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is-the-thing-actually-jewish · 3 months

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is Jewish Voice for Peace actually Jewish? I've heard a couple different things about that but no sources

@gryphistheantlerqueen also asked:

Whooo boy. So this has been sitting in the inbox for a few months, I wrote up a draft, and then it just sat... until this past week, when some new JVP BS hit the fan and gave me the kick to finish it.

Sooooo...

Verdict: Not Actually Jewish

(updated verdict after finding out about the “self-managed conversion” and “teacup mikvah”) Jewish, technically, and that "technically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and is actively debatable without access to a detailed breakdown of JVP’s actual membership rolls.

In general summation, JVP is a far-left radical antizionist group that is headed by a few visibly antizionist Jews and whose membership rolls are either a strong minority or outright majority of non-Jews, based on variable statistics that they've released. Although they claim that the “majority of their members and staff are Jewish”, this seems to be both statistically unlikely and actively suspicious due to their noted tendency to instruct even non-Jewish members to speak #AsAJew on social media, and their instructions to do “self-managed conversions”. However, due to their title, they are very popular with people who want a Jewish Stamp Of Approval for demonizing Israelis and Zionist Jews as a result. In effect, they are Jewish in the same way that people like Candace Owens and Hershel Walker are Black—as self-tokenizing minorities who throw the rest of their ethnic group under the bus in exchange for power and political access.

And despite the claims that they are “inspired by Jewish values and traditions” (as put on their website) and “oppose anti-Jewish hatred,” JVP routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric, up to and including blood libel and antisemitic conspiracy theories, and acts as a shield against non-Jews who also engage in antisemitic rhetoric so long as the non-Jews in question remember to shout "For Palestine!" first. This is not an exaggeration.

The primary example of their in-house antisemitic rhetoric is their "Deadly Exchange" program, where they explicitly and conspiratorially blame Israel as being responsible for American police brutality and militarization. However, for all of their fearmongering and blame-casting on the subject—as if American cops needed outside help in brutalizing minorities or gaining military-grade handmedowns from the Pentagon, both of which are explicit claims of the "Deadly Exchange" program—they have a hard time actually identifying specific deaths associated with the international training seminars they're holding up as responsible.

One of the the closest they've come to a specific allegation is claiming that "former St. Louis County police chief Timothy Fitch trained with the Israeli military three years before Michael Brown’s killing and the Ferguson uprising." (Note: this was in a video that appears to have since been made private.) But Darren Wilson worked for the Ferguson PD, not the St. Louis PD, and Fitch retired months before the killing. So he was in a completely different police department, and this is the closest JVP comes to pointing to specific deaths or acts of brutality that they blame on Israel. Everything else is literal fearmongering--up to and including the classic conspiratorial tropes of "secretive Jewish governmental influence".

JVP has also happily supported the words of white supremacists like Richard Spencer, taking his “You could say that I’m a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people," statement at face value, using it as the basis for entire articles where they compared Zionism to White Supremacy as a deliberate misrepresentation of the ideology that is common on the extreme political Left (you can compare that treatment again with how Candace Owens treats the word "Woke" on the Right). Even when the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" march happened, JVP wasted no time in comparing Zionism with the very ideology fueling the people chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us," saying that Zionism is "Jewish racial supremacy" and calling for a universal condemnation of the ideology as a form of White Supremacy... which was the exact sort of message that many of those same White Supremacists would have happily agreed with. So JVP is essentially siding with literal White Supremacists, even as they claim that "Jews are not the primary victims of White Supremacy."

JVP also engages in Holocaust revisionism, such as with this lovely quote from Cecilie Surasky, the deputy director of JVP, “I believe it is critical to situate the genocide of Jews in a broader context, and not as an exceptional, metaphysically unique event. Some 6 million Jews died, but another 5 million people were also targeted for annihilation.”

(another quote, from an article by Surasky, which compares Netanyahu to Hitler.)

