#she never said she was a zionist so THAT is why she has my vote

[ihaveraebies]

Liberals stop annoying the shit out of everyone by bullying them into voting challenge: impossible

If you're that concerned about how people vote, then start door-knocking and campaigning.

[schoolhater]

it is election day. i wrote a little essay to share with my IRLs who can't fathom why i might want to abstain from participating in the bloodshed by putting holocaust harris in power, or giving the transpbobic and anti-abortion green party federal campaign money. i've reposted the entire thing under the cut for anyone who wants to read.

but before i begin: donate to mohammed al-habil. he is recovering from surgery, his little sister is chronically ill. the genocide ruined his senior year of high school. it’s his birthday today. he should be celebrating and instead he’s begging on an internet full of people trying to justify the continued destruction of his entire people.

learn more + donate

i keep hearing from people defending their choice to vote for the genocider that even though the democrats are bad, the republicans are worse. or that this election is the most important one. i often see trolley problems that declare that the *only* people who would suffer under the democrats would be palestine, and, because *americans* would suffer under the republicans, we have to put aside our grievances about the potentially-three-hundred-thousand-and-thiry-five people who have been murdered in the past thirteen months and offer our full support to the person who did it.

nearly every time settler colonialism has occurred in history, the first wave of settlers is some vulnerable yet radicalized population who believes they will achieve prosperity in the new world. the uae-backed rsf is establishing settlements using refugees from other african countries in southeast sudan right now. the first wave of israeli settlers were poor. even herzl planned this in the 1890s, in 'the jewish state' he writes that the first wave of settlers should be poor farm workers. and now, the modern settlers in the illegally occupied west bank live in and they are the most radicalized most. despite facing extreme racism within israel, arab israeli settlers are among the most radical zionists. the first settlers in america were poor and tired religious extremists from britain. when they came here they didn't have shit except the military backing of the empire and the carte blanche to commit massacres of indigenous people.

imperialism needs these vulnerable people. it needs to funnel the oppressed populations it creates back into the machine to enact further violence. these people are effective cannon fodder against the indigenous population. they are vulnerable enough that they cannot resist, but their lives are comfortable enough thanks to subsidized housing and special treatment that they begin to identify wholly with the imperialist entity, so they don't even want to. if you're stuck thinking 'well, of course kamala and trump are the same to palestine, but trump will be worse for us!' you've taken the bait. that's exactly the kind of attitude that is allowing this genocide to happen right now. do you know why the usa gives subsidized healthcare to israelis? why we give so many benefits to veterans? why do thousands of people risk their entire lives to come here after we destroy their countries? the usa wants to recruit you into participating in the genocide of gaza so you never oppose it, because it would mean opposing yourself.

even kamala harris knows this. multiple times she's repeated some version of "sure people care about the genocide, but they also care about the price of eggs" as if these things are remotely comparable. because to her supporters, they are. to americans, the rest of the world does not even exist.

i said this on my instagram story and i'll say it again - we understand that the israeli elections are just a performance of democracy to pacify criticism of a violent genocidal apartheid system. none of us would really care if netanyahu stepped down tomorrow because we would see the bombings continue. well, america is the world's "israel"! to the rest of the world, america is that attack dog that only ever brings death and suffering. and regardless of which party is in charge, that doesn't change. and the democrats arent even hiding it anymore.

what the discourse around this election and seeing so many people i once respected voting for the genocide has taught me is that there is no red line for the majority of americans. we are the most self centered, narrow minded, backstabbing group of settlers on this earth. we have seen the terrorist organization that occupies the land we live on fund 70% of the most vile horrific crimes against humanity - the most nightmare inducing rapes, tortures, kidnappings, incarcerations, concentration camps, people being burned alive, people being ripped apart, rendered unrecognizable as human bodies, literally vaporized, killing over three hundred thousand people over thirteen months - and we still want the entities that did all this to exist tomorrow. we want to invest into a future in which all of this still exists.

and when asked to stop, we will threaten to do worse. a greater evil is imagined.

what does this make us?

....

i refuse to participate in this bullshit even to support a third party candidate. i refuse to be bought. i refuse to invest my time and energy into an institution that kills children. i don’t care who runs it.

i wanted to push back against this idea before the polls close as a sort of last ditch effort to be heard. i am not being heard right now. i have gotten into way too many arguments with people i once respected over why voting in favor of a genocide might not be the best idea. and every time i am met with utter disrespect - i am not treated as a person with a political perspective based on my experiences and learning, i am treated like an idiot. and the people voting for genocide are pragmatists, somehow. in lieu of a reason to disagree with me they resort to belittlement. i feel betrayed. i hope this rant changes some minds; if not, let it explain why i treat you differently now.

[damphexagon]

Fellow Leftists of Tumbler Dot Com ...

I come to you all with a confession, head bowed, filled with shame. I just don't know if I can go on if I don't get this off my chest. So here goes ... I like Kamala Harris. There, I said it. The thing is, I expected this year's election to be another thing to be crushed by. Even the last one that the lesser-of-two-evils candidate won a Pyrrhic victory in sucked shit. I'd emotionally steeled myself for an unwinnable rematch between Ancient Braindead Republican and Trump, followed by 4 years of degradation of civil rights, new mass deportations, worsening environmental destruction, and so forth. And now that... appears to maybe not be going to happen. I know people are not willing to like Harris, because a vote for her is not a vote for The Revolution. Pretty much by definition, you cannot vote a revolution -- after all, a system will never give you the tools you need to dismantle it. But it is a vote for something better, and not in the same way a vote for Biden was for something (only) better than a vote for Trump. You have a woman of color, the youngest serious candidate since Obama, who has promoted and voted for progressive policies for years, not just as something she adopted out of nowhere to get elected (to inevitably abandon immediately after). Within the constraints of what a two-party election can offer, this is what we've wanted. I know the big one for a lot of people right now is the U.S. supporting and financing Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, which is a great tragedy and a national disgrace that should be ended immediately. What I don't get though is why it's making people hate the candidate that most opposes it. Trump is all in, and Biden weirdly maybe even moreso. On the other hand, you have a candidate who refused to attend what basically amounted to a party for Netanyahu, and instead met with him to tell him, from the sounds of the press release at least, get your shit sorted out for a withdrawal from Gaza. When picking a Vice-Presidential candidate, she could've picked the "moderate" Zionist who would've swung a must-win state and most likely won the election, but instead she went with the pro-labor pro-education progressive unknown. To me, that says a lot, about policies but also about personal integrity. I know some would like something more forceful and explicit, but you do need to keep in mind who the average USAmerican voter is and remember that winning does matter. And she is winning. Not by a lot, but steadily by a little more every single day for the past weeks. So I guess what I'm saying is... can you just let me, us, be happy? Maybe just a little bit? I know things are still bad in many ways and regardless of the results of this election the United States is likely to remain a force of destruction in the world. No election result is a substitute for revolutionary action. But as far as elections go, this is more than we could've hoped for in any election since 2016, except the DNC is on board instead of running interference. It's not a guarantee, but things from Medicare For All to the Green New Deal to an actual end of the Israeli genocide of Palestine are more likely now than they have been in a long time. And if nothing else, can't we at the very least take pleasure in Trump's impotent tantrums and visible suffering? I thought we could all at least agree on that. Let me have this. Harris/Walz 2024.

[wadesprincessboy]

What do i do when my best friend in the entire world also has the worst opinions ever? I love her more than i can describe but she says terrible shit.

She genuinely adores the USSR and the CCP and thinks theyre genius. She is strongly anti-zionist, says shit like zionists are why trump got elected and all zios should die. She said if she was american she would never vote because kamala is a genocide supporter and she wouldnt care if trump got in because theyre both as bad as eachother.

As far as politics go she glorifies anyone who claims to be communist, and she also glorifies the IRA and anything they ever did. She also only cares about trans rights and doesnt care about anything else with politicians. Trans rights are important sure but she will ignore any good things someone has done if theyve so much as uttered the wrong pronoun.

We agree on some stuff, and she is genuinely wonderful as a friend, but im starting to struggle with her opinions. She will scream at me that im evil for mine but expects me to agree with hers.

She even yells at my mum and says the classic "im not listening to a zio" when she says anything she cant argue with. She drives me nuts with this shit. But again, shes a good friend. I give her a lot of shit and im borderline cruel to her at times but she sticks around. Shes always there for me. But this is getting to me.

She also once said "im like your babysitter arent i" when i wanted to go somewhere with her and when i asked her to elaborate she said "well you always want me around" and it has stuck with me. She feels required to be near me and that hurts.

Idk, i dont have anyone else like her. She pretty much lives with me and we do everything together and i cant imagine life without her but things get really sucky at times. I literally have no other friends like her. I have good friends who i care deeply about but theyre not her yk? I mean id consider her my qpp and i love her to bits. Idk what to do.

I need advice here.

