#this one just happened to have been built by jewish people

[leroibobo]

some images from the cave homes of gharyan, libya. communities of jews who made their homes in underground caves have been known in the maghreb since before the 1st century. when spain invaded tripoli in 1510, tripolian jews, both toshavim and sephardic, fled to gharyan and dug out cave homes for themselves. the houses today are occupied by non-jewish libyans or rented out to tourists.

[fairuzfan]

I'm watching two documentaries of one of my familys' villages and Palestinian and 'Israeli' witness accounts from the Naksa and a Jewish tour guide comes to one of the villages (which were the 3 villages side by side, all of them affected) and points to a bathhouse with gravestones all around it. The area of all three villages is now completely demolished and the Jewish National Fund built the "Canada Park" (funded predominately by Canada! Through tax deductible donations!), as well as an Israeli settlement, on top of it. An Israeli woman sits, eating from the trees that my ancestors planted, and she says "this is war. I dont feel the pain from these places, the pain of the people. This is what happens in war." Can you imagine? She sits, eating from my ancestors trees and she says "it doesn't matter to me." The level of selfishness to be so confident in your theft!

In the documentary, a Palestinian elder from Yalo says, holding back tears, that her dream is to go back to Yalo and die and be buried in her home, where her husband died. That was my great grandmothers' dream that was never realized, just a few years ago in a village not far from Yalo.

They talk about how this was a war crime, a crime against humanity. Since '67 we have been having these discussions. Since '48 we have been talking about war crimes committed by Israelis! These are the same discussions we keep having! The same facts we keep repeating! Even Yitzhak Rabin says the same things, that this is war, this is what happens in a war! It's the same things over and over and it's happening in Gaza!

There are people still alive who participated in the ethnic cleansing of these villages. They participated in demolishing these villages. They participated in killing those village members. They participated in the generations of poverty that Palestinians experience. They're still alive and just walking around in Israeli society, encouraging the genocide in Gaza. How can I trust a society like that? Knowing that these people are lauded as heroes for erasing these villages. How can I trust them when barely anyone in this society acknowledges the violence done onto us? Abhorrent violence that they let happen so willingly!

Here are the documentaries. These three villages were ethnically cleansed in '67, and it's shocking to hear the same sort of stories we hear from Gaza today. The same playbook, the same places.

Villages: Yalo, 'Imwas, Bayt Nuba

[genderkoolaid]

expand on ur "mental asylum Marxism shit" thing about children & grief?? from what you've said im pretty sure i will relate from my own experiences as a grieving child. also it sounds interesting!!

so i was thinking about how weird it is that, when a child has to deal with the death of a loved one, they say something like "no child should have to go through this! no child should have to even think about death!" which strikes me as weird because i was a child who dealt with the deaths of multiple close family members, very close together. the first was my great-grandmother, who i lived with and who was my best friend. death was never foreign to me (my mom has always been very death-positive on top of all that). grief was just part of my life like everything else was.

but i realized that its because people think childhood should not have any flaws. you should be 100% happy and fulfilled all the time. any time a child experiences anything painful, its bad. not "children should have access to love and support," but "children should not have basic life experiences because the idea of childhood being anything other than fluffy purity scares me."

because children in society are fundamentally not people. especially in a society structured around christian beliefs in natural law theory, that what is natural = what is good, healthy, and Divinely commanded. so on top of children being the property of adults, they are also forced to be the symbols of Nature. whatever is the most useful to whoever needs them. which means we built up this idea of children as tabula rasas, pureness incarnate. like a magic mirror where if we look into it, we'll be able to catch a glimpse of the true face of humanity. every single thing children do can be scrutinized for some grand truth about humans as a whole. and then, the ways children are treated also reflect how we think humanity should interact with its own nature.

example: the idea of humanity as inherently sinful and wicked, with that urge needing to be suppressed through state violence (hello hobbes) = the idea that children are annoying and shitty on purpose and need to be forced via punishment into being Good Citizens.

this is also why children cannot be trans, even though all trans people must prove that we were trans children. being queer must be unnatural; and even if not, its inherently sexual, and sexuality is dirty and bad. so children can't be trans, and they also can't read books on puberty until their parents decide when and what exactly they are allowed to learn. child victims of sexual assault only matter to the extent that they can be used as a symbol of a cultural threat; calling Jewish or trans people pedophiles means saying that they are foreigners attacking basic human nature, and indirectly, Divine command. if you aren't the right kind of victim, or when you inevitably reveal yourself to be A Person with complicated experiences and opinions, you are no longer of use to the agenda.

it sucks that bad things happen to anyone. aspects of youth can exacerbate the pain sometimes, but sometimes it does the reverse: I wish I could have spent more time with the family members I lost, but I know other people who are glad they loss family members young, because they weren't really hurt by it. I think the main thing is that, even sometimes when we talk about our past selves, we project this cultural idea of Child As Purity and ignore the actual person having the experience. when we "empathize" with children by projecting Purity onto them, we aren't actually connecting with them.

[weemietime]

I've been percolating this for a while. One of the hardest things about being Jewish is how nowadays, even commonly accepted historical facts are now seen as debatable when it comes to Jews. Our very history itself is being actively rewritten in front of our eyes. Bad actors continually vandalize Jewish articles on Wikipedia to co-opt our intracommunal terms and bastardize them against us.

Just look at the difference from 2021 to 2024 in the Zionism article. You can see where they've left shit alone in other places that contradicts this, such as clearly defining Palestinians as Arabs and then clearly defining Arabs as native to Paran/Saudi Arabia. To this day people push the false narrative that Jews are settler colonialists in our own homeland, ignoring that the Ottomans, which most Palestinians are descended from (the Arab migration during the Ottoman Empire, not Turks), were living on stolen land.

They stole it. They (Arabs) built Al-Aqsa over our most precious religious site. And if you say this, people turn around and call you Islamophobic. It'd be like if Americans accused Native Americans of being European and decided that actually, they are the indigenous population, and if you have a problem with that you're Christophobic.

31% of the total Israeli population is Ashkenazi and out of that number there are a good deal more who escaped active pogroms and persecutions in places like Russia and Poland. The Kielce pogrom happened after WW2. The majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi at 61%. So the narrative as it is now looks like the following:

- Yemeni Jews are entirely expunged and ethnically cleansed from Yemen. The last remaining Jew is jailed.

- Yemen deports these Jews to Israel.

- The Houthis release a statement saying that Israel must be destroyed.

- Everyone accuses the Yemeni Jews of Israel of being genocidal colonizers in their own homeland which they were expunged from.

There is such an overwhelmingly massive campaign emerging from the Islamic Republic in particular as well as Hamas to rewrite history and erase Jewish indigeneity in Israel altogether even though again, Ashkenazim (who they claim are European, but again, are indigenous to the Levant) are a minority in Israel.

We all just ignore that Arabs cannot even pronounce the word Palestine, yet they want to claim that Palestinians have been Palestinians for thousands of years in Israel.

[ckret2]

Conspiracy theories are an important part of the series' identity, what's wrong with them? Some have nasty implications if you really overthink it, but they're generally fun

I didn't say I'm not gonna include conspiracy theories in the story altogether. I said I'm not validating any REAL WORLD conspiracy theories, and I'm not talking about antisemitic & racist conspiracy theories. I'm happy to crack jokes debunking or mocking real world conspiracy theories. I'm happy to create new conspiracy theories for the fic that are totally divorced from any existing conspiracy theories.

But when I'm talking about the ones I'm not playing with, I ain't talking about "Elvis is still alive" conspiracies here. With a lot of the most oft-referenced goofy-sounding high profile conspiracy theories, they're not nasty "if you really overthink it." These theories are, in their very origins, vehicles for hatred toward minority groups. Browse for a while. Notice how many of the conspiracies that have ridiculous traits that make them seem fun on the surface are past the antisemitic point of no return.