This is just straight revisionism of the entire Holocaust and the unique fixation the Nazis had on the Jews. Literally, even when they were losing, they were diverting resources from the war just to kill more Jews. Quote Hitler himself, "Jews must be prevented from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations." The very basis of the Nazi ideology paints Jews as an existential threat to the human race's peace and security—a far cry from JVP's claim that the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust wasn't unique or exceptional.

Additionally, JVP ignores or re-envisions Mizrachi Jewish history. They call the very term Mizrachi “Zionist rhetoric,” and refer to Mizrachi “immigrants,” (“Deadly Exchange,” pg. 16-17), and claim “the Israeli government facilitated a mass immigration of Mizrahim” (“Our Approach to Zionism”) as though those weren’t the direct result of the mass expulsion of and violence against Jews in MENA countries. These weren’t immigrants, these were refugees.

And as for the question of “Are they Jewish?”, well...

Statistically, they are not representative of the Jewish population as a whole, 90% of whom identify as some degree of Zionist in the sense of “Supporting Jewish self-determination.” One does not need to be Jewish to join JVP, as they proudly state on their website. Their membership rolls are also extremely obfuscated, and the fact that they encourage their followers, whether Jewish or not, to post and speak “as Jews” on social media makes it even more difficult to figure out what percentage of their membership is actually Jewish. Furthermore, they have instructions for their members to engage in “self-conversions” that are not acceptable to Jewish law or tradition, and misuse/appropriate other sacred Jewish traditions to the point that “blasphemy” is an accurate description, with their instructions on the mikvah (a sacred bath) being outright offensive.

(note that one has to be completely nude and bare of any adornment or makeup to use the mikvah, which is a pure pool of collected rainwater to be immersed in, for context on the above... misuse. Trying to claim this as being “in line with sacred Jewish tradition” is like trying to claim to be Catholic while also saying that the Pope is the Antichrist and that using beer and a doughnut for the Eucharist is acceptable. For more information on mikveh, see: The Jewish Virtual Library, Aish, myjewishlearning, or Chabad.

There's also no altar.

The irony of asking people not to appropriate while doing this is astonishing.)

It’s also telling that they straight up say they are “claiming” the practice as their own.

Furthermore, JVP has hosted panels on “antisemitism” in the past... headed by people who are not only not Jewish, but who have been credibly accused of antisemitism in the past.

JVP has also endorsed The Mapping Project Boston, which was a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) subsidiary, listing every “Zionist” organization in Boston, Mass. This included Jewish schools, elder homes, community centers, disability centers, and more; all of them painted with scary and misleading “links” to non-Jewish organizations to insinuate Jewish control of the state and city governments, invoking age-old antisemitic tropes of a conspiracy of Jews as they did so:

(first image is the Mapping Project, the second is a 1938 Nazi political cartoon)

The Mapping Project also, and this is my personal favorite, accused Harvard University of doing “racist science” for engaging in archeological and genetic studies of Jews and Jewish history. Tellingly, BDS actually disavowed The Mapping Project (albeit for bad optics, not for the rank antisemitism they were promoting)... but JVP has not, even though the Mapping Project’s entry for the ADL reads as follows:

Masquerading as a “civil rights” group, the ADL is a counterinsurgency and espionage organization whose mission is to protect the mutual interests of the US and Israeli governments, and to eliminate solidarity among oppressed peoples, especially concerning Palestine. The ADL spies on and criminalizes activists (using its connections to governments, police, schools, and corporations) while undermining their work by pushing its own state-sanctioned, pro-“Israel” agenda. And while the ADL claims to represent Jews and to fight “antisemitism” on their behalf, the organization has supported anti-Jewish state violence and sanitized Nazis. The ADL cannot be reformed: it must be dismantled and whatever resources it has should go towards repairing the many harms it has done. (Emphasis added.)

Of course, JVP has also engaged in similar conspiracy-toned antisemitic dogwhistles, such as this fun bit from their first Deadly Exchange video:

So clearly (to me at least), they have no problems with The Mapping Project’s tone and presentation.

And this isn’t even going into JVP’s routine promotion of blood libel, their egregious double standards, their approving of pogroms, their active support for Hamas terrorists and demonization of Hamas’ victims, their attempted revisionism of Jewish history, their abject rejection of Jewish culture, and their other actions that show not just bias, but outright hatred for 90% of the world’s Jews.

