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

[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.

[ayoungchristian]

How to be a good ally for Jews as a Christian.

I need to preface this that I’m writing this as a non-denominational Christian, and I’m not a church pastor or a scholar in Christian and Judaism theology. This essay is compiled from a variety of sources, including through discussions with Jewish friends and mutuals on Tumblr, and is written towards Christians as a whole, regardless of sect.

I have to thank @jewishlivesmatter for inspiring me to write this, and @cree-n-jewish-thoughts and @chicocabs for looking through this piece.

It's a fact that a majority of Christians support Israel. Especially the American Evangelicals and self-proclaimed "Christian Zionists". It's likely that you, like me, have been raised to support Israel as an integral part of the Christian faith. Your church would have at some point claimed that Christians have a deep "spiritual and cultural" connection to the Holy Land, and hence we have a moral obligation to support Israel. But, unfortunately, being a supporter for Israel doesn't necessarily mean being an ally for the Jews.

Why do you support Israel?

First, question yourselves: why do you support Israel? Is it because:

"you want the Jews to all be in their ancestral homeland to facilitate the final holy war where they die in the rapture" or

"Jews deserve to be able to live safely in their ancestral homeland and the sole Jewish state"?

If your reason is the latter, then congrats! But it's only the first step to being an ally.

The former reasoning is particularly very concerning and likely drummed into you during your Christian upbringing. You probably heard of “a holy war to end all wars”, and only the Jews and others who accept Jesus as their savior will survive. In fact, it's likely you heard of these from the teachings of Revelation and the end of days.

That is actually core to the ideology of "Christian Zionism", which, by the way, is very different from "Zionism". Despite what others are now saying about Zionism, Zionism is a movement by the Jews to establish and support a homeland (Israel) in historical Judea, or today's Palestinian region. On the other hand, Christian Zionism is basically a duty to support the State of Israel because of its supposed role in the end times – Jesus’ return to Earth, a bloody final battle at the end of days, and Jesus ruling the world from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. And all of that would come at the expense of many Jews (and Muslims) in that “holy war”. In this scenario, war is not something to be avoided, but something inevitable, desired by God, and celebratory. In return, those who support Israel would be blessed by God.

Doesn't that sound very familiar? It's very much like how some Islamist “Jihadists”, like Hamas, Taliban and Al-Qaeda, would call for a "global holy war" against "infidels". But this time, it's on the opposite end of this "holy war", as the Republican Party of America and their evangelical supporters rally to support Israel out of mere political and religious duty. Given the way how many right-wing evangelists acted and justified their actions "in the name of God", it's no wonder you might have heard criticisms of how they're no different from the terrorists the US fights against.

I'm not saying you are a right-wing Christian fundamentalist like the evangelicals. But you need to look into yourself and question why you support Israel. So, if you support Israel because it would facilitate a holy war and the return of Christ, then you aren't a Jewish ally. You only see the Jews (and Muslims) as pawns and sacrificial lambs.

Antisemitism in Christianity

You would be surprised, but yes, antisemitism exists in Christianity. The next step to being an ally for the Jews is recognising the antisemitism that remains inherent in the teachings of Christianity. No, I'm not saying you should renounce the Christian faith to be an ally. Being a Christian doesn’t make you inherently antisemitic. But it's important to discuss and acknowledge the antisemitism exist in Christianity, and what to do about it. So, let me discuss the two common antisemitic tropes in Christianity: Jewish deicide and Christian supersessionism.

Jewish deicide

Jewish deicide is the theological position that the Jews are collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus (i.e. "the Jews are Christ killers!"). Thankfully, this is no longer in the doctrine of many mainstream sects I know. However, I need to address the root of it, how it came about, and how Christians used it to justify massacring Jews throughout history.

You probably have read the Gospel of Matthew, which, while serving as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments by tying references to many Jewish traditions, was very critical of the Pharisees and often highlighted the conflict between the Jewish community and Jesus and the Apostles. At the end, we know Jesus was betrayed by Judas (one of his disciples), hauled to the religious courts and condemned to death for blasphemy.

