#which is dangerous for diaspora Jews. it is dangerous for us. your rhetoric is DANGEROUS TO US

[creekfiend]

I just really need ppl to integrate the fact that Jews being explicitly racialized and violently targeted for elimination under white supremacy is in fact the reason this is all happening to begin with so perhaps rhetoric which conflates is with the group of people who have been ethnically cleansing and genociding us for centuries is like, not the hottest thing to do idk

[fromchaostocosmos]

I keep having this terrible thought.

A thought that haunts me as I read article after article, watch commentary video after commentary video.

As I scour the internet to find almost no mention of absolutely horrific antisemitism found in Hogwarts Legacy.

Antisemitism so bad it read like something take right pages of history book about an pogrom from middle ages.

I find maybe one or two Jewish news sites sadly giving the most mild reactions to it.

What I do find are endless information of JKR's transphobia, the escalation of her transphobia, what she is doing with her money, her dangerous rhetoric, and a break down of anything and everything you might need to know in regards to this realm.

To be clear I'm very happy that so many people are talking her horrific actions and statements and are willing to hold her responsible for that which she says and does. That is good, that is important.

But when tumblr is the only place I see talking about the terrifying antisemitism of this game, where we Jews here have gone in depth multiple times breaking it down to show how very explicit the antisemitism.

How antisemitic choices in even the smallest of details in this game that you might not even notice which just furthers goes to proves how very intentional it all is.

And I can't find anything comparable to what going on here tumblr well I'm a bit at loss for words.

Sure there may be sentence here or a something mentioned in passing there or maybe on the rare occasion some trying to bring attention to what is happening in the comments.

But that is it.

So I'm left thinking a terrible thought, if JKR wasn't transphobic, but the game was still just as antisemitic where would we be. What would happen then. Would even on tumblr anyone care to listen to us.

I don't enjoy this thought, I don't like. I know it is very Oppression Olympics in nature and I hate it.

And at the same time I remember for how long so many of us said hey these books how some major antisemitism problems to only be silenced and essentially be speaking to the void.

Same with when the new movies came, the fantastic beasts set of films, we had the same story of pointing out some major antisemitic problems and again getting told to be quiet, that we are making a mountain out a molehill, being paranoid, seeing antisemitism everywhere, and the other usual exhausting things that get to said us.

And the suddenly like magic one day people decided now is the time to care about the antisemitism in the Harry Potter universe.

Except is felt less like caring about the antisemitism because it is a problem, it adds to the endangering of Jewish people, adds to the further normalization of antisemitism and its various stereotypes and tropes, and so on.

Rather it felt more like we were being used like both a prop and to help prop up other peoples points and very valid issues with the series ad JKR herself. But there wasn't any actual listening to Jewish voices or involving in them.

So I am frustrated, I am hurt, and most of all I tired.

I'm tired of these games that being played our lives.

Being Jewish in Diaspora is like with a sword above your head and it is a matter of high or low that sword is. Well right now that sword is pretty low down and gets ever closer to coming down us.

So I'm tired yes, but I guess a foolish part me also held hope expecting better only to be so bitterly let down.

Unfortunately, disappointment in these dangerous times is just to expensive.

[normalbeast-downformaintenance]

This is what we as antizionists need to understand about Jewish Zionists. Yes, you'd think that the genocide of Jews less than 100 years ago and the colonization and dispossession and persecution that has followed us throughout history would make us form a collective hardline stance of solidarity with all colonized people across the world and refusal to ever put another group through that. And for a lot of people that is the case. But fear is an extremely powerful force and especially when you know that fear is well founded, it gets easy to justify in your mind lashing out as a reaction to that fear.

Zionism is a brutal example of this, on a much bigger scale. Think about how much of the rhetoric of Zionism is built around fear: "Every country that has tried to ethnically cleanse Jews has succeeded except in Israel", "The rest of the world is dangerous, Israel is the only place where we're safe", etc. etc. Then, by asserting Israel as the only safe place for Jewish people, everyone who stands in the way of Israel (read, Palestinians) are in your mind against Jewish safety. Now you can justify anything you do to them with that they're antisemitic. "We have to expel the Palestinians because Israel is our only safe place" becomes "We have to kill Palestinians because they are a threat to Jewish safety and hate Jews" and any resistance from Palestine becomes justification for further escalation. Similar logic is applied to any outside opposition to Zionism.

This is why antizionist Jews are so vehemently accused of being privileged or faking their Jewishness - if we're not Zionists, it must be because we are not afraid, because we haven't been targeted by antisemitism. Having to face that we're just as marginalized, just as scared, but choosing solidarity instead of violence, would mean having to question fear as a justification for violence.