[lambotel]

I remember people were giving you shit for saying not to vote for Kamala. And now they're telling everyone too not to vote for Kamala 😭.

yeah that shit was crazy and i deleted the post because i thought i was going to get called out or cancelled 🗿. i said what i said and still mean it although i do understand what others were saying, i appreciate that they explained it politely too. but telling me that just bc im not american i cant have an opinion on american politics is so weird, bc if my opinion was good then it WOULD matter to you? lmao, thats so odd. anyway. she's a zionist racist homophobic transphobic whore; i will never understand why y'all fought to the sunset and back with me. i will never understand why it was wrong of me (all bc im not american) to say dont vote for her, why it was wrong for me to have an opinion on another country while the president youre voting for IS LITERALLY INVOVLED IN MASS KILLINGS OF AKMOST ALL MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES. please make it make sense oh my god??. glad i can let out my frustration. i knew i was fucking right with my opinion but im glad others agree and see what i mean too. i think the sad part is that, both trump and kamala are fucking terrible people but one of them are definitely going to be president - all the promises they told y'all are just lies (every politician ever), and theyre only making your country fall. saying that you want to vote for someone who is doing good for your country is contradicting and stupid if you think about it because no politician or oresident has genuinely done something good for america that has lasted or been abided to, every politician has their ass in the middle east they do not give a flying fuck about their own people. i get y'all don't want to vote zionists but you want to consider kamala harris because she "has some good opinions" but please do your research. it is free to educate yourselves on these matters, THAT is your privilege. and don't get me started on trump, trump is a terrible piece of shit who shouldn't even be in this field of work let alone run for presidency. all these things he's wanting to start abd give out is fucking weird and disgusting and end of the world type of shit y'all need to be fucking careful. can't rlly tell someone what to do or who to vote but you can educate them and whatnot. this is all just my opinion on it and i dont want to hear no "europeans should stop giving their opinions on our politics" type of bullshit as if america isn't involved in EVERY COUNTRY but THEIR OWN. and just because our opinion is something you don't want to here, doesn't mean it isn't valid. im sure theres a lot i haven't said that are important to mention but i have wrote too much here and rn lol,, everyone's got their own thoughts and own perspectives but this is mine. america was never great and it will never be great. im going to shut up now.

[userparamore]

I think Paramore becoming political is a good thing cause they have a massive influence and so far the stuff that they supported has been good but every time white celebs do these things, they need to do more extensive research cause how did they promote maxwell frost without finding out how much of a liar and zionist he is in 2023. The way that man was very vocal about his support for Palestine before he got elected but then changed and abandoned his support and proceed to make fun of the movement and like tweets about being pro of the opposing country was so fucked up. There will never be a perfect politician, the band sees a gen z congress person who is very anti white supremacy in Florida but white people always stop at the bare minimum with this type of stuff cause supporting maxwell can also be seen as supporting a country that is pro genocide

I hope they don’t bring out any more politicians on stage or massively support someone because you know that they want to do good things in this one area only. Maybe it’s why it’s hard for me to listen to “the news” cause I know that the message is coming from a good place but the first verse especially feels so reductive to me. That “war on the other side of the planet” line has the same energy as Taylor swift’s “shade never made anybody less gay” 💀 this is not only paramore cause phoebe bridges and muna were also seen with Maxwell and it's so disappointing to watch

as a non-american i'm gonna air my ignorance and be completely honest and say that i know nothing about who maxwell frost is. so just to clarify that, and if i seem ignorant on this topic, then you know the reason.

i do agree with you tho. there is a difficult line to balance when it comes to being political as a band/celeb. i think it was a good decision for them to go down this route, but like you said there has to be done in the right way after doing the right research. again as a non-american the idea of endorsing politicians is just a weird concept to me. american politics and politicians are so celebritized (if that's even a word). it's like we're watching a reality show and voting for who we want to stay on the show for another week. i would rather paramore focused on shining a light on or raising awareness on a topic than endoring politicians like you said. and i think hayley and her "abort the supreme court" t-shirts on stage, or them encouraging people to go vote are a good way to do it. (again this is the perspective of a non-american so please excuse my ignorance <- pmore reference intended)

i share your feelings about "the news" tho. i think it's my least favorite song on the album bc the message of the song is so easily twisted. acknowledging the war in ukraine while sitting halfway across the world, and then turning it back on herself in the form of a headache is... unfortunate. i understand what she's trying to say with the "turn on / turn off the news". that you can't disappear into the doom scroll. that you need to protect yourself sometimes. but i really don't like the encouraging to turning off the news- especially in a post-trump world and his "fake" news. it is almost like what the right wing does. they turn off the "fake" news. i don't want to be encouraged to not be informed. to not ask questions. to not check the sources. it's how you end up in an echo chamber, and i don't want that.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

I did not and have never said "don't vote". I have already mailed in my ballot. I don't care who you vote for. I am not arguing "if you vote for Harris you are complicit in whatever she does", I am arguing that if you believe those who don't vote for Harris are at fault for Trump should he win, then you need to be consistent and also believe that if you do vote for Harris, you are at fault for her administration should she win.

Why would Trump start a nuclear war now when he didn't last time he was president?

When has Harris made the slightest overture towards denuclearization? She specifically said that she wants to maintain the "most lethal military in the world". She's not running on peace and international cooperation. Why would her being in control of the nukes be any better than Trump?

If you wholeheartedly support Harris and the Democrats, then you should be honest and admit that you are a proponent of neoliberalism and US imperialism, that you are a Zionist, that you want tougher border controls and more funding to the police, that you think human rights can be discarded if defending them doesn't poll well with middle class white men.

If you don't always agree with Harris or the Democrats, if you can recognize the flaws in their politics and want to work to prevent the Dems from doing the bad things they are doing and will continue to do, then you need to start organizing against them now, even if you think it is worthwhile to vote for Harris so Trump doesn't get elected. You need to have a concrete plan for opposing the reactionary and imperialist projects of Harris and the Democrats and you need to work towards implementing it.

I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else to change their vote. You're right, not much is going to change in the next two weeks. I'm trying to convince you that Democrats are worth fighting against just as much as Republicans are, and that no matter who wins in the next election, your political strategy should be the same. Because like it or not, both parties have the same material interests and will implement largely the same policies. You should not be misled into thinking that the Dems will change their mind on the rest of their platform just because they have a handful of progressive policies regarding domestic social issues. If you want to stop the bombs and drone strikes and migrant deaths and arms deals with genocidal apartheid regimes, it's going to take more than strongly worded letters to your representatives.

"If you don't vote for Kamala Harris and she loses, then you're complicit in whatever Trump does!"

Oh, so if Harris wins, you'll be complicit in whatever she does? Are you complicit in the things Biden is currently doing because you voted for him?

"Of course not! Trump would have done the same things, so my vote wouldn't have made a difference one bit! Now vote for Harris if you want to make a difference!"

[jewish-privilege]

...When the conference began Thursday morning, I was warned that protesters from the Bard chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine planned to interrupt my panel with [Ruth Wisse, a Harvard professor of Yiddish literature and scholar of Jewish history and culture, and Shany Mor, an Israeli thinker who is affiliated with the Hannah Arendt Center]. I was surprised they were not targeting the one on Zionism, but the one on anti-Semitism, the only panel of about 20 over the course of the two-day program where three Jews would be discussing the topic.

“But we’re not even talking about Israel,” I said to the conference organizers. “How does that make sense?”

My concern was met with an explanation of the College’s policy towards protesters. The center’s leadership, and the two Bard College deans attending the conference, seemed to have no particular plan to handle what was fixing to become an ugly disruption of Jews trying to discuss anti-Semitism. [Roger Berkowitz, the founder and director of Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center] told us that there would be added security, but the security officers were not allowed to remove the students.

As the protesters started to gather in the lobby, I approached them. I told them that I respected their passion and commitment to what they thought was right, but asked why they had picked this panel.

“Come to my panel tomorrow,” I said. “Come protest my comments on Zionism. I’ll be talking about the occupation. Bring your signs.”

I told them I’d reserve the first and second audience-questions for members of their group, but that protesting the all-Jewish anti-Semitism panel was undercutting their work.

“Don’t you see that?” I asked. Didn’t they see that protesting Jews over Israel when they are not even talking about Israel is racist? Didn’t they understand that saying we were responsible for the behavior of the Israeli Jews just because we shared their ethnicity was racist? That making every conversation with Jews about Israel is racist?”

“The conversation about anti-Semitism is already inherently about Israel,” one of the students archly explained, repeating a deeply anti-Semitic trope that has been voiced across the spectrum from David Duke to Louis Farrakhan to Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters. Right-wing anti-Semites see any accusation of anti-Semitism as a Jewish conspiracy to take away the rights of whites, while left-wing anti-Semites sees the same accusation as an attempt to silence Palestinians.

Apparently, so do some Bard students.

...When the protesters proceeded to interrupt Wisse, they were applauded by several of our fellow conference speakers in the audience. These vaunted intellectuals, flown in from across the country to discuss racism, were commending a display of racism against Jews.

This was much more horrifying than the students’ chanting and leafletting, which failed to stop the indomitable Wisse from having her say, defining anti-Semitism as any political organizing against Jews (I have been told since that two students were removed, something I didn’t see from the stage, but the rest stayed). Not one of our fellow conference speakers got up and exercised their free speech rights to call the protest what it was. Not one came over to us after to express shock and horror that three Jews would be denounced for Israel’s actions while attempting to discuss anti-Semitism in America.

...But not one of my fellow speakers said a word. Two days later, I have not received a single note acknowledging what happened, which leaves me thinking they condone it.

And some were explicit about it. At a party for conference speakers at Berkowitz’s house right after the panel, Etienne Balibar, a French philosopher currently teaching at Columbia University, told me he thought the protest was wonderful.

“Why are you silencing Palestinians?” he demanded. “There should have been a Palestinian discussing anti-Semitism. They have many thoughts about it!”

I left the party. How could I drink with people like that? And back at my hotel, I realized that it would be pointless to participate in Friday’s program. There is no debate possible when people think anti-Semitism is not only acceptable, but commendable.

So when I was introduced the next morning, I pulled out a new set of remarks. I directly addressed these academics and writers and intellectuals who were brought to Bard to speak about how to fight racism and anti-Semitism. I told them I was appalled that not one of them had called out this blatantly racist act, the way they surely would have if it had been three Muslims on the dais, or three black speakers — or at least, the way I would have in that scenario.

“I’m horrified by your cowardice. By your self-justifications,” I read from the new set of remarks I had written the night before. “You, who I called luminaries! Whose books I’ve read! There’s nothing more I want to say to you or hear from you.

