#until and including the last jew.

[researchgate]

Although I don't live in Israel, as a Persian Jew born and living in France I really appreciate your reblogs recently, it seems most of radblr is choosing to gaslight many Jewish users that NOBODY is attacking Jewish people and ONLY criticising Israeli government, while I and many other Jewish people I know are facing extreme antisemitism on the daily that only gets worse. I've had coworkers «joke» in various different ways basically that I should have my will written up for when Palestine reclaims their land because all «colonisers» [Israeli = Jewish as usual] deserve to be killed -- which is the mildest example. Seeing claims that no antisemitism is happening as a result of the pro-Hamas state of the internet and media is so ignorant and shows that most of these people are not Jewish nor do they know any Jewish people. Being Jewish is stressful on person and online and yet most responses are like «You people have only yourselves to blame» or calling us Zionists if we dare call out antisemitism, it's disgusting and as usual feels incredibly isolating. It makes me very relieved to have another Jewish woman on here like you who is so well-spoken! <3

Hi! Thank you so much for this, I'm so glad I could give you some relief.

I follow less than 40 blogs so I don't see most of the hate, but I surely believe this is the sentiment in general given how it is outside radblr, and what friends of mine told me happens on radblr itself. It's terrible and seeing some notes on posts is just... Despairing. It's clear none of them ever gave an actual damn about the conflict until they could celebrate the rape of Jewish women, and the slaughter of innocent Jewish civilians.

Antisemitism has always been a problem for diaspora Jews, regardless of the country, and it is undeniable it's gotten worse ever since Hamas has invaded Israel with the sole purpose of killing jews. People online are maliciously happy and proud of that, and as much as we like to call them "keyboard warriors" these are real people who not only espouse their opinions online, but live these opinions in real life too, thus posing a direct, active danger to Jews as possible offenders at worst, and at best, they'd be bystanders who film/encourage/watch silently attacks against Jews in real life.

These people never liked the idea of Jews existing, that much is clear. And when it comes to radblr, it seems they forget some important feminists were Jewish themselves. Instead they go full Judith Butler and call Hamas a liberation/resistance movement just because the latter is in their name (Harakat al muqawamah al Islamiyah — Islamic Resistance Movement), whereas they know to call out things like liberal feminism nit being feminism. It's honestly irritating at the very least.

The media and reaction to it is another interesting (and by interesting I mean very much predictable) case: when it's pto Hamas, no one bats an eye, people share al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, etc. articles without viewing them with even a little bit of critical thinking. But when a news source is clearly anti Hamas (not even pro Israel!), it's suddenly pro Israel and Zionist and the sentiment is terribly close to "Jews control the media." I'm not saying there weren't reports that were meant for just shock value (that's literally how news media work), but it was still very interesting to see people go back to antisemitic tropes. Predictable, too.

In the UK, security on Jewish schools has been strengthened in fear of violence against kids, but people would blame "Israel's treatment of the Palestinians" for that, which is full on victim blaming and antisemitism: they're jewish; Jewish = Israel; Israel = bad → jewish = bad like Israel → Israel deserves punishment → Jews deserve punishment.

The fact that the solution for Jews is to walk outside without anything that can mark them as Jewish is not too different to the idea that "she shouldn't have dressed in provocative outfit," which again, puts the blame and responsibility on the victim.

The fact that calling out any form of antisemitism is seen as Zionism is, however, not just the fault of antisemites in my opinion, because Token Jews allow themselves to ignore antisemitic notions within the movements which tokenize them, and allow people to think only Zionist (non-token) Jews care about antisemitism. It's vile, and just wrong. It's especially wring since Zionism isn't even what they think it is, they just think all Jews who protest or call out antisemitism is like that absolute scum Ben-Gvir (who is actually partially responsible for the situation right now, but I digress). It's so disheartening to see and even moreso to experience, of that I'm certain. The ""joke"" about the will for instance, is just absolutely vile and disgusting, although it accidentally acknowledges the fact Hamas wants total annihilation of Jews and not just the "Zionist Entity" as the 2017 revision of their charter suggests.

I'm sorry if I didn't address all of your points, your ask is very loaded, as is expected given the circumstances, and me being unfortunately not very well-dpoken means I probably couldn't treat it with all the due eloquence it deserves. For what it's worth, though, I did try my best.

Being Jewish, especially in the diaspora, is always stressful, but the current situation sure has made it worse ten-fold. Again, I'm glad I could offer some relief for at least the online experience. Myaskbox and DMs are always open if you want to share anything, or just need an ear for your frustrations. Given my situation, I cannot imagine yours but I can sympathize and offer my utmost patience and efforts to understand.

Thank you again for this meaningful ask, here's hoping for somewhat better, somewhat safer days to come as soon as possible. My thoughts are also with the diaspora Jews, at these truly trying times. 💙

Am Yisrael Chai, and we will outlive them.

[koushirouizumi]

(Because I'm still really happy about this discussion and I need to rewatch Fiddler on the Roof while cross-checking the full Yiddish script---)

For reference, there's Yiddish version of "Do You Love Me?" at that link (if slightly off sync), the English version of same song is here, and the full Yiddish script can be found here! (If the links die down the road, please check the script!)

The fundamental difference between Fiddler on the Roof and Fidler Afn Dakh:

English Tevye: Tradition!

Yiddish Tevye: Got iz a foter un heylik iz zayn toyre!

[discoursedumpster]

@puppypalice what do you think a Zionist is, though? Because this implies that there's some kind of Zionist organization or political party that people can join.

As far as I can tell, there are two different definitions people are using for "Zionist."

People who don't think Israel should be violently destroyed.

A specifically Jewish movement of people who love genocide in general, or genocide of Palestinians in particular.

But there's not an organization for either of those things.

You seem to be picturing the second definition? But like... what are they joining? The IDF?

I know they're not joining some evangelical megachurch that wants Israel to exist so that the End Times can come or whatever.

Because nobody is protesting those. They rarely even get mentioned.

I know they're not joining Hamas/PIJ/PFLP, despite the fact that Sinwar said he would fight until the last child in Gaza; despite Haniyeh demanding "the blood of Gaza's children, women, and elderly;" despite the fact that Gazans loathe Hamas for starting the war, routinely torturing and executing dissenters, and committing countless atrocities against them over the past 15 months.

Because at best, nobody gives a shit about Hamas. And at worst, they buy the propaganda that Hamas is "the Palestinian resistance." (Instead of the We Want To Live movement and the Gaza's Liberators movement.)

Are future historians going to be saying this about anyone who hates and opposes Hamas? Because that seems to be what usually gets Gazan activists, and Jews, denounced as Zionists.

If so, that now includes not only most of Gaza:

But also, the rest of Palestine:

That's from one of the co-organizers of the We Want To Live movement, who has twice been jailed and tortured by Hamas for organizing marches in Gaza.

He's only 24, and he's repeatedly put his life on the line for Gaza's freedom. And there is not one person in the pro-Palestine movement that will platform him, or anyone like him. Even Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib -- another Gazan activist, one who hates Israel significantly more than Howidy -- gets pre-emptively blocked.

Anyway, the context for the whole "they'll call them Zionists" thing was that the Hind Rajab Foundation filed 12 complaints against IDF soldiers.

Which does make it seem like that must be what everyone's going to be called Nazis for joining?

The Hind Rajab Foundation is chaired by a former Hezbollah member: Dyab Abou Jahah, a Belgian man from Lebanon who also:

founded a Holocaust denial group;

has repeatedly called for the violent destruction of Israel;

says Europe makes "the cult of the Holocaust and Jew-worshiping its alternative religion";

questioned the existence of the Nazi gas chambers;

and calls gay men “AIDS spreading faggots”...

...just to hit the highlights.

The article notes that there were no troops around when Hind Rajab was killed. Which is news to me, because I only learned about it on social media.

So basically, a guy who is at best a Nazi apologist started a group named after someone who wasn't killed by the IDF, but who he wants us to think was. And now that group is running "a campaign... to identify Israeli soldiers who have published videos to social media in which they commit, claim to have committed, or appear to endorse committing potential war crimes, and to file complaints against the soldiers on that basis."

@stoptheantisemitism blocked me after I said you can't just report people you assume must have committed a war crime. Because surely you can, since "they've posted themselves committing atrocities all over social media" or whatever.

But in fact, the article they posted literally says that the campaign includes people "who appear to endorse committing potential war crimes."

