#us Americans doesn't mean Christian Israel doesn't mean Jewish

[dragonlights]

I'm feeling Some Type of Way about other Jewish folks being like. "They're chanting to Kill Us" about "from the river to the sea". Like.

It feels the same type of way as usmericans (I am one, for context) getting afraid for calls to return the land to its native inhabitants. That doesn't mean kill???

Also, do they just think that because Israel exists, Palestinian Jews just.... All got up and left? Nobody stayed? With their families, their friends, their Homes???

I find that. Unlikely.

And FURTHERMORE. It's not free of Jews! It's free of Israel!!! It doesn't even imply the people of Israel getting hurt!

And look. I do believe that there are lots of folks here in the US who can't tell when their activism maybe crosses the line into antisemitism. But. Just saying "X thing is antisemitic" with No Further Conversation???? Like people don't have a right to go "how? Why do you think it means what it does? Have you considered you might be wrong?"

It's frustrating. People getting arrested and harmed for protesting a Fucking Genocide that we're complicit in and like.

Even if you as an individual believes it's fine for Israel to exist and it has a Right To Defend Itself like... Can we use critical thinking here? That maybe actions of The State have Ulterior Motives for killing 30k people, even while retaliating an act of terrorism???

It's like being like "well, I think the United States has a Right to defend itself" to protestors against the war in Iraq and such. And it's like. Okay! Cool. Conversation to be had after the civilian casualties slow down, ya?

Like. I have Thoughts about violent resistance against oppressive regimes and how people like the Idea of it but not The Reality. And that there are harms that are done to relatively innocent individuals but that sad fact doesn't necessarily mean that the method isn't necessary, but moreso what steps were taken before, and how can we solve these systemic problems with oppression and colonial power being inherently abusive Before it reaches this point.

Like. Maybe we can look at the bombing, the mass casualties, and go "isn't Israel supposed to be some kind of powerful military- who not only has been offered their hostages back in exchange for Palestinian hostages, at a rate consistent with the ratio of Palestinians Taken hostage, so why do they not use this method instead? How can they be sure they aren't killing their own citizens when they bomb areas like this?? Can you think of any Ulterior Motives a colonial state may have for bombing a region and then trying to develop real estate???? Any at all????"

And idk. I'm not A Great Wordsmith who can get these ideas out in an evocative and thought-provoking way. I'm just tired and mad. And want less oppressive regimes in the world.

[hero-israel]

Let me tell you being a former Christian this shit goes so much deeper than a lot of born Jews realize. The Christian worldview (specifically Calvinist/Puritan) seeping into and pervading all of modern leftism is honestly frightening. But also it's very funny.

They believe that there are Good people and Bad people, and that any mistake or lapse in judgment or instance of not being educated is a Mask Off moment, showing who is a member of the Elect and who is not. If you fuck up, that's not just a fuck up, it's Revealing. You are damned, were always damned, you were just good at hiding it, and now we know the truth and are doubly angry because not only are you evil, you lied about it. The only recourse is to shun you, and if that leads to your death, so be it. Anyone who's seen any micro celebrity get canceled saw this in action.

And the only way you can prove you're a member of the Elect is to operate as if you have nothing to hide. You have to loudly and proudly proclaim your righteousness. If you don't have anything to hide why would you be worried? Privacy is suspicious. You Must Speak on everything they deem important or else you obviously agree with the Bad People. There is no room for discussion or healthy debate. There are no loopholes or subclauses or other points of view to consider. You're with us or against us. If you don't constantly go around saying you're with us, you're probably secretly against us. The only way to convince your neighbors, whom you inherently distrust, that you're one of the Good Ones, is to perform righteousness, parrot righteous words. The only way to redeem yourself is by grandiose acts of self flagellation, perhaps being the right demographic, or by accusing others of Heresy.

The goal is not to bring good into the world, it's to recruit more people into the same thought patterns (that's kind of all Christian denominations though). Because if you can convince your community that you're one of the Elect, that means G-d preselected you for Heaven, and you're golden. No repercussions or consequences baby. The only material benefit for you is that you "get" to proclaim you're going to Heaven and everyone has to agree with you. If anyone doesn't they're probably going to Hell anyway. You're on the right side (of history), so why should you ever self reflect or grow? Why should you question anything? Why should nuance or empathy exist? This is about Right and Wrong. We know where we stand, where do you stand?

Every single aspect of American culture and politics, right and "left" alike, was planted by the pilgrims, and it is so fundamentally antithetical to true Leftist thought. Remember all the actually successful Western Leftist movements were started in Europe (and Israel cough cough)... because they kicked all their fucking psychotic Calvinists out. Those people went to America and that's a big big big reason why we don't have any near as much of a robust Leftist movement as even socially conservative European countries (and Israel cough cough). And what's funny is I still find myself slipping into these thought patterns, which is so not compatible with Jewish philosophy or theology. It's been years and I'm still not done.

It's a hell of a drug to kick, so I definitely don't trust white goysiche college kids who've been antitheists for about 6 months since they left their Republican parents' homes to have any great success in unlearning and unprogramming from this. Which is kind of obvious in that I see them acting just like their conservative Christian parents every day on every social media platform, swap out a gun toting white Jesus with some noble savage idea of Palestine, absolving the West of its sins against the Global South.

It is a cult structured around spiritual isolation, antisocial behavior, and it is inherently against any kind of political movement that centers and celebrates the Community. It is designed to tear communities apart and foster obedience to whatever authority can force itself on them. And this has been going on for almost 500 years, there is nothing we can do about it.

Thank you for the insightful look. Their "purity culture" approach definitely had to come from somewhere.

[callimara]

Important PSA

Criticizing Israel is NOT antisemetism or an attack on Jewish people because

ISRAEL =/= ALL JEWS

And while I am not saying that there is no antisemitism because there is plenty of that too, this is not a case of that. But grouping all Jews together as Israeli and presenting them as a monolith erases their individuality and identity. It's like calling all Asian people Chinese, and that if you criticize China, then you hate all Asian people. It doesn't make sense.

I am so frustrated seeing people who are trying to raise awareness about Palestine be called antisemetic and disgusting by people who cannot perceive Jews and Muslims as anything but a monolith. That's the reason why so many people are having trouble distinguishing between Hamas and Palestinian civilians, because to them, they're all the same.

And that's why they don't see an issue with collective punishment.

And you know what? Palestine is NOT just the Jewish holy land. It is also the Christian holy land, and the Muslim holy land. Palestine wasn't even the first choice for a Jewish homeland because it was heavily contested by Jewish rabbis at the time.

Turning Palestine (I say Palestine because the entirety of what is now Israel used to be Palestine) as an exclusively Jewish ethno-state means that people of Christian and Muslim faith all over the world are stripped of their holy land. The oldest church in the world, dating back to the times of Christ is located in Gaza, and who are the ones protecting it? Palestinians.

And you know who bombed it? Even though it had 500 refugees of both Muslim and Christian faith inside? Israel.

Even the slogan used for the founding of Israel itself, "A land without people for a people without a land." Is blatantly revisionist and erases the existence of Palestinians already living there. It erases all the historic religious sites that stand there and are frequented regularly by their respective devotees. Or worse, does not consider the Palestinians as 'people.'

Some people tend to forget that religious belief is NOT the same as race, and so you CANNOT claim indigeneity just because you are a certain religion. I am an Indonesian Muslim. Born Muslim, raised Muslim, and every generation of my family have been Muslim. That doesn't mean I can say I'm indigenous to Saudi Arabia. Let alone that Saudi Arabian land is my birthright.

If a white American woman born and raised in Seattle decides to convert to Hinduism, can she then say she is now indigenous to India? Or if she has a child, and that child had a child, and they were all raised as a Hindu, but have always lived in the US all their lives, can they claim that they are indigenous to India?

No.

And the fact is, the first Jewish settlers during The First Aliyah (great Jewish migration to Palestine) came from Eastern Europe and are genetically closer to Russians and other Slavs than they are to the Jews who remained in the Middle Eastern region after their exile (and I guess some people forget that you can convert into Judaism even if you didn't come from "The Promised Land." Like for marriages and stuff.) That's why they feel the need to distinguish themselves from the word "Arab."

Granted, there were also Yemeni Jews that migrated with them (whom I would say have stronger claims to indigeneity), but even in the transition camps, there was a clear divide between the European Ashkenazi Jews and the Yemeni Jews, who literally had their kids taken from them to give to the Ashkenazi Jews.

And let's not forget that when Jewish migrants from Ethiopia came, they were given contraceptives without consent to make sure they didn't impact the "desired" population.

Wake up. This isn't a religious war. This is European colonization.

[vergess]

Choosing you as the most likely to give a honest and detailed answer. Feel free to delete, however.