As one commentator put it, JVP as an organization is very much like Autism Speaks is to Autistic people--a thinly disguised hate group that views the people they’re supposedly speaking for as the problem, and themselves as promoting the Solution. To this moderator, they’re the equivalent of the Association of German National Jews, who were also known as the Jews for Hitler; they wanted to abandon Judaism and embrace Naziism... and they got sent to the gas chambers anyway.

Mod Joseph

Sources:

www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/jewish-voice-peace

www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Mikveh-Guide-for-Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-Outlined.pdf

(and also just... a general experience/exposure to them on social media, where even the most progressive actions taken by Israel, such as the recent ruling regarding queer Palestinians being able to claim sanctuary in Israel, being labeled as “pinkwashing”)

#jumblr #jvp #not actually Jewish #appropriation #avoid

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v0rpalsword · 3 months

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On Calling Out Antisemitism... in the Crossword

So I like to do crosswords. It's fun, sometimes I learn random facts, it exercises my brain, and that jolt of satisfaction when I figure out the gimmick brightens my day. I usually do it on the Washington Post, which is the same as the LA Times, mainly because it's free (though these days I pay for the WP in large part because I like Alexandra Petri's pieces, but I digress.)

So there I am, working on the Sunday crossword at work on a quiet Monday morning, and the clue is "sanctimonious sort." Could be many things, I skip it and continue. Slowly, as I get some of the crosses, I say to myself, "surely this isn't going to be 'pharisee'. I'm gonna be so mad if the answer is 'pharisee.'"

The answer was Pharisee.

If you don't know why that's a problem, in brief: The Pharisees were the precursors to modern Rabbinic Judaism, and that word has been used by those enacting violence upon us for centuries-- throughout blood libels, Inquisition, crusades, expulsions, etc. When "pharisee" means "sanctimonious, hypocritical, self-righteous, etc." and "pharisee" also means "Jew" even of the historic variety, it tends to be extremely bad news for the actual living Jews of whatever era it is.

So I wrote the editors of the LA Times and the Washington Post, and I said so. I told them about the history of the term. I told them that at a time when antisemitism across the United States is rising alarmingly, it is, at best, deeply irresponsible of the newspapers to allow this insidious conflation of Judaism with moral corruption and hypocrisy to appear in what ought to be a light-hearted game.

And you know what? I got a response from the LA Times within hours apologizing for the harm and saying they'd reached out to the crossword writing company to discuss it. I got a response from the acquisitions editor, who had spoken with the crossword editor, conveying their sincere apologies, saying that they were unaware of the antisemitic implications of the term, and they would never intentionally cause harm. They thanked me for bringing it to their attention, and also thanked me for my suggestion of an alternate clue ("Contemporary of Jesus").

We on Jumblr and in the Jewish community offline have spent so much time talking our throats hoarse and our typing fingers sore about the harms of antisemitism, especially since October 7. I know many of us are feeling frustrated, burnt out, and hopeless. We start to wonder what the point is, when none of it seems to be making a dent. I almost didn't send that email. I almost let it go. I let myself be distracted by work, forgot about it for a week or so until something reminded me and I got angry all over again, and then I sent off an email that I expected to be buried in the inbox to maybe get a response in a month or so, because even if it never got read, at least I knew I had written it. But it did get read, and it got shared with the relevant people, and they cared.

Sometimes people listen. Sometimes they learn. Sometimes, all it takes is one person saying "hey, this hurt me."

I'm taking the win today.

#jumblr #antisemetism tw #antisemitism #pharisees #crossword #if you come into my mentions with anything 'well actually' about the pharisees I will block you

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7amaspayrollmanager · 4 months

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Zionist blog really is:

Post one: UNRWA terrorists?

Post two: hamas hamas hamas

Post three: anti zionism is not always anti semitism but it is always anti semitism to me

Anon: do you care about palestinians at all???