Secret reptilian overlords disguised as humans? A deliberate effort to disguise centuries-old antisemitic conspiracies. "Jews secretly control the world," "Jews help others of their bloodline gain & maintain power," "Jews drink the blood of Christian children"—blood libel is a thing that real people believe and have believed for centuries and has historically been used to justify killing whole Jewish communities—and the exact rhetoric used in these obviously antisemitic claims was reskinned for the "reptilian overlords" conspiracy. And which real people do you think believers in the conspiracy disproportionately accuse of secretly being cold-blooded inhuman monsters trying to disguise themselves amongst normal humans? Reptilian overlords is a popular one to make jokes about because "the president's a lizard in disguise" sounds funny when stripped of context—and typically the people making jokes either don't know where it came from or don't care.

Hell, the entire "a cabal of Jewish people sorry we meant 'global elites' secretly rules the world" is one of the oldest, most versatile, and most popular of antisemetic conspiracy theories.

And check out some of the more ridiculous-sounding ones that pop culture likes making jokes about.

Hollow Earth? That one's "inside the earth is a paradise populated by Vikings (the manliest white people!) and Nazis. Yay Nazis!" A whole bunch of secret continent/secret moon colony/hidden geography conspiracies are very "yay Nazis". The Illuminati secretly control everything? For approximately a century, "Jews + Freemasons + Illuminati control the world" has been an extremely prominent conspiracy theory that's branched off into countless other conspiracy theories still believed today (it fed into the reptilian overlord conspiracy, for instance). Adrenochrome? Hollywood (and other "global elites") are trafficking children to harvest a chemical from their blood that they can inject? This is literally just blood libel again. Satanic Panic, the idea that there are real Satanic cults sacrificing children left and right, and the goofy things resulting from the panic like Chick Tracts claiming D&D will damn you? Innocent people were sent to jail for murder because they were gothy enough to be accused of Satanism. People (including the right's favorite targets: immigrants and queer people!) spent decades in jail over accusations that they were ritualistically sexually abusing children—crimes that never even happened. Even less directly harmful shit like "aliens built the pyramids" is only possible if you begin from a position of assuming it's more likely ALIENS built the pyramids than that ancient African people were capable of doing it and then ignore the fact that we do know how the damn things were built.

I don't think it's entertaining for a fictional story to go "hey, you know this conspiracy that was created to promote prejudice against minorities and has been used to hurt and kill people? Wouldn't it be sooo silly if there were a world where it's actually TRUE?? Wouldn't it be so funny if the antisemites and racists and homophobes and fascists were right about everything?"

So no. I'm not gonna use a fictional setting to validate any real world conspiracies; and I'm not gonna bring a whiff of antisemitic & racist conspiracies into a goofy comedy setting.

[jewish-sideblog]

"Both indigenous and colonizers" CAN PEOPLE STOP TALKING ABOUT SHIT THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND PLEASE

This wave of antisemitism and bullshit about "indigenous vs colonizer" makes me so scared as an indigenous person in the US of what will happen when Land Back movements do result in actual sovereignty restoration and then tribes do what people do and disagree over land and resources, like we were doing for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. Will we be reduced down to colonizers too??

It feels like Westerners, especially USAmericans, have such a black and white idea of what it means to be indigenous and what it means to be a colonizer/settler (because those terms are always conflated) and it makes me so angry and frustrated to see people apply those standards and lines thinking not just to complex sovereignty movements in their own countries but also to incredibly complex conflicts and wars happening on the other side of the world.

The damage I've seen done to sovereignty movements here in the US alone, people going around claiming that we want all "settlers" to go back to Europe or that we're going to start massacring people, has been horrible and the fact that it's all just to justify antisemitism makes me sick.

Genuinely. They're blocked now, but that same person said something to the effect of "Would an Iranian praying in a Mosque built on the ashes of a former synagogue be decolonization?"

And that was the point at which I was like. Ok. It seems like most people genuinely don't actually know what the terms "colonization", "colonizer" and "coloniality" mean. Obviously, that wouldn't be decolonization, because the Jews never colonized Iran. Emigration and colonization aren't the same fucking thing!

I used to have so much faith in my generation. I thought we were critical thinkers, capable of flexibility and engagement with new ideas. But I'm realizing now that we're basically just rebranded boomers. Back in the day, anybody you disagreed with was labelled as a "Communist". It didn't actually fucking matter if they were communist sympathizers, Soviet sympathizers, or even if they were remotely allied with socialist ideals. You could just call them a "Communist" and be done with it, without even understanding what that term means.

It's the same shit today. Instead of a HUAC witch hunt targeting communists, it's a social witch hunt targeting "colonizers" and "Zionists". I am terrified that the moment indigenous rights movements in the Americas and Oceania start making practical strides in Land Back, regaining rightful control over the ways your own land is used, you'll all be labelled as "colonizers" or "imperialists" or whatever the bad buzz word of the month turns out to be.

People simply can't wrap their heads around the idea that indigenous decolonization doesn't have the end goal of ethnically cleansing non-native people from the Americas. And it's because they're so absorbed in colonial thinking. They can't even fucking imagine what sovereignty could look like beyond an authoritarian structure based on control and violence. It's the same with Israel and Palestine-- they think that Jewish sovereignty must look like complete Jewish control to the detriment of Arabs, and they think Palestinian sovereignty must look like total Arab control to the detriment of Jews. The idea that a shared state or a two-state solution is "racist" stems from that false dichotomy.

Establishing an ideological binary of violence that pits "indigenous" against "colonizer", "native" against "settler", and "us" against "them" with no room for cooperation or collaboration is the core of colonialism. Because the core of colonialism is the idea that only one group can have true power at a time. And that's just not the way the world has to work.

[jewish-vents]

I’m Jewish through my dad but I wasn’t raised in the community(i learned what Purim was two weeks ago, i was fully not in it), so when I got to college last august I decided to really dive in and it’s been a beautiful sort of homecoming for me. I joined SAEPi and got into Chabbad leadership at my campus, and I’m almost at the point where I can do the Chabbad Shabbat prayers before and after dinner without stumbling over my words. Gonna surprise my grandma if I see her in the summer. Anyways.

When October 7th happened it was a shock to my system, because I was a baby Jew barely getting my feet. My parents never mentioned antisemitism to me as something that could affect me in the future, it was always a thing of the past. But I was right there standing in the doorway between jew-ish and Jewish, and it pushed me over the edge. I had many friends with family in Israel. I had a couple friends whose friends died in the attack. Everyone in that group was my family. It felt personal.

When the march in dc happened I went with one of my friends, and it was sad, but amazing to see in person how strong we are. In the plane terminal on the way home he and I got cornered and called baby killers, among other things, because he was wearing a kippa and his Israeli first responder coat. That was my first time experiencing antisemitism and it was terrifying, even though I didn’t get hurt. It was terrifying even though my friend was built like a tank and would’ve protected me. It was terrifying just to sit in the train car with him and watch a woman stare at him with wide eyes like he was some kind of criminal. I stepped closer to him as if to remind her he’s human. I stared back at her with just as much fear and watched her snap out of it, confused.

Last week was holocaust awareness week at my college, and one of the things I did was spend a couple hours in the plaza reading the names of people that died. I found 34 Feldmans and Fotts. I found family names, Chana and Fayge and Jeshua and Sophia Feldman one after the other, and still am wondering if that was part of my family that didn’t make it to the US in time.

I called my grandma and asked for everything she could remember about her family lineage and how we got here, everything she had from that part of her life. I thought that there would be plenty to lean into, family recipes and heirlooms and stories, but there was barely anything. She has a Star of David necklace and a ton of repressed memories, next to nothing else. The recipes I could find were through my great aunt, some short instructions from my great grandmother on the back of a letter she sent to the aunt about what to ask for from a kosher butcher.