From Matthew 27:24–25, the Roman governor Pilate, when he gave the approval for Jesus' cruxification (given according to the gospels, the religious leaders could not execute Jesus without the Romans' approval), he washed "washed his hands in front of the crowd" and claim Jesus' death was the responsibility of the Jewish mob. This then became the foundation of the "Jewish deicide".

There is an entire debate among historians whether or not the Jews even had any involvement with Jesus’ death, particularly because Jesus was cruificed, which was exclusively a political punishment by the Romans ruling over Judea at the time. Even if the Jews were marginally involved with Jesus’ death, he would have just been stoned based on religious charges alone. In fact, the Pharisees and the religious leaders were shown bringing to Jesus an adulteress and asked Him whether to stone her in John 8:1–11 (where Jesus proclaimed: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”). If they didn’t have political power to execute people for religious crimes, why would they still bring her to Jesus and challenge Him about it? But it’s not my place to further debate, and I shall link Rootsmetals’ blog essay on her perspective: https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/no-the-jews-did-not-kill-jesus

Of course, you might say, we aren't now blaming Jews as a whole for killing Jesus! It doesn’t matter who killed Jesus! It's part of God's plan for Jesus to die! Still, claiming or emphasising that the Jews had any degree of responsibility for Jesus’ death was the excuse used by various church denominations and communities to seek revenge against Jews as a whole. And that began a long history of Christianity antisemitism, from the crusades to the spread of blood libel against Judaism, and it was only very recently when many churches reformed their attitudes towards Jews. Heck, it was only in the 1960s when the Catholic Church rescinded the teaching of Jewish deicide.

We need to realize the depth or history of the deicide libel and the impact inflicted upon Jewish life and history. In honesty, it wasn't any better to even pin any blame on the selected few Jewish religious leaders at the time. It's still an element of Jewish deicide that the Jewish leaders forced Pilate and the Romans to have Jesus crucified, painting another antisemitic narrative of Jews being corrupt, "hypocritical" and "stiff-necked" religious leaders. This wasn't unique to just the Gospel of Matthew, by the way, but generally how the Jewish religious leaders were described at the time in the New Testament, which shaped our negative perceptions towards Jews and Judaism as a whole.

Christian supersessionism

This brings me to the topic of Christian supersessionism. To begin with, I suppose you all heard of the Prince of Egypt, right? Of the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. Now, many people would say the movie is based on a Christian story. Unfortunately, if you think that, you are wrong. It's still first and foremost still a Jewish story. In fact, to the Jews, the exodus took place thousands of years before Jesus was even a thought. Yes, yes, we know the Old Testament is part of the Bible and hence they are also an essential part of our narrative.

But hold your horses and take a moment to understand the Jewish perspective of Christianity. To them, we misappropriated and rewrote their texts (the Tanakh, or what we call the Old Testament) to line up with our unauthorized sequel (the New Testament) and universalised bits of Judaism to preach our religion to everyone else. We all love to pat ourselves on the back, to think we are enlightened and earned our way to Salvation through Christ, while the Jews remain in their "backward Kosher ways" because they didn't believe Jesus was the Messiah.

In fact, as a whole, Christianity is supersessionism. We claim ourselves to have superseded the Jewish people and assumed their role as "God's covenanted people". That we, Christians, are now people of God and replaced the Jews as their chosen people. This, by the way, has been used to try convert Jews by force en masse to Christianity, especially what the Catholic Church did to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. We have seen such sidelining of Jews even in literature, like Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, when Shylock the Jewish banker was eventually forced to convert. And there are also a great deal of theological jokes which are inherently antisemitic.

This is despite the fact that even Jesus claimed he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfil it. In fact, Jesus as a Jew continues to commend those who teach the Law accurately and hold it in reverence: “Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19). We Christians consider that Jesus came to embody the Word and to fully accomplish all that was written. Through his fulfiment of the Word, Jesus obtained our eternal salvation. That doesn’t necessarily render Judaism and the Old Testament as no longer valid.