“The next time someone says, ‘What have you done to help Jews as anti-Semitism has spiked across the nation, as Jews have been murdered at their place of worship and Orthodox Jews get beaten to a pulp day after day in Brooklyn,’ you can say, ‘I sat idly by as Jews were protested for trying to talk about anti-Semitism. I allowed a Jewish woman to be held accountable — because of her ethnicity — for the actions of a country halfway around the world where she can’t even vote. I egged the protest on, in fact. And then I went to a party.’”

There is no debate possible when people think that your very humanity is up for debate, something my fellow conference goers no doubt accept as obviously true when it comes to anti-Black racism or anti-Muslim racism. And yet somehow, when it comes to anti-Jewish racism — holding one Jew accountable for the actions of another simply because they are Jewish — no one bats an eye.

No doubt the intelligentsia at the conference proceeded to debate whether Jews are a valid target of protest in my absence (Berkowitz did ask me to stay, as did a few members of the audience when I walked off the stage). No doubt others will continue to debate the question, too; perhaps they will argue that Zionists are a valid target, even when they are discussing issues that aren’t related to Israel.

Yet polls show that more than 95% of Jews in America have a favorable view of Israel. The debate over whether Zionists are human and deserving of human treatment will have to be held in the absence of Jews of conscience. In 2019, no Jew should be forced to debate their humanity, their right to exist independent of anti-Semitism.

...But as I know all too well, the most important factor in hosting the full gamut of legitimate opinion is knowing where the red lines are. And if you think allowing Jews to be protested for being Jews does not represent a red line, I have nothing more to say to you, and nothing I want to hear.

As I was getting my suitcase to leave the Bard campus on Friday morning, a student approached me. He had followed me out of the auditorium after I made my speech and left the stage. He had a big smile on his face.

“That was great,” he said. “I was at the panel last night and I didn’t really understand what was happening. I’ve never really understood what anti-Semitism is. But your remarks just now — they made it so clear.

“I get it now!” he said, his young face awash in the jubilance that intellectually curious people feel when a puzzle is solved.

I was filled with surprise and gratitude. I had convinced one person.

[Read Batya Ungar-Sargon’s full post at The Forward]

[mytitsareontheinternet-blog]

Being Jewish/Being Labour

My very first political experience came in Year 4 when I had to argue against Liverpool Football Club building a new stadium in Stanley Park, the iconic separator of Anfield and Goodison. Earning myself a lot of praise for my naturally argumentative streak and on a high from my first real debate, 9-year-old me wanted to be a politician for the best part of 3 hours. I recall my dad telling my neighbour of my new-found career path and said neighbour telling me to “always fight for the poor.” At the time I probably, definitely shrugged that remark off, now I see how that comment is representative of the city I grew up in. 

Welcome to Liverpool, a city built and repaired by the EU when Thatcher’s reign wanted to drive our city into the ground. A city that has fought and continues to fight tirelessly not only for the justice of the Hillsborough victims but to erase everybody’s misconceptions about a city of workers, artists, volunteers and activists that welcome the world with open arms. It is almost a moral obligation to vote Labour in this city, in more recent times “Did you vote Labour or Tory?” is becoming as common as “Are you a Red or a Blue?” You owe it to your city, to your family, to your friends and to your community to vote Labour in Liverpool, no matter who is in charge.

My second political experience came aged 10, completely unbeknownst to me. My grandad randomly goes silent and teary and takes our dog on her second walk of the hour. She definitely didn’t need to go out again, she wasn’t expressing any want to… Now I see my grandad just didn’t want us to see him break down. As I’ve gotten older, the more my family have opened up and the more honest the world has become around me, I learned that my grandad suffers from severe panic attacks. This is believed to be from the trauma of losing loved ones to the Holocaust and a series of antisemitic attacks that he has been the victim of a handful of times in his life. These revelations have made me angry, not only have my family lost loved ones and not only do we have to grieve family that could’ve been, we have to watch something that supposedly ended 75 years ago still snatch the livelihood from our nearest and dearest even now.

I’m in my last year of school, and everyone around me seems… weirdly excited about politics. It was almost like One Direction split up and British Parliament was the next best thing. I don’t know if there was something in the water or if Jeremy Corbyn’s rebranding of a rebranded Labour lit a fire up everyone’s arse, but knowing very little about him, I really liked him. He wants everyone in the country to have a garden? Oh, what a world. A wholesome, transparent and faultless politician? That is everything everyone ever told me an MP wouldn’t be, and there is nothing more exciting than being 17 and proving a boomer wrong. A year goes by and I’m still wooed by this man, sure he has a few haters by this point but who doesn’t�� It’s not like Tories don’t have a reputation for saying and doing anything to protect themselves and as a Scouser, I knew that fact all too well.

Throughout the rise and fall of Corbynism, I turned 18, I started making my own money, I reconnected massively with my Jewish heritage and I was forming all kinds of relationships, I just wasn’t as invested in it anymore. I blindly voted based on a honeymoon-like misconception I had of a politician when I was a teenager. Coming up to the General Election 2019, I started to make some discoveries about Corbyn and the never dying anti-semitism accusations that came with his name. At first I thought these claims came from opportunistic Tories that would later turn their back on Jews when they got the outcome they wanted, and don’t get me wrong, a lot of it was just that, a lot of these accusations came from people that don’t care about Jewish people at all. I simply found it hard to believe that somebody who had it so right about every other aspect of my identity, could be so wrong about my ethnicity and religion.

Time proved me wrong. I quickly realised not all of these accusations came from fake allies riding on the back of Jewish activism to push their personal agenda. In fact, most of them never and I was confused. I confided in Labour Party members on multiple platforms about my confusion and upset and I simply just wanted people to be able to justify why the face of Labour called anti-Jewish terrorist organisations his “friends.” I wanted people to tell me why this man thought English humour was lost on British Jews. I wanted everyone who told me to support this man and his cause to explain why he was defending antisemitic caricatures and why he uses the word Zionist so loosely and why he can’t help but defend countless Holocaust deniers. I, myself, was met with the same abuse and anti-semitism that my grandad described. As well as what seemed like a reluctance of people coming to my defence, which left me more perplexed because this was unusual for Labour and its members when racism surfaces.

Despite what I was put through, how unwelcome and unheard I felt in a party bouncing with activism calling out social injustice, I felt like I would be a traitor not to have marked an X in the Labour box on my ballot. Part of me was saying you’re voting for a party, not a person. I thought about Steven Smith from Kensington being sanctioned, I thought about nurses and doctors and patients on corridors, I thought about the soaring numbers of food banks and rough sleepers. I thought about myself and the career I want to pursue in medicine and how I’m even going to get there when I know I’d struggle to make ends meet at university. The other part of me was reminded that I was now blacklisted from most Labour forums for being a Jewish Labour member with concerns, that Luciana Berger was forced out of her position as Wavetree’s MP as a Jewish woman because the anti-semitism that she received was so unbearable and of course, Labour’s leader wasn’t shy of antisemitic behaviour himself. This made me feel like a traitor putting X in the Labour box too. I couldn’t win. I did so on the grounds that I wanted a Labour government, I always had and I justified this on the basis that I would continue to to fight anti-semitism within the party, no matter how silenced I was. I wanted Jewish people to be able to access Labour and campaign with Labour without feeling either unwelcome or tokenised.

It was tough. It still is. It’s going to take a while to drain the party of antisemitism and it’s going to take even longer for Jewish people to be at the forefront again, but Labour isn’t inherently anti-semitic, it doesn’t have to be, there is a future for Jewish voices in Labour, but there is also a future where I will no longer advocate for a party that doesn’t advocate for me.

[secular-jew]

Zio Upbringings and Kvetchings in the Trumpian era

Zio Upbringings and Kvetchings in the Trumpian era.

I'm an American Jew who has does not suffer from moral wavering. I'm also an American Reform Jew that is neither Kashrut nor Kosher-observant.

My synagogue growing up was located in the the Boston suburbs, nestled amidst Protestant communities and dotted with Jews who somehow landed a port shy of Ellis Island. Attended shul almost exclusively during important Holidays and Hebrew school weekends through Bar-Mitvah.

At the age of 10, I remember the start to the Soviet-armament-supplied multilateral Arab-state war against Israel, a Pearl-Harbor style event lasting three harrowing weeks and almost wiping Israel off the map.

Word spread fast to reach North American Jews some 5,500 miles (8,800 kms) to the west. I remember hearing the tragic news Saturday morning during Yom Kippur services. The attack occupied 100% of the Sermon delivered by our Rabbi, who was known as Moses because he actually looked and spoke like Moses. He worried aloud that this could portend the end of our homeland, but concluded that the spark of Zionism was eternal: something that could never be extinguished by modern would-be colonizers. This thought that resonated deeply inside my soul.

This was thankfully a war that Israel survived, but was also a battle that Golda Meir ultimately lost, as she resigned just 1 month following her Labor Party's 1974 election win. Remember her final words as Israel's leader: "I have reached the end of my road."

My first physical intersection with Israel occurred in my late teens and early 20's, when I visited extensively what was the modern chapter of an 4,000-year old ancient Jewish story. Exploring 1979-1982 Israel meant stints to some obvious places; Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberius, and Eilat, Sinai (including a climb up/down Mt Sinai), the northern Golan Heights, the donut-hole known as Hebron, and the Dome of the Rock, the Jew's oldest extant relic. This is the place where Abraham is said to submitted to God's request that he sacrifice his son. Strange how this shrine has now submitted to a colonialist Islamic overlord.

Then came the Kibbutz experience, which meant living the communal lifestyle in Lower Galilee, sleeping on cots in the international guest quarters, up at 4:30am transported out to the fields, and picking pears until it got so hot, you felt like you were standing on the side of the sun.

All well worth the effort as the work day ended around lunch, at which point, we ate a lot of hummus and squeezed copious quantities of ruby-red Israeli grapefruits chilling in large stainless steel refrigerators. After lunch, we cooled down in the community pool, and in the evenings, hung with our Israeli contemporaries while listening to Bob Marley or the Doors, and smoking hashish for the first time. These are two experiences that transcended culture. I felt so at home, and even gained a Sabra girlfriend by the name of Rachel רָחֵל‎ (pictured).

In short, what I considered to be a typical Reform Jewish-American upbringing. (Or American-Jewish?)

Fast forward to present political leanings. Raised a JFK-liberal (liberal in its true meaning; rooted in idea-tolerance and acceptance of diverse views).

As a middle-schooler, I recollect being enamored by McGovern, although not sure exactly how or why. We were all indoctrinated into believing Nixon (one of the greatest friends to Israel, not something I had any clue about) was innately evil. Looking back at that period now, my political stylings appear to have been crafted mainly by academia, the news media, and my peers - all who seemed driven by a sanitized, 1980's version of TDS that could have been called: 'Nixon Derangement Syndrome.'

Once legal age, I was a 'de rigeur' Democrat, which thankfully lasted only a few short minutes. Not able to cast a vote in the 1976 election, I remember nonetheless favoring Jimmy Carter, a folksy down-to-earth ex-peanut-farmer who seemed very popular in the state of Massachusetts where I grew up. Carter morphed into nothing less than a clueless and spineless "progressive" who oversaw the dismantling of principled American leadership.

In high school, a few of us in the dormitory got to stay up late every night to watch "The Iran Crisis–America Held Hostage: Day "xxx" (where xxx represented the number of days that Iranians held the occupants of our U.S. Embassy hostage). The only TV in the building was located in the dorm-masters living room. I watched sitting next to my hall-mate Abdullah Hussein, the same person who became the King of Jordan and who sits on the Hashemite apartheid throne today. We had many discussions in which I defended Israel and lauded her accomplishments in defeating Arab imperialism, while Abdullah retorted with accusations of Jewish occupation and bloodlust at Deir Yassin. I did not have enough knowledge of the incident or of earlier examples of Arab genocide (such as the Hebron massacre and other Jewish genocides) to counter-punch effectively.

During my college years, I tended towards Democrat "moral" policies and candidates, until that goofy Georgian came along. At first, I naively admired Carter's straightforward folksy persona. But eventually, the President’s peanut incompetence drove me to #WalkAway from a party-lone Democrat.

I was proud of myself for making an independent decision (pun intended) and have little idea if any of my peers followed suit, but suffice to say, I have voted forcefully against Democrats up and down the ticket pretty much ever since, with a few exceptions. I consider Trump an pragmatic Independent masquerading as a Republican, not dissimilar to Democrat Bloomberg - who as Mayor of NYC masqueraded as a Republican.

Much as my odium for Carter drove me to #Jexit and advocate for Reagan, my contempt for Obama's virulently anti-America values drove me to become a self-assertive 'deplorable.' Between Reagan and Trump, every other voting-booth decision appeared to present itself as largely a Hobson's choice between a lesser of two evils.

Although Trump possesses virtually no tact and represents the antithesis of my personal style, I appreciate the skill and speed with which he accomplishes things, from building tall luxury residential condos -- to creating a global brand, to the refurbishment of Wolman's Rink in Central Park. His support of Israel, unlike his predecessors, is legion, documented, and consistent. Trump not only moved the Embassy to its rightful place, not only installed an incredible Ambassador, not only praises Israel at every turn, he constantly rebukes Israel's enemies (who should be everyone's enemies). I love that Israel renamed the Golan Heights in his honor. It's almost better than getting the Rec Room in the Ft. Lauderdale condo named after someone rich in your extended family.

Today? There's no political party for me. The Democrats are a shrill hodgepodge of looney-tunes and ill-tolerant blabbermouths who are given way too much airtime on CNN and what I now call MSLSD (aka, MSDNC).

In terms of policy, On social issues like marriage equality, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal. On local/national fiscal issues, I'm a decided Conservative. On international affairs, I'm a Hawk who majored in International Relations while attending Sciences-Po in Paris (an excuse to massively inhale croque-monsieurs) and firmly believe the US had relevant ethical global leadership responsibilities, a mantle given up by Europe. This meant leading from the front, not from behind. My philosophy became characterized by the notion that appeasement of tyrannies led by autocrats or theocrats was a policy doomed to failure, proven again and again throughout every civilization. Appeasement in the face of aggression has led to more death and destruction, and more insecurity, not less.

It's becoming evident, sadly, that history promises to repeat. Why? This seems to happen in a matter of a few generations. Case in point: Millennials (aka snowflakes) who are too far removed from the trauma of warfare to comprehend evil. Millennials steeped and indoctrinated in re-written and falsified academic narratives. Millennials who virtue signal intolerantly through the lens of victimization. The generation that seems to have lost a sense of moral courage and severed any emotional ties to the 'never-forget' tragedies that are meant to not be forgotten.

My thoughts on our homeland:

I'm a devout 2-state (Israel-Jordan) Zionist as per the 1917 Balfour Declaration and affirmed by the 1920 San Remo Conference (attended by Chaim Weizmann). I see Israel as an inherently Jewish state in its DNA, but which is secular in its jurisprudence.

Next year in Jerusalem.

[catboywizard]

ok so my rabbi(L) is legit one of my absolute favorite people in the whole world. everyone else I talk to in the congregation adores her too. she works so hard to make the community a queer and disability friendly place, even when some of the older members are assholes about it, and just in general she’s just so friendly, kind, and welcoming to everyone. she’s also doing what she can to talk about palestine even though she has to be really careful about it bc zionists on the board could fire her if she upsets them too much.

well this afternoon I was driving home, already stressed out cause I had just spilled ice cream on the carpet in my car, when my friend(S) from the congregation called me (actually CALLED me) saying this one extreme zionist woman(D) is trying to run for the board in the upcoming election on the platform of getting rid of L. which is WILD to me for a few reasons.

1) L, while trying to do what she can, has only dipped her toe into trying to talk about the palestinian genocide openly to the congregation, bc she knows something like this could happen. I know she has stronger opinions on it bc I can see who she follows on instagram, but the zionist members are all older, so I don’t think they have instagram or know how to see who people follow even if they did. S was saying earlier that D sees L as akin to an actual nazi bc she supports palestine, even though she’s been walking on eggshells the whole time and has barely said anything. (I mean, she hasn’t even taken the israeli flag down off the bimah)

2) D is kinda old and sickly to the point that I’ve only really met her one time maybe? she doesn’t come to service at all and just stays home and watches the livestream due to her issues. I don’t want it to seem like I’m judging people who are old, but how is she supposed to hold such an important position in the congregation when she is never here? there’s at least one other zionist who actually does show up regularly, so idk why they’re not trying to nominate him instead.

so anyway, S and their family are just trying to get as many friends on the board as possible to diminish D’s power if she does get elected.

they wanted my mom to run for something cause she’s ride or die for L (as she should be) and she’s open to it, but the problem is that my mom isn’t officially a jew yet, we’re still in the process of converting, and we don’t know if this is going to be a problem.

S is going to see if they can push back the membership meeting (when official nominations are going to happen) until after my mom’s beit din and mikvah in june when she officially becomes fully jewish, but we’re not sure if that can happen since some people did already know the previous date, even if it hadn’t gone out in an announcement yet.

we probably don’t have to worry about L actually being removed. however, like 6 years ago or something (before I was a member) the previous rabbi was apparently let go because she had a kid and was too distracted by them to do her job or something? and that’s when L came in. basically what I’m saying is that it’s not unheard of for the rabbi to be voted out here, and in fact that exact thing happened pretty recently. I have no idea how many zionists there are in the congregation bc I don’t talk to them, so I honestly don’t know how this is all going to go.

YALL

[schizo-spoon-blog]

Spoonbender Society: Selected Schizoepistles

FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:

We Live In A Society

People say we live in a democracy/democratic republic, a form of government intended to amplify what people think and address problems they find to be important. But it doesn’t ever seem to function that way.

The issue is in voter suppression, but as always not in the way people generally think voter suppression works. The issue is psychic, spiritual, and social suppression of citizens. Systemic over-development of senses of rationalization, neuroticism and anxiety, industrially incentivized narcissism.

People develop a deathly fear of what others think, or may think, or what they may have thought about them or what they think, what they may think, or what they may have thought.

A democracy where we’d rather not hear what other people have to say, because we find their thoughts offensive and retarded. That’s one thing people are happy to share. But because we suspect that there are so many offensive retards in the world, we fear... "Perhaps I’m a retard too?" You wonder that even for just a second in your life, if you have a soul. It’s OK to be a retard really, but you’ll never believe that it’s OK, and that's probably What Your Fucking Problem Is.

The opinions of us purported non-retards, to avoid sounding like complete retards, end up soft, ambivalent and stale, phrased like True Neutral Orgasm in Ego-Death Nirvana, but less Chad, less gratifying, and nobody cums. To not be reminded of the possibility of our own retardation, we like to pretend that if the retards just shut up and nobody can hear them, they go away. If they are Physically Removed from our presence, their evil thoughts and their malicious intentions will go away with them. We win. But they don’t. They never do.

We always fail to Psychically Remove them. We lose.

We can hypothesize a law of conservation of hatred, correlate one too of love, but the truth is banal. How can it be in light of our timeline? Why are these Hate Groups all over the place? Hitler’s corpse is rotting or burned to a crisp, or embalmed in a tomb or made a toilet for Some Rich Dude ((parenthetical removed)). (Or was he cloned?)

Great Fatherland Germany - defeated by the "untermensch" and partitioned like a cheese between rats. That Great "Faustian" and "Supreme" "Aryan" Race is subjugated by the hated "Juden" and all the "vermin" of the world, humiliated, castrated to be reunited a shadow of its former self. Yet the Nazi threat is omnipresent nearly a century later, in an era which may be an alien planet to those who lived in Hitler’s time.

How is it that the Great Allies, our fathers and grandfathers, achieved such total victory over so loathsome a foe, so unsympathetic and vile, only to see his Evil infect their own countrymen and posterity? How can something so thoroughly defeated still persist in what could be our neighbors or our co-workers our bosses or our employees? Each one could be a secret Nazi now. In parenting blogs moms worry that their children are becoming Nazis from goofy men they see in videos on line. Marriages are ending in divorce because the husband or wife is allegedly or apparently a Nazi. How could this happen?

Have you ever seen “The Matrix? Who hasn’t? You know all about the red and blue pills, and all the rainbow-flag DLC that it comes with, black and pink and green and brown and in configurations invisible to the human eye, I’m sure. If you don't know, the pills are portals to different realities. Take the black pill and you only see death, take the white pill and everything’s alright, take the blue pill you vote for Hillary, take the pink you become genderqueer. But this is not about taking any pills. This is about going off your meds. Going straight edge - except for whiskey, cigarettes, cocaine and pussy. It’s about the spoon - no, not for shooting up. It's for bending - with your mind. Remember? That spoon - The Spoon That Isn’t There.

That spoon is a Nazi.

If you are aware that there is no spoon you can tie it into knots. You can make it into a balloon animal. That Nazi Spoon could be a Jewish Socialist from Vermont, or a kosher Brooklyn Zionist, or a Dominican Taxi Driver. It could be an evil copy of your own son from Bizzaro World. It's probably your uncle. It could be Rottweilers, and Chihuahuas. Whether Pitbulls are Nazis or Jews/Blacks is an ongoing debate in the contemporary discourse.

But imaginary shit can be whatever the hell you want. You don’t have to be "The One" to Bend the Spoon. You don’t have to be anyone at all. What was the name of the kid who said the line about the spoon again? Nobody knows, nobody cares, and that's the beauty of Spoonbending.

"The Nazi" is the guy who keeps talking when he should shut up. He might be autistic, but he could just be an asshole. There is a strong possibility he could be both. Why does he keep saying all of this ridiculous stuff? He’s more offensive and more retarded than the usual, but it feels like He Has To Be This Way. Like it’s his curse, He Knows Too Much. He fell down some rabbit hole and ended up gorged on Fascist Propaganda. He mentions some girl named Celine. He rambles on about some guy you’re pretty sure is a Tekken character... the guy who turns into the Devil maybe. He mentions a vacation in Turkey with his family but insists on saying Constantinople and there’s a wild-man tear in his eye. He insists he knows about Atlantis and calls you gay for saying you liked Aquaman. Instead of saying goodbye he says “Subscribe to Pewdiepie.” The Nazi belongs in an institution. You wonder if he has guns and if maybe he should have them taken for a while. He probably doesn’t, but you can’t be sure. He’s 12.

When is it too early to become a school shooter? Is 12 too early to be an incel?

12 is probably the age at which incels hatch from their human hosts.

“Who is Pewdiepie, and how has he groomed my nephew into the Hitler Youth?” many families today are asking. They think they’re looking at a spoon. Conditoning fills your heart with a desperate desire to see the spoon. A fact, pure fact, logical, reasonable, peer reviewed, widely accepted, So True, a Textbook Fact. The spoon. Everyone else sees it too. That goddamn Nazi Spoon.

You ever try to ask this at a party as an ice-breaker and see how the guests react?

“So, anyway, was The Holocaust Real?”

“Excuse me, what?”

“What do you think, was it real, how many people do you think died, don’t the gas chambers sound goofy to you?”

”Um… no… they don’t sound goofy. What are you talking about?”

“You ever hear about the Nazi Roller-coaster they had at one of the camps? They’d put Jews into a roller-coaster except they’d fly off the edge and get splattered. That’s how the Nazis killed ‘em. I swear. I read it in a book by a Holocaust Survivor. Impossible to believe if it weren’t so True. No shit. You hear about that?”

”I’m… gonna get another beer.”

Of course there’s a Correct answer to that initial question. It’s also the Right answer. Who would ever get this wrong? It's the 2+2=X of History. Well…

Pop-Quiz, Random Nazi Check, Anybody here Hate Jews? You a Groyper, Son? What’s so funny? You think the Cookie Monster committing genocide is a laughing matter boy? We don’t take kindly to your kind around here.

Maybe you should give the Nazi-check thing a try, it’ll separate sheep and goat real easy for you.

If you do this everyone will think you are The Nazi.

The Nazis hated Jews, but did they hate real Jews as Jews exist, or did they hate the Fascist Propaganda Jew who was a work of fiction? On that note, were you in love with your last failed relationship, or just pretending you were? Have you ever had one impression of a person, but then learned they were another kind of person entirely? That first impression you had, the one that wasn’t True, was that a Real Person, or Imaginary? But you still spent all that money and sweat on an imaginary girl, huh?

Hope her hole was real.

I think that fake bitch of an ex you dated was a nazi. Your ex was a fascist. Oh, was she Jewish? It doesn’t matter, changes nothing. I’ve never met her - wouldn't matter if I did. When I imagine her, she's in Hugo Boss black and got skull-and-bones on her officer's cap, and she's saying racial slurs as she ruins your life, cheats on you, drains your bank account and kills your dog after getting custody over it in court. I imagine all bad people this way. All women who rejected me were exactly like this.

But I must breach working-class anti-fascist solidarity, and admit, on That Question ("Would you?").... Yeah, I would. Sorry bro. Take me away Comrades, I admit it, I'd give it to that Nazi Jew raw. Would I do that to her as she exists, or the Fascist Propaganda her who is a work of fiction?

That depends. You still got her number?

haha it's ok you can call me an incel, it's a step up from what i actually am

(User was banned for this post.)

The Nazi and the Fascist aren’t my hallucinations. That’s not my mental illness. But it’s adjacent to me, it’s thrown at me without my Consent, and it's a Trigger. I'm paranoid about commies myself.

In the multicultural cyberpunk year of 2019, with its trans-human gender-sex-orientations, anti-racist ethno-narcissism, fanatic anti-normalism, cultish critical theory intersections, grand byzantine minimalism, placidity, in such splendid predatory banality… In the absolute state of the world! – Aah! An undead ideology conceived by a salty Frenchman in the badlands of South Dakota in the 1890s shambles forth the devour all that is Good and Holy in the Great United States of AmeriKKKa, God Help Us All! And A Child Will Lead Those Dreadful Legions of Corruption Upon All The Meek Of Our Fallen World!

Or it’s just a spoon that isn’t real.

Nobody wants to be straight-forward, and I gotta navigate the labyrinths of euphemism. Maybe there's something weird going on - how people talk, how people act, how people think, none of those correlate to each other. It makes you feel schizo when you do all your mental rain-man calculus and realize there's a fucking Elephant in the living room and he's not wearing any goddamn pants. Once that little ray-of-sunshine blesses your tiny bug-man brain to enlighten you that the elephant is real, and the spoon isn't, it's only a matter of time before you're crowned in tinfoil a Potato King on your off-grid Bug-out estate in the Idaho Panhandle, or start drinking yourself to death and bullying mailmen (or both).

If you'd like to avoid that sort of Elephant-Mania Spoon-denialism, maybe you should try answering Uncomfortable Question instead of being so Weird about it, oh wise Mr. Kirk, Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Talking-Head, Mr. Important-Guy, Mr. Movement, Mr. Politics, Mr. Voice of Reason, Mr. Metatron. Take it from a schizo-maniac with a manifesto, you’re freaking out the hoes.

Try Praeger U talking points out on a Tinder date and watch her shrivel up from instathot to instahag -- she will go through menopause before your very eyes, that's how dry her pussy will get. Trying not to sound racist while talking about the Antarctic Nazi base and the importance of craniometry in ethnocultural anthropology will get you more action than anything that sounds like a paraphrase of Charlie Kirk -- because even if you're still being cringe at least you aren't being fake. Point and laugh at that fucking elephant - the moron isn't even wearing pants! That'll get her thinking about taking your pants off. Or not - it's not foolproof. If she doesn't laugh, red-flag, she's a Nazi so Begone Thot!

Please, for the love of God, go off-script! See the damn elephant and forget the spoon, and forget the wise Mr. Kirk, Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Talking-Head, Mr. Important-Guy, Mr. Movement, Mr. Politics, Mr. Voice of Reason, Mr. Metatron. Take it from a schizo-maniac with a manifesto, you'll go insane if you don't.

[. . . ] [T]hen there's that neuroticism, that narcissism, that fear. The whole point of these politics groups and gatherings and Q&As is what, anyway? Is it really just basic marketing tactics, like a live-action advertisement you expect for people to passively consume as though it is persuasive? To shove free-markets and free-speeches down my throat and have me swallow it without having anything that’s been bothering me answered? What do I look like to you, an Ideology Whore? You don't even reciprocate a good time, huh? I'm not that kind of girl. You didn't even buy me dinner. You made me pay to bore me. I'd cuck you if we dated just to make a very important point -- fully aware it'll go over your head. Fuck you.

We gotta hear The Script. We gotta recite The Script.

Real Conservatives Think Like This. Real Progressives Think Like This. White People Walk Like This. Black People Walk Like This.

Gotta hear that joke ten thousand times so you can recite it like a mantra in your sleep.

Free markets mean free people. Facts don’t care about your feelings. Private Companies can do what they wish. What you do in your bedroom is your own business. We want legal immigration, not illegal.

Abolish ICE. Your childhood hero says Trans-Rights. Do you not want me in the movement? Abolish whiteness.

The Racism of Lowered Expectations.

Reparations.

A white nation.

Workers of the world unite!

Abortion is a human right.

Have you got it memorized?

Let’s go over it a few more times.

Say it with me! Hillary was found innocent in a hundred hearings and it is sexist to besmirch her reputation.

Repeat after me! Trump’s economy is the best in history, and if he's racist why is black unemployment is at historical lows.

You benefit from unearned privilege. You suffer from toxic masculinity.