My family made it here in 1915 and 1921, they escaped before the holocaust, but they still weren’t untouched because of the ways they were ostracized and othered when they got here. My grandmother will barely admit she’s Jewish because none of her kids passed it on, it’s easier for her to let it go. I didn’t understand this until I realized that one couldn’t be hurt by the grief and pain of a family they aren’t part of.

Even those that survive are not left unscarred.

How could this not be personal? How could it not be generationally affective when it’s pushed so many to minimize their Jewishness out of self preservation? Raise their kids thinking they aren’t Jewish and hope their names never end up on a list of living or dead Jews? People still don’t see us as human. the antisemites still want to scar us. They want us to forget who we are.

It’s unreal to me when goyim act like American Jews in the current day are unaffected by the past and safe from antisemitism. I’ve been here less than a year and have been screamed at in an airport, have uncovered serious intergenerational trauma, and realized that of my Jewish family I have nothing to hold on to but a torn in half piece of paper with a sentence long tangent about brisket.

We are strong and we will outlive them, but god are we still fucking fighting for our lives.

.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Yesterday, there was a terrorist attack, two people were stabbed in the area where my mom's cousin and his wife live. I found out about it as I was returning from a medical appointment, going through a road where in Nov, a terrorist shot to death a young Israeli man.

Based on what the IDF has found of Hamas' armaments (which surpassed Israeli estimates), based on how things stand now, Hamas would be capable of continuing to fire rockets into Israel for at least 2-3 more years. That's why, even as the fighting continues, there are new defensive measures that will be built along road 232, the same road mentioned in the NYT's article about the Hamas rapes during the Oct 7 massacre.

Speaking of that article, apparently despite the insane amount of evidence in it, and mentioned recently in regards to the subject of the rapes, some are trying to deny that this part of the massacre happened. This is a perfect response (IMO) from feminists.againstantisemitism on IG:

Cyberwell, a watch dog that monitors antisemitism on social media, has reported a sharp rise in antisemitic posts since Oct 7. And not just of the new, anti-Zionist kind. There has been a rise in 1000% in posts accusing Jews of killing Jesus (yes, the Jew crucified by Romans almost 2,000 years ago... funny how you never see people going around saying Italians killed Jesus... almost like the whole thing isn't about who actually killed Jesus, and more about providing yet another excuse for antisemitism, a hatred that pre-dates Jesus), and 1600% in the hashtag saying that Hitler was right, the guy whose antisemitic, genocidal ideology, the attackers, maimers, rapists, kidnappers and murderers of Oct 7 would happily co-sign. All of this, while the world appropriates the Jewish slogan "never again" to use against Jews defending themselves. Make it make sense.

And here's a reminder that what starts online, doesn't stay online. There have been unprecedented levels of antisemitism in many places, including in New Zealand. What got to me the most is the report on antisemitic incidents targeting school kids, and that only 40% of parents report these (sometimes 'coz previous cases have not been treated right, or the school is seen as being ill-equipped to deal with antisemitism). A 2021 survey found that 60% of New Zealanders agreed with antisemitic statements, so it might be argued that this recent outburst has been waiting to happen for a while, just waiting for an excuse to.

Here's another piece that I sadly could only find in Hebrew so far. It reveals some more of the interrogations of Hamas terrorists, this time covering how Hamas terrorizes civilians in Gaza. Here's my loose translation of a testimony's summary, from a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist (Muhammed Darwish Amare). It can be found (with the full testimony in the vid and appearing) at the above link: "Someone told me that they took explosives, to place them from his apartment to a spot 2 meters (6.5 feet) away from him. The man came down and told [the terrorist]: 'Oh man, how are you placing the explosives by the door, and then if they explode, my kids and I will be gone.' He responded, 'If you don't like it, then get out of here.' The apartment owner said to him, 'These are my kids, this isn't right,' and the explosives placer replied, 'I will lay them even if you don't like it, and I will even place them between you and your wife.' Then he took out his pistol and shot the apartment owner in the leg."

Another testimony, found at the same link, this one is of a former Hamas member (Zuhady Ali Zahdy Shahi): "I felt that we civilians are human shields. Why should we protect them? We want to be saved, too. That's Hamas' mistake. People left their house [during the fighting], and there was a safe passage, because the army told us to go south, that there will be food and water there. They drew a safe passage for us, and then we ran into [Hamas terrorists], who made us go into one of the neighborhoods. They told us, 'No one is going south, there are bombings, and no one can continue on the street.' We went into the Shifa hospital, and we got stuck inside. [The terrorists] sat among us, with the civilians. They were scared of the soldiers. I even argued with one of them, and told him, 'Your place isn't here, with the civilians, but downstairs [in the terror tunnels].' He told me that the moment the war would be over, he will punish me, he started threatening me." When asked what he thought of the IDF, Shahi said, "Truth is, based on what I've seen, I wish you would stay with us. If they would have stayed where we lived, we wouldn't be starving. The moment the army came into Shifa, we were scared of what would be done with us, but it was the opposite. They brought us food and water, and sat with us. We felt safe."

This is 56 years old Ilan Weiss.

His 53 years old wife Shiri and 18 years old daughter Noa were kidnapped by Hamas, and released in the hostage deal. Ilan himself, who was a member of the emergency team at kibbutz Be'eri, left his house on the morning of the massacre, as first reports came in, and wasn't heard of again. He was considered missing (meaning, it was unknown whether he was kidnapped or killed on Oct 7). Today it was announced that his body was identified, and he had been murdered during the massacre. May his memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: BEN SHIMONI

Full English text of this sign about Ben at the bottom of the page

Ben Shimoni, 31, was celebrating peace at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 when the event came under massive terrorist attack by a barbaric well-armed horde of killers and rapists. Amid carnage and chaos, Ben dodged bullets to reach his car and then picked up four strangers. He maneuvered their way out of the festival site and drove thirty minutes to Beersheba, where his passengers got out of the car. To their shock, Ben said he was going back to rescue more people. They tried desperately to change his mind but Ben turned the car around and headed back to hell. 

Ben was very familiar with the roads around the festival area because he spent his childhood in Gaza. Ben lived in Gush Katif, a tight-knit, warm community of Jews. In 2005, when Ben was only 13, his idyllic life was hideously disrupted when his family and all the other Jews in Gush Katif were forcibly ejected by their own government in a tragically misguided attempt to conciliate the Palestinians. Families who’d harvested land and built businesses over a lifetime had to hand it all over to their enemies. The Palestinians immediately destroyed the farms and factories, elected Hamas and began building terror tunnels to kill Jews. Now 18 years later, paragliding terrorists on a mission of destruction were at the Nova music festival and Ben was on a mission of his own: to rescue as many people as possible. 

Like a firefighter rushing into a burning building, Ben drove into a field that was still under massive attack. He immediately filled his car with five more terrified strangers, and drove them to safety in Beersheba. This group, too, was shocked because once again, after reaching safety, Ben chose to go back to the festival site. He’d already saved nine lives but made one more desperate and valiant attempt. He picked up three frantic girls and almost got away until they were stopped at a checkpoint manned by heavily armed soldiers. Ben’s girlfriend Jessica Elter was on the phone with him and heard what happened next. Jessica told the Jewish Chronicle: “Suddenly I heard Ben asking, confused but not afraid, if some people in the road were Hamas terrorists or Israeli police. I heard the girls in the back screaming and pleading with Ben at the top of their lungs to ‘Drive, drive, drive.’ I heard a lot of yelling in Arabic and a big crash, some shooting and, after a minute of quiet the phone just hung up.”