And no matter how despicable or disgusting that is, it's also absolutely fucking silly to be like, "Hey!! Sri Lanka!! SRI LANKA!! This guy who tweeted about wanting to burn Gaza City to the ground is in your country right now!!! Arrest him!!!!!!"

The fuck you want Sri Lanka to do about that??? He didn't commit a crime on their soil, and he's not a citizen of their country.

So I'm assuming you're talking about the IDF. But what's the point of saying that future historians will imply people were Nazis for joining the IDF even if they don't hate Palestinians? People are already calling them that today.

More to the point, it's not like there's a massive movement to move to Israel and get permission to join its military.

Is the point just to make sure we damn everyone in the IDF, whether they personally hate Palestinians or not, whether they were conscripted or not, etc?

Is the point just to call them Nazis?

Is the point to minimize the Nazis by deemphasizing what they did?

Because it seems important that Hitler not only industrialized mass murder and killed a peak of 500,000 people a month, but also:

declared a state of emergency,

seized dictatorial powers,

stripped Jews of their citizenship,

made relationships and sex with them illegal,

pressured white people to boycott all Jewish businesses,

and banned them from leaving the country without turning their property and money over to the Nazis,

none of which Israel has ever done to either the Palestinalsians, or its own Arab citizens.

like, I would assume that nobody is making a conscious attempt to minimize what the Nazis did. But it minimizes what they did either way.

[adiradirim]

Sephardic Jews from Thessaloniki in their traditional costumes, in the city’s old cemetery, before the war // a contemporary photo that shows where the destroyed cemetery once was, which is now Greece's largest university, built partially on top of and with land and materials (particularly tombstones) stolen from the razed site.

Thessaloniki or Salonika, once referred to as “the Jerusalem of the Balkans” due to its Ladino-speaking Jewish majority, saw roughly 96% of its Jewish population murdered during the Holocaust. This mass destruction extended to the city's Jewish cemetery, which had been the country's largest, established in the 15th century and housing hundreds of thousands of Jewish graves until its razing by city authorities who had long desired to repurpose the land and resented the inconvenience of Jewish presence. Despite its large-scale destruction during German occupation in 1942, which was initiated and carried out primarily by Thessaloniki authorities with Nazi consent and arrangement, some parts of the cemetery survived intact as late as 1947. Many tombstones were subsequently appropriated and used by city authorities and the Greek Orthodox Church. After the war, people were still carrying away Jewish gravestones each day and regularly looting the cemetery in search of valuables. The city's officials, led by their mayor, completed the cemetery's destruction and sold the tombstones to contractors for use as building materials in various projects; as such many were and are still found in various walls, roads, structures, and churches around the city. A 1992 commemorative book pictures Greek schoolgirls playing Hamlet with skulls and other bones they found in the cemetery.

“[T]he ‘rape’ of the cemetery escalated, marble flooded the market, and its price plummeted. Jewish tombstones were stacked up in mason’s yards and, with the permission of the director of antiquities of Macedonia and overseen by the metropolitan bishop and the municipality, used to pave roads, line latrines, and extend the sea walls; to construct pathways, patios, and walls in private and public spaces though out the city, in suburbs such as Panorama and Ampelokipi, and more than sixty kilometers away in beach towns in Halkidiki, where they decorated playgrounds, bars, and restaurants in hotels; to build a swimming pool – with Hebrew-letter inscription visible; to repair the St. Demetrius Church and other buildings...” Devin Naar, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece

Most of the efforts to return found tombstones throughout the city are led by Jews, particularly Jacky Benmayor, the curator of the Jewish Museum and last Ladino speaker in Greece, who has personally recovered hundreds of tombstones including his own family's. Surviving Greek Jews never received compensation for the confiscation of the land under the destroyed cemetery, upon which now partially rests Greece's largest university, Aristotle University, which also used Jewish gravestones as building material for its long-coveted expansion finally made possible by the dispossession and annihilation of the city's Jews. In 2014, 72 years after the cemetery's destruction and appropriation, a small memorial was established on campus grounds to acknowledge the Jewish cemetery the school is built on and with; the ceremony just 10 years ago involved the first-ever acknowledgement of the atrocities and apology from a Thessaloniki mayor. The memorial has been vandalised multiple times since its establishment.

[girlactionfigure]

SEPTEMBER 4, 2024

Many anti-Israel protestors claim that the terrorist groups they support are merely anti-Zionist, not antisemitic.

The evidence shows otherwise.

Let’s take a look.

THIS IS A HAMAS FLAG...

…in the middle of New York City. Some Hamas apologists will tell you that Hamas no longer intends to exterminate all Jews, because in 2017, they “replaced their [openly genocidal] charter.” Well, lucky for you, Hamas is here to set the record straight. See, after releasing their “new” charter, Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar assured the media that the 2017 document did not replace their original 1988 charter. 

Since 2017, Hamas has made openly genocidal calls toward Jews. In 2018, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV media channel predicted “the cleansing of Palestine of the filth of the Jews.”

In 2019, Hamas Political Bureau member Fathi Hammad said, “You seven million Palestinians abroad, enough warming up! There are Jews everywhere! We must attack every Jew on planet Earth –- we must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help.” In 2021, Hammad called, via Al-Aqsa TV, for the Palestinians in Jerusalem to “cut off the heads of the Jews.”

BTW, THIS IS ONE OF THE MANY THINGS THAT THE ORIGINAL HAMAS CHARTER SAYS...

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)."

(Article 7)

Pretty explicitly antisemitic, wouldn’t you agree?

THIS IS A HEZBOLLAH FLAG (AND A HAMAS HEADBAND)..

…in the middle of New York City. Like Hamas, the entire purpose of Hezbollah’s existence is the destruction of the State of Israel. Unlike Hamas, however, Hezbollah, for decades, has carried out violent terrorist attacks against Jews not just in Israel, but also in the Diaspora.

Hezbollah’s most notorious attack was the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), the largest Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The attack took 85 innocent lives. Before October 7, the AMIA bombing was the single largest antisemitic massacre since the end of the Holocaust.

Given Hezbollah targets (non-Israeli) Jews worldwide, could it be that their problem is with Jews, not just with Zionism?

THIS, AGAIN, IS THE HEZBOLLAH FLAG...

...at the Princeton University encampment. If you’re still on the fence about Hezbollah’s true antisemitic intentions, fear not: Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah is here to clarify them for you.

“If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli,” Nasrallah stated. Just anti-Zionism, huh?

Then there’s his infamous threat: “If [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” 

We get the message loud and clear.

THIS IS "JEWISH" VOICE FOR PEACE, GLORIFYING THE HOUTHIS...

...using a photo that very clearly showcases the Houthi banner, which states, “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

“A Curse Upon the Jews” is pretty straightforward antisemitism, don’t you think? 

The Houthis are also personally responsible for ethnically cleansing the last Jews out of Yemen. Just anti-Zionism, eh?

THIS IS A PALESTINIAN FLAG WITH VARIOUS PORTRAITS, INCLUDING THAT OF YAHYA SINWAR...

…in the middle of New York City. If orchestrating the October 7 massacre, the biggest antisemitic massacre since the end of the Holocaust, is not evidence enough for you, there are other indications that Sinwar is not exactly a friend of the Jews.

In May of 2021, for example, Sinwar led a rally, in which the crowd was encouraged to chant, "We will trample on the heads of the Jews in front of everyone..."

There is also, of course, his infamous threat: “October 7 was just a rehearsal.”

Sinwar is the head of Hamas, which we’ve already established doesn’t really like Jews.

THIS IS A PFLP FLAG (AND A HEZBOLLAH FLAG AND A HAMAS HEADBAND)...

…in the middle of New York City. See that red flag? Yeah, that’s the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. PFLP flags are all the rage at pro-Palestine protests. Marxist Jihad. Super fun.

Yet, while the PFLP claims to advocate for a secular, democratic Palestine, the reality is much darker. When, for example, the PFLP, with the aid of West German terrorists, hijacked Air France Flight 139, en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, they infamously separated the Jewish from the non-Jewish passengers.Yes, you read that right: they separated the Jewish from the non-Jewish passengers. Not the Israeli passengers from the non-Israeli passengers. The Jewish from the non-Jewish passengers.

The non-Jewish passengers were let go. The Jews were kept hostage. That’s a pretty clear message.

THIS IS A PFLP FLAG...

