#to see if they were jewish'

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Hey major shout-out to my fellow trans Jews. This year has been hell and it's hard not to feel like we've been completely abandoned, betrayed, shut out, and made unsafe across the full political spectrum.

I'm so sorry; we deserved better. I hope you're okay and standing strong - we will get through this together 🕎 🏳️‍⚧️ ✡️

[shalom-iamcominghome]

The funny difference between protestantism (what I grew up with) and judaism is how both conceive of work

For many protestant-influenced scenarios, you must work - the sabbath day? That's just another weekend to spend as you please (work. chores, which is work, too). There's no real excuse to stop working, working is inherently G-dly and Good.

Judaism? Don't you even think about working on the hours of shabbos. (Certain) Holidays? Same deal. Actually, working is explicitly impermissible, g-d literally said so.

Anyway, I just think those small differences in how work and what constitutes work contributes to attitudes about working. I don't think protestantism or judaism are inherently like those examples, just that in my experience, the protestant attitude towards work is that it is what makes you worthy, good, and holy and non-work (laziness, sloth) is A Sin.

[cree-n-jewish-thoughts]

To my converted or converting brothers and sisters.

You are valid. You are now Jewish.

I want to be a Rabbi one day, so I like to help out with the conversion courses in our Synoguage. I love to sit in on the days where you explain (as my Rabbi says it) "what brought you here, to this moment. Sitting at this table? What makes you feel you are Jewish?"

The answers are always unique but similar in so many ways. Hearing a majority of you muttering some kind of version of Kol Nidre, I see people who their families were forced to convert and they want to come back, people find out through ancestry.com that they have Jewish grandparents.

I've seen older adults sitting at that table, I've seen young adults sitting around that table, I've even seen elderly people sitting around that table.

Every one of your stories you tell, everything you feel, it's valid. I can feel the love and the pain that is in that room on those days.

Many Jews feel that conversion means "astray and coming back"

Many converts, even with no prior knowledge, find blood Jews in their family tree.

My feeling is that a convert is no longer really white, either. Your family, most likely at one point in more recent times, either chose to convert to another faith, went crypto, or were forced to convert to another faith.

All that matters is that you are coming/came home.

💙✡️💙

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

I've been reading Exodus lately and I've just gotten to the portions where God gives the first commands to the people via Moses (twice), and then goes on to give detailed instructions about the tabernacle and how it should be built, and I'm just... we think art is unimportant?? we think things only mean as much as their functionality?? we so easily fall into the trap of believing that beauty means nothing, that it's cheap and only worth whatever mindless distraction it brings, that it's barely more than a cheap sensual thrill, that buildings should just be practical and plain and cheap, that everything should be functional but ultimately disposable, that paintings and dresses and mugs and curtains and carpets are just pretty but have no real value, that beauty is fleeting and vain and therefore shouldn't be thought about too much, if even looked for at all... we fall into these traps so easily, and we forget that there are chapters upon chapters of painstakingly detailed plans to build one portable worship tent, and those plans have been handed down through thousands of years of human history, because beauty and art and skill in craft is important

[uncanny-tranny]

Big reminder that your country is not immune to bigotry. I've seen so many people, for example, pretend like antisemitism doesn't exist in the USA because we were part of the allied forces in WWII (of course, they conveniently don't remember that we rejected jewish refugees when WWII broke out and we only really joined because Pearl Harbor was bombed, but I digress).

If you think your country is immune from antisemitism, racism (including anti-Indigenous racism), class issues, ableism, whatever else it may be, look deeper because you will find it.

[bronzeagenormie]

ikik it is unlike me to post abt szuch personal details but in retrospect its so funny how when tgey found out abt my erm unusual proclivities my atheist, lifelong antizionist, ethnically jewish dad & my autistic godfearing orthodox christian mon decided to go on a pilgrimage to the holy land to "knock on tge door of evry synagogue in jerusalem & pray at da wailing wall for their child 2b fixed" & within 4 days of them getting there my mom texted me like "weve seen szo many pride flags in tel aviv i keep thinking of u, ppl actually accept this lgbt shit in other parts of the world. if u decide to continue in this lifestyle, u shld study hard and get a good job so that society will have to accept you

[hilacopter]

*on the floor trembling through gritted teeth* this made me grow as a person. this made me change for the better. good things have come out of this.