When people are calling Israel a colony, what do they mean? The way I understand that word, a colony is land, controlled by some other country that's elsewhere and run by citizens of that country. That doesn't seem to be the case here, since most Israel citizens are only citizens of Israel, not something else, and there's no "main" country they're representing and can return to. Or are people using "colony" metaphorically here?

Before Tumblr mobs me - I don't like Israel and don't support it.

Israel began as a British colony of Palestine in the post WW1 era, around 1920. The people responsible for the genocide are almost entirely of European origin who were moved to Palestine after WW2 (in the 1940s and 1950s) to avoid returning to the homelands where they'd been given up to the nazis by their neighbors.

Today, however, the bulk of the colonization effort is managed by the US military industrial complex.

Now, there are many other people living in Israel, of many faiths and many ethnicities. The Israeli people, be they Jews or otherwise, are also not fans of the genocide, in much the same way the American people are not fans of US genocides.

But the israeli government exists almost entirely as a puppet for US and European colonial goals, and has done since the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in the 90s.

Prior to that, there was a brief period wherein the rightfully elected leaders of Israel sought peace in the region after throwing off the shackles of British colonialism, which again founded the country and only "ended" (on paper) in the 1950s.

Israel has been a colonial effort for about 2/3s of the century it has existed, including today.

Now, this is a simplified explanation, of course. For example, although it was was a colonial effort, the "return" of Jews to their "homeland" was also a refugee effort, and a repatriation effort.

Jews never really "stopped" being indigenous to the levant even in diaspora. This is extremely obvious if you've ever lived in a Jewish neighborhood, but may come as a shock to a lot of people used to thinking of the assimilated mask Jews wear in Christian societies as our "true" selves.

My family were nondiasporic Jews until me, which I gather is an... unusual perspective that many people don't see often. You'll have to take me at my word, I think, because it's difficult to explain. But Jews never actually "became white" the way people so desperately want to believe. Some jews learned to pass for white, yes, but that isn't the same thing.

Jews, even the Ashkenazim (the "white european" ones) have a right to return home the same as anyone. And not just because I'm a fan of open borders.

But here's the deal.

Mizrahim (Jews who remained in the middle east rather than living in diaspora) are literally treated as inferior, as "arabs" (a colonial term) regardless of religion or ethnicity. To be a Jew is not enough. You have to be the right kind. This is true of other Jews of Colour in Israel as well, often to an even greater extreme, as any Ethiopian Jew in Israel damned well knows.

This also... well, I've talked about it a bit before, but this summary is also casting a very cruel light on the concept of Jewish citizenship being automatically granted in the case of Jewish descent. Which isn't fair of me at all.

In a world without all the goddamned genocide, having a reduced immigration process for the children of emigrants is perfectly fucking common and normal and many countries do it, including the US.

And this also doesn't touch upon the critical political reality that Israel exists as a place for bigots to throw their jews away instead of straight up killing us.

So, okay, this got away from me.

Basically, Israel as a state is a colony of the US (today) and UK (historic), which is armed almost entirely by the US, and which attacks targets the US deems "of interest." The fact that the colony is populated by repatriated indigenous peoples doesn't really change that.

If anything, it deepens the horror, because many of the Jews involved in the genocide against Palestine genuinely (and fairly) believe that this is the last place on earth where a Jewish person can reasonably expect religious safety. Genuinely, and fairly, believe that it's a choice between "the genocide of all Jews globally or the elimination of a single '''Arab''' city."

They're wrong, but not irrational.

In a way, the existence of global antisemitism is the justification that fuels the ongoing palestinian genocide.

Though in practical terms, it is "fueled" by US weapons. The US wants to own Israel and use it as a launching off point for US violence in the region, without the US having to take the blame.

"See? It's all just poor, innocent Israel defending itself*!"

*(entirely with US weapons and often on US orders, often with weapons given to Israel rather than purchased, solely to further destabilize a religiously and financially significant region and furthermore to instill a sense of fear of Israel's neighbors and gratitude to the US)

For another example of a colony-of-the-repatriated, you can check out the history of civil war in Liberia, after the US just dumped a bunch of freed slaves there instead of killing them. Unsurprisingly, it went fucking Badly. However, because Liberia was not considered a "valuable" colony, less study tends to be done into the complexities of that.

Or, I mean, there's always "the life history of Osama Bin Laden" which is kind of like a one man speedrun of what the US is doing with all of Israel.

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[lordhavemercyyyyy]

just brought myself to tears with the shortest prayer of my life just trying to ask God for help for the people in Gaza and Palestine right now, highly recommend to my fellow children of God to actually do something good and support victims of genocide and now I'm gonna rant about why it doesn't fucking matter whether you (directed towards Christians, specifically American Christians) side with the Gazans and Palestinians or if you side with Israel, genocide is just that: genocide.

“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37–39).

The Bible itself tells us to show love and compassion for others regardless of who they are. All humans are children of God, whether they believe in the Jewish and Christian God or if they believe in another, or even if they follow no god. The Lord in Heaven created us all in His image, so we are all the same deep down. Meaning, how about we actually stop giving a fuck about taking sides and start praying for the victims of genocide, start advocating for victims of oppression. Push all accusations of antisemitism or racism aside, GENOCIDE IS GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE IS MURDER, AND MURDER IS SIN. If you truly consider yourself a righteous believer in the Lord, then act like it. Advocate for His law. Show kindness to all others, as Jesus preached.

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:43–44). It does not matter who they are, they are people deserving of love and compassion.

[a-queer-seminarian]

Puerto Rican Jewish poet & activist Aurora Levins Morales speaks on solidarity & the history of antisemitism

From her poem "Red Sea":

...We cannot cross until we carry each other, all of us refugees, all of us prophets. No more taking turns on history's wheel, trying to collect old debts no-one can pay. The sea will not open that way.  This time that country is what we promise each other, our rage pressed cheek to cheek until tears flood the space between, until there are no enemies left, because this time no one will be left to drown and all of us must be chosen.  This time it's all of us or none.

I was deeply moved by an article on Levins Morales' website in which she examines modern-day Israel through a zoomed-out lens of millennia of antisemitism:

‘Long before that state was founded out of the ashes of genocide and at the expense of a colonized Arab people, Jews were the shock absorbers of Europe's class societies, "Middle Agents" drafted into being the local representatives of distant and definitely Christian ruling classes who alternately exploited and persecuted them while squeezing the life blood out of Europe's peasants and workers.'

People are often confused by anti-Semitism. They see many US Jews accumulating wealth, moving up, gaining positions of influence, and they say, "What oppression?"... 

The whole point of anti-Semitism has been to create a vulnerable buffer group that can be bribed with some privileges into managing the exploitation of others, and then, when social pressure builds, be blamed and scapegoated, distracting those at the bottom from the crimes of those at the top. Peasants who go on pogrom against their Jewish neighbors won't make it to the nobleman's palace to burn him out and seize the fields. This was the role of Jews in Europe. This has been the role of Jews in the United States, and this is the role of Jews in the Middle East…’

Levins Morales explains those “buffer” roles in detail, describes how Latin@s are often put in these roles as well, and then brings up an author who said of Israelis, “given all they’ve endured, they should know better.” She responds to this with this insight:

‘Trauma doesn't make people into better human beings. Most of the time, trauma just makes people terrified and easier to manipulate. It makes starving Irish tenants fleeing a devastating famine willing to own slaves or homestead Native American land or police the ghettos they used to live in. It makes the formerly kidnapped and enslaved willing to set up shop in Liberia and hold their African kin in contempt. It makes the survivors of Hitler's Final Solution be willing to become harsh colonial masters, agents of US oil greed and militarism, to bulldoze the villages of Palestinians to make Jewish settlements, torture and kill those who resist, and still insist they are the victims here. People who have faced destruction don't necessarily know better.’

While naming that trauma doesn’t make people “better,” just leaves them terrified and grasping at any sense of security they can, Levins Morales is also sure to note how Jews have always been “disproportionately present in movements for social justice wherever [they] have landed.” To her, fighting antisemitism means supporting Jewish integrity, the Jewish commitment to justice and compassion. 

Furthermore, solidarity with the people of Israel and Palestine alike depends on our clear stand against antisemitism in our own communities, because, she says, 

'The central justification for Israeli militarism and the subjugation of Palestinians is the belief that Jews are alone in the world, that no-one will fight for us, that the next time Jews are blamed and attacked, most of the world's people will stand by and watch.'

Only through all of us standing up to antisemitism and standing side by side with our Jewish neighbors, she says, can Jews feel secure enough to “abandon the middle agent role and get the backs of other peoples, knowing that they also have ours."

It is this vision of interdependence and mutual aid that Levins Morales brings into her poem “Red Sea," which imagines the kind of liberation when Moses parted the Red Sea happening today — but only if we support one another.