The pipeline described previously is also how you end up with Hamas attacks on non combatant civilians, and antisemitism within Hamas as exhibited in the 1988 charter. The attacks were carried out by Palestinians who have lived their entire lives under an active military occupation by a state that has enacted horrific crimes on their people for over 75 years. Most of them are orphans. They have grown up in fear as a direct result of Jewish nationalism, and that fear becomes fear of Jews and the justification of violence against any Jew whether they're an active part of the military occupation or not.

Here's where it's important to remember what OP said about degrees of power and social capital. The Zionist colonial project was aided by Great Britain in its inception and is being backed by several powerful countries in the west including the United States which provides Israel with billions of dollars in foreign aid yearly that Israel in turn uses to purchase military technology from the US. Because of Israel's close ties with the US and its importance as an outpost for western interests in the Middle East, western media outlets largely run with the narrative of Israel as the state of the Jews and criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and there are tangible efforts all over the west to censor criticism against Israel and Zionism. The Zionist colonial project has displaced many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and killed several hundred thousands as well, whereas the number of civilians killed in the attacks on October 7th is estimated to around 1200.

These two forces are in no way equal. Not in terms of scale, not in terms of international support. What they both have in common is how the fear that comes with marginalization has played a central part in their emergence. Theodore Herzl himself, the father of Zionism, stated that antisemitism would become the greatest friend to Zionism, and he was right.

This is why it is absolutely vital for antizionism to fight against antisemitism and the conflation of Jews with Zionism, for Jews and Palestinians in the diaspora to have solidarity with each other, and for Jewish voices to be boosted in the antizionist movement. When Zionists claim that we'll never be safe in the diaspora, when Israeli and western politicians and Hamas officials paint the Jewish people and the Palestinian people as enemies, we have to become each other's safety. We fight against the narrative of fear.

We all know there's a lot of ways that people use their marginalization to defend anything bad they do, but I think there's a very specific flavor of this where people are convinced that because they're oppressed, they can't fall into reactionary lines of thinking. That's just not true.

The core emotion behind most reactionary thought is fear. And the thing is, much as it hurts to acknowledge, being afraid because you're genuinely in danger doesn't actually make you less vulnerable to reactionary thought than being afraid because some grifter has convinced you that other people having rights is a threat.

Of course, that doesn't mean that everyone with a reactionary mindset has the same degree of power, but everyone has the capacity to hurt people. If your response to fear is to then look around for someone to blame and scapegoat and bully and abuse, then even if you have very little social capital you're still going to hurt a whole lot of people. The fear you feel being a response to others actually trying to hurt you isn't going to change that.

[faggotry-enjoyer]

a number of statements that are not contradictory:

jews are not collectively responsible for anything the state of israel does.

expecting the relationship israelis (whether jewish, arab, or otherwise) have to israel to be fundamentally different, more sinister, more antagonistic, more nationalist, or less valid than the relationship people anywhere else have to their countries is an antisemitic double standard.

expecting jews, whether israeli or diaspora, to have any specific take on israel is antisemitic (dual loyalty).

demanding to know any jew's take(s) on i/p is invasive and disrespectful.

attempting to divide jews into good antizionist israel-hating tokens and evil zionist palestinian-hating monsters is antisemitic.

jews are indigenous to the land of israel, and denying their connection to the land is antisemitic.

jews, like any other indigenous group, deserve the right to self-determination in their homeland. in our current world, the typical form of self-determination is the nation-state. therefore, the state of israel is as legitimate as any other nation-state.

the modern state of israel was established for jewish refugees, and continues to be a place for jews to go when the rest of the violently antisemitic world expels them or makes fleeing the least dangerous option. it is the only place in the world where jews are not an extreme minority, and the only place in the world where jews can be visibly jewish without fear. therefore, israel's existence is essential to jewish safety.

roughly half of the world's jewish population lives in israel, which would make their loss of sovereignty devastating to the jewish community as a whole

a number of significant aliyah waves are within living memory. there are very few jews in the world. jewish communities tend to become stronger and form more ties with each other whenever antisemitism increases. communication across long distances is easier than any other point in human history. all of these factors combined makes it so that many diaspora jews are only at most a few degrees of separation away from at least one israeli jew.

all of these factors, and probably more i'm missing, mean that most jews are probably going to have some kind of feelings ahout israel, which are often going to be very personal. expecting their thoughts to fall into your outside party line is antisemitic and quite frankly callous.

the state of israel has its problems and deserves to be criticized like any other country

most outside criticism of israel is done in bad faith, and israel is not treated like any other country. no other country has its right to exist denied or called into question so frequently or so widely.