Ben’s car was later found riddled with bullets but empty and he was initially classified as missing. However after five days Ben’s family was notified that his body had been identified, some distance from the car. Nearby was the body of the girl who’d been in the passenger seat. They had both been shot. The two girls who were in the back of the car have never been found and are presumed to be hostages in Gaza. Jessica is praying for their rescue and hoping to learn more from them about Ben’s final minutes.

Jessica says that Ben’s heroic self-sacrifice to save at least nine other people was completely in character. “He was shy, loyal, very honest with every person he met, and never said no to someone in need. He always put others before himself, truly. He had the best heart ever. And the thing he did that morning testifies to the person he was.” Jessica and Ben had attended several previous Nova festivals. Jessica would have been at that one too, except that she had recently grown more religious and stayed home to observe Shabbat.

Ben was a successful businessman who worked in the restaurant industry and appreciated the Israeli night life scene. His brother Avinoam remembers that Ben “loved life. Loved cars, traveling and parties. Always puts himself last and wants to help, so it’s not surprising that the last action he did in his life was trying to rescue his friends from hell.” 

Israeli band Synergia released a song based on a poem written about Ben Shimoni. It begins, “Who is the person who goes back into hell, a moment after he escaped?”

At the Nova festival site, Ben’s loved ones put up a sign about Ben’s life and his heroic actions on October 7, 2023. May his memory always be for a blessing and may his soul have a great elevation!

Full text about Ben (from the blue sign in the image above) at the memorial site, written by his family:

Ben Binyamin Shimon was the first born son to parents Pnina and Rafi Shimoni after many efforts to bring children into the world. Ben has younger twin brothers, Avinoam and Chai, and Chai has special needs. The three of them grew up in Dugit of Gush Katif near the sea. Following the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, Ben’s parents Pnina and Rafi divorced. Ben moved to the north with his father, and two years later, his brother Avinoam joined him, spending their teenage years there together. After completing his military service, both Ben and his father decided to leave the north and move to Modiin to start a business together, which led Ben into the world of business and back to the south. In recent years, Ben moved back to live with his mother and brother Chai in their home in Ashkelon. Later on, his partner Jessica also joined them. Ben always loved extreme sports, cars, and motorcycle racing. His friends and close-knit family were his whole world.

He was always ready to help, even when not asked. Ben loved to celebrate life and live in the moment; nightlife and parties were an integral part of his life. He owned several businesses related to food and nightlife.

In the last few months of his life, he decided to leave these businesses and began working as a sous- chef with his good friend Matan Zafrir at the Pitmaster restaurant in Petah Tikva, with a bright future ahead in the industry. His coworkers recount that they had never met a more professional, caring, and dedicated person than him. 

That Saturday, Ben decided to stay home for the second holiday of Sukkot, a decision that, as it turned out later, saved his mother and brother Chai from traveling to celebrate at the home of their friend from Dugit, Tova Goren, who lived in Kfar Aza and was murdered in her home along with her daughter Eran.

On October 7th, in the early morning hours, Ben left for the Nova festival, where he met up with his friends Tom Peretz and Michal Ohana. His partner Jessica, who was inseparable from him, surprisingly decided to stay home that evening with his mother and brother Chai. When the attack began, Ben immediately called his mother to inform her that there were rockets and to wake up Jessicaand take everyone to the safe room (bomb shelter).

Ben wasn’t afraid of the rockets; he got in his car and started to flee. He knew the area well, having grown up there and served there during his military service. Ben was an experienced driver and knew how to navigate the roads of the Gaza envelope. At the beginning of the journey, he picked up four passengers he didn’t know; Jude Kotler, Amit Shalit, Mashi Lindner, and Tal Gozal. From their testimonies, we understand that Ben quickly grasped the situation and did everything to calm them down and bring them to safety.

He rescued them to Be’er Sheva. On his way there, he contacted his father, who lives in Be’er Sheva, and asked if he could bring them to his house.

His father was at work in Omer (another city in the South) and told Ben to come and get the key. Ben realized this would delay him and decided to drop them off at a house he didn’t know at the entrance to Be’er Sheva. There, they begged him to stay with them and not return to the festival area, but he was determined to save his friends who were still there. That morning, during the rescues, Ben managed to speak with his friends and family. Everyone had the chance to talk to him; his father Rafi, his mother Pnina, his brother Avinoam, and his girlfriend Jessica.

They were all proud of him for saving people, and asked him to come home and not return to the area of the festival. However, Ben was determined to save his friends. He returned and managed to save another eight people he didn’t know to the Netivot area. Only ten months later we were connected with these people and learned that they were physically healthy but not mentally. Afterward, he returned to the festival area for a second time in hopes of finding his friends Tom and Michal, even though they told him not to come.

Nevertheless, he drove to the last location they sent him. But when he arrived at the location, Tom and Michal were no longer there (probably because their phone battery died, and they had already moved to their next hiding place). Today Tom and Michal are safe and sound. At that time, Ben knew that Gaya Halifa (Z”L), who worked with him at the Pitmaster, was also at the festival, so he contacted her and understood she was in danger. He asked her to send him her location. Gaya was with her friend Romi Gonen; they were hiding from the terrorists’ gunfire in a small bush near the Re’im parking lot.

Gaya sent Ben the location, and along with it, she wrote, “Don’t come; there are gunshots.” Despite this, Ben chose to look for them. He found them and got them into his car. In addition to them, Ben saw Ofir Tzarfati (Z’L) and offered him to join them in the car. Ofir had just made sure that his friends and girlfriend were rescued into another car and there was no space for him to go with them, so he joined Ben’s car.The four of them began driving towards Ashkelon on Road 232. Gaya managed to speak with her father, Avi and tell him that Ben rescued them and they were on their way out, asking him to pick her up from Ashdod. Romi texted her friends and family that a friend of Gaya’s from work (Ben) came to rescue them and that they were on their way out. After a short drive of a few kilometers at a crazy speed, during which Ben was on the phone with Jessica, he told her that he saw figures ahead and asked, “Are they terrorists? Arabs?” Immediately after, Jessica heard gunfire and screams. At 10:12 AM, at the Alumim Junction, they encountered an ambush by terrorists who slaughtered them.

The car stopped, and Ben and Gaya were murdered on the spot. Ofir and Romi were injured and half an hour later, kidnapped to Gaza. All this was recorded on a phone call between Romi and her mother, Mirav. After 54 days, we learned that Ofir was murdered in captivity at Shifa Hospital, and his body was found and returned for burial in Israel. As of today (ten months after October 7th, at the time of this writing), Romi is still held captive by Hamas, and we all pray for her safe return to her family, healthy in body and soul. Ben and Gaya were declared missing for five days. After extensive searches and understanding that something terrible had happened, we hoped that perhaps they were injured or even kidnapped, but the bitter news came. Ben planned to continue living life to the fullest and build his life his way, but fate chose for him to die a hero. Ben left behind a grieving family, friends, and a girlfriend who miss him, are proud of him, and love him deeply.

[jewishvitya]

i’m not too knowledgeable of current israeli thoughts regarding this, but wanted to ask anyways - back last year, i remember seeing some israelis i knew vehemently refer to the attack on october 10 as a pogrom. wall street journal echoed that last year but i haven’t heard much about it since. is this a common sentiment held among israelis, regardless of their political beliefs? while i do not diminish the pains caused by hamas’s attack, i wonder if it will ever be officially recognized to the extreme of being a pogrom. just something lingering in my mind for whatever reason.

thank you for all you post, it’s been a wonderful resource for me and i’m sure many others. god bless!

Thank you so much!! I'm glad I can be helpful.

Yeah, Israelis regard October 7 as a pogrom, but almost more than that. There's a kind of 9/11-like thing forming around this, I don't know how to explain it.