[vonnegutcunt]

hypocracy is generally trivial but it's so important to note that many of the same liberal-minded people who are handwavingly like, "we need israel, having a jewish state is the only way to protect jewish people" (which- what a sad but not unfair nod to the antisemitism of every nation in the world, propaganda though it may be) are so intensely opposed to those "inherently oppresive islamic states". (by which i mean muslim majority states with religion central to the government system and values. not to be confused with islamic statism) meanwhile, europeans and americans live in christian majorities whose (speaking now for the us) governing body has an immense interest in courting the support of a conservative christian right wing (who represent many of the implicit values the country was founded on). which is apples to oranges but it is to say that no one gets an ethnostate or theocracy, if you can establish why it's bad in one instance it should be obvious why it's bad in another and refusing to recognize that is just racist? religion only backwards and conservative when it doesn't support my interests?

[clarabosswald]

If you really did want to help Palestine, you wouldn't be advocating for Israel.

Its not about the few good people in Israel. It's about the fucking genocide.

okay, it's taken a while but we've finally reached an ask that's not completely deranged. so i'm gonna answer this with good faith.

i'm gonna start with one idea - the separation of the israeli government from the israeli people. did the people of israel choose rightwing governments again and again, that have all led to the occupation and murder or palestinians? yes, because, as per democracy, different parties got enough seats to form those governments. but to claim that all millions of israelis (including israeli-arabs - muslims, christians, druze, beduin) have all, 100%, supported everything those governments ever did, is... a really crass misrepresentation of what democracy is. like, the very very basic and simple concept of democracy. you're ignoring the simple fact that it's never 100% of citizens who vote in every election. you're ignoring the hundreds of thousands of children and teenagers who don't get to vote. and, of course, you're branding all the people who did not vote for those governments as meaningless.

tell me, when bush was the american president, did 100% of all americans want to see afghanistan eradicated? when trump was the american president, did 100% of all americans want to expel all immigrants? when PiS held the majority in poland, did 100% of polish people want poland to become an "lgbt+-free zone"? did 100% of brazilians agree with bolsonaro that the amazon rainforest should be leveled? i could go on.

it's an insane double standard.

so when you say i'm "advocating for israel" you mean i'm advocating for its government, which i'm not. i'm advocating for the people - millions of lives - because i hold this silly idea that human lives are priceless and should always be protected.

it's the same reason why, outside of tumblr (because one internet blog doesn't reflect my whole life), in my own real life, i advocate for palestinian lives.

because you know what israeli nutjobs are saying?

they're saying that the residents of the gaza strip - all 2 million plus of them - are measured by hamas' actions. their government.

does it matter that the last elections were over 15 years ago? does it matter that the overwhelming majority of gaza's current population were too young to vote then/weren't even born back then? does it matter that hamas took the government power by force, and have led an authoritarian regime in the strip ever since? no, to those people, it doesn't matter. to them, all palestinians are hamas.

just like how to you, all israelis are the government.

it is absolutely surreal how much these two extremist groups are mirroring one another - the pro-hamas bunch and the pro-jewish supremacy bunch. using the exact same vocabulary. the exact same justifications. the exact same justification to minimize and trivialize the lives and values of millions of people. "their leaders are like that, so they're all like that, and they all deserve to suffer and die."

so yeah, it is about the """"few"""" good people in israel (sorry the number isn't high enough for you, it's hard gauging exactly how many humans are "enough"). just as it is about the """"few"""" good people in palestine (as i keep saying on israeli platforms to the people who trivialize palestinian lives).

people don't mean nothing. no one will ever convince me of that.

[jyndor]

for years I have said that the comparisons between the holocaust and israeli occupation are inappropriate and (because people have in my experience generally only made them as a cheap gotcha to all jewish people) antisemitic.

I do not think of the holocaust first when I think of the 75-year palestinian genocide. I think of the genocides of indigenous peoples in the americas, I think of apartheid south africa, I think of the trail of tears and the armenian genocide.

but how am I supposed to see men stripped down to their underwear packed in military trucks and not think of the holocaust?

and the us vetoed that un security council resolution. and the uk abstained. well, genociders gotta stick together, I guess.

land back now. reparations now. free palestine and all the people of the world everywhere NOW.

edit: to be clear comparisons are also always, always just pieces of different things that have similarities. genocides all have similarities and they all have things that are unique to them. I don't love the idea that we can't use comparisons to learn about them - people naturally look for patterns, it isn't shocking that people might see surface level similarities and make comparisons.

that said nazism is not just fascism, and the holocaust isn't just genocide. just because the state of israel is going fascist and is committing genocide, it doesn't mean that israeli fascism is nazism. nazism is about hating jewish people and creating a white christian ethnostate. it's pretty obvious that that is not what israel is on about.

time for another comparison: like us americans after 9/11, most jewish israelis support the war. now I'm not super keen on the results from the polls of israelis bc they have relatively small sample sizes (600 each) but polls are not so much about the exact numbers as they are about finding trends.

personally I think the comparison between the us and israel is far better but again, comparisons are surface level at best and really don't do anything except perhaps help with identifying macro level trends of different stuff. ie: how settler colonialism leads to dehumanization, fascism and genocide.

[sunspira]

this reminded me I feel we need to make clear that settler colonialism is not the same thing as migration and immigration. The difference of which is many but the point being that indigenousness really only matters in terms of violent displacement and genocide. in context of international power dynamics under imperialism colonialism and exploitation. migration can be a natural human thing and not at all immoral or condemnable or deserving of violence.

this is very important in the israel and palestine discussion and in all genocide denialist conversations. being indigenous did not give german gentiles a right to massacre jewish diaspora and other immigrants. because those immigrants got there as normal immigrants. which is entirely different than the kind of casualties that can befall settler colonists who by virtue of their role are not civilians, they are military outposts that very intentionally recruits family units with inadequate military training put in the line of fire on purpose as a PAWN for sympathy and because family units are the most effective way to root a permanent colonial settlement as proven by the genocide of north america. and who may lose their lives when we resist violent colonialism with violence.

perhaps just as importantly, ashkenazi jewish germans WERE and ARE indigenous to germany, because being the oldest and only ethnic group to a land is a bit of an anthropological myth that doesn't exist. ANYONE who got there through the natural and timeless means of human migration is indigenous, at least in the meaningful contexts of imperial violence and stolen land. ashkenazi jewish people were always indigenous citizens of germany.

similarly, palestinian arabs who trace their earliest recorded ancient origins to the middle of the arab peninsula and migrated to the north of the peninsula to the coastal Levant region are considered indigenous. indeed the hebrews of judea were just as indigenous, if not with even older records to the lands along the coast that are now called palestine! many palestinian christians trace their origins as well to the pre-abrahamic phonecian people and the assyrians. during the abrahamic era, the canaanites who were there just as long as the hebrews were likely arab, phonecian, assyrian and SO MUCH MORE in ethnicity. many of which are non abrahamic ethnoreligious groups i failed to mention and perhaps fall beyond the scope of the hebrew jewish vs muslim arab claims. palestinian jewish people and other levantine jewish people matter just as much as the other indigenous ethnicities such as the palestinian/levantine christians and palestinian/levantine muslims.

and while christians jews and muslims born and raised in other lands do not have AUTOMATIC and TOTALITARIAN CLAIM to palestinian land. they do have every right to IMMIGRATE to palestine. to actual palestine. as equals. under the state of palestine and become citizens.

see jewish americans or russian polish jewish people wanting to move to palestine because it was once the home of their hebrew ancestors is NOT wrong in the slightest. people moving to palestine and having ashkenazi jewish communities and enclaves is NOT the problem. it would be wonderful. but that's not what isreal is. dear god i wish that was all that Israel was or is. that's what the first holocaust refugees to the land WERE. regular immigrant civilians seeking a new home under palestinian law. and as such they were welcomed with open arms. but you know, as equals. not as a siege of viking conquerors literally raping and pillaging because like the manifest destiny english before them and the norse seeking valhallah before that, they believed they were given a divine right to do so. that is not immigration that is an act of war. normal immigration is not war. normal immigration is not a problem. least of all to a place your ancestors used to live. that's lovely. it was the decision to enact an american military organized and funded hostile takeover and murder and enslavement of the other civilians that is the fuckijg problem. hello.

[frostyreturns]

"God says Israel belongs to the jews"

No God used Israel as a synonym for the jews as a people. They were called Israel long before ever setting foot in the land we now call the modern state Israel. They were called Israel while they still lived in Africa, when they were slaves in Egypt they were called Israelites. Saying Israel belongs to the jews in the context of the Biblical Israelites is a nonsense sentence that doesn't mean anything it's like saying Christianity belongs to Christians.