…at the University of Pennsylvania encampment. If you’re still not convinced this is antisemitic, the founder of the PFLP, George Habash, quickly was there to set the record straight: “Killing one Jew far away from the field of battle is more effective than killing a hundred Jews on the field of battle,because it attracts more attention.”

You read that? He said “Jew.” Not Israeli. Not Zionist. “Jew.”

The PFLP live-streamed the October 7 massacre, and, as of several months ago, Israeli intelligence estimated that the PFLP was holding the youngest hostage, one-year-old Kfir Bibas, and his five-year-old brother, Ariel Bibas, hostage.

THIS IS A PALESTINIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD FLAG (AND A PFLP FLAG AND A HAMAS FLAG)...

…in the middle of New York City. Palestinian Islamic Jihad participated in the October 7 massacre. More than that, however, their entire ideology is antisemitic to the core.

See, Palestinian Islamic Jihad believes that a proper reading of the Quran indicates that Muslims are in an eternal struggle with their forever enemies, the Jews, and that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians exists because of this eternal struggle. 

To recap: Palestine or no Palestine, Islamic Jihad’s ideology dictates that Jews are the eternal enemies of the Muslims.

Sounds antisemitic to me, but what do I know?

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and  Patreon. 

somehow we’ve normalized weekly antisemitic hate marches in broad daylight

[space-station-nursery]

◜ 🕎𓂃 Happy Hanukkah! ‧ ✡️◞

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Happy early Hanukkah to all my Jewish followers !! Whist me and my family are not Jewish, its still fun to learn about other holidays, especially one that feels under talked about [to me at least 🤭]

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★﹒┊What is Hanukkah? ⁔⁔

Hanukkah is a Jewish festival celebrated on Kislev 25 in December, reaffirming Judaism's ideals and commemorating the rededication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem. Despite not being mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, Hanukkah remains a popular religious observance and reaffirms the Second Temple's significance.

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★﹒┊What does it originate from? ⁔⁔

In 175 B.C., King Antiochus prohibited Jews from practicing Judaism in his ancient kingdom which included Judea. He replaced the Temple of Jerusalem with an altar dedicated to Zeus, the Greek god. The Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, rebelled and fought for three years to establish an independent region. In 164 B.C., the Maccabees defeated Antiochus and his troops. Upon return to their ransacked temple, they found only one jar of oil—just enough to light the temple’s candles for one day. The Talmud miraculously burned oil for eight days, allowing the Maccabees to find more oil for their sacred candles. The conflict continued for over 22 years, culminating in a peace treaty in 142 B.C., forming the Jews' own independent region.

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★﹒┊How is it celebrated? ⁔⁔

Jews celebrate Hanukkah by lighting a menorah, which holds 8 candles each, plus a shamash candle in the center used to light the other candles. The menorah is lit for eight nights, with one candle added and lit on the first night and so on until all 8 candles are lit. People recite blessings, pray, sing songs, and exchange gifts to celebrate the miracle in the temple over 2,000 years ago.

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★﹒┊Hanukkah Fun ⁔⁔

Before finishing up, i would like to give you guys some Hanukkah worksheets !

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18+ blogs // DD!LG, AB!DL and variants [even "SFW"] // 27 and older // DNI

Fact OTD: Hanukkah traditions feature deep-fried jelly donuts called sufganiyot and potato pancakes called latkes, both fried and symbolizing the long-lasting lamp oil.

[nimrochan]

I don’t think that my few handfuls of followers on various social media accounts realize that I’m an American-Israeli. I’ve been watching things unfold and staying silent for the most part. I know it’s very easy to have an opinion from the comfort and safety of my home, but too many people are also echoing online opinions without enough information or thought behind them. Although it’s fair to say that I’m biased, I think it’s important to view conflicts from multiple perspectives. Including and especially from someone from the actual region/culture that everyone outside of it suddenly has an opinion on. And I think I’m ready to say what I wanted to say:

Why aren’t people more angry with Hamas?

I’ve spent some childhood years in Israel. Every week on the news was another incident - a bus b*mbing, a car b*mbing, a s*icide b*mber… I remember being terrified of getting on buses, or going to public places. I remember soldiers standing at the entrance of every mall, and I remember hearing how one soldier died while stopping a s*icide b*mber at a mall entrance - both were women in their early 20’s. Until today my father tells me to avoid crowded places, and to always stand in a corner with my back on the wall to observe my surroundings.

When I moved to America I had moved on from these memories and didn’t really think about them. But the attacks never stopped. For DECADES. And over the last few years I did notice that very few non-Jewish Americans were aware of what life is like in Israel - having a barrage of rockets rain on you every once in a while. Having alerts to warn you to head to the nearest shelter. Israel has the protection of the Iron Dome. But it’s not perfect, and some rockets do hit their targets. Also, you know, maybe people shouldn’t be firing rockets unprovoked into another country?? (Don’t even get me started on Hezbollah, too.) No one bats an eye if other countries randomly shoot rockets into Israel, but as soon as Israel retaliates to try destroying the area where rockets come from, everyone comes out of the woodwork to condemn them.

Some of my American family members have an app that dings every time rockets are fired into Israel. I could never bring myself to download it. The number of dings drives me crazy.

In fact, if you ever wanted to buy a piece of jewelry or sculpture made of Hamas rockets, there are businesses upcycling them.

If you’re not from Israel, I just want you to imagine the number of rockets that regularly have to come into your country for any rockets-to-products businesses to even exist. For reasons beyond my comprehension, a lot of political parties in America want to defund the Iron Dome, a system designed solely for defense. But I digress.

Gazans never had an Iron Dome and yet Hamas gives no regard to the lives of their own people when they fire openly from homes, schools, hospitals. When they hide hostages and weapons in heavily populated areas.

I remember frantically texting and calling people on 10/07 to see if any of my family members were harmed or killed in the attack. All while anti-Zionists already rallied on social media to offer no sympathy and blame the attack on the Jews on, the Jews. Right. Luckily, whatever close family I had in the area was far away enough from the attack that they were spared, and they soon evacuated. My second cousin and her kids were only spared because they happened to be away, but their home was in ashes and their friends and neighbors were dead.

Israel is a small and close-knit country. I don't have words to describe how we grieved. 1200 innocent civilians sl*ughtered for no reason. That number is just a little under half of the number of deaths on 9/11, and it was done without the help of airplanes, just men running around killing people. The youngest one was 14 hours old. This is the largest m*rder of Jews since the Holocaust. I won’t even go into detail about how some of their bodies were mutilated because it’s too horrific for me to want to type it out. In fact I left the most disturbing footage out of this post. I had been avoiding seeing the footage of Shani Louk, but it was shown at the exhibit too and I’ll never be able to forget it for as long as I live. It made me sick to my stomach.

Look at the pictures. Look at all those shoes. The last time I felt such powerful emotion staring at shoes was at a Holocaust museum. A lot of item displays included their owners’ smart phones showing their final videos on a loop. The people who attend the Nova festival tend to be laid-back, free spirits. They show up covered in glitter and wearing fairy-wings, waving rainbow flags. They lived next to Gaza because they felt safe there, and they often supported Palestinians. Listen to the unhindered joy in the voice of the man calling his father to tell him he had m*rdered ten Jews. One of the most disgusting parts of this is the fact that people protested outside this exhibit as well.

When I brought myself to browse social media again, over and over I saw posts about how “they deserved it” and “they had it coming.” The same people, the same self-proclaimed “feminists” who would shared the #MeToo and #YesAllWomen hashtags, people with immensely large followings, were now having no sympathy for the Israeli women who were r*ped, basically saying “she asked for it.” People defending and excusing Hamas because they “weren’t created in a vacuum.” When did we start excusing r*pe and t*rrorism for ANY reason? On that note, don’t you think Israel’s aggressive defense of itself also stems from a historical reason, shaped by outside forces?

And then there are many voices still expressing plain denial! This was the most well-documented t*rrorist attack in history, because the attackers filmed it with pride, and yet over and over I also saw people posting about how “it never happened,” “they would never do that,” and how these t*rrorists were just “resistance fighters” with propaganda crafted to “make them look bad.”

In my home state of New York, I saw people marching wearing same types of scarves that these “resistance fighters” wore to commit crimes against humanity so recently, tearing down posters of Israeli hostages instead of hanging their own posters on innocent killed Gazans and sharing in the grief.