On the morning of October 7, I was in range of the rockets, which is rare. Most don't reach as far as where I live. It was the first barrage of that scale that I experienced in this city, I was panicking. And the news of everything going on around Gaza was like nothing else we experienced. I told a friend I'm scared of what our retaliation will look like. I was terrified for the people of Gaza. I didn't imagine this, but I knew it would be bad.

The perception is that before the holocaust, pogroms were something almost inevitable we had to weather. Zionism was a movement before the holocaust, and antisemitic violence had a part in that. After the holocaust, it picked up in popularity, we said, "that's it, no more victimizing us without us fighting back. We'll have our own state with our own army and we'll never be defenseless again."

And in this context, I can tell you that October 7 is the most deaths in one attack that Jewish people experienced since the holocaust.

We do a lot of suppressing Palestinians. In response to the exploding busses on the second intifada, the wall around the West Bank was built and their movement was severely limited (I don't know how bad it was before the second intifada, I just know it got worse). In response to the attacks from Gaza on 2005, we took firm control of the borders there too. We essentially imprison them in fragments of their lands in order to hold them back from hurting us. And we hate our government, but we trust and almost idealize our military. Knowing our military is keeping them in check is how we feel safe.

On October 7, the illusion of safety and control we had was shattered. I heard several people I know talking about how nothing can be the same, something changed, something broke. Israelis feel restless and scared. Even some people I knew as leftists repeated the "but what else can we do? Hamas already said they'll repeat October 7, we can't let that happen."

So. Pogrom doesn't really cover it? It's almost its own thing. But also, yes, a pogrom.

[abyssalzones]

C-PTSD as a diagnosis makes so much sense for Ford because he really does fit almost all of the criteria, ESPECIALLY if you take the stuff in J3 into account in conjunction with his traumatic childhood (bullying, bad dad, etc.). It just makes sense in regards to his motivations and his issues with interpersonal relationships (like with Stan). Also buring yourself in your work (like he does) is a very common 'flight' coping mechanism to trauma in adults

I'm smiling like this right now

ford's whole.... mental health deal is extremely interesting to examine because Oh my god this man is the textbook image for "reacting to ongoing, continuous trauma". intentional or otherwise (I'm inclined to believe it's both).

like. okay hang on I'm about to get very in depth with it

I feel like there's no way this entire guy's life and in some ways his lasting identity haven't been defined by and constructed around various forms of trauma, maybe the most obvious and true-to-canon-intent being peer abuse/bullying from childhood. a lot of people downplay the impact of this type of abuse but it's... responsible for a lot of social ills in shocking ways. (if you're more interested in this topic here is an article my friend mer linked me a while back, it gets into it very deeply)

(a lot of this is going to be sourced from the wikipedia page for CPTSD [and my own experience Living with it] which I realize isn't very professional of me but Whatever this is tumblr)

one of the core tenets of ford's personality is that he's Different. he owns it, sure- his six fingers become a point of pride rather than something to be ashamed of- but they make it extremely clear that from a young age he associated being different with being a social pariah. ford's generation was characterized by notoriously cruel bullying, and anything that remotely made you stand out rendered you a target. ford could've been bullied for being nerdy and jewish (and failing to perform socially, ie dating) alone, having such an obvious mutation definitely was not winning him any points.

so it's honestly no surprise, when from childhood ford feels like he has One person in the world to trust and confide in, that he would go on to form very unhealthy attachment patterns typical of CPTSD. as you elaborated on regarding AvPD (which I know far less about but seems to have comorbidity with CPTSD): if you're hard-wired to believe socializing with others results in failure or betrayal, then you're not going to make an effort. but what does end up happening is that you're going to pour all of your trust and dependency into one person at a time, one person who is "safe".

previously, that was his brother. and it's not really hard to draw the conclusion from there that fiddleford was a subject of ford's attachment style, considering he was his One friend from college, and... one of Maybe two people ford is friends with at all who he isn't related to. he cites him as the only person he can possibly trust to work on the portal project alongside him, and he still can't bring himself to tell him the full truth, because he's terrified of losing him. I love their dynamic (I do think they were mutual best friends, and there was no small amount of trust reciprocated between them. "fiddleford was weird as hell too" is something I keep coming back to) and I don't think it's built on entirely unhealthy terms, but that kind of pressure is... setting things up to crash and burn.

enter bill stage left. back to "continuous yearning to be liked and accepted"- this guy knew that and made every effort to prey on ford's insecurities to reel him in as close as possible. this is what really pisses me off about the idea that bill was just "inflating ford's ego", because it's way, way more insidious than that. throughout the entirety of journal 3 we see ford reintroduce someone to his life he has a very positive relationship with (fiddleford) and how that trust gets gradually broken down by bill's influence "winning out" over their friendship. I think it's safe to say ford was already vulnerable: from the start, he'd been isolated in his research for six years (and it's unclear for how long he'd known bill by 1982), and bill proved time and time again to be someone who wouldn't judge him, someone who would praise him for his hard work, and perhaps most critically, make him feel like being different was something special.

like that's... that's really not good!!!! and that kind of thing works wonders on someone who has already settled with the idea that they're inclined to be alone just by design.

trying to put a cap on this. in relationships like the one he's had with his brother or fiddleford it doesn't even necessarily have to be ""toxic"" (vague term anyway) or outwardly bad to be built on unhealthy attachment patterns, and considering for a good chunk of ford's life his attachment to others can be characterized as "I can only trust ONE person at a time" it feels essential to any discussion of his CPTSD or canon trust issues. That is something that happens a lot in Real cases of CPTSD (hi) and only further snowballs into More trauma by leaving you vulnerable to manipulation and abuse (see: bill.)

I've been going on for way too long now and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of the thing I wanted to elaborate on sorry. that post traumatic stress disorder can complex

[proudzionist]

I saw this on Instagram and I am sorry but I agree 💯 .

They we're given Gaza and Jordan and forced the Jews to leave it .

Did it bring peace ?

Did it bring tranquility?

NO 👎

They still murdered Jews and have for 76 years .

Oct 7th was horrific it was a true genocide ( not the fake one ) that Gazans claim .

However , Jews have been murdered for decades by Palestinians and various terrorists cells .

How can there be a two state solution when the Palestinians won't acknowledge you ?

Feels it is ok to murder you ?

Teach there children to hate you so the next generation is just as evil as they are .

They are a death cult 🫣

They hate Israel more than they ever Loved their own children.

Hamas could've built bomb shelters ( like Israel did for the're people ) to save lives ,but THEY DIDN'T.

They use these people as shields and hide underneath them .

However , don't forget it was the Gazans who spit on dead bodies of girls as they we're paraded on the streets.

Palestinians who helped Hamas murder innocent men women children and babies.

Hostages were and some still are held in Gazan homes for Pete's sake .

How in the world do you have a two state solution with that ???

Did it bring peace when they got Gaza ?

NO 👎

They still murdered Jews !

They don't want a two state solution and you shouldn't either .

How in the world can they co exist after everything that they have done for decades to Israel . Israel is the only Jewish nation in the world,yet their are 52 Muslim countries ( if not more ) there is only one Jewish Nation.

Israel has roughly 2 million Arabs living in it.

How many Muslim countries has Jews living in it 🤔

....................we all know that Answer

.....................now don't we !

You don't see Jews going to Iran Iraq Syria Afghanistan Yemen Pakistan and demanding there land for themselves.

Palestina was named by the Romans not Arabs .

The Romans didn't get rid of all the Jews when they renamed Israel Palestina.

I wish we could all live in peace and harmony and support each other but that can't happen until they accept Israel and stop murdering the Jewish people.

Israel is a tiny nation 🇮🇱

Israel is the only Jewish nation in the world 🇮🇱

Israel just wants to be left alone and live our lives without rockets every hour coming into Israel ,suicide bombers , teenagers with knives stabbing Jewish people to death and the list goes on and on and on.