And if you don't think God has ever been against Israel then you didn't read your Bible, there are many times Israel stopped serving God and God turned against them. Which should show us God's support and endorsement is conditional and not an eternal allegiance to an ethnicity or a government that didn't exist before 1947. Any Biblical account of God's support for Israel is speaking specifically about his followers as a whole who yes at the time were all jews. And yes jews still believe that they are exclusively God's people but as Christians we don't, we believe jews stopped being God's people when they rejected Christ and his fulfillment of the law. Modern day Israel does not serve God, they do not even follow jewish law. The government of Israel on a daily basis violates both Christian and Jewish commands persecuting not just Palestinians and muslims but Christians and jews as well. If ever there was a government not serving God it's Israel, which is why God also warned Israel not to even have a government.

There was also that part of the Bible where Jesus said his kingdom was not of this earth but sure I guess that is consistent with the idea that a certain plot of land needs to be fought over and innocents killed in God's name. Now either God is inconsistent and contradicts himself or you're wrong. It's not God who is being inconsistent it's statist brainwashed conservative Americans who can't tell the difference between religion, ethnicity, and state.

If you're not going to personally go die for Israel and if you're not willing to personally blow up innocent civilians in the name of a foreign government tangentially related to a religion you do not even follow... having this specific plot of land then shut the fuck up and stop using God's name to support things God specifically condemns.

inb4 hurdur ur an antisemitism and nazi

[marta-bee]

I've been ruminating (some would say obsessing) on that word I keep seeing used to describe the situation in Gaza. Genocide. Long post is long, so let's put this under a cut.

I know there's debate on some quarters on whether it's accurate; I'm not sure it is, but also think that question misses the point, because whatever else Gaza is, it's a humanitarian fuck-show. And it's caused, beside the obvious, by Israeli willingness to risk human life rather than tolerate a risk to their own security (which they're much better equipped to protect themselves from than the people of Gaza are), coupled with Israeli refusal to make lasting peace with their neighbor enabled by American military and cultural support. So yes, this one feels personal to me both as an American and someone with mixed Jewish-Christian heritage. People who claim to represent me are enabling said humanitarian fuck-show, which is nothing if not uncomfortable.

That said, every time I see that word it gets stuck in my craw a bit. Not because it's untrue but because mass human suffering caused by violence against an ethnic minority is hardly limited to Gaza, or to the present moment. So I'm questioning whether the Gaza situation is uniquely terrible. Not that it needs to be; I don't post about it much here because Tumblr is my refuge from the offline world, but I am doing quite a lot in RL to support Gaza, and to press my congressmen to take a stronger stance against Israel. I don't want to give the impression I'm not bothered or lukewarm just because I'm not vocal about it here.

But the fact that this suffering and violence isn't unique makes me really uncomfortable with that word because, let's face it, the language is intended to outrage people. I've been thinking about a phrase Fred Clarke (the blogger "Slacktivist" at Patheos, a moderate Baptist who often criticized Christian evangelicalism and fundamentalism) used to parody fundamentalist stances on abortion. "Satanic baby-killers" - it was how the fundamentalists supposedly described abortionists and pro-life folks; not sure if they really used it or if Clarke invented it to make his point. The point being, even if you believed this was accurate of what abortionists were doing, the real reason to use it was to make abortionists and fellow citizens who happened to be pro-life seem so other, so --well-- Satanic, that it was morally impossible not to support them. It was meant to radicalize their own side and dehumanize the other.

I'm not so worried about dehumanizing Israelis and Jews more generally. I mean, yes, that's a concern, but it's possible to criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic, and this word at least doesn't play into all those old tropes, at least not in a way I can see. I'm more worried about how it shapes the way we think about our fellow Americans. Because America isn't as overwhelmingly outraged by the Gaza crisis as Tumblr and other left-leaning social media would make you believe. A recent Pew Research poll (results published 3/21/24) found that 31% said their sympathies lie entirely or mostly with Israel, and another 26% said they were equally sympathetic toward both groups. There are reasons for this, not particularly valid ones today but historically I understand why so many Americans (particularly older ones and more conservative ones) are primed to support, but for the most part those reasons are outdated, something they need to be encouraged to reconsider and move on from. Accusing them of supporting a genocide only puts them on the defense.

(The short version, based on my personal conversations with family and neighbors: they think of Israel as a democracy in a sea of dictatorships and monarchies, no longer true; Israel is our ally so it's unpatriotic to criticize them, would take more space to deconstruct but if we can't criticize our friends when they do shit like this who can; and they see Israel as a necessary safeguard where Jews can go to escape discrimination, which is vaguely racist and surely a much less humane and effective approach than addressing the anti-Semitism where said Jews actually live. As I said, not valid reasons, but reasons nonetheless I'm trying to help them grow out of through our conversations. Which means they need to feel safe enough to consider they might actually be wrong.)

The bigger concern for me, though, is what this does to the people using that language. That's why I brought up that "Satanic baby-killers" phrase. Because it ratchets up the sense that your neighbors are moral monsters. It dehumanizes them, so you don't see people who are wrong because they haven't educated themselves or even because they have some valid reason to support Israel I'm not seeing (I'm human, I'm fallible, and I always want to hear new ideas I haven't considered because I want to grow). Instead, they see someone despicable, someone who's wholly other from people like them. It dehumanizes them. And, speaking as someone who grew up in the American South in the '80s and '90s, so yes, I did live through that Satanic baby-killer mind set if not the actual language: that shit will mess you up. I'd rather my current friends not have to go through that.

On the other hand: Gaza is still a humanitarian fuck-show. And evil still needs to be opposed. I know that, and I do that. Possibly I should just get over my hang-up over that word and focus on the things that matter more in terms of RL consequences. Still, it bothers me, and -- being me -- I needed to take the time to unpack why.

[transition-with-the-torah]

Title: We Need To Talk About Antisemitism

Author: Rabbi Diana Fersko

Format / Cost: Free (via Libby); 2023 current/first edition.

There are eight chapters covering antisemitism, microaggressions, Christianity, the Holocaust, race, Israel, accountability, and the future.

The author is an American rabbi and quite a few of the examples are based in American culture or discussions, such as modern US-based discussions of conditional whiteness in the chapter on racializing Jews. However, I do think this seems like a pretty good overview of how historical antisemitism has functioned and affects modern strains of antisemitism, including in politically Left-leaning circles.

(This has been tagged with #reviews for personal blog organization purposes and may not be a satisfying or complete review for others. This was finished on the 21st of March but scheduled to post after Purim [23rd through 24th].)

Ch 1: We Need To Talk About Antisemitism

Section: What Even Is Antisemitism?

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance defines antisemitism as "a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." [...] He [Rabbi Jonathan Sacks] famously taught that "antisemitism is not allowing Jews to exist collectively the way we allow others to exist collectively."

The author gives a list of beliefs that have been held together by the logic-less 'conspiracy theory' of antisemitism, which includes well-known lies (like blood libel and punishing Jews for deicide) and new to me lies (like Jews control the weather). It's why antisemitism doesn't fall apart by direct contradictions like "fascists called Jews communists while communists called Jews capitalists."

Antisemitism is a collection of contradictions, but it doesn't matter. Pick the major cultural problem and project it onto the Jews—that's antisemitism.

Section: How Do Antisemites Think?

As a cover, antisemitic accusations throughout history have been coupled with arguments that suggest the problem wasn't the Jews per se, just the things the Jews did. If we would only stop doing those things, we could live in peace. I call this If only the Jews would... type of thinking. The Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that "the euthanasia of Judaism can only be achieved by means of a pure, moral religion, and the abandonment of all of its old regulations." His idea was to take the Judaism out of the Jew. It's a fancy way of saying, If only the Jews would stop being Jewish, we could accept them.

Section: How Does Antisemitism Survive?

The author presents three theories: 1) antisemitism "maintains its appeal by latching on to the highest values of any given society" (religious ideas were most valued in the medieval period so it used devilish religious behaviors, science was most valued in the Enlightenment period so it used race science and eugenics, late 20th-century and forward values have been based around civil rights so Israel [and therefore all Jews] must be the worst violator of human rights ever); 2) antisemitism is a contagious virus (so, like viral spread, antisemitism isn't isolated to one demographic or geographic area) that can mutate and lay dormant before being noticeable again, and 3) antisemitism survives when we don't talk about it.

Ch 2: We Need To Talk About Microaggressions

Microaggressions are much less harmful than the actual violence against Jews. However, they are their own type of injury, the everyday papercuts that Jews encounter. They are the slights that we can just ignore, the vaguely anti-Jewish sentiments that we feel but can't necessarily name. They come from what historian Deborah Lipstadt calls "the dinner party antisemite," the people who make casual but hurtful comments.