I see people over and over calling Israelis “white colonists,” when in fact MOST OF THEM ARE BROWN, dark-skinned just like their neighbors (if I showed you photos of my family in Israel, you'd be surprised to learn they aren't Arabic). We are an ethnic minority on this planet and in every country except Israel, but antisemites love to flip the script and paint us as majority white colonizer oppressors. When the majority of Americans calling for the abolishment of Israel are themselves actually living on colonized land (I mean, really?) When most of North Africa has been colonized by Arab populations, yet everyone seems to conveniently forget that. Most alarmingly, I see people marching the streets and praising Hamas and the actual 10/07 attacks.

These same people probably could never spot Gaza on a map before 10/07. Where were they for the Chinese Uyghurs? Where were they for the mass murdered Syrians? For Afghans left at the mercy of the Taliban? For Iraqis killed after 9/11? For Darfur? Because no news unless Jews, right? How can you say you care about Muslims and then praise Hamas? How can you be Pro-Palestine and Pro-Hamas at the same time?! There is a huge, sick problem in America when college students here are applauded by overseas t*rrorist leaders on goddamn Twitter.

And these “Queers for Palestine”- where is the support for the gayest, most feminist, and most liberal country in the Middle East? (Go ahead and look up which country in the Middle East holds annual Pride Parades.) Where is the support for the millions of Arab-Israelis and other non-Jews who call Israel their home? Where is the support for the Arabs and non-Jews also killed on 10/07? Where are the feminists using their voices to demand Hamas return the hostages that are very likely being r*ped as I type this?

I feel like I’m going crazy telling people that there is a lot of fake news and propaganda being spread by Hamas and eaten up by the West. I am not the kind of person to use the phrase “fake news.” But when I see some extreme footage allegedly showing the IDF doing something especially horrible, I count the hours or days before the news is silently retracted because it turned out to be incorrect. Propaganda against Jews has seeped so far into gentile culture over the decades that people don't even realize it. It’s become sickeningly casual and normalized in all kinds of circles. Hell, I don’t even know who to vote for or who secretly wants me dead - the left side with the pro-Hamas crowd or the right side with their white supermacists .

No, I am not denying that a lot of innocent Gazans are dying horrific deaths. When I see footage of injured Palestinian children, I don’t look away and pretend it doesn’t happen, because it does. But what about Hamas dressing up as civilians, firing weapons among civilians, and continuing to hide the hostages??? What about the 15-17 year old brainwashed children marching with guns? When is enough enough? You know which army doesn’t hide in civilian clothing, or recruit children, or parade naked dead women around after they’ve killed them?? Take a guess.

War is fucking awful. And I'm not trying to justify it, just trying to articulate why this is such a clusterfuck of a situation. Someone please name any other country that wouldn’t retaliate and demand their hostages back after such an ugly, unprovoked attack. Someone please explain to me why the hatred is so intense and out of proportion. Again, DECADES of attacks. Someone please tell me what should be done - because if you do nothing, then 10/07 happens over and over and over again. Israelis are all living, breathing people with families just like Gazan civilians are. Stop dehumanizing us.

Why is it that after the Ukraine-Russia war started, when most westerners were on Ukraine’s side (including myself so don’t jump down my throat), that individual Russians living in western countries did not feel threatened the way individual Jews are being threatened? That war actually seems a way more black-and-white situation to me. Why did the Israeli singer for Eurovision need presidential-level protection from the mob gathered outside her hotel? Why did the other contestants continually insult her? You think every single Jew on the planet has a say in what happens in Israel?

Why am I going on social media to dumb down, only to see posts like “Reblog to increase IDF soldier s*icides” and “Like to # CeaseFire” and “From the river to the sea” (that expression basically means to promote the killing of all Israelis, I don’t care how you look at it). Why are you trying to call a cease fire with t*rrorists who are known to constantly break ceasefire, then make a surprised Pikachu face when they do it again?

Anti-Zionism is a clever cover for anti-semitism. The very definition of Zionism is the pursuit of an independent Jewish state (of which there is currently only ONE - for comparison, there are 57 Muslim countries). A lot of people don’t even know what Zionism is when they call themselves Anti-Zionist. And if you do? Most Jews are Zionist. You can’t separate semitism from Zionism to make yourself feel better. Israel is such a tiny country, it takes 6 hours to drive end-to-end across the longest part. While all over the world, synagogues are being threatened, Jewish graveyards are being vandalized, and Jews are being attacked, you are absolutely telling me and my people that we don’t deserve a safe space. And yes, Jews are indigenous to the Middle East just like Arabs are.

How do people rally against discrimination, but in the same breath act like discrimination towards Jews doesn’t count? You can’t reason your way out of it. You do not get to tell me what is and isn’t antisemitic.

Hamas does NOT give a damn about the actual land that Jews are living on. Hamas’s ultimate goal is to kill all Jews (it's LITERALLY spelled out in their government charter), is that what people want?? And even if you deny it, you think you could theoretically move all 8 million Jews out of Israel to where exactly?

You think other countries want to welcome a mass migration of 8 million Jews? (Remember why Jews left in the first place?) You want literal t*rrorists to have a stronger foothold in the Middle East?

Why do the surrounding countries condemn Israel, yet not step up to help Gazans either? Why won’t they open up their borders?

I’m sick and tired of people who have zero stake in the Middle East and very little knowledge just jumping on the bandwagon and virtue-signaling like it’s some clear black-and-white situation when it’s not. And then having the nerve to lecture ME. I’m angry and I’m frustrated.

Bring them the fuck home.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

To follow up on my Hosanna poll, I think before things go any further, it'd be good to actually explain and define it. I was initially going to wait until the end of the poll, but it seems that google is giving people a lot of bad and/or conflicting answers and I'd rather people walk away with the correct information.

So! Hosanna is an anglicized version of the Hebrew words "hosha na" [הושע נא or as a contraction הושענא]. Hosha na is a little enigmatic and hard to translate, but the simplest translation is probably "save us, please." It's traditionally used as an exclamation to G-d to rescue us, but it also has shades of being a triumphant shout (the implication being confidence that G-d will save us.)

Jews say "hoshanot" (the plural of hosha na) as part of our traditional Sukkot liturgy, and is something we do still today.

For us, the multi-faceted meaning of the root word allows us to have multiple layers of meaning. During Sukkot, we start praying for rain in its proper season and amounts, and we shake the lulav and etrog as part of these processions and liturgy. On Hoshana Rabba [the "great hoshana"], the last day of Sukkot, we process around the bimah (front lectern) seven times as a completion of our season of repentance and our starting of the new year with abundant blessings.

My siddur (prayer book) Lev Shalem has this as an explanation and translation:

[Image ID is of the Lev Shalem siddur, pages 382 & 383 - I tried hard to find a pdf of this that would be readable using a screen reader, but the versions I'm finding cut off at pg. 376 at the latest. If anyone has bandwidth to type this up, I would greatly appreciate it]

For the curious, here is a recording of the Hoshanot liturgy and procession:

Christians mostly know the word from the gospels and hymns.

Here is what Wikipedia says about its use in Christianity:

Historical meaning

Since those welcoming Jesus were Jewish, as of course Jesus himself was, some would interpret the cry of "Hosanna" on the entry of Jesus in its proper meaning, as a cry by the people for salvation and rescue.

Christian reinterpretation

"Hosanna" many interpret as a shout of praise or adoration made in recognition of the messiahship of Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem

It is applied in numerous verses of the New Testament, including "Hosanna! blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ!" (Matthew 21:9,15; Mark 11:9–10; John 12:13), which forms part of the Sanctus prayer; "hosanna in the highest" (Mark 11.10); and "hosanna to the Son of David" (Matt 21:9). These quotations, however, are of words in the Jewish Psalm 118. Although not used in the book of Luke, the testimony of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is recorded in Luke 19.

In church music

The "Hosanna Anthem", based on the phrase Hosanna, is a traditional Moravian Church anthem written by Bishop Christian Gregor of Herrnhut sung on Palm Sunday and the first Sunday of Advent. It is antiphonal, i.e. a call-and-response song; traditionally, it is sung between the children and adult congregation, though it is not unheard of for it to be done in other ways, such as between choir and congregation, or played between trombone choirs.