The Jewish people should not apologize too exist

The Jewish people have lived and died and fought for there ancestral homeland for thousands of years and ...................

Israel is not going anywhere!

Sorry ,not Sorry !

[latent-thoughts]

The Jews weren't the first natives in that region. The Canaanites were there before the Jews showed up to violently erase them from existence for the terrible crime of not being of Yahweh's choosen people. All Jews know this. It is literally in the fucking book. You know this.

Don't lie in order to defend the idea that Israel is a thing that absolutely must exist. It's fine that you believe that idea, but what's getting irksome is this underlying insistence that "Israel must exist" is an obvious conclusion to the region's problems and anyone who has a modicum of moral fiber in their soul can clearly see that. Your religion isn't true to the people who aren't you. I do not recognize the Jews as a chosen, special sort of people and I shouldn't be expected to. And, yes, I can tell when it's expected because they'll get annoyed when I mention the Canaanites. Yeah, I've seen the eye-rolls, the "history's a complex mess so I'm justified in picking and choosing what events humanity should give a shit about based on how recent they are and how much the directly affect MY culture" bullshit, the accusations of antisemitism despite the fact that I would be completely fine with the existence of Israel if the people who made it didn't, well, slaughter the families of Canaanites in order to do so. Also, Israel isn't a person or a type of person, it's a state, it's completely fine to hate and isn't synonymous with hating Jews. If you think that it is, I'm going to remind you that people who aren't Jewish exist and they don't need to necessarily have the values Jews want them to in order to good people.

If the foundation of your state is built on moving into land that isn't yours and erasing the people that your god doesn't want there, it's completely reasonable to expect that other states might just return that favor in kind. After all, you set the precedent, right? And then constantly referred to it in your holy texts like it was the best, most necessary thing that ever needed to happen. That kind of zeal certainly won't spread.

Oh boy, I'm going to say it. I think that all of the states that have ever engaged in and justified (I'm going to say it) genocidal behavior aren't really... y'know worth defending? Worth giving a shit about? And yeah, saying "God needed us to do it! We are the chosen people! HOLY LAND!" is a shitty justification. Objectively shitty. Jewish people aren't the chosen people to anyone else besides other Jewish people. Nothing really wrong with that, but... nothing really that right with it either. It kinda cancels itself out.

Long ask, I know. Whatever. Stop lying. The Canaanites were there before the Jews. The Jews killed them all then called the land they stole from them "Israel". See? There are perfectly good reasons to hate Israel that have nothing to do with Palestine.

C'mon, the Americas had fucking slavery. England tried to take over the world. Hell, Germany tried to kill all of you! Israel is another shitty place. It isn't special.

I vow to ignore Israel from now on, achieving everlasting peace and making the entire Middle East envious of me.

Oh, and to be absolutely clear in the most awkward manner possible, I don't hate the Jews. I just find their bullshit to be really fucking annoying.

If the Jews killed them all, how is it that their DNA is still dominant in modern day Jews (plus Palestinians and other populations of Levant)?

The truth is that both Jews and Palestinians were part of the same people at some point in time, who also mixed with Canaanites and settled in the region that is modern day Israel+Levant. And Canaanites' ancestors had actually arrived in that region from further East.

So by your logic, then, even the Canaanites weren't the natives of that land.

(There may have been tribal wars, as was common in that era, but it's pretty clear that no one wiped out anyone.)

We can keep going back in time to disprove the indigeneity of people till we arrive in Africa. Which is kind of moronic, TBH.

Personally, I'm not denying the indigeneity of either Jews or Palestinians. Only you are trying to justify your hatred for Jews and denying that they have a right to live in their homeland. Just by saying that you don't hate Jews doesn't veil your anti-semitism.

Both Jews and Palestinians deserve to live there. A two state solution is one way for it. Terrorism by Hamas isn't.

Furthermore, if you know your history (which I'm having doubts about), you know that Jews were persecuted and driven out of almost all the countries and kingdoms they had moved to over the centuries. There were Jews in the Middle Eastern countries, African countries, Europe, etc.. Tell me what happened to them. If you can't, you don't understand why Jews wanted a country of their own, in their native homeland.

With the exception of India, they were either killed, forcefully converted, or driven out of these countries at some point in time. The Holocaust is just one such instance over the centuries, and it was a big deal. The present day rising anti-semitism only strengthens their belief that they're never fully accepted in other places. Hence their need for self determination and separate state of their own (which they already have, btw).

Also, I know you didn't bother to check before coming in my inbox to spew venom, but I'm not Jewish. I'm not even from that region. But I understand what it means to have a history that's full of massacres and genocide of my people.

Plus, I'm someone who likes to stay informed, someone who's against anti-semitism. I don't need to be a Jew to understand where they're coming from.

[weemietime]

1. there's no such thing as a soul and 2. why does israel specifically need to be where it is now? israel has not even existed for a century. many different people have inhabited the land for thousands of years, mostly arab. is the only argument for the current geographic location of israel a religious argument? why can't it be anywhere else? if it's not a religious argument, why is the land so important if the it was jewish land thousands of years ago? is america justified in its existence despite having killed dozens of millions of native americans? WHY CANT ISRAEL ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD? WHY IS ISRAEL EXPANDING INTO LEBANON AND WHY IS IT BUILT UPON THE EXPULSION OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PALESTINIANS? Religious arguments should not be taken seriously in the current day. The only other argument i've heard from zionists is one of racial superiority. Zionism boils down to white supremacy and Judaism/Jewish people are completely separate from that. The original zionists claimed to be secular marxists. How can you reconcile these inconsistencies and expect people to not think you're genocidal???

Good l-rd, the Kremlin-Hamas propaganda pipeline workin overtime. *Pats trunk* I can fit so much Nazi gibberish in this bad boy. 1) I don't give a shit that you don't respect my traditions and my beliefs, we already know you have no respect whatsoever. Cool.

2) Israel is where it is now because it is Israel, you deranged fucking lunatic. No, the people who have lived there over the last centuries have NOT been Arabs. There is ZERO archaeological evidence to back up a claim that Palestinian Arabs have been in Israel from the same time as Jews.

3) Point blank, everything you've built up here is a Nazi lie. this is false. A lie. We Jews dig up thousands years old shit from our culture in Israel. Not Arab/Islamic culture. It isn't there. You know your little al aqsa flood operation as Hamas calls it. Arabs built Al Aqsa over our most precious Beit hamikdash. Just for spite by the way. Muhammed hated Jews, ask the Jews of Medina how he handled them. Oh you can't they all got beheaded and enslaved.

Then turn around and call us colonizers when we return street names to their ORIGINAL Hebrew. You're ignorant as fuck of history, "dismantle colonialism" but simps for Hezbollah, the long arm of the IRGC who colonized Iran from the native Persian population. Do you know how many countries Arabs conquered? You don't know shit about the Middle East, keep us out of your fucking mouth.

This is called DARVO and its a tool of colonizers to suppress indigenous history and tradition and overwrite what really happened. And y'all are mad about it because Jews won't let it happen. We won't let you gas light and manipulate us and say see we're the indigenous ones when Arabs were the ones who rolled in and stole our land in the first place.

Arab migrations happened and the Arabs who lived there knowingly lived in stolen land, that is not our fucking problem. I would be content to live in peace with Arabs. I would respect moderate Islam. I would even say sure you can call Israel your homeland even though it's not, whatever.

By the way when Israel declared independence Israelis didn't force Arabs out of their homes. The Arabs all ganged up on Israel and attacked. The Arab league told those people leave your homes, we will kill all the Jews then you can come back. Welp they lost. Tel Aviv wasn't there before 1920s, dipshit. Most of Israel has been build on ceded, legally purchased land.