The author proposes narrowing as "the practice of restricting Jewish identity to a specific, inflexible, and incomplete Jewish stereotype." Narrowing Jewish Looks goes into 'white skin', hooked or big noses, frizzy or unkempt hair, probably fat, and negative connotations around "looking Jewish" that erases the diversity of how Jews actually can look. Some of this has to do with current day racial differentiation in the US, some of it can overlap with fatphobia, and some of it has to do with historical differences (such as thinking Jews have literal horns). Narrowing Jewish Behavior discusses presumptions about religious observance (the less hidden your observance, the 'more Jewish' you are), skill assumptions (including Jews being better lawyers and financial professionals), and attempts to use comedy as a loophole for presenting a sliding scale of antisemitism - but only as a joke. Narrowing The Jewish Stories We Tell is about a focus on news media and fictional media for leaving Judaism (specifically how Orthodox and Hasidic communities are repressive, antiquated, and must be left entirely). Narrowing Our Own Identity is about hiding your own Jewishness, beating others to the microaggression punch, and the importance of Jews sharing what Jews are like with others [instead of letting non-Jewish people recycle these narrowing stereotypes].

Ch 3: We Need To Talk About Christianity

Even acknowledging any friction between Jews and our Christian counterparts feels like a sensitive topic. Today, Christians and Jews coexist in unparalleled peace in America. Most non-Orthodox Jews I know have Christian family members. My synagogue has Christian board members, and many people in my community have chosen to raise Jewish children in a family where one parent is Jewish and the other is not. [...] That lived reality makes it hard to believe that antisemitism was once fueled by Christianity and even harder to believe that Christian-based antisemitism still exists.

Tbh, I do not find this hard to believe, but I have a feeling that watching people reblog 'Jesus killer' type posts around Xmas 2023 isn't considered a typical exposure to this conversation.

Section: Christian Antisemitism In The Past

Historically, the goal of Christian antisemitism was to distance Christianity as far away from Judaism as possible. The early church was eager, desperate even, to show that Christians and Jews were wholly different. More than that, Jews were dangerous, we were deviants, and Christians should stay far away from us. For hundred of years, Christianity viewed Judaism as a threat. [...] The existence of both traditions was theologically inconsistent. If Judaism was theologically correct, then Christianity was theologically incorrect. Judaism therefore represented an existential threat to Christianity, to which Christian thinkers responded by calling for Jews to give up our beliefs or face violence.

Section: Jews And Money

In the medieval period, merchants and craftspeople began organizing themselves into guilds, which were sort of like professional schools or medical boards. If you wanted to do certain jobs or produce certain goods, you had to be in a guild. Guess who wasn't allowed in? At the same time, the church forbade Christians from working in banking, as they were not permitted to lend money or charge interest. And thus, unable to participate in most mainstream jobs, the Jews were pushed into the world of finance. With this, perhaps the most pervasive stereotype against the Jews became solidified. The Jew became known as a greedy moneylender, controlling the banks, trying to dominate Christian lives through money. That's why, hundreds of years later, a nine-year-old boy in Manhattan has pennies thrown at his feet.

This certainly isn't the only aspect of Xtian antisemitism that started from the early Xtian Church wanting to differentiate itself or that started in the medieval times, but this isn't trying to be a complete history of Xtian antisemitism.

Section: The Christmas Assumption

But Christian antisemitism has found a way to continue to survive. Because today, Christian antisemitism does the opposite of what it used to do. Instead of insisting that Jews are wholly different from Christians, it insists that Jews are wholly the same as Christians. [...] The Christmas assumption is a way of asserting that Jewish rituals are basically Christian rituals in disguise.

While I've absolutely run into this Xtian hegemony before, it feels like a different level of exhaustion to realize that even a rabbi is asked about observing Xmas 'because it's not religious anymore'. (Even a rabbi!)

Section: Christian Antisemitism Today

The Xmas assumption is just one way that Jewish identity gets minimized, and it's not always something that one could consider just a little bit of minimization. The Xtian day of rest and church attendance is assumed to be your day of rest, and trying to get days off from work and/or school for Jewish holidays can turn into A Whole Thing.

Being a Jewish American is also different than being a Christian American in more substantive ways. It means that your elected officials are most often not observers of your religion. It means that laws and policies are informed by Christian beliefs and sometimes violate your own religious beliefs. It means your education has a Christian-dominant perspective. [...] Being a Jew in America right now means that you probably don't casually identify your religion in public without experiencing anxiety. [...] The most significant way that being a Jewish American differs from being a Christian American is that Jews are not as safe as our Christian counterparts.

Some people will hit or physically attack someone who's wearing a Magen David or a kippah. [In some areas, this is directed at Jewish communities that are perceived to be Orthodox or have very distinctive means of dress, like Hasidim.] Others may bring a weapon into a synagogue and attempt to hurt or kill people, which isn't exactly a hypothetical. This is brought up in relation to a Xtian friend of the author who wanted to attend a service during the High Holy Days who was clueless that there would be security, and not a denial that some Xtians may also not have guaranteed safety 100% of the time (specifically, I'm thinking of the Mother Emanuel AME Church and the anti-Black shooting there in 2015, since President Biden's visit to that church wasn't that long ago).

Ch 4: We Need To Talk About The Holocaust

Sometimes the Holocaust is used for humor; other times, it's used for politics; sometimes it's used for self-advancement. But in our culture, it's almost always used. The Holocaust is no longer presented as a tragedy in its own right. Now it's a vehicle for someone else's cause. A path to something else. A metaphor.

While there is a politically Right-leaning example, this isn't just a problem in those circles.

Flat Holocaust is the culturally aggressive miniaturization of the genocide against the Jewish people. It means narrowing history's greatest crime against humanity—a crime both intimate and individual, and one incomprehensibly vast—and turning it into a vehicle, an analogy. It's simplifying something that remains unfathomably complicated. It's reducing the crime with no name, for which the term genocide was invented, into a synonym for the word "bad." It's making the Holocaust into a metaphor rather than a distinct, horrifying event in Jewish history. Flat Holocaust is not the Holocaust. It's the mini Holocaust. It's a shadow Holocaust. It's a caricature. It's a lazy, cheap way to define one's own pain. We hear about the Holocaust a fair amount in public discourse today, but we don't actually talk about it. Instead, we use the Holocaust to talk about ourselves. That's Flat Holocaust.

Five proposed reasons for why the 'Flat Holocaust' happens: 1) The Holocaust is so large of an event that it's hard to wrap your brain around it, which can make it easier to fall into generalizations or grow desensitized to it; 2) When you nearly wipe out a particular minority group, there are fewer people to talk about what happened; 3) "Pain, trauma, and humiliation don't make people want to tell their stories" in the aftermath [to say nothing of enough time passing that there are fewer direct survivors to share their firsthand experience]; 4); With the poor state of Holocaust education in the public school system, a lot of people don't really learn about the Holocaust (or pick up random pieces of knowledge from pop culture and social media); and 5) Antisemitism.

Section: The Result Of Flat Holocaust

Holocaust denial has different shades of denial, and the author uses a pyramid analogy with total denial at the top/peak. Lower down, there's "de-Judaizing the Holocaust" by focusing on other demographic groups killed, especially if it's done in such a way as to make the other demographics the main target of Nazi persecution. There's also "Holocaust minimization" by not wanting to hear anything about the Holocaust 'because it was so long ago' or decreasing the size and scope of the deaths (there's a study cited that half of Millennials believe two to three million Jews were killed instead of six million). [This can also look like downplaying or ignoring that the Holocaust wasn't focused on one particular country and had effects outside of Europe.] At the analogous bottom of this pyramid is "Holocaust omission" where there's a lack of mentioning the Holocaust when it actually would be an appropriate time to do so.

In an effort to counteract the Flat Holocaust, there's a section after Chapter 8 with an excerpt of Fela Warschau's testimony from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and there's interviews with a few third-generation survivors as Millennial grandchildren become the latest to carry on their family's experiences.

Ch 5: We Need To Talk About Race

What is happening with the way we talk about Jews and race in America? Neo-Nazis are talking about the "Jewish race," arguing that Jews in America secretly plot to overthrow whiteness by replacing white people with people of color. Pockets of the progress left are talking about the "Jewish race," framing Jews as part of a white majority that reinforces racial oppression merely by continuing our existence, as my professor suggested [by asking if a Jew marrying another Jew was racist]. And fringe groups like the Radical Hebrew Israelite movement are talking about the "Jewish race," arguing that the Jews usurp Black identity and that African Americans are the true Jews.

Section: The Holocaust Was About Race

Before the Nazis, conversion was often a way to escape antisemitism. [...] In the Nazi mind, Jews were a separate, inferior race, so we were unchangeable, incapable of conversion. Being a Jew was no longer a matter of theology, family, or identity; it was a matter of biology.

Gestures towards race science and eugenics.

As a government, they [the Nazis] proudly and eagerly pursued the goal of breeding a more gifted race. They believed the Aryan race was morally, genetically, and intrinsically superior to the "Jewish race." This is why it is maddening to be told that the Holocaust was not about race.

For those who have not heard of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (often shortened to Protocols), there's a brief explanation of how that book combined the older Xtian ideas of antisemitism with the comparatively newer ideas of race science.

Section: The Far Right: How Neo-Nazis Racialize Jews Today

The Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 didn't pick "Jews will not replace us" as one of their chants during the march for absolutely zero reason. The great replacement theory is an idea that white people are being infiltrated by and tricked by Jews who look white but aren't white. There's also a component of Jews being in another 'secret cabal' and causing immigration, using political control to influence civil rights wins for people of color, and otherwise increasing the amount of people of color compared to white people. Basically: "Generations after the rise of the Nazis, the Nazi idea still survives. To white supremacists, Jews are a race, and certainly not a white race. Instead, we are a race that poses the ultimate threat to whiteness."

Section: The Far Left: How Parts Of The Progressive Left Racialize Jews Today

On the far right, Jews are not white enough, but on the far left, Jews are white, and sometimes the ultimate whites.

This isn't about negating discussions of conditional whiteness or some light-skinned Jews being white passing. This is more about how older antisemitic ideas of Jews having money and power take on a little modern twist to be about a White Jew essentially being a White European, a colonizer, and a white supremacist. This idea of the White Jew isn't just the very top of rich, white privilege – Jews were the 'international group' orchestrating the slave trade, absolutely zero Jews anywhere could possibly be non-white, and 'Jewish privilege' is different enough from white privilege to have its own moniker.

Section: Black Extremism

I've chosen to label this section with the term Black extremism to remind us all that these ideas are by definition extreme—they do not represent the mainstream of the Black community by any means. And they should not be confused with a discussion of Jews who are Black.

This section covers two groups. The Radical Hebrew Israelites is used to describe a subgroup of the Hebrew Israelite umbrella (formerly the Black Hebrew Israelites, but outside terminology has changed as non-Black people of color have increased their membership), since each individual group can have a different attitude towards Jews. The Nation of Islam has put forward different beliefs over the decades, but the leadership of Louis Farrakhan starting in 1981 has included him repeating Protocols-style antisemitism.

Broadly speaking, the core belief of Hebrew Israelites is that Black people in the US are considered the true modern descendants of the biblical Israelites (with some groups allowing non-Black people of color as corresponding to other biblical tribes within the Kingdom of Israel). As far as I can tell, most of the less fringe groups separate themselves from Judaism without antagonizing Jews, especially if they incorporate the New Testament and more Xtian belief and practice into their Old Testament inspired "Jewish" practice. The more fringe Radical Hebrew Israelite groups can view white Americans as the devil (or descendants of a biblical devil stand-in, referred to as Edomites), claim some amount of Jews will be killed with the Edomites during Armageddon, and whoever survives Armageddon will be enslaved by them in the post-Armageddon world. At least one group is known for antagonistic street preaching and verbally harassing people – homophobia, transphobia, anti-Asian Covid-19 stuff, anti-Middle Eastern xenophobia, and so on.

When it comes to the Nation of Islam, it kind of depends on when and under whose leadership you're trying to look into. Like, an ancient African scientist named Yakub actually might have created white people a couple thousand years ago, so they're not really people like whoever's descended from Africans. Or the founder, who is more important than the Prophet Muhammad, will return in a spaceship to wipe out white people and establish a Black led utopia. (When the founder's son became the leader in the 1970s, he tried to expunge these non-Islamic beliefs, incorporated more Sunni beliefs, opened up memberships to non-Black people – including whites – and officially renamed the NOI in his move to make it more of a mainstream Islamic movement.) Those who wanted to carry on the NOI created a successor group with the same name in the late 1970s, which is where Louis Farrakhan came into play as the new leader. He has blamed an international cabal of Jews for the slave trade, praised Hitler, said Jews control the media/banks/US government, claimed Jews were spreading AIDS, and who knows what else on Twitter. According to his Wiki page, he's also gotten into Dianetics since the 2010s, though he maintains that the Nation of Islam is separate from Scientology.

[Note: I also did some outside googling, so not all of these details are in the book.]

Section: Where Does Racializing Jews Lead?

Jews have a specific, painful, lengthy relationship with race that doesn't lend itself to broad brushstrokes or binary racial categories. Jews are not a race. And when we force race upon the Jewish people, antisemitism comes out the other side.

Some physical attacks on Jews are attributed to involvement in the above Black extremist groups, but it's not really about comparing the exact number of attacks from white supremacists to them (or even how many more white supremacists there are in the US). Environments that are open to and encourage antisemitism can be dangerous regardless of the political direction it comes from.

Ch 6: We Need To Talk About Israel

The way we talk about Israel in this country is infused with antisemitism. And talking about that is really, really hard. It's hard because, for those of us on the political left, naming this antisemitism involves calling out people with whom we often agree. It's hard because there is so much emotion infused into the Israel discourse from every imaginable angle.

Section: Anti-Israel Antisemitism In America Targets American Jews

Online, many insist that this shaming is about Israel's government, not about Jews at all, and certainly not about American Jews. I guess the men driving those vans screaming "Fuck the Jews" down the streets of Manhattan didn't get the message. I'm not overly interested in analyzing people's intentions in criticizing Israel. I'm interested in discussing the outcome of that criticism. And that outcome is to diminish and destabilize the American Jewish diaspora.

Section: Excluding Jews From Civic Life: When Intersectional Doesn't Mean You

As the political scientist and former Israeli politician Einat Wilf has written, "Antisemitism works by increasingly restricting spaces where Jews can feel welcome and comfortable, until there are none left." When we make Israel and its supporters into cultural pariahs, we make Jews into cultural pariahs. Because demonizing Israel results in diminishing the participation of Jewish Americans in day-to-day life.

There's a specific example from a chapter of The Sunrise Movement not wanting three Jewish organizations to take part in a rally because they were "in alignment with and in support of Zionism and the State of Israel" despite other organizations in the rally supporting Israel as well. There's also the 2017 Dyke March that didn't allow rainbow flags with a Magen David on them because they didn't want anything that "can inadvertently or advertently express Zionism" present. Really, there could be more examples, which is the point.

Section: Excluding Jews On College Campus

Like our Israel discourse in general, BDS has little effect on Israel itself. If it measured its success by its economic or political impact on the State of Israel, it would be considered a colossal failure. However, BDS has been wildly successful at one thing: toxifying Israel among younger people in the United States.

The author gives quite a few examples of antisemitism on campus, as well, but I mostly keep thinking of what I've heard from others on Tumblr: an Israeli-Palestinian organization, Standing Together, should be included in BDS because there are Israelis involved; some Hillels have been proposed for BDS consideration because Hillel International 'normalizes' Israel, even though boycotting the community space for primarily American students to access kosher food, celebrate Jewish holidays, etc. doesn't seem to accomplish anything regarding Israel; and at least one concerning incident of anti-Israel protesters trying to get to Jewish students behind a locked door. You know, historically speaking, good things do not happen when angry groups of people are chasing after a minority group they're mad at.

Section: The Way We Talk About Israel Today Is Similar To The Way We Talked About Jews In The Past

The lie that Jews are needlessly violent and collectively seek the destruction of others certainly did not begin with the fictional account of Dracula, let alone with the founding of the State of Israel. It existed for centuries before. During antiquity, a Greek writer in Egypt circulated the lie that Jews captured a Greek child every year, fattened him up, and murdered him for ritual purposes.

The previous paragraph before that quote expanded on how a rise in Jews fleeing Russia and Poland due to pogroms in the late 19th-century gave rise to concerns about foreigners that can be interpreted as related to the vampire Dracula. Unfortunately, I just heard about "Montreal newspaper's political cartoon showing Netanyahu as a vampire decried as antisemitism" today, 20 March 2024 [archival link]. Not to get too sidetracked, but also, from "The Twinned Evils of 'Nosferatu'":

[...] and yet, Mein Kampf, published in 1925, makes multiple references to Jews as vampires, bloodsuckers, and parasites as well as "that race which shuns the sunlight." These and similar metaphors were picked up by followers like the Nazi ideologue Albert Rosenberg who repeatedly used quasi-biological terms to characterize Jews as a vampire bacillus infecting their German host. Once war broke out the tone grew ever more shrill as in the 1943 Nazi pamphlet, The Jewish Vampire Brings Chaos to the World. The vilest of Nazi propaganda films, The Eternal Jew, released in 1940, specifically compared East European Jews to a plague of rats and ended with a blood-draining sequence of ritual slaughter for kosher meat.

This is clearly not the only thing written about vampires, Jews, and how vampire depictions do and do not play into this antisemitic history. Back to "We Need To Talk About Antisemitism":

Otherwise, in this section, there's some more history of blood libel with the case of William of Norwich in the late 1140s, a few of the 100+ examples from Xtian Europe, and some examples of modern day blood libel (including literal 'Jews kill babies in order to use their blood in making matzah' blood libel in 2000).

No mainstream American outlet is going to print an accusation that Jews use blood to bake matzah. But the belief under that conspiracy theory—that Jews are bloodthirsty, conspiratorial, and needlessly violent—persists, and it persists most obviously in our rhetoric around Israel.

This is about printed text of someone's quote stating such. As the referenced political cartoon above suggests, I'm not nearly as surprised that there have been political cartoons of Netanyahu drinking blood (sometimes specified as baby blood, but not always).

Another [antisemitic trope] is the accusation of dual loyalties, that Jewish people are not loyal to the government under which we live. Instead, we are loyal to Israel, secret agents for a foreign government. [...] Alfred Dreyfus, a French military officer, was infamously falsely accused of being a spy based on the supposition that, because of his Jewishness, he would not be loyal to the country he served. Jews were accused of dual loyalties in Spain during the Inquisition. We were accused of dual loyalties in Russia under Stalin. And we were certainly accused of dual loyalties, or no loyalty to Germany at all, under Hitler. Well before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, this accusation of conflicting allegiance was commonplace.

Unsurprisingly, there's still modern day examples, as well.

Section: But Wait, Is All Criticism Of Israel Antisemitic? How Can We Tell?

The first [guideline] is to avoid invoking classic antisemitic canards when dealing with Israel. [...] Israel has many blemishes on its society and government. You don't need to rely on antisemitic tropes and tactics to discuss them.

Please imagine that quote is a giant neon sign.

The second guideline was developed by human rights activist and former prisoner of war Natan Sharansky. He articulated the "3D test" as a way to separate antisemitic discussion of Israel from critical discussion of Israel. He argued that we must pay attention to three pathways of thought: delegitimize, demonize, double standard.

Double standard refers to holding Israel to a different, more critical standard than other nation-states. This isn't about letting everyone do whatever they want, but it is about the unavoidable amount of people who ignore or, if they acknowledge it, don't call for the same level of punishment for other countries when they engage in violent conflict compared to what they call for Israel.

Demonize refers to needing to make Israel the worst – to inflating its wrongs into the absolute worst actions imaginable, viewing societal ills as originating from Israel, and attempting to downplay/ignore/twist any possibly okay things about Israel into not-okay things. [Some people may not be able to think about anything even slightly okay about Israel, so an example could be how any progress on LGBTQ+ rights for Israeli citizens is framed as some devious PR plot for improving Israel's international image instead of being normal laws passed for internal reasons and motivations.]

Delegitimize refers to saying that Israel shouldn't exist as a nation-state, especially if you single out the sole Jewish nation-state as the only one that should not exist. [Inevitably, I've seen this type of statement summon anarchists from the ether, so: Yes, there are people who only want Israel to not exist. No, you wanting all nation-states to not exist isn't inherently antisemitic. However, when it comes to international politics and recognizing sovereign nation-states, you're clearly not the majority, in charge of anything, or really putting forward a practical suggestion regarding a nation-state that already exists.]

Section: How Can We Fight Israel-Based Antisemitism?

There are three options: 1) Don't fight it and leave the institutions and organizations that don't want Jews, and for some people, consider aliyah [moving to Israel and becoming an Israeli citizen]; 2) Stay and attempt to fight Israel-based antisemitism via education/fact checking, coalition building, not hiding Jewish connections to Israel, and insisting that there's still space for Jews to remain in America; and 3) Do nothing—the author absolutely doesn't support this option, but it is technically an option. This looks like ignoring antisemitism and making the diaspora less safe for Jews, which will just make leaving look like a better option.

Anti-Israel antisemitism is the American loophole to enter the world of Jew hatred. It is socially acceptable, trending antisemitism. It is antisemitism that feels OK and even necessary for some. The antisemites of the past didn't believe they were wrong, and neither do the antisemites in our midst.

Ch 7: We Need To Talk About Accountability

Never underestimate my ability to not recognize someone being name-dropped. There's enough explanation in the examples of people who have said antisemitic comments (and if applicable, apologized and done better) that it still makes sense, but some people may recognize more of these examples than myself.

Section: Forgiveness Matters

There must be a reentry point for people who make mistakes, even serious ones. Judaism is clear on this matter. When a person errs, there are prescribed paths to return to righteous living. Those paths can include some combination of contrition, education, restitution, reparation, and clear alteration of behavior.

Unsurprisingly, this can be easier with living people who can apologize, seek out education on the Holocaust and Jewish history, and demonstrably not repeat their antisemitic actions.

Section: When It's Time To Move On

Some people don't just make one or two comments that can be fixed with education, and some people very well may decide to avoid their contributions to society to the extent possible. As an example, Richard Wagner was very public about his thoughts on Jews – "It is an established fact that I consider the Jewish race to be the born enemy of true mankind and of everything that is noble" – and beloved by Hitler ("Whoever wants to understand Nazi Germany must know Wagner... At every stage of my life I come back to Richard Wagner."). It might seem like a small thing, but the author, as a rabbi who officiates weddings, tries not to use Bride Chorus/Here Comes The Bride [because it's from a Wagner opera]. This doesn't mean it's always easy to do this, and this can wind up being an individual choice for living people who have reached steadfast levels of antisemitism (author's example: Alice Walker).

Section: Who Decides If And How We Hold Antisemites Accountable?

The sad truth is that, despite the myths about our worldwide influence, Jews have little power over how antisemites are treated in public.

It's much more likely to be someone from that group applying pressure to someone to take action, such as a respected athlete in that sport's circles speaking up about another athlete's comments. This can look like Jewish organizations writing letters and getting nowhere because the group is silent – Dave Chappelle among various comedians, Mel Gibson among various Hollywood examples, and US politicians. Social media is, well, it's not great, and moderation about what counts as antisemitism can be unclear, not enforced, or not able to keep up with the quantity of antisemitic comments online.

Ch 8: We Need To Talk About The Future

Take The Necessary Precautions is about taking the physical threat of antisemitism seriously and adding or maintaining security measures at Jewish institutions, which currently does involves having to deal with law enforcement. [Balancing security with less police involvement is not an easy conversation, but quite frankly, there are no civilian alternatives to bomb sniffing dogs when your synagogue has gotten a bomb threat, so the boards of synagogues and security committees may not have much of a choice but to maintain working relationships with law enforcement.] Just Call It Antisemitism is about a tendency to condemn a list of hate instead of acknowledging when just antisemitism itself is happening. Don't Tokenize covers the history of Jews taking part in anti-Jewish movements briefly and reminds us: "Let's not hold up the exception as the rule and allow their existence to justify antisemitic rhetoric. If you want to fight antisemitism, don't amplify a minority view and claim it's representative."

Avoid Groupthink provides some historical context to how unsafe a mob mentality can be for minorities, specifying massacres of Jews during the Crusades and just some of the pogroms that happened in the 20th-century. On Denying Our Own Antisemitism is about self-honesty concerning the small ways we contribute to antisemitism, such as not speaking up about the less obvious stuff. Don't Use Jews is about not using Jews as a collective as a metaphor or using the Holocaust as a go-to comparison. It's also includes not using Israel as some sort of metaphor: "The State of Israel, just like the Jewish people, is not a concept, a cause, a project, or an idea. It's a real place with real people. We must let it exist as it is, not as we project it to be."

Allow Jewish To Be An Identity is about how Jewish is viewed as a non-identity that doesn't really need to be specified like other identities should be. "Are we a religion, a culture, an ethnicity, a nation, a race? [...] This fluidity, this tendency to pass through categories, can lead people to misinterpret the Jews. Sometimes people try to cram us into one category. Other times, they insist that, because we are not fully in one box, we don't belong in any."

Celebrate Jewish Life is about embracing living Jews instead of focusing solely on dead Jews [see also: "People Love Dead Jews"]. It's not about ignoring history, which does include Jews dying, but the comfort of only thinking about Jews when they're dead and less inconvenient (especially to modern discussions). Judaism has an interest in living and surviving, so there's a section on being proudly, openly Jewish.

[vergess]

Anonymous asked: If vergess is willing to answer I’ve been wondering what Zionism even is I keep hearing conflicting definitions

The reason you're hearing conflicting definitions is, there's two definitions you'll hear in general conversation.

Okay, so like 150 years ago (late 1800s), a guy was like, "Ahem, ahem. While we're inventing nationalism all over europe, I notice that Jews are constantly left out of national identities. What if, since y'all shitheads refure to acknowledge our humanity and shared history in Europe and elsewhere in the world, considering us to be middle eastern immigrants regardless of how long we've lived among you as your neighbors. So!! What if we made a Jewish National State where Jews could live peacefully as a politically influential block, ideally in the Jewish homeland to which we are indigenous, ie, Palestine."

From this, came two very different conclusions.

Most Jews will define Zionism as the Jewish right to self-determination in the Jewish homeland. Which is a fancy way of saying, "there's exactly one place on earth y'all will let Jews live, so let us fucking LIVE there instead of being executed en masse by the Christian European Bootheel."

Of course, one should always remember that while some pre existing tensions were capitalized upon, this remains a case of two indigenous groups (Jews, Palestinians) pitted against each other by colonial powers looking to expel one and hope we would both exterminate each other after other methods of eliminating us had failed.

Anyway.

Most gentiles will define zionism as Jewish Nationalism, and they'll say it in the same tone they say nationalist socialism out of fucking spite, because the concept of an indigenous group repatriating to their homeland is somehow indistinguishable from colonizers destroying indigenous populations.

The problem, of course, is that the Israeli Government uses colonizer techniques like "the enemy is both weak and strong" and "kill all their children" etc, and they use them against other indigenous groups, which very, very much makes it look like the second, shittier definition is "the real one."

However, it's important to remember that just because the Israeli government is doing a genocide or six, that doesn't mean the people in Israel, be they of middle eastern or global descent, are to blame.

Zionism is about the right of the people to self determine.

It is misused by propagandistic elements in the Israeli government to justify huge levels of violence, in a way directly copied from the US's use of racial propaganda.

Which means it's especially effective at confusing and muddying American conversations.

So, to put it another way:

If you want to remain ideologically consistent, and you hate "zionism" you must also hate all other nationalist movements, including and especially, nationalist movements focused on re-empowering and re-homing indigenous peoples.

Just because Israel's government is genocidal does not make all Jews who believe in the right to one day return home safely are also evil.

I hope that clarified things! If not, I am turning anon back on for a few days so you can ask followup questions directly.

[blautitlewave]

One of the thousands of frustrating things about this Israel v. Palestine thing is how brainwashed Zionists are. Cuz that's what it is. Brainwashing. If they lived in Israel they were given the same indoctrination spiel that every American had up until very recently. If they were raised anywhere else and then traveled to Israel they were also hit with brainwashing about why it's so important and vital that Jews have Israel, why all the meanies surrounding them just want to see the extinction of the Jewish people, why it's necessary and right to have a military as brutal as it is. It's predicated on this fear of extinction that was very much a real threat 80 years ago with the Holocaust, but it wasn't Muslims who organized the whole thing, it was Christians. Christians have probably been the most prolific threat to Jewish existence over the centuries.

And what is so fucking frustrating is that the arguments and beliefs that Zionists have are the exact, exact, exact same beliefs that Europeans had when colonizing and terrorizing indigenous peoples. "They're not using the land right." "It's in God's plan." "This land was destined for us." It does not fucking matter that you were once persecuted to the point of genocide, it does not matter if the people you are targeting are lobbing shit back at you, and it doesn't matter even IF they supposedly also plan to exterminate you. You don't get to commit genocide, no one does, not for any reason or with any historical argument or in any context. And no, just because you experienced one of the most extreme forms of genocide does not mean that you can turn around and say that anything less than the Holocaust is 'not a genocide'. That logic is how genocides go unchecked and manifest in the future. And by the by, the word "genocide" was coined in 1944 by the Jewish Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to describe the horrific crimes committed during the Nazi occupation of Poland against both Jews and non-Jews, so using the genocide of Jews as the sterling example of genocide feels like a deliberate overshadowing and monopolization of trauma, terror, and destruction that vulnerable underprivileged groups have faced and continue to face by a State. Genocides happen because one group has the power to destroy another people and thus do it. It does not matter if the group doing it is doing it out of "self-defense".

All this does is remind me of how Whites in the South were terrified of black slave uprisings because 1) They constituted a sizeable population in the region, and 2) Despite all the religion and pseudoscience and economic justifications for slavery, Whites knew exactly what they'd done to slaves and were terrified of what retribution would look like from those who had been mistreated for so long.

That is the position that the Zionist Israeli government is in. Even if they believe Palestinians to be inferior, even if they believe Palestinians to be a thorn in their side that should vamoose, they know that all of their policies are, from the most emotionally intelligent perspective, more than enough to inspire terrorism. But the enduring issue, and the heart of this genocide, is that they don't recognize Palestinians as innately possessing the full faculties that they would otherwise recognize in other human beings. Because they are Palestinian, they are not fully people in part because of what they represent (a people that existed before Israel's founding), and the only way to fully solidify Israel's sense of self is to erase all traces of "Before the Nation". That's what it is at the end of the day. It's just European-derived genocidal state-making right AFTER a genocide had just occurred on another continent. The Jews that helped found Israel deliberately copied the Western blueprints for colonization because they were inundated with European ideas to "re-transplant" themselves into a land that has been dealing with Western incursion for centuries to fast-track them into creating a nation state that then turned around and labelled Palestinians as non-citizens, or people that were not to receive full rights because that's how the state functions, as a purveyor of violence through legal bullshit. The Jews that founded Israel took the pain and suffering they experienced and decided that their desire for a new nation outweighed the pain and suffering that other people would experience because of it, because borders are always stained with blood.

But oh we can't say that because for some reason being victims of a genocide means you're given carte blanche to inflict similar pain onto other people so long as the numbers aren't too high and you have the "anti-semitism!" card to pull out whenever someone criticizes your policies. Policies which are apartheid in nature at best.

Zionist Jews are no different from the Manifest Destiny Christians of yore, who now exist in the more palatable and marketable guise of missionaries. Gag me with this 'oh it's different this time because X, Y, Z" bullshit. It's the same song played in a different time signature, that's all it fucking is.

[caffeineandsociety]

Really I think what's getting lost in all the noise here is that zionism is just...a nationalist movement. It is far better understood as a nationalist movement than religious extremism or anything of the like. Nationalist movements can and do pop up in any major culture, in any nation. Just like every nationalist movement, it has its own unique intricacies (such as, in this case, support from evangelical Christians who think that enabling it will bring about the second coming, which is an aspect I truly believe we need to talk about more) but at the end of the day, it's ultimately yet another nationalist movement. Many nationalist movements never come to power in more than just small communities, but sometimes they do make it to national power, and the result is...always bad. At this particular moment in time it's one of the most urgent ones to resist, because it made it into power in a specific part of the world, but at its core it's no worse than any other - all nationalist movements tend to want to end up...Like This.

Nationalist movements promise safety, but they never end up living up to those promises, partially because their entire central conceit can't survive long in actual human populations without becoming super hypocritical and moving the goalposts. It's all about finding safety in an in-group...meaning you have to carefully vet people to make sure they're really part of the in-group. It's a major factor behind the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party effect: as nationalist movements become more powerful, and come closer and closer to total separatism, and yet society doesn't turn into the promised safe, flourishing utopia - the in-group shrinks. People at the fringes are scapegoated and cut out. Furthermore, nationalist movements are usually far more inclined to cut their losses and sacrifice part of the in-group for the "safety" of the rest than to be willing to damage the illusion that anything short of the nuclear option will bring about that safety. Kinda sounds like, like, oh, say, Israel killing Israeli hostages themselves? Discriminating against Ethiopian Jews? This is all perfectly in line with the typical behavior of a nationalist party in power.

What's important to recognize is that:

1) A nationalist movement having power within their nation does NOT mean that the race, ethnicity, or culture they're ostensibly there to "protect" doesn't constitute an oppressed group elsewhere. In fact, in the case of zionism, it's often used as part of the drive to oppress diaspora Jews - recall the evangelical hope to bring about the second coming; the claim is that it will be made to happen by expelling all Jewish people from the rest of the world and building a new temple in Israel.

2) Nationalist parties in power typically aren't universally despised by their citizens...but they don't tend to be fully reflective of popular sentiment, either. Some citizens fall totally in line with the nationalist party's ideals, but most fall on a spectrum from a partially propaganda poisoned "ehhh....I GUESS they're the lesser evil, but can't we have ANYONE else?" to a full-out rejection on the level of "go ahead, put me on a list, I want our leadership's heads on a pike". You can see the same spectrum around you, too, no matter where you live, if you remain at least a little bit politically aware - so if you wouldn't assume every random strange American is a full-throttle QAnon-MAGAt asshole, and wouldn't have in 2016-2020 either, then hey, keeping point 1 in mind, you should probably ask yourself why someone might want you to think that of anyone in any other nationalist-controlled nation - yes, even if they DO have a showcase of that place's MAGAt-equivalents. Arguably, especially then.

3) A history of oppression by nationalist parties doesn't inherently make anyone more OR less likely to fall into their own nationalist movement - it makes people less likely to fall for certain brands of propaganda, but more likely to be seduced by the promise of safety, and once that happens, it's easy for people to have a hard time getting out, because of the knee-jerk tendency to go "EXCUSE me? How DARE you compare me to the people who oppressed me and killed my family!" It's a mental pitfall that can happen to pretty much anyone, unfortunately - and does happen to some, but not to others. See point 2 again: no citizen body is a monolith.