[strawberryseamstress]

hey so i fucking googled tallulah to see if it was a real name and

[infiniteglitterfall]

Me, looking through books on Palestine: "Ilan Pappé wrote one called 'The Biggest Prison On Earth?!' People in Gaza hate it being called a prison. There's an entire hashtag for it. There's been an account dedicated to collecting pics and videos of #TheGazaYouDontSee for 6 years.

"Is Pappé even Palestinian? oh god wait I can tell already. this is gonna be an 'Israeli apologist' isn't it." Internet: "Yeah, Pappé's Israeli."

Me: "For fuck's--- so people will believe Israelis unquestioningly if they're shit-talking Israel, but in all other situations, Israelis are all liars?"

Internet: "Pretty much. Also, at best, Ilan Pappé must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians."

Me, admittedly in full schadenfreude now: "What?!?!"

Internet: "Benny Morris. That historian who's extremely hard-core about primary source documentation, who wrote that detailed book about how and why each group of Palestinian refugees left in 1947-9. He reviewed three books about Palestine."

Me: "Holy shit. And the book by Pappé is about the Husaynis. The family that Nazi war criminal Amin al-Husseini came from, the guy who fucked absolutely everything up for both Israel and Palestine."

Internet: "That's the one. Morris wrote, 'At best, Ilan Pappe must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest. In truth, he probably merits a place somewhere between the two.'"

Me: "Why??"

Internet: "He says, 'Here is a clear and typical example—in detail, which is where the devil resides—of Pappe’s handiwork. I take this example from The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'....

"Blah blah blah, basically in 1947 the UN voted to partition the land into Palestine and Israel, and extremist militias started shooting at Jewish towns and people. David Ben-Gurion was the leader of the Jewish community there, and his journal describes a visit from a scientist named Aharon Katzir, telling him about an experiment codenamed "Shimshon." Morris gives us the journal entry:

...An experiment was conducted on animals. The researchers were clothed in gas masks and suit. The suit costs 20 grush, the mask about 20 grush (all must be bought immediately). The operation [or experiment] went well. No animal died, the [animals] remained dazzled [as when a car’s headlights dazzle an oncoming driver] for 24 hours. There are some 50 kilos [of the gas]. [They] were moved to Tel Aviv. The [production] equipment is being moved here. On the laboratory level, some 20 kilos can be produced per day.

"Morris says, 'This is the only accessible source that exists, to the best of my knowledge, about the meeting and the gas experiment, and it is the sole source cited by Pappe for his description of the meeting and the "Shimshon" project. But this is how Pappe gives the passage in English:

Katzir reported to Ben-Gurion: 'We are experimenting with animals. Our researchers were wearing gas masks and adequate outfit. Good results. The animals did not die (they were just blinded). We can produce 20 kilos a day of this stuff.'

"'The translation is flecked with inaccuracies, but the outrage is in Pappe’s perversion of "dazzled," or sunveru, to "blinded"—in Hebrew "blinded" would be uvru, the verb not used by Ben-Gurion—coupled with the willful omission of the qualifier '"for 24 hours."'

"'Pappe’s version of this text is driven by something other than linguistic and historiographical accuracy. Published in English for the English-speaking world, where animal-lovers are legion and deliberately blinding animals would be regarded as a barbaric act, the passage, as published by Pappe, cannot fail to provoke a strong aversion to Ben-Gurion and to Israel.

"'Such distortions, large and small, characterize almost every page of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. So I should add, to make the historical context perfectly clear, that no gas was ever used in the war of 1948 by any of the participants. [Or, he later notes, by either Israel or Palestine ever.] Pappe never tells the reader this.