The bottom line:

Jews and Christians have different connections, associations, and meanings attached to this word as expressions of our different theologies and texts. The word is derived from a Hebrew word and was created by Jews and is still used by us today. (Like literally today - we are currently in the middle of the Sukkot festival.) Christians changed the meaning to fit within their own context, and pronunciation of the word evolved with linguistic drift over time. In the same way that there's not a reason to pitch a fit over saying Jesus rather than Yeshua, there's no compelling reason to change hosanna back to hosha na; if anything, the distinction helps make it clear that it's effectively a different word and concept from ours.

On the other hand, I do think Christians ought to know the original meaning of the word if they're going to use it. To only ever know their version when it was derived from ours is yet another small way of playing into supercessionism by erasing and replacing the Jewish context of things that were originated in Judaism that Christians have embedded in Christianity. While the Christians of today cannot unwind the supercessionism of Christian history, they *can* choose to understand their present Christianity in ways that do not play into supercessionism and that respect the Jewish community of today.

I hope this was helpful and gives folks a new perspective on an obscure Hebrew word!

[matan4il]

IDK how to write today's update post. There were so many things I meant to include info about, but now everything pales in the face of the terrible news we got this morning.

At least 24 Israeli soldiers were killed in the last 24 hours in Gaza.

Here are the faces of some of them:

The terrorists responsible for most of these deaths, attacked in a spot just 600 meters (0.37 miles, with the border breached on Oct 7 in the middle) from a southern Israeli community, Kissufim.

[this paragraph is for the people spewing hate, on and off anon : if you read the news and smiled to yourself, or felt any kind of joy, I want you to know that's vile. It's devoid of any morality or humanity. You can tell yourself and others that you're for human rights all you want, but if you feel joy at the death of human beings, human beings who had the right to live (and would have lived, had it not been for the terrible massacre Hamas carried out on Oct 7, which the terrorists promised to recreate repeatedly, targeting Israelis and Jews alike), then you're not for human rights. It's just an excuse you use to be able to publicly celebrate the death of Jews, and of non-Jewish citizens of the Jewish state who defend their fellow Jews. It's just the same, age old antisemitism under a new guise]

IDK how to explain what that number does to me, as an Israeli, as a Jew, as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.

I still remember the morning of Oct 7, as the news started pouring in. First, just talking about the rockets, they had no confirmation of casualties yet. Then, we got the news of one elderly woman, killed by a rocket as she left her home to open the communal bomb shelter for others to use. Then suddenly it was 5 dead, then 10, then 22, along with the news that Palestinian terrorists from Gaza have invaded Israel's south.

And I knew then that the number is going to be higher. The way it normally goes with news of terrorist attack, is you first get a big number, those killed immediately or shortly after the attack, and then there are a few more wounded who don't make it. Basically, there's a big number, and then a small adjustment. Something like... first hearing about the 10 immedaite casualties of an attack, then the number is adjusted to 12 or 13 in the following hours, or days. But here, the jump in the number of dead from 10 to 22 told me we're not in the "small adjustment phase" yet. We're still in the "counting the initial big number phase."

That was so hard, because 22 was already hard to deal with. Up until Oct 7, if I remember correctly, we had lost 38 people in 2023 to Palestinian terrorism. That was already considered the bloodiest year in terms of terrorism victims since the second intifada. People were already grieving, asking questions about what was going on, talking about how the renewal of certain (American) funding to Palestinians (such as the Palestinian Authority's Pay for Slay program) was causing this surge in murderous activity, and what can be done to change the situation. To lose 22 people in one day meant that the number of 2023 terrorism victims was almost doubled already... and we were not yet done counting our dead. The grief and loss of almost 9 months and change almost doubled in a day... and it was likely about to grow.

The number of dead kept rising. We jumped from 22 to 50. From 50 to 100. Then 200. Still no sign of getting to the "small adjustment phase" and it was hard to breathe with every new update. We got to 300, and it was almost unbearable. Then 450. A jump of 150 dead. There was no way to process it, no way to really comprehend it, and the worst was always that the jumps in numbers between updates meant we're still in the "counting the initial big number phase." Somewhere after 600 and before the next update, I realized from an interview (nothing official, just the implication of what one person, who was in the know, said) that it was not going to be less than 1,000 people killed. And I no longer felt like I could contain any of it. The horror, the grief, the shock, the struggle to comprehend that this is real, and not the worst nightmare I've ever had.

At least 1,200 people were murdered during Hamas' massacre. It's been over 3 months, and when I write that I didn't know how to contain everything I was feeling back then, I still don't. So you might think, what's 24 people in comparison to 1,200 dead? But that's not how it works. The death of one person does not pale in comparison with the death of the many.

When I work on Holocaust research, and I work on the testimony of one Jewish girl, who had to watch her father being beaten in front of her eyes by Nazi-collaborating Italian fascist soldiers in a concentration camp in Libya, in northern Africa, when I try to process what the murder of just one parent, just one person means to her, I know it's the destruction of her whole world. It doesn't lessen the pain, that the number of Jewish Holocaust victims outside of Europe is "just" in the thousands, while in Europe it's in the millions. One death can in itself be impossible to bear.

And here's the thing. Those deaths and their impact accumulate. We didn't just learn today that we lost 24 soldiers. We lost 24 worlds (because as the Jewish saying goes, "He who kills one person, it's as if he killed the entire world, and he who saves one person, it's as if he saved the whole world," Mishna Sanhedrin 4.5) and we lost them as a part of now over 220 soldiers we lost in this war (see below a map of Israel with a red dot for every place where at least one soldier was killed), which was forced upon us with the murder and destruction of over 1,200 worlds, which comes after 75 years of a conflict we didn't want, in which we lost 28,000 worlds, and that followed a genocide in which we lost at least 6,000,000 worlds, and that in itself is the peak of almost two thousand years of persecution, during which the full and total number of Jews lost, of worlds destroyed just because of antisemitism, will never be known. All I know is that the Jews we know today, we're not the Jewish people. We are what's left of the Jewish people. And we will live. Am Yisrael Chai. Always. In the face of countless attempts at our destruction, we're still here. But we remember them all. Every single soul lost. Every world destroyed. Every child that had been murdered, every child that will never get to be born. We have lost 24 worlds today, and the fact that we have lost so many before, only makes the loss worse.

And we would not have lost a single person in the fighting in Gaza if we had actually been guilty of the crimes they accuse us of. We could have wiped out all of Gaza from the air, without risking the life of a single soldier on the ground. Every one of the Israeli soldiers killed, died to protect Israelis, as well as to save Palestinian civilians.

The way I feel right now, I think about the words of one member of Kissufim who I heard today: "We are broken, but strong."

May the memory of those lost be a blessing, every single one of them, every Jewish person, and non-Jew killed for standing with Jews, in every generation.

You're all still with me, I carry all of you in my heart, always.

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

[xclowniex]

Okay I need peoples opinions in this.

There is a tik tok creator and author who has a series on tik tok they're trying to turn into a book called Cafae Latte.

It is this very queer and diverse series. All characters are played by one woman, the creator who is white.

She has 2 jewish characters, both are dragons who shape shifted into humans. One wears a magen david and the other is orthodox and wears a tichel. The creator wears them when portraying the respective characters

Now I have an issue with this for a few reasons which all fall under the big glaring thing of, they didn't consult any jews or do any research past the surface!

First issue of business is the tichel. I do find it incredibly disrespectful for a non jew to wear a tichel when you're portraying a Jewish character and you can't even get tzniut correctly. It wasn't until they finally got a tichel, that they learnt thay they needed to cover their collar bone and elbows. Especially when you also don't call it a tichel and just call it a "jewish head covering". If you're trying to make a Jewish character who keeps tzniut, these are basic things you should know if you did any research!

Second order of business, the magen david. I do find this disrespectful as it's not really for non jews to wear???? Like it's not like you commit this great atrocity by wearing it. But considering their poor rep with the character above, I doubt they know anything meaning behind it and why its important to jews. Plus it's pretty much literally just used to signify that the character is Jewish and that's it.

Thirdly order of business, idk how else to start this besides, they unjewished hebrew??????

Like they were creating a family crest for one of their jewish characters and had this design with the tree of life and some hebrew and wanted help on getting the hebrew correct and said "hebrew speakers and that probably include jews, I think. I need your help with this hebrew".

Like excuse me what. Not all jews speak hebrew and not all hebrew speakers are jewish, but the majority of hebrew speakers are jewish. Adding jews as this after thought which may technically be included is awful.

Last order of business. This time, not about the jewish characters but the arab and muslim one.