It still remains a debate in Christian theological circles whether the Mosaic Laws still apply to us, which parts of it, and so on. Paul’s letters have not been very helpful as he doubled down on Christian supersessionism, saying that a believer in Christ is no longer under the Law. It has also been argued that if the Law is still binding on us today, then it has not yet accomplished its purpose – it has not yet been fulfilled.

But in the end, as far as the Jews were concerned, the Tanakh was written as a historical record of their people, and was never intended to be used outside of its intended cultural and tribal context. On the other hand, we had rewritten and misappropriated their texts and practices for our own purposes (as you can also read from the Gospel of Matthew). The Jews did not consider Jesus as the Messiah for a variety of reasons, and to them, as Christ has not come, the Law has not been fulfilled and is still in effect. To us, we might not consider the Law as applicable to us under the new convenant by Jesus.

I suppose, however, we put the theological debate to a stop here, and recognise we have differing perspectives on whether Christ has come. We still need to recognise the idea that Judaism has had its entire belief system misappropriated by us, and then Jews have been punished over and over for daring to adher to Judaism and claim their history as their own, and we treat them as fools for refusing to submit to our religion.

So, what can we do?

If you managed to reach to this part, then I say you have made another step to learn about the inherent antisemitic biasedness in Christianity. Again, however, this essay is not for you to disavow Christianity and that we should all convert to Judaism to be an ally, but to recognise and reconcile with the fact that not only have Christianity long been (mis)used to harm Jews, but that antisemitism exists in Christian religious texts.

(And yes, I know you would be tempted to say: but Islam does it too! But it would be the case of ‘the pot calling the kettle black’. Every movement has its inherent antisemitism, and Christianity is no exception. This essay is more about how Christians can be genuine allies for the Jews.)

We need to recognise that we Christians are privileged. In fact, we are the largest religious group in the world (including Catholics and so on) at about 2.4 billion, which is about 30% of the world population. On the other hand, the Jews are a very tiny friction. Ever since our mass conversion attempts, pogroms and the Holocaust, they only stand about 15 million people, half of whom are in Israel. We also don’t speak for the Jews, nor should we speak over their concerns.

Nevertheless, even with numbers, we need to stop thinking of Christianity as the superior religion over Judaism, that we must convert all the Jews into Christianity so that ‘they would be saved’ like us. In fact, it would be greatly offensive, since it had been source of intergenerational pain and grievances among Jews towards Christianity as a whole. To proslethyise to the Jews is basically eroding their identity, like how we have done by taking their culture and practices for our own ends.

We also need to assume good faith when they express curiosity of the Christian faith and want to know more, but bear in mind the previous paragraph: the point is not to convince but for them to understand. Never come down their throats about how Judaism is "outdated" or debate about the Law or the Tanakh. In fact, this generally applies when talking with non-Christians about our faith. We should keep an open-mind and welcome questions about our theology. Even if we don't have all the answers (like the Trinity and the Holy Spirit), it’s fine to say we don't know.

Most importantly of all: Treat the Jews as fellow people worthy of respect. We shouldn’t be using Jews as vehicles and tokens for our own ends – that would be exploitative and dehumanizing. At the end of the day, if we believe their God to be our God, that means they are still God's chosen people and they must be respected. We shouldn't dismiss them and their religion which we claim to supersede.

I also recommend, if you have the time, to research further on Jewish culture, history and traditions. I suppose some of us would have acquired some basic knowledge because of the Passover and so on, but we also need to acknowledge and understand what we had taken from the Jews, and what those practices really mean to them.

Ultimately the main points are: acknowledge the inherent antisemitism within Christianity and treat the Jews as people to be respected, not as pawns of a holy war.

Sources:

https://antisemitism.adl.org/deicide/

More resources:

[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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[agam-shel-barvadim]

Re: https://www.tumblr.com/agam-shel-barvadim/772927609001721856/same-goes-to-europe-israeli-right-wing-is-nothing <- this post.

I want to preface this that I don’t know everything about the Israeli right wing or politics, mostly cause I am a little young to be dealing with politics right now though this war has forced it.

But to my main point, I am an Armenian Israeli, Armenian mother, Jewish father, and I hate recently that users like mossadspysomething and other people on tumblr have been glorifying of the Israeli right wing on tumblr.

The Likud party, which if I stand corrected is the party bibi and ben-gvir are a part of has caused damage to the minorities of Israel and has been discriminatory against said minorities. The best example I can think of is my own personal one is that I can no longer live in the Armenian Jerusalesm quarter because settlers kept destroying and attacking it and it was becoming dangerous for my family, and the Israeli right wing and the “socialist” in it did nothing to stop it. I mean their almost all pro settlement, so not surprised, but I digress. It just, I don’t think we should openly excuse an openly racist and damaging party because it’s not the same as American and European ones.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-jerusalem-old-city-armenian-christians-6c1b4d324bd4a657be4836c092077e39# <- link about the current situation in the quarter.

Like stated above the right wing did nothing to stop this and nothing to protect us, so I don’t care about the socialists.

Hope you have a good day though, Shalom!

(P.S: I am open to correction about Israeli politics.)

(P.P.S: I just wrote this in English to reach more people because this is a major issue I’ve been seeing raise up so I wanted to address in the language most can understand.)

I've been trying to think of the right way to respond to this. I'll start by saying that I'm sorry that this is tour experience. It shouldn't be that way. I apologize in advance if my answer is a bit insensitive, as I (as always) try to present nuance.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "glorifying the Israeli right-wing". What I do know is that I don't want to judge a movement by its extremists. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are not the Israeli right-wing, they're right wing *extremists*. And BiBi is just a selfish just-stay-on-office type of politician.

The way that I see it, we haven't had real Israeli right-wing for a while now. This is why I said that "right-wing" originally means a very different thing to us than to the West, but it's become more and more similar which concerns me.

I personally prefer to view the concept of Israeli right-wing through Menahem Begin. Now THAT was an Israeli right-wing leader. Israeli right-wing is meant to be not about being against minorities (🤢) but about not trusting enemy nations, preserving a more independant military state, etc.

As I said in the past in another post, I like to sum up the Israeli political spectrum as such: the question asked is "how much can we trust our enemies to mutualy retain from fighting?" and the left-wing says "yes", and the right-wing says "no", and everything else is nuance.

And anything that doesn't have to do with this one question is neither inheritly right-wing or inheritly left-wing, imo. What you're describing here isn't right-wing, it's just bigotry. and unfortunately, our current leading right-wing parties are FULL of bigots.

I have a lot of strong thoughts about some Israeli left-wing politicians as well, but maybe this post is not the place for that.

idk what posts of other people you're refering to here, all I know is that as far as I've noticed, the people whose posts I interact with are not really fond with BiBi either.

The bottom line of my answer is, try not to judge a movement/collective/"side"/whatever by its extremists.

I feel like all of us need to remember this sometimes. Me included.

take care will ya? and remember that even if nobody in the Knesset gives a single shit about you, there are always people who do.

[cleoselene]

had a thoroughly lovely and sociologically fascinating Christmas Eve. look, I ain't no Christian, I'm just an American with atheistic tendencies who was raised celebrating American Christian holidays, but it was never religious, just you know. Holidays. For fun. To enjoy. That was always my concept of every holiday. Like, absolutely opposite of "Jesus is the reason for the season" because we never ever went to church, ever. My mom is vaguely Christian/loves to talk about "the angels"/also believes she was Jewish in a former life. Which is to say she's a new age flake with American Christian seasoning. And she was like, SO SHOOK when i told her I didn't believe in God or anything. I was like, Mom, if you wanted to indoctrinate me, maybe you should have... tried? lol

So my old friend who goes all the way back to middle school invited me to go to dinner with her and her husband for Christmas eve. Our familial traditions have always been that Christmas day is the important one, that's the feasting and presents. Christmas eve was never a solid tradition and actually most of growing up i went to a friend's house for Christmas eve because her parents had banger parties for it. i did that from like, ages 11-23 and my mom always did something with her friends. Christmas eve is traditionally my social holiday outside of the family.

So when she said, "let's go to Shula's, my treat," I was like WORD, because I have always wanted a 90 dollar steak but could never actually AFFORD a 90 dollar steak. but I guess I missed in the ask a couple months ago the "we'll do church first part" and yeah, lol. The last time I was in a church was my father's funeral 24 years ago. THC lozenges got me through that service and got me nice and munchied for Shula's after word (yes, the 90 dollar steak was excellent, I got it with chimichurri sauce, and had this thick cut maple bacon with tomato jam appetizer, hnngh). So it wasn't until a few days ago that I realized I would be going to church, and like, intense church, because these are super churchy people. I realize it is actually the very first time I've ever gone to church on a holiday? Like I used to totally joke about how I couldn't think of a better way to ruin a holiday, but given that I've become a sociologist since the last time I was in a church, it was a way more fascinating experience. No, I was not moved by the spirit but as a student of human ritual and human behavior and human group activities, I was pretty riveted. It was your pretty basic nativity reading/Christmas songs combination with a short sermon that had a very South Florida message, lol, because the pastor made very certain to tell us that just because Jesus was born in a manger doesn't mean he was POOR, as Joseph was a carpenter and that was a good job!! And some lady called out "AMEN!" and i was like, just riveted at the exultation of "Thank God Jesus wasn't really a Poor" roflcopter. They also had an Israeli flag hanging and I asked my friend what the connection was there, and she said there was a Biblical mandate to support the state of Israel, and I was like, but isn't the concept of the nation-state way newer than the Bible? And then she said it was something related to the 'end times' and I was like ohhhh. Okay then. Everyone was friendly, though, it wasn't overly long.

They also did a communion, which. Honestly, Christians, ritual vampirism and cannibalism is fucking fascinating. I find the whole virgin birth story horrifying and ghoulish, but the ritualistic vamprism and cannibalism is FUCKING METAL. So goth. This wasn't a Catholic place so they invited us all to join in and the goth in me couldn't resist joining in.

It was SO lovely to go out and do grown up normie things. I never go out to dinner, let alone at a place like Shula's (still undefeated like Shula -Pitbull) so it was a rare treat. We got hot chocolate afterward and went to this neighborhood in town that is super fucking intense about their Christmas lights, like it's in the HOA that you have to put up holiday lights and each street is given a theme. It's a Southwest Florida thing. People sit in their parking lots and project movies on their garages around a bonfire and kids stand through sunroofs in pajamas as they slow-cruise the neighborhood like they're drunk bachelorettes at a party, it's cute.

My friend and her husband are lovely, kind, generous people. She was my lab partner in science class and it was a great deal for me because she was willing to do all the gross dissection that made my stomach churn, lol. She asked if I wanted to split a calamari appetizer and i was like, nooooo, remember in science class when we had to dissect them???? And then we deep fried them??? And the portable smelled like fried fish for two weeks???? I haven't been able to get that horrible rotten fish smell out of my mind every time I see calamari.

And she was like, "that was when I became a fan!" rofl. Everyone who's grossed out in science class should have a lab partner like her.

I also got to meet her two cats which, spectacular. one of them jumped on my lap and headbutted my hand. Excellent experience. I am grateful for her friendship, she has been so kind and friendly and warm all our lives, really.

Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy first night of Hanukkah! It's after midnight where I am so we're on to both. I hope whatever you're doing for your holiday season is comforting and peaceful. I have been in a major depressive funk the last couple months since the election and Ernie's death happened in the span of a week, so it was nice to get out of my routine and put on jewelry and do my hair (I don't do make-up).

Just ate the rest of my steak. Sylvie got my little pieces of gristle. She still has mad separation anxiety and my roommate's said the first hour I was gone was rough, that she made both of them cry because she was crying so hard. Just wailing :( But she settled after an hour and then bonded with both of them even more, when I got home and they went to bed and I went to my room, she was like, "no, but mom, can we go back out and hang out with our friends??" She is still just a baby.

[naradreamscape]

Hey um. I have a theory about why far-right and accelerationist Christians are so in support of the colonization of Palestine, especially with the statement, "Israel is our ally/friend". In short, filling "Israel" with mostly White and White-passing settlers means a televangelist can point to a person with Eurocentric features, and say, "He's descended from Jesus!" to a child who's only seen Jesus looking like Obi Wan Kenobi.

I don't wanna throw this onto peoples' dashes with the safety off, so further exploration under the cut:

Deep down, non-Jewish zionists are basically following the "Palestinians are just people who wandered into OUR houses" sentiment of Kahanism, but in a way that "protects" the Evangelical & pay-to-pray Christian subsets' perception of a White Jesus. The mass murders of innocent civilians is then shrugged off, believing "they're just invaders".

For years, people have scoffed at the White Jesus depictions, since there are actual reconstructions of the body wrapped in the Shroud of Turin - but since that's the only physical artifact we have of what Jesus the Man looked like, some have been trying to debunk its authenticity as a death cloth. Beyond that, the Levant and its political history are well-documented, so we know what communities lived in that territory, from the Romans to the different local Jewish Palestinian communities - where Yeshua ben-Yosef was born, so we know historically he was a Palestinian.

Palestine is one of the oldest cultures on earth, and one of the fewest that hasn't been Americanized to any extent. The Palestinian Jesus grew up in Palestinian culture - which doesn't match the tourist-friendly ideal of Americans standing around in tunics, quoting the New Testament. It's hard to sell hotel and theme park packages in Jesus's hometown when the local population doesn't want that at all and just wants to live on their own - and they're serious enough about it to take up arms against this.

In Short: I very sincerely think far right American religious organizations are encouraging the Palestinian genocide because the Israel Colony Project will provide them with a White Jesus. The IOF is being encouraged to be as destructive as possible so more landmarks and traces of ancient Palestinian culture cannot be used to debunk the existence of Americanized Jesus, after which, they will be "rebuilt" by the colony according to whatever their own designs may be. In the meantime, far right Christians - and to an extent, Mormons too - are funding the genocide under the guise of "Israel is our ally".

It's white supremacy being purported by two far right religious factions. I'm ashamed of all the people who claim to share my religion, still thinking they've gotten this far because they're correct. They're running on the money of white supremacists. I am ashamed to be Jewish most days, but I refuse to abandon my faith. I will not let this mutated version of Judaism represent us any longer.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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 progressive 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 involve 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.

[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.

[darkmaga-returns]

terrorism: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion -Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Before I commence, a disclaimer for dumb people and disingenuous Zionists like Ben Shapiro and pretty much the entire Murdoch press who are deliberately trying to distort the boundaries of xenophobia for nefarious purposes.

An example of a genuinely ‘antisemitic’ act would be approaching a Jewish person minding their own business, and then abusing them, spitting on them, or physically assaulting them (in other words, performing the kind of attack an increasing number of Jews are committing against Christians in Israel).

Apart from your Soros rent-a-crowd and fringe Neo-Nazi Hitler fanboy types (the kind we’re expected to mindlessly support in the Ukraine), few if any critics of Zionism are encouraging or participating in such behavior.

An example of something that is NOT an ‘antisemitic’ act is criticizing Zionists and the Israeli government for their well-documented malfeasance. This is no more ‘antisemitic’ than criticizing the US government or Italian mafia is anti-American or anti-Italian.

Discussion of historical events the Zionists prefer we didn’t know or talk about is not ‘antisemitism’ - it’s called “discussing history.”

Hideously evil Zionists like Menachem Begin, David Ben-Gurion and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu are NOT above criticism simply because they are Jewish. If you disagree, and think these folks are beyond reproach simply because they’re Jews, then congratulations - you are a BIGOT. Like militant feminists, you are the very thing you disingenuously claim to despise.