antisemitic tropes are commonly projected onto the state of israel

the state of israel is commonly used as a rhetorical prop for justification or denial of antisemitism

if the anti-israeli crowd and broader discourse on i/p wasn't antisemitic, we wouldn't see massive increases in antisemitism every time tensions rise or large-scale violence breaks out in israel and/or palestine

inverting an incorrect point of view does not produce a correct one. inverting "jews are inherently more likely to support israel and anything bad israel does" to "jews do not have any connection to israel" doesn't get rid of the antisemitism. it's just a different antisemitic talking point.

i am not jewish. all claims about jewish community and culture i make here are based on the most common views i see expressed by the many jews i follow. political takes are heavily influenced by analysis and stories from a number of jews and middle easterners, especially israelis and mizrahim, but are ultimately my own and always subject to change. this reblog was written on january 19, 2024.

thinking about how so much of the left spent so long making dual loyalty accusations that so many jews had to reiterate that "judaism != israel" as in "just because i'm jewish doesn't mean i support anything and everything the israeli state does wtf" only for the left to turn around and start saying "judaism != israel" as in "israel has nothing at all to to do with judaism" as in "any and all discussion of antisemitism with regard to israel is irrelevant derailing" (at best) and have the gall to act like they're saying the same thing because those are the Right Words, right? forced them to put up a shield only to rip that shield from their hands and beat them with it. vile. fucking vile.

[entanglingbriars]

You’re coming at this from a really odd perspective, so I want to first say that I checked at your blog and you do legitimately seem to be a Zionist arguing against Palestinian militias rather than for the Nazis. Second I want to acknowledge that a ton of leftists are hella antisemitic and while I don’t agree with your estimated percentages, the basic sentiment probably isn’t too far off from reality.

So, let’s start with two complementary differences between 1930s Germany and modern Palestine. First, Germany was not occupied by Jews. One of the things that makes the modern State of Israel really interesting from a history of antisemitism perspective is that Israel is the first place in modern history that the idea of Jewish political control of a country has been a reasonable conclusion rather than a wide-eyed conspiracy theory torn from the pages of Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Not only that, but the occupation of Germany ended three years before the Weimar Republic fell and Hitler took control (1930 and 1933 respectively). The Nazis were not fighting to end the occupation of Germany (although you could make a case for reunification).

Second, Germany (at the time the Nazis had power) was controlled by Germans. Although the West Bank and Gaza have some degree of internal self-government, its borders, water rights, and people’s freedom of movement are all under Israeli control. The Shoah was possible precisely because the notion of Jewish control of Germany was absurd.

This could easily lead someone (and in fact has led a lot of people) to conclude that Palestinians’ occupation and oppression is the fault of the Jewish people even if they can easily see through the claim the 1930s Germany’s sufferings were caused by “the Jews.” Conflating the State of Israel with the Jewish people is a common rhetorical trick pulled by both Zionists and antizionists, but this ignores not only all of us in the Diaspora, but also the interplay of racial dynamics among Jews in Israel, the extent to which Israel’s power relies on the backing of foreign governments, the way coalitions form in the Knesset, etc.

Finally, I want to stress just how dangerous making this sort of argument is. The reasons that lead a lot of liberals and leftists to support Palestine are sufficiently compelling to them that they’re unlikely to abandon them if they are unable to explain how the Palestinian nationalists differ from the Nazis. This means that there is a significant risk that in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance this creates they will stop thinking the Nazis were wrong. We see much smaller versions of this when the response to “Antizionism is antisemtism” is “Okay, then I’m an antisemite.” It’s always dangerous to point out someone’s hypocrisy if they can resolve that hypocrisy in a way that’s worse than the hypocrisy itself.

If the gate at Auschwitz had said "CRITICISM OF ISRAEL" about 30% of woke-SJ types would be fine with it. Make it 60% if the Nazis hadn't been white.

Life in 1920 Berlin was no easier than in 2020 Gaza. Germany was under occupation (by France and Belgium). Society was crippled and humiliated. There was like 15,000% inflation, it cost 200 billion deutschemarks to buy a loaf of bread. Rampant unemployment, poverty, hunger, and a suicide epidemic so big it is still studied a century later. And they didn't have a thousand global charities giving them pity donations. If the Palestinians have an excuse to form a fascist militia to mass murder Jewish communities, why NOT the Germans? I always thought it was just plain wrong and there was no excuse, yet all I ever hear about the Palestinian fascist militias are excuses. You see the memes about "What do you call someone who joined the Nazis because they were poor and hopeless? A NAZI, punch a Nazi (like and share!)", makes sense, but apparently there's some fine print involved, a secret password where someone who's double-reverse-pinkyswear hopeless every other Thursday gets to join the Nazis and it's actually understandable and still the Jews' fault.