Therre is this character they play who is a Muslim arab amercian and they said in their intro post for this character "I'm not sure which arab country specifically she is from as I'm not educated enough". Like excuse me what. There are cultural differences between different arab countries, not in a way which they're completely different from each other but it is a thing.

And to make matters worse, she has a YouTube video giving tips on writing diversity well.

And idk it just really irks me as they are a published writer, who is all about good diversity representation yet can't even do it properly. Consulting jews, not even jews actually, hebrew speakers to use their words, is not enough to give good rep. You need to talk to rabbis, jewish community leaders in general.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Larry Sand

The findings are nothing short of alarming:

55% of Jewish students have personally been victims of antisemitism at their schools.

43% did not feel safe enough to report the incidents.

Of those who did report, 87% believe their school failed to investigate properly.

43% hide their Jewish identity from their classmates out of fear.

72% feel unwelcome in certain spaces on campus simply for being Jewish.

67% say Jews are completely excluded from their school’s DEI initiatives.

69% are blamed for the actions of Israel—actions they have no control over.

67% feel their university did not take sufficient action to protect Jewish students in the wake of the 10/7 massacre.

43% would not recommend their school to fellow Jewish students.

At the University of California at Davis, which was number 17 on the list of 25, 81% of students have experienced antisemitism, 93% do not feel safe expressing Jewish identity, 93% do not feel welcome in many spaces on campus, 100% of students feel they are blamed for Israel’s actions, and 87% said they do not feel safeguarded by the school.

At UCLA, Zionism is taboo. It is included on a list of qualities that are an impediment to hiring, and personnel can be removed from their position if they support it. The school lumps Zionism in with racism, white supremacy, homophobia, misogyny, and “all other hateful/bigoted ideologies.”

There is some pushback, however. In Virginia, after a group of students defaced George Mason University’s student center in August, spray painting messages that warned of a “student intifada,” GMU suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and pursued a criminal investigation of two female members who are suspected of being involved in the incident.

Also, on a positive note, Tufts University in Massachusetts recently extended a suspension of its SJP chapter until January 2027 after first deactivating the group in October, a school spokesman confirmed last month.

Additionally, the University of Michigan has initiated disciplinary proceedings against one of its most outspoken and controversial anti-Israel groups, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE)—an SJP spinoff—the result of which may be a suspension of up to four years.

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities has reportedly suspended and demanded financial restitution from seven pro-Hamas activists who were arrested for commandeering an administrative building on Oct. 21, an action which aimed to pressure school officials into enacting a boycott of Israel. According to a statement from SJP and other anti-Israel campus groups that was posted on social media, “seven of eight students charged with misconducting themselves on that day have been ‘found guilty’ by a university disciplinary tribunal. Each has been fined about $5,500, the statement further alleged, and suspended for periods ranging from one to five semesters.”

On another optimistic note, in November, President-elect Donald Trump announced measures “to defeat antisemitism and defend our Jewish citizens in America. My first week back in the Oval Office, my administration will inform every college president that if you do not end antisemitic propaganda, they will lose their accreditation and federal taxpayer support. I will inform every educational institution in our land that if they permit violence, harassment, or threats against Jewish students, the schools will be held accountable for violations of the civil rights laws.”

Trump emphasized that “Jewish Americans must have equal protection under the law.” And he promised that “[m]y administration will move swiftly to restore safety for Jewish students and Jewish people on American streets.”

What else can be done?

We must end taxpayer funding of private colleges. Currently, there are about 4,000 for-profit colleges in the U.S., and they receive the great majority of federal tax dollars for higher education—which is about $201 billion. In fact, there are only 22 colleges in the country that refuse any public funds. It is disgraceful that as a taxpayer and a Jew, my tax dollars go to schools that foster antisemitism.

Lastly, Jews and, in fact, any right-thinking teacher who belongs to a union like UTLA that is hostile to Jews should opt out and stop supporting them. Immediately!

[jewishicequeen]

Hi. Can you share a cool fact about Israel? How's the fan culture over there? You guys got conventions? 👀

BOY DO WE

There are 4 big conventions in Israel, run by two organisations- the Israeli Society For Science Fiction and Fantasy(known shortly as "Ha'Aguda), and AMAI, the Israeli Manga and Anime Organization.

The Aguda's conventions are the biggest and most well-known. There's Icon during Sukkot and Olamot("worlds") during Passover, and both are always in Tel Aviv. Those are the comic-con of Israel- they have everything geeky and fanish, from every type of media. They last 2-3 days, and are free to enter but you have to pay to go into specific events. Those are my favorites!

AMAI's conventions are centered around Japanese media and culture. There are also two- Harucon at Purim(the closest con), and Animatsuri at the summer. Those cons costs money to enter, but once you're inside you can go anywhere as long as there are free seats. Those cons are in Jerusalem, and are very big. They also sometimes include a run of an Animusical(anime-inspired original musical production done by members of the community)

Other then those 4, we have lots of smaller cons done by different organizations and for different specific topics- there's Meorot which is a Harry Potter and LOTR con set during Hannukah, the Aguda also has Mitopia in the summer, that's centered specifically around books, and there's Draconicon for DND and RPG players! And a lot more! Last year I also had the chance to go to the first Sha'atnez, a con surrounding specifically Jewish Fantasy and Fantastic Judaism. It was fantastic and I REALLY hope it'll be an annual thing.

Interesting thing about fan culture here- the main two groups involved in it are queers, and religious orthodox jews. Both are in the fannish scene in much larger percantages then they make of the general population! I suspect the religious thing is because Shabbat-keepers have a lot of time when all they can do is read, and queers are already very dominant in such communities, but it's still very cool I think:)

Anyway fun fact, I've been in the artist alley for... 6-7 cons up untill now? My favorite to sell in was Noar Kore which sadly does not exist anymore but I REALLY like doing those booths.

[bsof-maarav]

Editor’s Note: Sanne DeWitt is a microbiologist, geneticist, researcher, and author of a memoir: “I Was Born In An Old Age Home”. She has lived in Berkeley, California since 1957, where she moved for advanced studies in microbiology and genetics, and worked there until her retirement. The views expressed here are those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.CNN — 

In 1957, I moved to Berkeley, California: a bastion of American liberalism that squarely aligns with my progressive values, and a hub of American scholarship that nurtured my academic quest and professional growth. I came here for advanced studies in microbiology and genetics. Since then, I have lived, worked as a scientist and retired in this community.

Over the 65 years that I have called this beautiful area home, I have occasionally encountered antisemitism, but these one-off incidents never succeeded in destroying my spirit. When I was four years old, Nazis burst into my bedroom and sent me and my family to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. We were soon released and I was smuggled out of Germany by a Christian woman. After this harrowing experience, not much in the Bay Area could scare me.

But since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the hatred towards Jews that I have seen in Berkeley terrifies me more than anything I have experienced while living here. I am still reeling from being called a liar at a Berkeley City Council meeting, where I asked for a proclamation to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day and spoke about October 7. The Jews at that meeting were circled and called “Zionist pigs” by menacing protesters.

We are approaching the holiday of Passover, which commemorates the freedom of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and our formation as a free Jewish people in our own land. But this Passover is like no other in recent history, with scores of hostages still held in Gaza and Jews worldwide fearful for our future — including Jews in the US. We are facing the worst global antisemitism since the Holocaust and while it is not state-sanctioned as Nazism was, it is a threat going unchecked in California’s East Bay.

It is incredibly painful to see my neighbors vilify Jews, tear down posters of Jewish hostages in Gaza and not believe Jewish rape victims. In this hotbed, hatred and hostility have become normalized. Families have moved their children out of public schools. Jewish businesses have been vandalized and boycotted. And lies about Jews and Israel have gone unchecked and unchallenged in our public forums. Our local Jewish community is both horrified and petrified.

This onslaught of Jewish hatred cannot become the new normal. This epidemic must be treated as seriously as all other hatreds that our society is confronting, such as racism and homophobia. We need more education about Judaism and how the long, sordid history of antisemitism ties into other forms of hatred in our public schools.

We need colleges and universities to unequivocally denounce hate speech and actions directed at Jews. We need public officials to urge mutual respect, understanding and civil discourse during city council and town hall meetings.

I have seen where unchecked antisemitism can lead, when people will do nothing — or worse, join the mainstream, such as our German neighbors during Nazism. This Passover, I resolve with whatever time I have left in this world to fight for the safety of the Jewish people, in Berkeley and around the globe.

During Passover, we are commanded to tell the story of the exodus out of Egypt to our children. We believe in the lasting power of sharing this history with younger generations and reflecting on this hopeful new beginning. There is also lasting power in sharing my history as a Jewish refugee — and I invite my Berkeley neighbors to hear my story. Without understanding and acceptance, we are enslaved by our biases.

The hatred, violence and bigotry against the Jewish community cannot continue — for our shared future, we must confront it and root it out.

[mariacallous]

Last December, in a column about the Jewish books of 2023, I predicted that “next year’s list will include a slew of books dealing with the crisis in Israel or will be read through the lens of the war.”

It was an easy call: If this year’s nonfiction Jewish authors didn’t focus directly on the tragedy or aftermath of Oct. 7 — Israeli journalist Lee Yaron in “10/7: 100 Human Stories,” massacre survivor Amir Tibon in “The Gates of Gaza” and Adam Kirsch in “On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice,” to name a few — many added a chapter on the crisis to projects that had long been in the works. 

Joshua Leifer told me he had to rewrite “about 20,000 words” of “Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life,” his autobiographical critique of the Jewish mainstream. Three books of Jewish theology intended for wide audiences — “To Be a Jew Today” by Noah Feldman, “The Triumph of Life” by Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg and “Judaism Is About Love” by Rabbi Shai Held — included additional chapters taking into account the fresh wounds and nascent implications of the attack and the war.

In a typical year, the books by Leifer, Feldman, Greenberg and Held — and perhaps “The Amen Effect,” an inspirational volume by Rabbi Sharon Brous — would have competed for the book that best captured the Jewish moment and discourse. It’s a category I’ve been thinking about lately, after asking JTA readers to suggest Jewish books that define 21st-century Jewry and that — here’s the key part — are likely to be found on the shelves of the Jewish readers they know. I was inspired by universally read, era-defining books like 1958’s “Exodus” by Leon Uris, which fed and presaged the Zionist fervor of the 1960s, and “World of Our Fathers” by Irving Howe, which in the 1970s remembered what the children and grandchildren of Eastern European immigrants were already starting to forget.

I’ll get to the readers’ nominees in a moment, but I want to start by suggesting that it is still too early to pick a book, or books, that best reflects where Jews have landed in the wake of Oct. 7. The war still grinds on, and the Jewish community remains uncertain how it will end or what it will ultimately mean. Some themes are emerging, including resurgent antisemitism, the international isolation of Israel, a rupture between Jews and the political left, and perhaps a return to Jewish religious practice and belonging. Any author will need some time and distance to make sense of the upheaval.

It may not be surprising then that the book most frequently suggested by the dozens of readers who responded to my callout, “People Love Dead Jews,” anticipated these upheavals and the Jews’ sense of abandonment. Novelist Dara Horn’s first nonfiction collection, published in 2021, posited that societies that are happy building memorials and museums to Jewish suffering are reluctant to show respect or understanding to actual living Jewish communities. The book “really helped me wrap my head around present-day antisemitism,” wrote reader Marianne Leloir Grange. 

For many readers, “People Love Dead Jews” serves as a skeleton key to understanding the worldwide backlash against Israel in a war that began when Hamas slaughtered 1,200 mostly Jews on Oct. 7. As Horn explained in an interview in April with the online European Jewish magazine K., “You’ll see that people love dead Jews, as long as they’re vulnerable and helpless. In fact, I found it remarkable how much people seemed to relish the idea of showing their support for murdered Jews, until Israel responded with force. That’s how people love the Jews: powerless to stop their own slaughter. As soon as the Jews show any capacity for action, it’s all over.”

(When I asked Horn this week what books spoke to her this year, she said she appreciated Kirsch’s book, the anthology “Young Zionist Voices” edited by David Hazony, and Benjamin Resnick’s dystopian novel “Next Stop.”) 

Another frequently mentioned book seemed almost to act as a balm to Horn’s thesis: “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride. Last year’s best-selling, prize-winning historical novel is set in a small Pennsylvania town at a moment when immigrant Jews and poor Black families found common cause. “‘The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store’ by James McBride is probably one of the most popular recent books likely to be on an American Jew’s bookshelf,” Galina Vromen wrote me. “I would argue that part of the attraction to Jews today is in light of antisemitism and nostalgia when Jews and Blacks saw themselves on the same side of just causes and Jews were not regarded as enemy white people.”

Vromen, a novelist, had a number of strong suggestions for the kinds of recent books likely to be on American Jewish bookshelves, including “The Netanyahus,” Joshua Cohen’s 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that serves as a cutting critique of present-day Israeli politics; “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” Michael Chabon’s best-selling 2000 novel about the Jews who pioneered superhero comics; and “Start-Up Nation” by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. The last one, published in 2009, presented Israel as an incubator of high tech innovation (and coined an enduringly popular nickname for the country) and offers readers a comforting rebuke to the activists who see Israel as an oppressor and colonizer. 

A number of readers recommended Philip Roth’s 2004 novel “The Plot Against America,” which imagined an America run by the populist, isolationist, Nazi-sympathizing and antisemitic Charles Lindbergh in the early years of World War II. The book has had a number of lives: Roth said he wrote it as a rumination on Jewish security in America, but by 2016 it was seen by Donald Trump’s critics as an eerie prophecy of his rise and first election; HBO adapted it for a miniseries in 2020; and this year the New York Times named it one of the “100 Best Books of the 21st Century.”

Beyond that, no other book was suggested by more than one reader, although the ones they did mention seem like strong contenders for the current Jewish book shelf: “Everything Is Illuminated,” Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2002 magical realist novel that anticipated the current vogue for works about Jewish roots tours in Eastern Europe; “My Promised Land” by Ari Shavit and “Like Dreamers” by Yossi Klein Halevi, two 2013 nonfiction works by Israeli authors attempting to explain the country’s heart and soul; and Deborah Lipstadt’s 2019 “Antisemitism: Here and Now” (although I am guessing her 2005 memoir “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier,” which became the motion picture “Denial,” is better known). 

Samuel Freedman’s “Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry,” published in 2000, fell just short of the 21st century, but was a prescient look at the internal political and religious divides that would only yawn wider in the coming decades. 

I was also pleased to hear from readers who suggested cookbooks. “Jerusalem” by Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi (2011) not only kicked off a mania for high-end Middle Eastern cooking but presented a complex and even hopeful version of Jewish and Palestinian coexistence (which did not, over time, include the authors). Joan Nathan’s “Jewish Cooking in America” (1994) cemented her role as Jewish cuisine’s Julia Child. And it’s the rare kosher-keeping home cook who doesn’t own a volume in Susie Fishbein’s “Kosher By Design” series. Fishbein “single-handedly raised Jewish cooking to a gourmet level [and] opened the floodgates to a new sub-industry,” Barbara Kessel wrote me from Jerusalem.

What became clear from my unscientific survey is that in a polarized and media-saturated age, there are fewer books that American Jews might have in common than, say, 40 years ago. But maybe that’s OK. Each year sees a flood of new Jewish books, capturing voices beyond the ashkenormative assumptions of the 20th century and as diverse as the people who write and read them: Mizrachim, women, interfaith families, LGBT Jews, Jews of color, Jews by choice, the religious, the formerly religious.

“Today, my understanding of Jewish life is so much bigger (and richer),” the writer Erika Dreifus wrote me, remembering her own childhood among Ashkenazi Jews in the metro New York area. “I’m so much more aware of Jewish experience that differs from my own.”

[gryficowa]

It occurred to me that what is happening to Muslims and what they are experiencing may be even worse than what Jews experienced and this thought is terrifying...

In a sense, I mean that it is worse than what the Jews experienced (Because they experienced something terrible, I will say it directly, the way Hitler manipulated people and how he dehumanized is terrible, there is no doubt, so when I say that it is worse, then it's worse and that's something that's terrifying, the holocaust itself was fucking terrible, the process itself that led to it was fucking terrible, the concentration camps themselves were terrible, so that's squared, and that says too much and shouldn't happen, the continuation of the holocaust itself sounds like something that shouldn't happen, but the holocaust squared and more worse process that took place? This would have been unimaginable years ago that something could be even worse, it was a tragedy unforgettable and lasting for generations, so what effect will it have today when it is worse?), in short, the process of dehumanization was facilitated by an invention called… the Internet (I know, I sound like a boomer who hates the Internet, it's not that, the Internet has many strengths, but used incorrectly it leads to bad things and this is the proof)

I mean that the process of dehumanization of Muslims was made easier, not only was there TV, but also the Internet, because while in the times of the Third Reich access to easier dehumanization lasted for years, the Internet took care of it by accelerating this process by many millions of percent (Because when it comes to o the Internet, was a master of dehumanizing his victims, this can be seen at the beginning of YouTube and everything else)

Hello, compare the dehumanization of Jews to the dehumanization of Muslims in the era of the Internet (After the situation of September 11), it was faster than in the case of Jews (And that says a lot…), because the flow of information was easier (It has advantages, but also a disadvantage what is the dehumanization of various groups…) and therefore the dehumanization of Muslims was rapid, so when a Muslim was harmed by an Islamophobe, they either remained silent or praised the perpetrator because "These evil Islamists deserved it!" This level of dehumanization of Muslims is worse than what the Jews experienced, and as I mentioned, the process itself was terrifying, so Yes… I can't describe it, it's just that the process itself was worse because it was easier to obtain information (including false information for the purpose of dehumanization that people believed in), unfortunately, the Internet contributed a lot to dehumanization and it sucks, because it shouldn't happen

Unfortunately, the beginning of greater access to the Internet was a gift, but not for everyone, if you were a dehumanized group, the Internet became hell, as shown by the multitude of stories of how the Internet decided to persecute children, including those with disabilities (Because they are funny and such… . Yes, the Internet was so fucked up back then), but apart from children, Muslims were also killed by fake information used by Islamophobes to increase dislike towards them as people, and the mainstream media was no better either, they often swallowed fake information and treated it as the truth, so yes, one Islamophobe wrote false information, then the real media noticed it and they were so concerned about history (made out of thin air), that they started spreading it (Without doing anything to find out about its credibility, yes, journalists in those days were lazy)

People were more susceptible to propaganda involving dehumanization, so it was a matter of time until Muslims were treated as inferior to others (while spreading many harmful stereotypes about this ethnic group, e.g. that they are terrorists and rape women, you know, a classic what we have already heard about Hamas, nothing new)

What happened to Muslims is worse than what happened to Jews is not to erase the Holocaust, but to draw attention to how quickly and efficiently dehumanization has taken place nowadays compared to what happened during Hitler's times, which makes it more terrifying because it took less than a decade, for Muslims to be treated as punching bags, unfortunately, Muslims themselves are defenseless due to the fact that Jews at least have legal defense and can defend themselves in this way, Muslims don't have it so bright, their rights are not as easy as Jews (Nowadays , not only them, black people are also fucked in this respect in the law itself), unfortunately, it shows how people's laws are full of holes, when you do not belong to minorities protected by the country itself, then they can kill you, because if you defend yourself against an attacker, you will go to prison for being a murderer and they will antagonize you in the mainstream media (Because you are not white or Jewish, they would listen to you), which is seen many times when a non-white person defends himself against an attacker…

Unfortunately, I notice the fact that the Jews themselves do not notice this small but important privilege that they will care about your report when something bad happens, it is a small but important privilege that you will not even notice, because unfortunately, but you have no knowledge about other groups that are persecuted and how helpless they are in this situation, because the police don't care about them, they can't defend themselves (trans people, black people, Muslims), because the media will start antagonizing them and portraying them as perpetrators, even though they were not perpetrators, but victims… This is unfortunately happening and it sucks, Unfortunately, Muslims do not have the same privilege as you in this respect and Islamophobia still thrives, often on tragedy, when the police fail them, and then a toxic cycle develops that fuels discrimination, no matter what they do, they will be angry because the law does not protect them, because they are considered aggressors, they can be beaten and defend themselves, but they will be angry because they hurt a white man ( Or a Jew… Because I don't know, he attacked them, which happens…) and the media feeds on it, so do Islamophobes who later have arguments why "Muslims are evil" and so on endlessly, the dehumanization of Muslims has become something "Normal", and it should never be like that, unfortunately, people don't care about fatalities if they are not whites or Jews themselves , so statistics are omitted, when the mentioned groups attacked them for the purpose of racist and Islamophobic propaganda, if the same were done to dehumanize Jews, it would be a drama for the whole world and all the media to say how terrible it is, but how is it done towards other groups (which are also persecuted) all this is silent :/

Do you see why this is worse than the Holocaust? There are a lot of factors here and the fact how quickly the dehumanization of one group went is terrifying, not even a decade has passed before this group was already dehumanized and now we see genocides of these groups, but people remain silent or blame them for self-defense when they are attacked (Because Muslims are bad, so they deserve to be murdered), or classic pinkwashing/homonationalism in order to play on the feelings of LGBT+ people so that they follow suit and become Islamophobic, because genocide is acceptable when the propaganda is used that all Muslims are queerphobes who will kill you for being LGBT+, seriously, this is sick

What is happening in this world is sick and we should stop defending only Jews (Especially Zionists, because not every Jew is a Zionist, but many Zionists consider themselves Jews, you get the idea), especially when they are aggressors against a group that she does not have the privilege of defending her from people, or the law and it should not be accepted, using "Anti-Semitism" as a shield is disgusting when you rub your face with the trauma of those who experienced crimes from Hitler and his followers, you are simply disgusting, you feed on people's trauma for your own benefit, to attack a group which she's more vulnerable than you, it's not normal, it is sick

Simply put, the situation of Muslims is not that good and is worse than what the Jews experienced, not only is xenophobia also racism, because compared to Jews, they cannot hide in the crowd because their features and skin color betray them, so even if they did not wear a hijab (or other headgear), they would still fall victim to attacks because that they can't stop looking like Muslims, you Jews have the privilege of looking like the rest of the people and the police are on your side too, so is the mainstream media, so why today are you using it to hurt others and silencing other Jews when they are not like that like you and defend the weaker?

Zionist Jews are annoying, especially because they strongly deny being Jewish to other Jews who are against genocide and compared to them, they are not Islamophobic, but good people (And it doesn't help that Zionists cooperated with the Nazis, so this defense with the text "Anti-Semitism" is cynical)

Many Zionists will probably be angry that I say directly that what is happening to Muslims is even worse than what happened to Jews, but someone has to finally say something about it, because it is not normal that one group has been dehumanized to such an extent so much that when someone dies because of Islamophobia, people don't care

It's worse because of how fast it happened, because when they die no one cares, I hate that we are in a world where dehumanization is legal and socially acceptable, this should never have happened

[girlactionfigure]

My father died in 2016. I didn't attend his funeral or burial in Cairo. I felt awful, so I asked my family for some belongings to remind me of him. I was given quite a few things, including a book that bought us in 2000 and often read for me and my brother.

The book is called "stories of animals in the Quran". The publisher is based in downtown Cairo and the book can be found anywhere.

Today, I will share some of the quotes from this book (cover page attached in this post and other photos in first comment).    

- The Golden Calf: the house of Israel are idol worshippers who are not true to faith. 

- Elephant: there was once a man who was king in Yemen, his name was "Zu Nawas", he was a tyrant. Two Jewish men lured him to embrace Judaism and to leave Christianity and force Judaism on the people, but the people didn't abandon Christianity. So, they [the men] suggested that he dig a deep pit and fill it with fire and offer the people an ultimatum, embrace Judaism or be thrown in the fire. 

- Donkey: better than Jews who were burdened with the Torah and rather than keep it, they forged it and altered it. 

- Apes: the ape Saturday people, Allah never transfigured a nation to the most degenerate animal as he did to the house of Israel. Allah obliged them to Friday, they deviated from it and accepted Saturday. 

I was 10 in 2000, my brother was 7. This is what we were told about Jews. This is what kids are taught in Muslim countries. 

But, of course, go ahead. Tell yourself that Israel is to blame. Scream, "free Palestine", and fall for the lie that the antisemitism we see on our streets has nothing to do with MUSLIM ANTISEMITISM and a campaign of GLOBAL JIHAD waged by millions of Muslims across the world. 

Go on, fall for the lies. Be a useful idiot. But, don't you ever dare gaslight me and tell me that what I was taught and experienced, and that the evidence I show you TODAY, is not true!!!

I will speak out against Muslim antisemitism until the last day of my life. I have a favour to ask: please share this with all the loud Muslim activists who argue there's no antisemitism within Muslim communities, especially Mehdi Hasan who blocked me, and the loud broadcasters involved in this conflict, such as Piers Morgan!

"the book is called "stories of animals in the Quran"