The amount of private land that was taken from innocent people occurred as insulation from terrorism from a war six other fucking countries started at once. Israel is genocidal huh, Israel has never once fired the first shot in any war its ever been in. Think on that you limp ugly bitch.

We're a community, a family. That's what Judaism is. By the way, that's what the people in those kibbutzim were doing too. They were peace activists, pro Palestinian peace activists, lol. They tricked them for twenty years, multiple generations, being their friends.

But Hamas doesn't want peace and they openly say it over and over and over again to you dumb fucking imbeciles, over and over and over. No peace, no compromise, no ceasefire. They want total annihilation of Israel and Jews world wide. That's their agenda. Don't even fucking come back if you can't acknowledge that this is what they want to do.

Palestinian Arabs can't even pronounce the word Palestine in Arabic lmao. It's not got any Arabic etymology. It was a slur to mock US, THE JEWS, by the romans. Can you pickup a G-d damn history book and read for once in your piss baby life?

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Breaking down the Comics: Writing a legend, building a history.

Today we aren't reviewing an issue of Moon Knight. Today we are going to talk about something important.

So who wrote Moon Knight?

"Easy!", you might say. "Doug Moench!"

Sure. But you'd be surprised to find that it's not as much as you'd think.

Doug Moench wrote issues 1-15, 17-26, 28-33.

He returns in 1998 for a 4 issue mini seires Vol 3 "Resurrection Wars" which revives Marc Spector, who had been killed off in the previous volume.

He continues in 1999 with Vol 4, another 4 issue mini series "High Strangers/Strangeness" which won an award for favorite limited series.

He also wrote werewolf by Night, which gave us the first iteration of Moon Knight. An instantly popular character that made appearances in other comics like "The Hulk" before he was given his own comic.

He had time to work on the designs with Bill Sienkiewicz. They built up the weapons, the costume, the cab, and the copter.

He also built up the side characters of Gena, Gena's two boys, Crawley, Frenchie, Detective Flint, and Marlene.

He set the ground rules:

Moon Knight system is Jewish.

Marc, Jake, and Steven are a part of a system and are not one man pretending to be someone else

Jake is the one that is friendly and loves being with the people.

Steven is posh, collected, and takes care of things.

Marc is the one with experience, has the skills needed to get things done, and holds all the pain.

They are former Mercenaries who did terrible things and have deep guilt.

Khonshu resurrected them to act as Moon Knight

They strive to protect any who would come to them for help that perhaps might not get it elsewhere

I would even argue that he was building up to the fact that Moon Knight himself was his own form of alter but it has since been glossed over and replaced with the idea that Marc is most often the one under the mask.

Pretty simple rules to follow to make it a Moon Knight comics, but you'd be surprised what some writers have done with it.

These comics were written long before DID was acknowledged and the different forms of PTSD and Dissociation were defined.

And yet, here we stand with a traumazied man from Chicago slowly working through a freshly cognizant system and trying to figure out how three (four) people can work together towards not just a life, but life as a superhero who wants to help people.

Further more, an odd thing happened in this.

We had a comic that often focused more on mental health than on super powers, heroics, or villains.

More often than not, we watched Marc, Jake, and Steven struggle with themselves and one another. We watched stories unfold from the villain's point of view, often just being ordinary people pushed too far by a system that failed them.

More so, we watched Moon Knight sympathise with these villains.

How often he let them walk away or he let them kill their abusers, wondering if he was doing wrong himself.

How can he help when sometimes the help he offers is not what is needed?

We even watched him fail. We saw him lose his temper and cause damage. We saw him curl into a ball and break. We saw him get lost in his own nightmares and dissociative fuges.

Moench stepped forward and often handled current events with raw emotion. We saw his characters cry over the loss of public iconic figures. We watched people struggling as they returned from war. We saw child abuse and poverty. We watched economic struggles with classism and we watched people struggle to deal with grief.

We even watched them deal with antisemitism over and over again. How many times were the victims of his stories Jewish and trying to survive in America? What about the story that took place with the mass shooting in the Synagoug? We heard stories of Generational trauma as elders struggled with survival after the Holocaust.

Moon Knight was a unique comic unlike any other I've ever come across. For it's time and for it's topics at the time. What's more, this comic continued.

It was no 'special of the week' comic and spanned multiple years as they grew.

What do we know about Moench? Who did he write this comic for?

The Moon Knight in the Were Wolf by Night certainly didn't have all this depth. He was just a man dressed in silver, fighting a monster and ultimately choosing the side of the monster.

Moench himself was from Chicago. He knew what it was like to live in the city and see the fall of factories and hard times on the streets. We know he witnessed the times of Vietnam veterans being forgotten and abused. He witnessed a lot of changes happening in the world and the places he was writing about.

He wrote about what spoke to him and what he saw around him.

And in his stories, there often were no clear heroes, winners, or villains.

But there was one issue that he chose to add into this comic that was already filled with so many things that other comics avoided.

Moon Knight wasn't written as Jewish in that one shot cameo. He wasn't written with DID either, but I'll get to that.

There are interviews of Doug admitting that "I didn't say, 'I'm going to sit down and create a Jewish character.'"

In fact, he picked a name and later found out it was a Jewish name. This made him do research. Not just into Judaism, but into the areas that Marc Spector fought in and where his family came from.

Do you have any idea how many writers of that time and our current time simply slap the label of "Jewish" on a character and refuse to actually look into what makes them Jewish?

I can't say how much he researched and how much he got wrong or right, but I do know that when he did choose to dive into topics that touched on certain issues, he handled them with a grace that is often overlooked.

The writer that came after Moench? Alan Zelenetz, a former Jewish day school principal from Brooklyn.

Zelenetz had been acting as an editor for a bit before he took a look at Moench's early start.

And it was in Issue 37 and 38 where we get the real backstory of Marc Spector. A man running from his Rabbi father.

Marc now became the son of an Orthodox Rabbi who had been forced to flee Czechoslovakia after the Nazi invasion.

Here, we get the story of Marc running to the Marines. Running to the mercenaries, and running from home. Perhaps even, running from G-d.

Zelenetz wanted to lean into the Jewish past and Jewish story. He explored themes of using a holy book to create a villain while playing with Jewish myths. He also explored Antisemitism without toning it down or hiding it under comic bookish villainy. He portrayed Moon Knight facing white supremacist vandalizing a Jewish Cemetery. He showed Moon Knight saving the Torah from a Synagogue fire. He also showed a strained relationship and the question of Moon Knight finding his own relationship in what he does with his father's views.

Alan Zelenetz edited/wrote shorts for issues 18, 21–22, 27, 32, Then wrote the whole story for issues 36–38.

Zelenetz voiced that he was looking to add some Jewish representation into his workforce and perhaps into the comic industry at the time. Considering his background, perhaps he was the only one at the time that had the proper knowledge to play with things the way that he did in the story of Elias Spector's death and Marc Spector's pain.

He did not stick around with Moon Knight for long after. Though, he admits that he wanted to play with the fact that Khonshu was an Egyptian god and Marc was from such a Jewish background. I am sad we didn't get to see that story.

After that, Moon Knight's original 1980s run was finished. The question of what to do with Moon Knight, where to take him, and who would take up the mantle of writing him now lay in the hands of Marvel.

Many failed after this. They failed to keep the heart of what Moon Knight stood for and who Moon Knight was. His Jewishness was forgotten and his mental health became a joke.

Not to say all of them failed. There are a few shining stars that gleamed in the darkness and I like to think that it was these moments that kept Moon Knight going all these years.

Moench didn't set out to write a story about mental health, and yet his approach is the most real I've seen. Hardly a shining picture of perfect representation, there is still something there in watching the character almost seem to push back against the unintended desire to push him into a corner.

No matter how often Jake and Steven and Moon Knight were seen as Marc pretending to be someone else, there was always ALWAYS that correction. Always that push back.