Followed by response: how DARE you! I care about palestinians on a daily basis I feel so bad for them and just because I only post their POV when they're saying something against hamas, doesn't mean idc

Post 4: standing together ❤️ #realactivists

Post 5: The Palestinians have always wanted to kill us all those terrorist attacks since 1948 is proof of their larger plan to commit genocide against the jews because in my israeli textbooks the palestinian is nothing but a refugee or a terrorist and their armed assaults against Israel has always been presented as a continuation of the Shoah rather than a natural reaction against the occupation and settler colonialism

Post 6: apparently I'm on a blocklist bc I'm zionist? Nice try anti semites it has nothing to do with the fact that I am in fact incredibly racist towards palestinians and can't see it if it weren't staring right at me

Post 7: pictures of Ethiopian jews

Post 8: the Nakba didn't happen like the Palis say it did

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notaplaceofhonour · 2 months

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See, this is what I’m talking about with hyperbolic & totalizing rhetoric both obscuring the actual problems and inevitably falling back on antisemitic libel.

At no point have I said the destruction or loss of life in any war isn’t excessive. But when war isn’t enough for you to criticize it, and it has to be “genocide” for you to care, you become more susceptible to filling the holes with hyperbole and misinformation. And more often than not, the hyperbole & conspiracy theories that are closest in reach rely on antisemitic tropes.

It isn’t enough that bombs are inherently destructive to human life & infrastructure, and that even “precision bombs” are not actually that precise; it has to be the worst, most total version of that thing—it has to be “carpet bombing”.

It isn’t enough to criticize the concept of civilian casualties as acceptable “collateral damage” in war; Israel has to be especially evil, so they have to be intentionally targeting civilians for the sake of it—thus the long and well-documented history of Hamas using civilians as “human shields” (even openly literally bragging about it), preventing civilians from escaping, and building military bases under civilian infrastructure, as well as the status quo of accepting civilian casualties in warfare, both remain unaddressed.

It isn’t enough that the destruction of war causes food and water scarcity, it has to be intentionally engineered. It has to be Israel poisoning wells.

And there it is: well-poisoning, an antisemitic libel nearly as old as—one could argue, an offshoot of—blood libel.

The claim that Israel is poisoning Palestinian wells is so baseless that even the source of that claim, Mahmoud Abbas, admitted his accusations were entirely baseless the very next day:

I’m pointing out that specific claim because it’s the easiest to illustrate just how baseless & bigoted it is. But it goes deeper than that: the same totalizing rhetoric and thought process that led this person to believe that antisemitic lie is also responsible for their willingness to attribute Hamas blocking escape routes to the IDF, to describe the bombing of military targets under civilian infrastructure as ”carpet bombing”, and that Israel is trying to exterminate the Palestinian people, despite so much evidence to the contrary.

I am not downplaying the loss of life & tragedy of this conflict or “mincing words” when I say this; I am not even denying the possibility that at some point more information may surface that suggests extermination was actually Netanyahu’s goal (though we are not there).

I am pointing out how this totalizing rhetoric, and the eagerness to believe Israelis are evil, genocidal monsters is impeding the left’s ability to accurately assess & address the root causes of that loss of life. I am pointing out how this goes deeper than just avoiding a checklist of antisemitic tropes. I am asking you to ask yourself, “What is making me so susceptible to believing Jews would poison wells or commit genocide?” “What bad habits am I engaging in with regard to my thought processes & rhetorical habits that makes me more prone to believing this?“

#antisemitism #i/p #well poisoning libel #blood libel

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matan4il · 25 days

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Just came across this. I'm more appalled when people dismiss others for expressing any sympathies to Israel. In fact, I recall a fanartist who, in reaction of a voice actor Rob Paulsen expressing sympathy for Israel and the hostages, denounced him as a Zionist and drew Donnie supporting Palestine.

When Jews or Israelis express their pain, if the reaction is to start making number-based comparisons, as if that resolves the entire question of "who do we get to feel for" (like we can't feel for innocents on both sides), it's just self-exposing people as lacking any real human empathy, or care about all human life.