"'Raising the subject of gas is historical irrelevance. But the paragraph will dangle in the reader’s imagination as a dark possibility, or worse, a dark reality: the Jews, gassed by the Nazis three years before, were about to gas, or were gassing, Arabs.'"

Me: "Uuuuggghhhhhhhhh. Yeah, it will."

Internet: "He does say, 'Palestinian Dynasty was a good idea.' Then he does some really detailed historian-dragging about the lack of primary sources and reliance on people's interpretations of what they say instead.

"'Almost all of Pappe’s references direct the reader to books and articles in English, Hebrew, and Arabic by other scholars, or to the memoirs of various Arab politicians, which are not the most reliable of sources. Occasionally there is a reference to an Arab or Western travelogue or genealogy, or to a diplomat’s memoir; but there is barely an allusion to documents in the relevant British, American, and Zionist/Israeli archives.

"'When referring to the content of American consular reports about Arab riots in the 1920s, for example, Pappe invariably directs the reader to an article in Hebrew by Gideon Biger—“The American Consulate in Jerusalem and the Events of 1920-1921,” in Cathedra, September 1988—and not to the documents themselves, which are easily accessible in the United States National Archive.

"'Those who falsify history routinely take the path of omission. They ignore crucial facts and important pieces of evidence while cherry-picking from the documentation to prove a case. 

"'Those who falsify history routinely take the path of omission. They ignore crucial facts and important pieces of evidence while cherry-picking from the documentation to prove a case. 

"'But Pappe is more brazen. He, too, often omits and ignores significant evidence, and he, too, alleges that a source tells us the opposite of what it in fact says, but he will also simply and straightforwardly falsify evidence.

"'Consider his handling of the Arab anti-Jewish riots of the 1920s.

"'Pappe writes of the “Nabi Musa” riots in April 1920: “The [British] Palin Commission... reported that the Jewish presence in the country was provoking the Arab population and was the cause of the riots.” He also quotes at length Musa Kazim al-Husayni, the clan’s leading notable at the time, to the effect that “it was not the [Arab] Hebronites who had started the riots but the Jews.”

"'But the (never published) [Palin Commission Report], while forthrightly anti-Zionist, thereby accurately reflecting the prevailing views in the British military government that ruled Palestine until mid-1920, flatly and strikingly charged the Arabs with responsibility for the bloodshed.

"'The team chaired by Major-General P.C. Palin wrote that “it is perfectly clear that with... few exceptions the Jews were the sufferers, and were, moreover, the victims of a peculiarly brutal and cowardly attack, the majority of the casualties being old men, women and children.” The inquiry pointed out that whereas 216 Jews were killed or injured, the British security forces and the Jews, in defending themselves or in retaliatory attacks, caused only twenty-five Arab casualties.'"

Me: "Yeah. I'm looking at that report right now and it says there had been an explosion, and then people were looting Jewish stores and beating Jews with stones, and in one case stabbing someone. Some people said that some Jews got up on the roof of a hotel and retaliated by throwing stones themselves.

"And then it literally says, 'The point as to the retaliation by Jews is of importance because it seems to have impressed the Military and led them to imagine that the Jews were to some extent responsible for provoking the rising.' That's the only thing it really says about anyone blaming the Jews.

"Except.... the very beginning gives some historical context. And it does say that when the Balfour Declaration came out, Muslims and Christians 'considered that they were to be handed over to an oppression which they hated far more than the Turk's and were aghast at the thought of this domination....

"'If this intensity of feeling proceeded merely from wounded pride of race and disappointment in political aspirations, it would be easier to criticise and rebuke: but it must be borne in mind that at the bottom of all is a deepseated fear of the Jew, both as a possible ruler and as an economic competitor. Rightly or wrongly they fear the Jew as a ruler, regarding his race as one of the most intolerant known to history....

"'The prospect of extensive Jewish immigration fills him with a panic fear, which may be exaggerated, but is none the less genuine. He sees the ablest race intellectually in the world, past-masters in all the arts of ousting competitors whether on the market, in the farm or the bureaucratic offices, backed by apparently inexhaustible funds given by their compatriots in all lands and possessed of powerful influence in the councils of the nations, prepared to enter the lists against him in every one of his normal occupations, backed by the one thing wanted to make them irresistible, the physical force of a great Imperial Power, and he feels himself overmastered and defeated before the contest is begun.'

"Wow! What a great fucking example of how 'positive' stereotypes are actually used to fuck people over! We're not antisemitic, we actually think Jews are the smartest, most powerful, richest group with tremendous global power! So positive!! Not at all being used here to justify antisemitic violence!

"Also, immigration from all over the world actually meant that different agricultural and manufacturing techniques were brought into the region, and yes, financial investments to start businesses sometimes, which meant that Arab Palestinians there had the highest per capita income in the Middle East, the highest daily wages, and started a lot of businesses of their own. But go off, I guess."

"Anyfuckingway.... it basically says that the Muslims and Christians were angry and scared, the Jews were too quick to set up the functioning government that the Brits were supposed to be there to help both sides create -- and which the Arab leaders completely refused to create for Palestine, because (1) fascists and (2) didn't want Jews nearby -- and that they were "ready prey for any form of agitation hostile to the British Government and the Jews." Then it says the movement for a United Syria was agitating them real hard, and so were the Sherifians.

"Is that what Ilan Passe, I mean Pappe, meant by the Palin Report blaming the Jews?! That when it says it's understandable the Arabs were freaking out, because antisemitism, Pappe thinks it's saying the Jews were provoking them?!"

Internet: "I don't know. I kinda tuned out after the first hour you were talking."

Me: "OGH MY GOD"

Internet: "So anyway, then Morris ALSO says, 'About the 1929 “Temple Mount” riots, which included two large-scale massacres of Jews, in Hebron and in Safed, Pappe writes: “The opposite camp, Zionist and British, was no less ruthless [than the Arabs]. In Jaffa a Jewish mob murdered seven Palestinians.”

Me: "What the ENTIRE FUCK? There was no united 'Zionist and British' camp! The Brits would barely let any Holocaust refugees in, ffs!"

Internet: "Morris says, 'Actually, there were no massacres of Arabs by Jews, though a number of Arabs were killed when Jews defended themselves or retaliated after Arab violence.

"'Pappe adds that the British “Shaw Commission,” so-called because it was chaired by Sir Walter Shaw (a former chief justice of the Straits Settlements), which investigated the riots, “upheld the basic Arab claim that Jewish provocations had caused the violent outbreak. ‘The principal cause... was twelve years of pro-Zionist [British] policy.’”

"'It is unclear what Pappe is quoting from. I did not find this sentence in the commission’s report. Pappe’s bibliography refers, under “Primary Sources,” simply to “The Shaw Commission.” The report? The deliberations? Memoranda by or about? Who can tell?

"'The footnote attached to the quote, presumably to give its source, says, simply, “Ibid.”

"'The one before it says, “Ibid., p. 103.”

"'The one before that says, “The Shaw Commission, session 46, p. 92.”

"'But the quoted passage does not appear on page 103 of the report.

"In the text of Palestinian Dynasty, Pappe states that “Shaw wrote [this] after leaving the country [Palestine].” But if it is not in the report, where did Shaw “write” it?'"

Me: "I'M ON IT. [rapid-fire googling] OMG. This is.... Not the first time. In 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,' he reported that in a 1937 letter to his son, David Ben-Gurion declared: 'The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as war.'

"It's not in the source he gave. It's not in any of the three different sources he's given for it.

"He apparently has never responded to any requests for an explanation, either from the journal he published in, or from other historians. But it says he did "obliquely [acknowledge] the controversy in an article in Electronic Intifada, in which he portrayed himself as the victim of intimidation at the hands of “Zionist hooligans.”'