Call it the writer's curse of characters misbehaving and taking on a life of their own, but perhaps there was something more there. Perhaps he felt the weight of time and cry of the suppressed and overlooked.

So many of his stories danced the line of "I can't say it because it will get edited out by the big wigs at Marvel, but if you would just look... Just look over here for just a moment..."

And years upon years later, a writer did see the whispers there and said "I see the story of pain. I see the cry of mental health." Lemire told the story that Moench couldn't and from that, we are still pushing forward with McKay.

And more, perhaps we will see the Jewish story that hides in all that also get a spotlight again.

In the era of big battles, cross-over events, explosions, and super villains cackling about domination... I still look back at Stained Glass Scarlet, The Druid, the Music Box, And Colloquy.

As I finish the original 1980s run, I brace myself to dive into what comes next.

I think I'm trying to find where and how the original run ventured so far into the dark and insulting territory it did and the journey back into a revival that now means so much to so many.

In a way, perhaps it mirrors a journey into our own mental health. How easy it is to become lost in what everyone around you tells you that you are and how you are supposed to be until your own doubt sets in to drown you. Perhaps it is the journey of Moon Knight's character emerging from this to find a path to healing that is what kept us here so long.

[thelonelyjew]

I really hope it doesn't sound like I'm trying to start an argument with this, I genuinely want your opinion. Do you think Israel should exist? Do you think it can exist peacefully? I'm a Jewish kid, I support Palestine and think the genocide needs to stop, but I feel like some (obviously not all) of the criticism of Israel feels a little bit antisemitic. Like I've seen people saying that zionists control a bunch of things internationally and in the us government, and that sounds very similar to antisemitic conspiracy theories. I'm sorry for asking you this, I just don't know who to ask. My mom is really sensitive about this because she's been bullied for being Jewish. And my friends aren't quite as politically aware, so they don't understand the history and just keep being like "why did the us ever support Israel to begin with?" and they certainly don't understand where zionism came from so I can't have actual conversations with them

So if you have anything to say, or any resources, anything you think I should read, that would seriously be really helpful

This ask contains several complicated questions so I'll break it down and do my best to present not just my opinion but also what I understand to be the context and the alternatives, and what factors shape my thinking.

Do I believe the state of Israel should exist? On one level, I don't believe any states should exist. All modern nation-states are built on some amount of violence and ethnostates especially all require some amount of erasure of groups outside the national group being enshrined in the national mythology. This is not unique to Israel; Atatürk's "One nation one language one flag" policy continues to be the basis of Turkish aggression against and denial of Kurdish cultural existence for example. The ongoing Tigrayan genocide is part of the legacy of Amharic supremacy in the statecraft that went into the building of the state of Ethiopia. Every nation-state has a dark history casting a long shadow. For more context on this topic, Worshipping Power by Peter Gelderloos is a good read.

As far as alternatives, the proposals of Murray Bookchin, what he calls Social Ecology, and the Democratic Confederalism proposed by Abdullah Öcalan are promising. Other historical examples of alternatives past and present include the Haudeosaunee Confederacy, the Caracol model of the Zapatistas, peasant cooperative experiments seen in Makhnovchina during the Russian revolution and in revolutionary Spain in the 30s, and of course the Democratic Confederalist experiment in northeastern Syria aka Rojava.

The Rojava model is especially relevant because, while westerners tend to make armchair pronouncements about what ought to happen in the Middle East based on extremely flawed and limited knowledge and a deeply ingrained cultural bias (read Orientalism by Edward Said for more on that), there are experiments in pluralistic multicultural democracy that originate from within the region that are much more relevant. It's always so wild to me to hear Zionist apologia in the form of the question, "well what else could we ("we?") possibly support if not a two-state solution or an only-Israel 'the only democracy in the Middle East™️' solution?" When practically right next door there is a thriving 10-year experiment in radical democracy in an area with more ethnic, religious, and language groups than you can count on one hand, in an area where some people from those groups were brutally murdering each other less than a decade ago and now are having to find ways to patch up society and function in peace and with respect and self-determination for all groups there. That seems very relevant as an example but I almost never hear anyone mention it and Palestine together, despite historically the movements supporting each other.

As far as antisemitic conspiracy theories, I think you're right about that. I know a lot of people, even well-meaning people who have not fully examined their internalized antisemitism, will talk about US support for Israel as if Israel is controlling US politics and that is why there is so much military aid being sent, or they will talk about American support for Israel as if it's the result of Jewish influence in politics. On no other topic do Jews hold this amount of sway. Jews tend to support immigration reform and universal healthcare and yet we don't have the power as a tiny voting bloc to get those passed. No, the US supports Israel because it's an investment. Israel is essentially a weapons research and development laboratory for the US. The Israeli economy is overwhelmingly dependent on its military development and exports. A good source for this is the documentary film, "The Lab" directed by Yotam Feldman, an Israeli Jew himself, who goes into great detail on the role that Israel plays in weapons development for not only the US but also dictatorships in South America.

The other big source of American support for Israel is based on religion but not the Jewish religion. Evangelical Christians are by far the most powerful religious group in US politics, and they believe that Jews being returned to the holy land is a necessary component of triggering the war of Armageddon and bringing about end times etc. They are not our friends; our role in their teleology is to die to bring about the salvation of (a relatively small number of) Christians. This group is represented by powerful televangelists like John Hagee, whose organization Christians United For Israel describes itself as America's largest pro-Israel group. Not only are not all Jews Zionists and not all Zionists Jews; there are more Christian Zionists in America (30 million according to Tristan Sturm) than there are Jews in the entire world (less than 17 million according to Sheskin and Dashefsky data for 2023.)

Antisemitism absolutely still exists and is a real problem, and the conflation of critique of Israel with antisemitism makes genuine antisemitism much harder to address. Israeli propaganda deliberately inflames the reasonable and justified fears of Jewish people and directs them at a relatively powerless target rather than at the systems that endanger all of us.

I would argue that the state of Israel itself is antisemitic. Not only does it aggressively promote the old antisemitic narrative that conflates Jewish identity with Zionism, it has been instrumental in the displacement and destruction of so many Jewish communities and traditions that had been existing for centuries. I just finished reading My Father's Paradise, by a Kurdish Jew whose father's family was forced to relocate to Israel shortly after his bar mitzvah, the last ever to happen in the ancient Aramaic-speaking Jewish community of Zaxo in northern Iraq. It captures a poignant glimpse of how it feels to be the last surviving native speaker of your childhood language, and the role Israeli statecraft played in dooming many Jewish communities of the diaspora to that fate.

And here's maybe my hottest take: even if there were no genocide of Palestinians to worry about, I would still be anti-Zionist because I think Zionism is inherently anti-Jewish. Most of Jewish life has happened in the diaspora for the last several millennia, yet Zionism is an anti-diaspora ideology that sees our lives, our homes, our diverse sub-cultures and languages and spiritual practices as inferior, broken, not worth preserving let alone continuing. Modern Zionism is, by Hertzl's own admission, a settler-colonial project intended to shape Jewry into the mold popular among European nations at the time, and thereby win the respect of Christendom by playing their game on their terms and excelling. In short The national project of Israel is manufacturing whiteness for Jews.

But the truth is that for as long as there has been political Zionism, there have been Jewish anti-Zionists, as evidenced by folk songs like the century-old "Oy Ir Narishe Tsionisten" ("Oh You Foolish Zionists") re-popularized by Daniel Kahn, whose music is also associated with a Yiddish cultural revival among young diaspora Jews.

There's a lot more I could ramble on about and more books I could point towards but this is already very long and I'm no expert on the subject, just a very tired Jew who has been at this for a long time now. I'll leave you with a link to a good article about the recent wave of campus protests and incidents of alleged, and sometimes actual, antisemitism among them: