Jews tell you someone is not Jewish, and you're not Jewish, its not your place to say we're wrong.

[sakebytheriver]

Here's the thing about Oct. 7th

Any analysis of the situation that does not acknowledge that the IOF itself is responsible for most of the casualties is incomplete and pretty close to straight up propaganda

I have no love in my heart for Hamas, I agree that it is an extreme fundamentalist religious movement founded on the most radical platform the Palestinian revolution could have had and even as the secularists have taken positions and done work to move the ideology in a less radical direction as they saw that with only Hamas in power they only had one option but to try and change the organization from the inside, that doesn't mean they don't still have extreme views or tactics and nor does it mean that they are not also mistreating the Palestinians in Gaza as any ruling government party mistreats their citizens, remember they only received 44.5% of the vote and then promptly ended free elections there after, not even to mention how many Gazans were under the voting age when that election was held. Their extreme views and tactics for liberation are quite literally why Netenyahu himself funneled money into their operation to ensure that they were the international face of Palestine to make it so that public international opinion would be against them and further destabilize Palestinian liberation attempts

But it has literally been reported by Israel's own media and journalists that the IOF are the ones who shelled Israeli homes which led to those horrific burning deaths of Israeli babies Ben Shapiro won't let the internet forget about, it was reported by the Israeli media itself that the IOF fired at their own citizens fleeing from the music festival, it was reported by Israeli media that the IOF shot and killed hostages with their hands tied behind their backs, and it has been confirmed by Israeli citizens who were taken hostage by Hamas insurgents that the insurgent's main goal seemed to be to keep them alive and relatively safe in order to be taken hostage as leverage for the Palestinian hostages Israel has locked in their prisons while the IOF soldiers and the people who gave them their marching orders were indiscriminate in who they killed, driving tanks through residential areas, shooting citizens, and bombing houses with families, the elderly, and infants inside

This is not to say that Hamas didn't kill anyone, I'm sure they did, but from Israel's own media and their own citizen's reports who were taken hostage we have been told the number of casualties were so high on Oct. 7th because the IOF had absolutely no qualms killing their own people

And nor is this to say that Hamas is some kind of humanitarian freedom fighting militia that will always treat Israelis nice and respectfully, the reason why they've been so nice to their hostages is because they are playing the optics game that Israel won't

They are doing the wartime optics game correctly right now while Israel has all but abandoned it, they are keeping the hostages safe and well looked after so that when held up next to the cruelty and the indiscriminate violence of the Apartheid state (which has over 10,000 Palestinians held hostage in their prisons as of now) they look better in comparison to the international eye, that is the whole point of fighting an asymmetrical war, you have to use asymmetrical tactics, especially in an age where public opinion can mean the difference between life or death

Ultimately, my point here is that the idea that Hamas are the ones who are soley responsible for the massacre of over a thousand Israeli citizens is just false, and that is confirmed by the Israeli media itself. It was the IOF response to the attack that killed so many, Hamas does not have the technology available to them to be able to shell someone's house, the people who crossed the Gazan border were only armed with the guns they could carry in their hands, that doesn't lead to the kind of damage done in these Israeli neighborhoods that we have seen reported on (just check NPR's ig page it's full of videos of the Israeli neighborhoods destroyed after Oct. 7th) but a tank driven by an IOF soldier who has been given the greenlight by his superiors to kill as many Israelis as he deems necessary in the hopes of killing any single Hamas insurgent they can get, definitely will

Innocents died on Oct. 7th, I will never deny that, but most of them didn't meet their end by a Hamas insurgent. They met their end by an Israeli soldier who was supposed to be sent there to protect them and if you don't acknowledge that fact, if you simply say that it was the attack by Hamas that killed so many people then you have not done any research into what actually happened that day and you don't get to use it as some kind of gotcha against the people who support Palestine

[magical-girl-coral]

The 2024 version of "Call yourself a 'community organizer' even though you're not on speaking terms with your roommates" is "Call yourself a 'anarcho socialist punk even though you never bother to study about antisemitism"

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

I feel like "Zionism" is to leftists like "pronoun" is to the right. The immediate reaction of anger. The complete ignorance to the actual meaning of the word thinking it's a synonym for a much more specific thing they deem evil.

Pronouns are not about norm breaking gender identity. Zionism isn't about support of the Israeli government. But who's gonna care? The moment you say these words, people stop listening and hear only whatever affirms their beliefs. There's probably no point in making this post besides venting because nearly everyone's already blacked out and decided that I said something they disagree with about what I'm specifically saying these words don't mean.

[wild-at-mind]

I skipped a reblog on the last post tbh even though it was overall fine, because it did the whole 'of course there is a place for violence in our activism!' thing and I no longer endorse that, honestly. Ever since Richard Spencer got punched on camera I've watched people practically salivating for an opportunity to do the same to an acceptable target.

But so much of activism is about optics. The optics of Richard Spencer being punched on camera are extremely good, because not only did everyone know he was on record saying stuff like 'Heil Trump', he was also right in the middle of giving an interview about his shitty views, and he was putting on that calm, composed and dignified act that he was using as a way to raise respectability for his movement. (I remember Kat Blaque a few years after described it as dressing like a church boy.) The anonymous assailant punching him shattered all of that. It was unquestionably a triumph during one of the dirtiest and ugliest times for US right wing politics in recent memory. In the years after this happened, I remember seeing a number of left wing people, online and in person, who clearly were not normally comfortable with violence suddenly paying lip service to the idea, and it just felt so disingenuous. I wanted to ask them what they meant specifically- were they about to go out and start something? Or did they just mean they didn't condemn every incidence of violence in activism? (Which as I hope I have shown, is the category I fall into.) But the thing is, very few opportunities are as clear as the Richard Spencer incident. You can say punch nazis all you want, but many of them do in fact realise that going around being obviously nazi in public is an escalation, so they hide it. The man who killed UK MP Jo Cox was found to have a large amount of materials in his house from extreme right movements from across the world, and had some of the most extreme views imaginable, but he had sense enough to hide it in his day to day. If before he committed the murder you found out somehow and punched him, you'd just be seen as punching a random middle aged man.

The times there have been violence against TERFs have, I guarantee, done nothing but handed them the moral high ground plus an even bigger victim complex on a silver platter. Their entire movement revolves around being the downtrodden victims of some kind of organised trans agenda looking to victimise them. Even though I am certain they have started some physical fights and trans people reacted in self defense, trans people will always be framed as the aggressor in these encounters, and no that is not fair, but I think it is reason enough to do everything you can to avoid putting hands on a TERF if you are ever in that situation. (No matter what your gender identity is, you will be called a trans woman in any backlash also, leading to more harm for trans women specifically.) I feel like people try and hand wave this as respectibility politics, but I prefer to see it as optics. And your audience is people whose first and only idea about the issue of trans rights will be this encounter. At some point while particating in non-violent direct actions in the environmental movement, I realised random people are very eager to overstate the harm of anything you do. For example, if you block a road for any length of time, someone will find a way to say that cause a death, through some convuluted means. I've told this story before, but one time during a longer period of protest I was involved in, a friend of mine had a random woman run up to her and scream at her that a little boy had died because of the road blocking, I guess he was supposed to have been in a car and not an ambulance (NHS cuts yadda yadda) and couldn't get to the hospital in time and it was the fault of my friend specifically that he had died. This upset my friend very much. I have heard of stories like this many times, the person who died because of our road blocking, a couple of which are verifiably true stories but most which remained rumour, like this one.

Road blocking is a non-violent action, but people still find a way to twist it into a violence you personally have done if you participate. The only way to make some people happy is if you never do anything that might inconvenience someone in any way in the course of your activism. But it's not hopeless, because there is a massive freedom to realisiing this. After I saw my friend accused of murdering a little boy because she maybe sat on a road with some other people, I lost interest in any idea of deliberately violent activism. I do not believe that violence is never justified, but I do think that when you try and use it as an activism tool, it's like lighting a fire. You can control it up to a certain point, but then you can't, and it escalates. People talk a lot about rioting on here as if riots are a special advanced kind of protest, but they are not things people plan. They happen because of tensions coming to a head, and once the riot starts, you no longer have control of what it does. Property damage is not inherently violent but it works best when strongly targetted, and during a riot there is bound to be a tonne of collaterel damage done to the everyday lives of people who live in the area. And even though rioting can lead to changes for the better, this is not a situation you can manifacture in a lab, just go out and do one day. And when you see that quote the rioting is the language of the unheard, remember that applies to the right wing as well. The people rioting against immigration in Dublin I'm sure felt unheard.

I hope this not particularly thought out post made sense.

[ichverdurstehier]

So much for "believe all women"

Hey, that twelve year old girl from France or somewhere who got called a "dirty Jew" as three boys raped her? Is that a fake accusation? The boys that had pro Hamas shit on their phone?

TWELVE YEARS OLD.

And before you say something like "oh but look at this bad thing Israel did" how does that justify raping a twelve year old girl???

Yes, Israel does bad stuff. Attacking a twelve year old girl doesn't fix that!! What the fuck

To the little girl, wherever you are, you did not deserve it. It was not your fault. You did not deserve rape for being Jewish. No one deserves rape

[arofili]

uh...........I've been Out Of The Game on tumblr for a bit and this definitely not a political blog but um. maybe don't glorify the fucking houthis on my dash ok???

[azuredrg]

there's a lot to be said on israel weaponizing their largely jewish population to commit crimes. i think attacking jews & jewish culture is giving israel exactly what they want, an excuse to fight back.

so i am begging hands and knees to not say "it sucks, but this is how it has to be" to antisemetic hate crimes because you can't be assed to attempt to separate antisemitism from anti-zionism. it's not difficult at all.

if you want to say israel is not meant to represent us, please act like you believe it

[jewishbarbies]

people will really say “I hate christianity so all religion has to stop” and not see anything wrong with it

[skypalacearchitect]

Since Jewish people are such a small population globally yet face so much violence and hate, I think it's important for gentiles (such as myself) to be allies and stand against antisemitism.

I don't think I am particularly good at this, I do want to find ways to do more than just reblogging tumblr blogs, I want to find ways to help in-person, but this is what I know to do right now.

I’m low on hope today. If you’re a goyim (ie non-Jewish) leftist of any religion or lack thereof, and you stand up to antisemitism, interact with this. I literally don’t believe anyone actually cares about us at all.

Jews DNI.

I genuinely want to see if any goyim who are loudly decrying all other forms of hatred are willing to be the ones to spread this message.

And this isn’t a “if you have a heart, you’ll reblog this” point scoring thing I’m trying to get. I am actually truly feeling like most people don’t have the balls to share this. Most people hate Jews this much.

[slyandthefamilybook]

it's so annoying seeing posts about Jewish culture—cutesy posts about fighting with g-d that appeal to Christian atheists' religious trauma, posts with Jewish music, posts with pictures of beautiful Jews—getting tens or even hundreds of thousands of notes, but the moment someone makes a post about antisemitism—about how it's built in to Western society, about how it's insidious and creeping, about how you've probably internalized it, about the difficulties we face and the grief we feel—they fail to break jumblr containment. Don't get me wrong, I love that goyim are celebrating Jewish culture as something beautiful and wonderful, but that can't be all we are to you. We're real people with real problems that you can't just ignore in favor of reblogging posts about bagels or whatever

[cephalopodvictorious]

And the level of comfort with such racially charged language and outright antisemitic dog whistles? You’re opening your mouths and letting Klan members speak

It’s just kinda heartbreaking seeing people who have historically been friends with me say “I’m not an antisemite! I don’t hate Jews! But this very loud group of Jew haters told me they’re virtuous so I’m gunna parrot them so that I don’t catch flack. I’m not researching anything, I’m sure this is all real. But I def don’t hate YOU”

In a turn of events that may surprise you - that just also makes you a Jew hater actually and does directly contribute to making it unsafe for me

[nachobsns]

Hello - I was impressed and extremely relieved by what you wrote in the post about the cult mentality of the Left RE Israel and accusations of genocide. You mentioned that you bought into the mindset until recently. If it's all right for me to ask, what was it that helped you break out of it? (Please feel free to delete/ignore if you'd rather not answer!)

thank you!! and no worries about asking— i think i put something in my pinned post about how people are welcome to send asks about this stuff, although my story isn’t super interesting. i fell down the typical online rabbithole, a couple weeks after october 7; i knew what had happened, at least vaguely, but the posts trickling onto my dash were all about the (undeniably tragic) loss of life in gaza, with little to no acknowledgment of the hamas atrocities that had started the war, so my narrative was pretty one-sided from the beginning. it just continued to snowball as the months went on and people became more radicalized, calling into question the reality of the 10/7 attacks and the humanity of all israelis. i never went all the way down the pipeline to full-on endorsing hamas or justifying their attacks, at least on a personal level, thank god, but i would reblog other people’s posts referring to hamas as a “resistance movement” and calls to boycott starbucks and mcdonald’s and condemnation of the “zionist media” etc etc etc. what pulled me out of it wasn’t any one thing— if someone had directly called me on my flawed logic and antisemitic biases while i was in this mindset, i doubt it would have done much, just reinforced my belief that i was on the “right side of history” and zionists were aggressors who couldn’t be reasoned with. it was mostly just passive observance and a slow exposure to other perspectives. i’m pretty sure the first post that led me to question my thinking was an ask on jewish-vents, which popped up on my dash in like, late july. this led me down another rabbithole, first scouring every single post on jewish-vents, then moving on to more popular jewish blogs that i had seen on “zionist blocklists” (applesauce42069, xclowniex, and spacelazarwolf were probably some of the blogs that influenced me the most, though i told myself i was just hate-scrolling at first, lol). i felt incredibly guilty seeing all the harm the movement i was a part of had caused to random jews and israelis just trying to live their lives and i realized how it went against everything i believed about how minority groups should be treated. from there, the aspect of actually undoing my thinking and changing my behavior for the better still took several weeks. denial of jewish indigenity to the levant in the face of tantamount archeological and cultural evidence was the first to go, as well as any ambiguity in my feelings about hamas. after that, it’s mostly been a slow process of redefining the idf’s actions from a “genocide” to a “war.” i still believe that what’s happening in gaza is unconscionable and horrific, and that too many innocent civilians have died, but i also understand how difficult it is to fight against a terrorist group that systematically embeds itself in civilian populations, and that the ratio of militant to civilian deaths is incredibly low compared to most urban warfare. i quietly deleted my old blog in early august— if i had directly engaged in harassment against jews, i likely would have kept it to make amends to the harmed parties and put a face to my actions, but as was, i had just contributed to the larger atmosphere of antisemitism on this site, and i felt uncomfortable knowing that i had a blog full of sentiments that no longer matched my values and beliefs. i decided i would be better if i took my endorsement out of the equation entirely, because when you’re looking through the notes of a post, it obviously doesn’t matter if someone who’s reblogged it no longer agrees with what was said— their notes still count as tacit approval, and i did not want approval of this “activism” attached to my online presence. i still have unwanted kneejerk reactions that crop up sometimes, particularly around the fundraiser posts from people “in gaza”; even though i know logically that they have all the markers of scams, there is still a part of me that really wants to believe i could help.

[stil-lindigo]

Hey, I just wanted to share something with you, as someone who's so invested in the Palestine conflict, I hope it might inspire hope, even a little.

I was born and live in Egypt, a very conservative and religious country. These days I deleted my Tiktok and rarely ever use Twitter, as I'm in my senior year, and seeing the constant deaths and torture was getting into me so much that I couldn't even eat or drink properly, nevertheless properly study. I honestly am not proud of myself for doing so, but there's comfort in the fact Egypt is so Pro-Palestine. There's a lot to be done, and even for people like me, we can help.

My school has been donating food, clothes and blankets to Palestine. The McDonald's in here have been trying to distance themselves, claiming they're "100% Egyptian", only to get mocked and insulted. I go by the local McDonald's, there's a lot of schools where I am, around 5 in two blocks, and where before they were constantly so full, these days they're so empty. I can only see maybe 3, 4 people in there. A lot of people in my school are on a complete strike, against every American product. We've resorted to buying and getting local products instead. Egypt is doing very poorly economically at the moment, but there's still a lot of effort into knocking out American products, even if not by the companies, by the youth and the children. I can't go a single class without one of my teachers openly supporting Palestine. My Arabic teacher constantly uses the people in Gaza to teach me grammar, calling them brave and courageous. My geography teacher denies Isreal, and has been in league with others to get more donations and aid. Egyptians believe so truly that Palestine will be free that it's hard not to think so too. I've had classmates openly agree that if they could, they'd join the army to help fight for Palestine, I've seen more people than ever mocking the current regime, I've seen more people than ever falling out of the American illusion and seeing it for what it is. I've spent a lot of religion classes being taught Arabic brotherhood and chivalry, when previously, the lessons were stereotypically conservative in nature and I used to despise them for it.

Yes, the government sucks like every other, but there's an air of open support in here. No one is losing their jobs for stating the truth, homes and shops are waving the Palestinian flag. Even the antisemitism, which was rampant, has seen a noticeable decline. People in here stand for Palestine.

I want to also let you know you've been an inspiration for people, or at least, to me. I want to be able to participate more, and I see your reposts and reblogs and I want to do even more than what I did at the start, which was retweeting and reposting and sharing what I can to my friends. Unfortunately due to my current living situation and my terrible memory, I missed being able to donate to the school, but they have stated to open up donations again soon, and I'm preparing in advance for that one. I was not raised Zionist, but I was raised warned against participating in political affairs, saying I'd be put in more trouble, and even could be killed. But I see you and I see so many Americans losing their jobs and being branded criminals and as moral failures for speaking out, and I find it harder and harder in me not to also speak out. And even if I'm not constantly retweeting and reposting, there is something I can do. You helped me realize that, and I'd like to thank you.

I hope this cheers you up even a little, I've noticed your posts these days expressing how much this has been upsetting you. It's been upsetting to all of us, and I want you to know that it's not fruitless, no matter how many western countries and how many bootlickers make you feel otherwise. This ordeal has taught me the world is a brotherhood, politics and money are never a reason for why we should not stand together, and why we shouldn't speak for those having their voice silenced.

Please excuse me if something comes off wrong or unnatural. Like I said, I was born and I live in Egypt, English is not my first language and I still have issues communicating my personal thoughts in it. Please never don't stand for Palestine. Please never lose hope for it, like the Egyptians never have and never will. Please never let people make you feel hopeless and insane.

Thank you for listening to me, thank you for caring about Palestine when it would've been easy not to. Thank you for using your platform, and if you found it in you to read this thing, thank you for giving time to a brown Arab, when the world so strongly encourages you not to. Please continue to inspire justice, and I hope the world one day continues to inspire hope for you.

😭 anon, I cant explain how much I appreciate you sending this message. I know there is hope for Palestinian liberation, I know that we will see freedom for Palestine. But god do I need the reminder sometimes that we aren’t all just shouting into the void. My country of Australia shamefully takes a cowardly stance on Palestine, always deferring to the US to guide our foreign policy, and yet always claims moral superiority over other countries such as yours. Thank you, really thank you so much for sending this message. I feel so so honoured to have earned an audience that includes you. I believe an audience does reflect an artist, and to know I have done you proud in any way makes me feel full.

And please don’t ever feel ashamed of your English, you are eloquent and have a wonderful, compassionate voice, and you have inspired hope in me for yet another day.