"This is absolutely fucking wild. THEN it says the chair of the Ethics Committee where he was teaching eventually said that the second part of the quote ('but one needs,' etc) was a (combined?) paraphrase of a diary entry and a speech Ben-Gurion gave, and that the first half is 'based on' a letter to his son.

"And it's so convincing! The chair says, 'Shabtai Teveth[,] Ben Gurion’s biographer, Benny Morris and the historian Nur Maslaha have all quoted this letter. In fact their translation was stronger than the quotation from Professor Pappé: ‘We must expel the Arabs and take their place.’ Professor Pappé has documentary evidence of these quotations and the source will ensure that this is correctly cited in any future editions of the publication or related studies.'

"And IT'S NOT EVEN TRUE?!

"Ben-Gurion's actual diary entry (not a letter) says the opposite.

“'We do not want and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places.... All our aspiration is built on the assumption – proven throughout all our activity – that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.'

"Benny Morris misquoted it as "We must expel the Arabs and take their places" in the English version of his 1987 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, although it was correct in the Hebrew version. He corrected himself in the 2001 book Righteous Victims.

"Teveth also misquoted it in the English version of his 1985 book Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, but again, had it correct in the Hebrew edition.

"And both Morris and Teveth explicitly point out the rest of the entry. The part about all their aspiration being built on the assumption and experience that there was enough room in the country for everyone.

"Historian Efraim Karsh’s 1997 book Fabricating Israeli History pointed out and corrected their mistakes.

"This is apparently a very well-known issue among historians of Israel and Palestine. It was a big deal in 2003, when an evangelist Christian publisher put out a book FULL of disinformation, which not only used the same quote as Pappe does, but also could not give a real source for it.

"But Pappe STILL USED THE MISQUOTE AND DOUBLED DOWN ON IT EVERY SINGLE TIME."

Internet: "Are you done? I know all this already."

Me: "Also, there are literally only two places where the phrase 'twelve years of pro-Zionist policy' shows up online, and they're both about Pappe making quotes up.

"NOW I'm done."

Benny Morris wasn't, though. The review continues at the link below. And the next part starts, "To the deliberate slanting of history Pappe adds a profound ignorance of basic facts. Together these sins and deficiencies render his “histories” worthless as representations of the past, though they are important as documents in the current political and historiographic disputations about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Pappe’s grasp of the facts of World War I, for example, is weak in the extreme."

[willhelp-exe-art]

gonna draw carpathian/rusyn miku soon because i havent seen anyone do that yet :>

[shalom-iamcominghome]

This isn't, like, the biggest deal, but I do find it funny when people are almost... surprised or shocked that converts unironically believe in judaism and also unironically align themselves with jewishness. It's just something I've seen a small handful of times and it's like... of course I (and others!) unironically believe in this stuff. I'm not putting in this work because I don't have enough going on in my life

[aiteanngaelach]

Cant figure out how to do the underwater screenshot thing so just in case u can't tell that's the screenshot^^^

Zionism is inherently violent zionists been carrying out a genocide for months killed tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people they been stealin land and colonizing Palestine for decades cop on to yourself. There needs to be conversations abt Irish antisemitism and it's deeply disappointing that anytime I seen any attempt at conversations it involves defences of zionism. Irish antisemitism historic and present is a massive issue and needs attention but NOT at the expense of people undergoing a genocide or in defense of the inhumane settler colonial state carryin out said genocide. Disgusted that a big blogger among Irish language Tumblr is rebloggin this shite given the audience they have. Dlúthpháirtíocht leis an bPalaistín go deo

[ur-favorite-basil-enthusiast]

i feel as if we can stop using palestine as a teachable moment in conversational skills. like i don't know how many other teenagers or even adults are experiencing this but when i speak out about palestine or talk to my parents about palestine in this blanket statement kind of way (a bluntness the situation deserves) - saying genocide is definitively wrong no matter who killed or kidnapped who first; genocide is ALWAYS WRONG and those who support it are ALWAYS WRONG - im met with a lot of people saying that i have to be concious of how i speak and be respectful of different opinions and its like...do you understand what's happening here? this isnt a simple difference of opinion these are human lives and i think that the default human feeling should be a love towards other human lives. THIS IS NOT A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. THIS IS NOT A TEACHABLE MOMENT. THIS IS GENOCIDE.