The world is about to end and everything you know and love will die, and it is your fault, for not believing in the correct things at the correct time.

Are you laughing yet?

I’m dying. I feel like an e-girl, and my orbiters are sides.

But do you wanna know what I really think? The whole bit about psychic and social suppression? You ever hear about the Procrustean bed? Well, what if we put your political, social, moral consciousness and your psychic abilitys into a bed like that. We could talk about it. You ever play Xenogears?

Or you could just put me in a box. I really wouldn't mind. I'm Houdini. Hey, was Houdini a Nazi, like Henry Ford? Can we get a fact-check? I didn't mean to be problematic.

Break the Conditoning - Step outside the box, and use it as a step ladder. Ascend, Beyond the Box - use The Spoon.

Bush did 9/11, the Israeli’s danced, the Aliens killed JFK - sure - but I only say this because of my MK Ultra Schizo-brain. It’s true, it’s false, it’s fact, it’s myth, I don’t have to believe any of it -- I also don't have to believe any of you if I don’t want to. My feelings do not care about your facts, and did you know that some of the world's most uncomfortable facts are manifested into being by uncomfortable feelings? Is it the fact of the bullet that kills the political dissident, or the feelings of his executioner? Is it the deranged lust of the rapist that violates his victim, or the fact of his power to do so? I guess it depends on whether the perpetrator said "nothing personnel kid" before he committed the act. I don't know about that Nazi Rapist's feelings, but MY feelings are valid and I can believe or disbelieve whatever I want on the basis of my feelings, and my feelings alone. My feelings bend the spoon of your facts.

Are you going to say I don’t have the right, Adolf? Sucks for you, bud, I may be a commie by blood, but the heart that pumps it was assembled in the ole USA -- and we got the Right to be a Retard here in America. It's a Free Country.

[Note: please insert image of Jonathan Frakes from Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction]

Now that the dust has settled: Was the Nazi Roller-Coaster Real? Or did we put the Truth in a Mass-Grave? We will let you know at the conclusion of our program.

Sincerely and Full of Suffering Your Friend Always, Orcbrand

[girlactionfigure]

Bibi and Rotem

Thanks to Rotem Sela, an Israeli actress, model, and TV personality, we can learn a lesson about Zionism, nationalism, racism, and the Israeli and American Jewish Left.

Here is what happened: Miri Regev, Likud loyalist and Minister of Culture and Sport, noted that if Netanyahu’s main opponent, Benny Gantz, were to form a government, he would have to include anti-Zionist Arab parties in his coalition. Sela, on her Instagram page (because that is how actresses, models, and TV personalities communicate), said, in part (Hebrew link, my translation):

My God, there are also Arab citizens in this country! When the hell will someone in this government broadcast to the public that Israel is a state of all of its citizens? Every person was born equal. Even Arabs, God save us, are people.

PM Netanyahu responded as follows (also my translation):

Rotem my dear, an important correction: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people – and only them. As you wrote, there is no problem with Arab citizens of Israel – they have equal rights with everyone…

In Israel, the reaction to Sela’s comment was predictable – anger on the Right and agreement on the Left (and yes, Gal Gadot expressed her support for her friend Sela in a relatively non-political way).

The usual suspects in America, J Street, If Not Now, the New Israel Fund, the Israel Policy Forum, and others, were on it like one of those Israeli hopping spiders on a cockroach. “Racist,” “undemocratic,” “cynical,” “morally repugnant,” and on and on. If Not Now referred to “racism” not once but twice in their statement.

I wouldn’t have called Sela “my dear,” but Netanyahu’s response was otherwise entirely correct. Even without the Nation-State Law, Israel has never been a “state of all its citizens” as Sela, who is supposed to be well-educated, asserted. Like Japan and numerous other countries, but unlike the US, Israel is a nation-state, a state in which – or by which – a particular people or culture expresses its right of self-determination.

The USA was defined by its founding fathers to be a state of all its citizens (although it took some time before it was ready to accept all of its legal inhabitants as citizens with full rights). Israel, on the other hand, was created to be “the state of the Jewish people,” while at the same time it endeavored to provide equal rights to all of its citizens. One way to understand this is to say that there are “civil rights” – the right to vote and hold office, education and employment, and so on, and “national rights,” which include the symbols, languages, and religions of the state, and – particularly important in the case of Israel – the objectives of encouraging immigration from the national diaspora and maintaining a national majority.

The nation-state law explicitly affirms the intention of the founders that national rights in the State of Israel belong to the Jewish people, and to nobody else. It does not limit the civil rights of national minorities. Rotem Sela doesn’t seem to understand this distinction. Netanyahu does, which may be one of the reasons he is PM and she is a fashion model.

This is nothing new, and it is neither racist, undemocratic, fascist, or morally repugnant. Nationalism and nation-states are out of fashion today, particularly in Europe, whose European Union is a (failing) attempt to replace those things with a universal government, and among the American Left, which is in the grip of the pathological ideology of “intersectionalism” (this will require a dedicated post).

There is a reason that Israel’s founding fathers defined it as the nation-state of the Jewish people and not something else, and that is the Zionist understanding that only in a majority Jewish state with Jewish symbols, culture, institutions, government, police, military, and so on can Jews be guaranteed a normal life and freedom from oppression without giving up their Jewishness.

This was the conclusion drawn by the early Zionists, from on the historical experiences of their people. It was further confirmed by the Holocaust, and the mass expulsions of Jews from Muslim countries following 1948. Today it is being confirmed yet again by the worldwide resurgence of antisemitism, even in places like the US and the UK where it had been thought to be dead. And it should also be clear that even without anti-Jewish violence, in places where Jews are a minority, they will be silently swallowed up by assimilation.

The definition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people has both symbolic and highly practical consequences. It justifies the use of Jewish symbolism in the flag, the national anthem, the symbol of the state, and so forth. It justifies the decision to observe Jewish holidays as national holidays, and to use the Hebrew language. But most important, the Law of Return for Jews (and no one else) is grounded in the understanding that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. It is the most concrete expression of national rights possible.

This isn’t “racism” (although by current American standards, who knows what that means?). It is nationalism, in particular Jewish nationalism, or in short, Zionism.

If Israel were to be redefined as a state of all its citizens, as the extreme Left and many Arab citizens want (and Rotem Sela appears to believe has already happened), what would be the justification for a Law of Return for Jews? Why shouldn’t there be one for Arabs? Why should Israel act as a place of refuge for persecuted Jews such as the Jews of Ethiopia, or even European Jews fleeing antisemitism? Why would it be important to have our capital in Jerusalem?

Israeli critics of the Nation-State Law (including Benny Gantz) have said that they would like to add a statement to it guaranteeing “equality” to all citizens of Israel. This is a bad idea. Equal civil rights for all are guaranteed by other basic laws. The Nation-State Law is the only one that specifically deals with national rights, and adding a statement about equality to it could be interpreted as diluting its force. It would be like the recent action of the American Congress, which diluted-to-death a resolution about antisemitism by making it a catch-all statement against every kind of bigotry. Even the antisemites were then able to vote for it.

The reactions of J Street, et al., illustrate that they are not only critical of Israel’s actions, but that they are critical of the most basic foundation of the Jewish state, the Zionist idea itself.

Thank you for helping clarify that, Rotem.

Abu Yehuda

[gayerluke]

this is the same aunt that’s always sharing stupid pro-israel/zionist shit on my facebook (SHE’S NOT JEWISH) & constantly putting me in this difficult situation of “how do i tell her why i don’t like this & to stop doing it without sounding like a bitch?” so i usually just delete it, she also shares like those cutesy animal videos that are actually really unsafe but i’ve given up on that battle entirely & just like them all without looking at them.

her sister is the one who doesn’t speak to me because she goaded me into a political argument that i refused to have where she accused me of not only aligning with but supporting literal homophobes, until finally i told her that this wasn’t fair to me as someone who is actually in the line of fire & affected by these things, whereas despite her belief that she is oppressed for being a democrat who chooses to live in texas, actually she is not, & even though that is a true statement i apologized sincerely & humbly for it & never got an apology or even a response back from her for saying i was voting for trump & pence, the guy who wants me to be electrocuted to death, & this was ALL because i said hillary clinton wasn’t perfect, like those were pretty much my exact words (i believe my post was “if you really think the email thing is the only bad thing hillary clinton has ever done you’re living in a fantasy world”) & then i had to PROVE that hillary wasn’t perfect bc if you’re saying hillary’s not perfect clearly that means you’re a republican, bc There Is No Other Side, so i brought up the antiblack “super criminal” shit as one example but that was FALSE bc when hillary talked about bringing black boys to heel it in fact WASN’T racist, & also BERNIE agreed even though at this point he was out of the race & irrelevant & i had not even said anything about him or indicated that i supported him, & the whole time i kept trying to agree to disagree until someone had to end it so i just told her that she needs to trust that i know what’s right for myself since out of the two of us i am the one who will actually be materially affected by the outcome of these things, but apparently pointing out that she wasn’t going to be stripped of any rights was the greatest insult of all & not only does she not speak to me but she also blocked me on facebook, because instead of working out conflict with a presumably-beloved family member like a human being, she has decided, as an adult human woman in her 50s, that the appropriate way to deal with a disagreement (which we didn’t even have!!! we voted for the same person!!!!!) is to cut off all communication with the other party like you’re a high schooler, because that’s just how little she cares about me or values me, & when another horrible nightmare comes true, & gays or jews are in the news being attacked & murdered, i doubt she ever feels bad about doing that shit to me but she’s probably secretly glad to know im hurting, bc i deserve it for whatever wrong opinion i apparently had.

so now every time her sister pulls some innocently-stupid-but-harmful shit i have to have this whole war within myself over how i can disagree without coming off as a bitch, how i can be eloquent & gracious in telling her to knock it off, how i can find language that WON’T make me sound like an angry k--- d--- but oops that’s impossible bc no matter what i say, if it’s coming out of my mouth it’s angry k--- d--- talk because that’s what i am, but we’re liberals so we will never examine our own innate homophobia & antisemitism because of course we don’t have that, so then i get stuck with constantly tone-policing myself & constantly having to stomach all these regular soul-crushing microaggressions like “i’d like to learn yiddish for fun,” “she recently became jewish,” “if you’re going to be jewish you need to know the bible,” “she wants us to use she/her pronouns but she still likes women so it’s so confusing!” (about a trans coworker, so if i like women does that make me a man?), “i am ok with homosexuals i just don’t want to see it” (oh wow pulling out an oldie-but-goodie from when i was a child that you probably have no memory of! But I Do 🙂 ps it was literally about watching a regular movie, only with gays in it which apparently makes it pornography). not to mention things about my weight that i no longer let pass, not insulting things but i pointed out that the first thing out of her mouth upon seeing me being “wow, you’ve lost weight!” is inappropriate in any situation, but particularly weird given that it was because i’d had an 8lb cyst removed. 

ANYWAY IM JUST FUCKING STRESSED bc all my Chill family members are literally dead & i have no one left & i don’t want to alienate another aunt from my life bc that’ll knock out a whole half of my remaining family which is her & her husband, but like that doesnt mean im going to allow her to just put unapproved photos of me up on the internet alongside all of my private information!!! im not!!!! & that’s not unreasonable or crazy!!!!

& somehow my mom just stays out of all of this, like she doesn’t stick up for me, she doesn’t defend me, & it’s like you’re not watching two of your sisters argue, I AM LITERALLY YOUR DAUGHTER, please dont act like you’re not with me!!!! that hurts!!!! whether you’re ashamed of raising an ugly hairy loud-mouthed (((assertive))) k--- d--- or not, you did & you have a responsibility to it, im YOUR monster & i deserve some fucking support!!!!!

& if you don’t like long posts about my stupid fucking meaningless life just unfollow me bc i am literally alone!!!! i have no one else to talk to except for this stupid fucking site full of children at 2am on a sunday

[janiedean]

aimmyarrowshigh ha risposto al tuo post

“lordhellebore ha risposto al tuo post “doegred-main ha risposto al...”

Prettytiredup has one post and it's this one. It's either the original op in the first place who keeps borderline denying the Holocaust or it's the anon who called her a c*nt. Replying seems futile from here on.

good lord fine enough

@aimmyarrowshigh: no, @prettytiredup is not me. admittedly, it’s a mutual who didn’t want discourse on their main who took it up because I’m honestly fucking tired of this fucking discussion, and btw, why the fuck would the anon who called me a CUNT - you can write it, I don’t get offended - make a post to defend me after calling me a cunt? hmmm?

that said: oh, I keep on denying the holocaust?

never mind that you obv didn’t read the post I made with receipts on how much I don’t, let me c/p the basics for you, I’m so antisemite and such a holocaust denier that: 

I’ve been to two different concentration camps, I plan to visit others when I get the chance;

I’ve more than once defended Israel’s existence with people who thought it should be annhilitated or that I was a **zionist** for not hating it on principle and I absolutely think it has a right to exist and it should exist also as reparation (or beginning to) for the antisemitism european jewish people had to endure for millennia

I vote far letft

have one instance of how antisemite I am

have a second instance (this is about the ANNE FRANK IS OVERRATED discourse, wild ride 100%)

have a third instance of the anne frank discourse in which GUESS WHAT I reblogged a list of crimes against jewish people since the destruction of jerusalem that was compiled by the same user that told me first I was a nazi apologist and in my tags I was like OMG THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING THAT LIST NOW I CAN LINK IT WHENEVER I HAVE TO DISCUSS WITH ANTISEMITES here have the receipt

and that was my personal take on that same OP

there was the time I absolutely didn’t agree with some crazy radical catholic who was pretty damned antisemite

that was my opinion about people who says that the holocaust was a white genocide and so it’s not as important as we make it to be, take two

btw that was the op about the white genocide thing I didn’t comment but I think my tags suffice

I can’t find the OP but it was about people in a london university where some students were doing holocaust denial in spades

this was about a post that got me angry af where someone made a picture with the titanic sinking, the picture with the jewish boy in warsaw getting arrested and a picture of sept 11th and one of a slave galley with a caption ‘WE’RE TOLD TO NEVER FORGET THREE OF THOSE AND TO FORGET JUST ONE GUESS WHY’

now, if this is still denying the holocaust to you whatever, let me know when you go complain to the actual person who said that ‘auschwitz and birkenau were two different camps in the first SOME polish people ended up but it wasn’t a DEATH camp and the second was just for jewish and rroma people’ which is factually false and it takes going on the fucking internet to know.

also, fyi, all of yours:

I honestly do not take offense at being called a CUNT, no really I don’t, in my language it doesn’t have any negative connotations

that said I do take offense, slightly, at the person who accused me of nazi apologism having called me a) suspiria (and then specifying I WAS CALLING YOU A WITCH) which is not nice but whatever, good movie, b) asking me if I wanted *biscotti* for how italians handled wwii when I 1) openly said I loathed fascism, 2) biscotti is the literal translation for cookies but guess what, ‘do you want **biscotti**’ is someone that here you literally say to your dog, but never mind that, c) and I also take a lot more offense at that person having had the gall to use a mafia-related example to explain me how giving up jewish people for conquered gentiles went during the holocaust when I am half-sicilian and she couldn’t have known but I could have had relatives dead because of the fucking mafia and it’s like, offensive af to go use that example with italian people but hey, I mean, if I had been japanese and she had asked me if I wanted some fucking sushi and used a yakuza example it would have been okay??? really???

so like idk you obv. most likely think I deserve to be called the above for my ***holocaust denial*** which amounted to saying that ‘more than one category died during it’ which is like factual history but I mean, before opening your mouth and let air fly freely through it it’d be nice if you look up the damned entire thing.

ah and there was the asshole who called me a cracker after insulting my intelligence but whatever, nothing new on tumblr dot com.

other than that: I blocked most people involved with this damned discourse after the mafia thing because honestly at this point I’m not even going to engage and I made my bloody point. and guess why someone reblogs my untagged post to explain me how the hell a jewish ITALIAN name which is actually fairly typical is written when the writer himself used it with the italian spelling and whose first language was italian to explain me I have to get over it when I haven’t even mentioned them or tagged anyone, and I honestly just want to let this die out and I’m only replying to asks if I get them but that’s it. and in this case it was the anon calling me a cunt bringing the topic up.

but guess why, one of the two people I haven’t blocked in this mess is reblogging my posts, which is suggesting me that everyone I blocked is stalking my blog to look for receipts or whatever when I have absolutely nothing to prove so like, idk, excuse me if now I’m very skeptical about anyone involved esp. since I think I made clear I said my piece and I don’t care to get involved with y’all any further. except that then you have to go assume the above and honestly if it’s not clear I’m really quite tired of interacting with y’all so like, idk, there’s that.

I’m also more offended that my original comments to that OP which were pretty balanced and just wanted to offer a nuanced pov have been ignored and the replies screencapped so I could pass for a racist without me having a possibility to reply since OP blocked me while posting actual misinformation than I could ever be at being called a cunt with the u, but hey, I guess everyone’s sensibilities are different.

but sure, go tell my fascist classmates from middle school who said that the concentration camps didn’t exist at all that I am the holocaust denier/nazi apologist, I’m sure that they’d have a laugh for how much we actually fought about it back in the day.

I mean, y’all really can’t take a hint and realize that once in a while it’s better to just shut up and let things drop?

[mycorrectviews]

Report from Israel:  The End of Labor or the Start of Something New?

Breaking the Impasse

It was a strange year for Israeli politics even before the Corona virus turned us all into extras on the set of a bad sci fi movie.  Things are not supposed to work this way.

Israel went to the polls three times over the past year, and each time Bibi fought his way to a draw with Blue White, the most recently created -- and lately deceased -- successor party to the one time Labor led center left.  This stalemate was born of polarization, with orthodox parties swearing obeisance to the supreme leader of the Israeli right in advance of each election. Avigdor Lieberman, the Putin-wannabe secular nationalist, meanwhile, joined the other side with equal vigor, in attempt to rebrand himself as an anti-Bibi, right wing liberal.  The usual way out of such an impasse, a Likud- BW unity government with a rotating prime ministership, proved equally impossible.  As a collection of disparate groupings with no ideological common denominator save opposition to the indictment-plagued Netanyahu, BW was unable to join a unity government almost by definition, driving the country to round after round of electoral gridlock.  Three elections and a pandemic, however, changed the calculus. Neither side knew how they’d emerge from a fourth round of elections in the midst of a recession and health emergency.  Benny Gantz blinked first, dismantled his party and the “Never Bibi” coalition, joining his nemesis in an “emergency” government.  Gantz brought over enough MK’s from his rump faction of Blue White to help Netanyahu build a comfortable majority.  In return he received an equal number of ministerial portfolios along with a turn in the prime minister’s office 18 months from now – all at an impressive discount for a fractured party only half the size of the Likud.  Bibi, meanwhile, will continue his fight to stay out of jail from the prime minister’s chair, where he can influence the selection of judges and disburse patronage to potential trial witnesses.

How bad is all this?

Well, it’s a matter of perspective.  To the extent Bibi is the main, existential question facing Israel, the unity government is no cause for celebration.  Using every conceivable stratagem to avoid doing what he unabashedly demanded of his hapless predecessor Ehud Olmert -- to leave the political stage and face justice like any other citizen -- Bibi has severely undermined the rule of law.  But it could get even worse.  Over the past three years Netanyahu has spared no effort to eviscerate public confidence in the Supreme Court, the Police, the office of the attorney general and the independent press – working in precise lockstep with everyone who owes him a dime, from government ministers to his Adelson financed newspaper to brand any and all opponents with the stain of left wing elitism.  The unity government, with the Justice Ministry passing to a Gantz appointee, will now presumably cease its war on Israel’s free institutions.  One may also hope Bibi and his ministers will dispense with the racist, Arab baiting rhetoric he needed to question the legitimacy of Blue White.  In the final analysis, what interests Netanyahu is neither judicial activism nor Arab politicians; all that matters is what works for Bibi.  Had Gantz left him to continue running an interim, right wing government until September, with a potentially more extreme one on the horizon, we might all have ended up joining some ideological street militia in the dangerous twilight of Israel’s democratic order.  Hard to say.

Amir Peretz’ Continuing Odyssey

Amir Peretz took the reins of the Labor Party at the nadir of its political fortunes.  In April, an irrelevant nonentity, Avi Gabbai, had crashed the party of Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin to six MK’s out of 120 in parliament.  

To be fair, Gabbai, like Peretz in his wake, had little chance under the circumstances.  Blue White, with its unprecedented challenge to the Netanyahu regime, sucked the oxygen out of Israel’s political environment for the Zionist left.  Gantz and his allies fired the imagination of voters thirsty for change, no matter what that change would mean.  BW, after all, was an ideologically incoherent alliance of three different lists: Yair Lapid’s neoliberals, Bougie Yaalon’s right wing annexationists, and Gantz’s own startup –- a party that could easily have found its place in the historic Mapai.  As a political force, Blue White always had a limited shelf life.  

Peretz – I can only assume, extrapolating from my own assessment at the time – took the long view. Harboring no illusions of winning , he sought to rebuild a social democratic alternative for the day after.  Labor had been in precipitous decline since the Rabin assassination, but now, with his party on the brink of extinction, Peretz sought to break the genetic code of Israeli politics that kept middle eastern Jews and their descendants (Mizrachim) – over half of Israel’s Jewish population -- loyal to the Likud.  

Schadenfreude

Left wing intellectuals have long struggled to explain why Mizrachim – more heavily working and lower middle class than their Ashkenazi counterparts – vote against their “own interests” by repeatedly supporting the Likud and its occupation policy.  But the very endeavor belies the elitism and ethnic condescension that defines Israel’s ethnic divide.   The left’s inability to conceive that right wing voters are capable of rational decisions reminds many folks – and rightly so -- of the arrogance and paternalism with which the European, Mapai establishment treated North African immigrants during Israel’s first three decades.   The recoil has been powerful and enduring.  You felt it in the schadenfreude with which Likud activists gleefully told journalists how they lied to exit polls on election night last year to humiliate the press with unrealistic projections of a Gantz victory.  And the culture of Israel’s left never ceases to trigger more recoil.  Israeli pundits have treated Amir Peretz, himself an immigrant from Morocco, as a clown – or a trickster – ever since the Lebanon war (one Labor voter explained to me a few years back that Peretz simply “didn’t know his place”). You felt it, too, in the visceral reactions to Peretz’ short lived partnership with Orly Levy, another “Moroccan” politician last summer.  In the words one left wing columnist, “there is now a Mizrachi party on the left. Peretz has condemned the left to the status of Salah Shabbati [Ed. an iconic, wiley, poor Moroccan immigrant in a classic Israeli theatre production].  Peretz lives in his own tribe,” she wrote.  It’s evident in the hysterical accusations one self-declared Mertz supporter wrote me on Facebook (“Peretz is a racist who thinks Ashkenazim are evil”). These folks just can’t put two and two together.  If the left can still brand Mizrachim as incapable of understanding their own interests by voting against peace, is it any surprise that attacking the left as Arab-lovers is so popular on the right?

Playing the Ethnic Card

Amir Peretz, to be sure, never played the ethnic card in his long and distinguished political career. A protégé of the late Lova Eliav -- an early Labor supporter of Palestinian statehood -- and a veteran Rabin loyalist, Peretz made his first mark as mayor of the Mizrachi town of Sderot -- a Likud stronghold, despite his unabashedly socialist politics.  Moving on to become an MK, Histadrut boss, cabinet minister and ultimately deputy Prime Minister, he is the rare, dovish politician who can hold his own in right wing constituencies without being branded a “leftist,” (itself a demonstration of how little a role ideology plays in the politics of identity). There was something contrived, yet native about his open shirt collar and Stalinesque moustache (which always reminded me of the Mapai forefather Beryl Katzenelson but which Israel’s hi-tech, Tel Aviv elite saw as a mark of buffoonery).   One way or another, many Mizrachi voters saw him as authentic.  But last summer’s merger between Labor and Orly Levy held out the promise of something big.  Levy’s father David symbolized the political coming of age of Israel’s Mizrachim, rising to power with the Likud as Menahem Begin’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister.  David Levy, too, was initially ridiculed in the press (he spoke French but not English when he addressed the UN).  His star ultimately faded, and he ended his career as a foe of Netanyahu.  Orly, a fiercely independent – some would say unabashedly opportunistic – politician in her own right, left Avigdor Lieberman’s right wing party to form her own, unsuccessful list in 2017.  Her calling card was a social democratic economic policy, not foreign policy or human rights. Amir Peretz saw an alliance with Levy as Labor’s game changer.  It would give right wing voters – especially Mizrachim – the legitimacy to vote Labor, thereby genetically reengineering Israel’s political paradigm for the long term.  Was he playing the ethnic card now?  Well, in a sense he was.  But no Israeli political party was ever accused of tribalism for fielding two (three or four) Ashkanzim in their top slots.  Left wing critics of the merger said Levy was, if not a Trojan horse, then at least guilty of ideological impurity.  Peretz countered by asking why [the very non-Mizrachi] Tzipi Livni was treated as a liberal heroine after bolting the Likud for an electoral run with Labor.  He was right in principle, tragically wrong in practice.

Save Us, Amir Peretz

As Amir was trying to reinvent Labor, political space was narrowing on the left.  In the June elections, Labor and Meretz, running separately, each polled dangerously close to the electoral threshold, prompting calls for a joint run in September under Amir’s leadership to avoid wiping out one, or both.  Peretz demurred.  By his calculations, such a union would be worth less than the sum of its parts. The Likud supporters he hoped to attract would never vote for Meretz -- a symbol, in their view, of Israel’s socio-cultural elite. Meretz voters, meanwhile, could not stomach Orly Levy.  It was a marriage made in hell, but the pressure was high.  Meretz supporters demonstrated in front of Peretz’ home and took out full page newspaper ads calling for unity.  Liberal columnists had been accusing Peretz for months of political adventurism and self-delusions of grandeur.  He would, no doubt, be blamed for the extinction of the Israeli left if Meretz failed to reach the threshold.  The result was humiliating in any case.  In September’s election the united list polled only 6 MK’s, about half of what Meretz and Labor scored separately in June.  But that was not the end of it.  Orly Levy, apparently, decided she had no political future in a tiny, left wing niche party and bolted right again, declaring she would not join a Gantz-led government.  It was the end of the road.  That road, in any case.

Mapai Redux?

Peretz had repeatedly vowed never to join a Netanyahu government.  Sometimes, however -- as Emerson says -- consistency is merely a hobgoblin of little minds.  Since the elections Peretz did, in fact, turn down go-it-alone offers from Netanyahu that would have guaranteed the Likud a slim majority and Labor an unprecedented bounty. But once Gantz gave Netanyahu his government, the only question for Peretz is where he could make the best use of his remaining political capital.  Purists demanded he remain in an opposition led by the neoliberal Yair Lapid and his far right allies, Lieberman and Yaalon, along with the Joint Arab List (a stellar political force that merits separate discussion in its own right).   Despised and irrelevant, he would have finished his career, and the historic role of Israeli Labor, on the margins of the 23rd Knesset.  Instead, Peretz and his ally Itzik Shmuli led a two member Labor faction into the government, receiving two ministerial portfolios, chairmanship of the government’s economic cabinet and responsibility for Bedouin development in the Negev.  But his move carries with it far greater political meaning.  Peretz will has now formed an ad hoc political axis with his Blue White allies including former Histadrut boss and Peretz protégé Avi Nisankorn at the Justice Minstry, another one-time Peretz appointee, former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, as foreign minister, and a list of other progressive MKs that could easily form the nucleus of a new, center-left political force.  To be sure, the two lists have not merged, but Labor and BW have signed a separate, cooperation agreement within the unity government itself.   It calls for raising the minimum wage, defense of collective bargaining rights, fighting racism and pursuing the peace process.

What now?

Is Amir Peretz reinventing Labor, once again?  The risks are far from negligible.  This government will lead Israel into an unprecedented, Corona induced recession. The main beneficiaries could be today’s opposition, with everyone associated with the governing coalition being held responsible for mass unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies.  It might have been preferable to leave Bibi holding the bag alone. Gantz also promised to support the annexation of the Jordan Valley on the eastern limits of the West Bank, a move some argue could trigger to a chain reaction leading to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority itself. Let’s hope not.  On the other hand, this unity government could also work the other way, with Benny Gantz proving his mettle and by leading the country out of recession, and talented young social democrats like Labor’s Itzik Shmuli (the new minister of labor and social affairs) gaining vital governing experience, positioning them for national leadership in the future.  

As they survey the smoking wreckage of an opposition that defined itself by opposition to one man, some pundits have called for an entirely new paradigm, with progressive Jews joining forces with the 15 members of the Joint Arab List to form the nucleus of a revived, Israeli left.   In my view, this is premature.  Israel’s Jewish and Palestinian citizens still constitute distinct national communities with opposing views on the legitimacy of Jewish statehood.  They can, and still must, collaborate to promote civil equality, democracy and social justice.  Zionist parties must find a way to integrate more Arabs into senior positions, and Arab parties must do the same for Jews.  But there must still be a powerful, mainstream, center left political force that supports the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish People for self-determination, while championing civil equality, economic justice and human rights for all.