[jyndor]

also just in case anyone only heard about the protest at the synagogue in LA but not about the fact that the synagogue was being used to host a real estate event that illegally sold land in the occupied west bank (and in fact referred to selling land in the "best anglo neighborhoods in israel" which... oof), and THAT was what the protesters were there for. to protest the illegal sale of occupied land (both domestically and internationally illegal btw. domestically illegal because these sales are racially discriminatory, and internationally because they are the sales of illegally occupied territories) not because it's a synagogue and they are antisemitic.

because while the optics of protesting a synagogue are never good, the story was so fucking disgustingly misrepresented and no doubt fucking terrified jewish ppl in los angeles because it was being referred to as a pogrom.

you can read ifnotnow LA's excellent statement on this here.

[luesmainblog]

for those wondering why i have been mostly quiet regarding israel and palestine: most of the pro-palestine stuff i come across is dismissive of hamas' horrors, blatantly antisemetic in parts, and generally conflates the israeli population with their government. or worse, treats them as a monolith; it is true that there are many israelis mocking the people their soldiers are destroying. it is NOT true that all of israel doesn't care and is just totally cool with what's going on. i will share what i find of israel's atrocities, but i will not make my jewish followers feel unsafe for shit they had nothing to do with. most of the stuff i've seen that *does* acknowledge the horror is jewish bloggers who have spent much of their life advocating for palestine, now having to struggle against antisemetics coming to them, furious that they DARE to be upset at the lost israeli lives. as though they are not allowed to mourn for both sides. as though they are not allowed to be horrified by what has happened; that they can ONLY be worried for palestine and how the attack was the perfect excuse for israel to double down. i refuse to send even more hatred their way by spreading their grief further into the void; you never know Exactly who's following your follower's followers. i am glad, at least, that nobody i follow was outright celebrating. but i know that people WERE, and now they're trying to act like that never happened. so incase this wasn't clear, cheering on the deaths of Israelis does not fucking help palestine.

I am truly disgusted with the blatant racism and colonialism that manifests israel's very core. it is an attempt at a violent ethnostate, intent to not only destroy the people it seeks to replace, but fully erase them from history. i am also disgusted with the way that the left is happy to celebrate genuine terrorism if it's committed "for the right side", as if parading dead bodies and raping people does fucking ANYTHING good. as if that doesn't fuel the israeli government's chances for propoganda. as if it hasn't traumatized your jewish neighbors. there are no fucking winners in war. free palestine and protect your muslim AND jewish friends in this time, they are BOTH getting their shit kicked in by ignorant people who want to take out their anger on some random kid in ohio. we are all posting in anger here. but let's check ourselves before we post; misinformation and antisemitism weakens our voices. Edit for clarity: this post is for my mutuals. I am specifically asking my mutuals to think carefully about what they post; i am aware that i've been too quiet, and i am trying to remedy that. i am also warning my jewish and muslim followers that if you've been using my blog as a safe spot to not think about it for a little bit, you're gonna wanna block the tags below. 'horrible things' will usually do it. i am also venting about how every jew i follow is getting hit with the "die you stupid zionist" shit from coward anons who can't tell the difference between supporting israel and just being fucking concerned for your family over there. it's fucked.

[bijoumikhawal]

only going "rape and torture are bad" when people defend Palestinians is pretty fucking scummy, speaking as someone who knows more than the average person on this site does about torture, and hates it real bad and knows a lot of people repeat torture apologia because it's deeply pervasive in modern culture