It's as if you told someone you're hurting because your mom died, and their reaction would be, "Who cares? You should are more about your neighbor's pain, who just lost FIVE cousins. Not just one realtive, but FIVE! So that's the only thing we should all care about, yourself included!"

That is NOT a normal reaction, it IS devoid of empathy and basic human decency, and it IS mind boggling that this even has to be explained to people.

...Not to mention that if we really wanted to try and make the metaphor work in terms of context as well, then it would be like if you were being told that you should care more about your neighbor's pain over losing five cousins than about your own mom's death, when two of the cousins are known to be responsible for having murdered your mom, and it's very likely someone in that family is exaggerating about how many cousins have died, and that same relative also keeps promising that soon enough, they'd murder you, too.

I hope you're okay and taking care of yourself, lovely! xoxox

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

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edenfenixblogs · 6 months

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Shut up you genocide supporter

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

So, just to be clear, I made a post specifically explaining that I hear this phrase as a call for my death personally. I hear this phrase as a call for the death of all Jews to be murdered and denied burial and to be shoved into the sea and provided examples as of why. And I received this in my inbox less than a minute later.

I also explained explicitly that I believe Palestinian people have a right to use this phrase and reclaim it from terrorists who took it from them. I explained that my ultimate goal is peace for Palestinians and for Jews. I explained that I wish for Palestinians to live as full and equal citizens in their homeland. I explained that anything that does not contribute to this goal of peace is causing active harm to Jews as well as deepening the conflict going on right now.

Given that information, you chose to send me this.

So you want me to die? You want to kill me, a Jewish person who does not live in and has never been to Israel? You want to kill all Jews?

Hmmm…it sounds like only one of us actually supports genocide, and it sure isn’t me.

Next time you want to tell me that you want me dead and want to kill all Jewish people, you can just say that. There’s no need to pretend you’re helping Palestinians at the same time.

PS: to all the goyim who replied to my recent posts that they support Jews and abhor antisemitism—now would be a good time to show support.

Jews cannot continue to receive this kind of targeted harassment in the name of people who claim to support peace. Standing up to antisemitism means loudly and clearly denouncing this. And if you don’t do so, I’m just gonna assume you stand with @pata-hikari, who wants me dead.

I have made it abundantly clear that I don’t support the violent response to the 10/7 attacks. I have made it abundantly clear I want freedom and equality for Palestinians. It’s time for y’all to make it abundantly clear that you understand that this message was a death threat. That people are using a phrase coined to promote hope and peace and liberation to threaten (another) mass Jewish slaughter. Do you care about me or not? Stop fence sitting or choosing sides. Fight for peace or stop pretending to be my friend and ally. An ally doesn’t stand idly by while someone they claim to support gets death threats.

Again, I don’t want ANY violence. I don’t want anyone to attack this person. What I want is to stop having to deal with this shit every day. What I want is for people to be as loud in their opposition to antisemitism as they are for Palestinian self determination. What I want is to stop having to be regarded as a good guy or a bad guy. I just want to be a fucking person and I want PEACE ONLY.

#just a normal day for Jews #this is normal #jewish muslim solidarity #israeli palestinian conflict #Israeli Palestinian solidarity #i/p #i/p conflict #i dare a goy to reblog this challenge

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boldlygoingtohell · 5 months

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In a weird way, as a Jew, I can kinda take Normal Antisemitism™️.

I mean, I understand where right-wing racists are coming from when it comes to their antisemitism. At the end of the day, theirs just comes from fear, replacement theory, etc… It’s easily identifiable. 2+2=4. Yea its shitty, but I see how they got from A to B and it’s a straight line.

But left-wing antisemitism?? Like, how does that happen? I thought the left was about supporting minority groups, encouraging them to speak and be heard. But all I’m seeing from leftists these days (I myself being super fucking liberal, left, etc…) is just waves and waves of antisemitism. And yes it has to do with Israel, but these people are incapable of criticizing the Israeli government without going “all Jews are responsible!” in the process. It's infuriating.

Are all the the world’s Jews, millions of which live OUTSIDE of Israel, now responsible for Israel’s actions? I'M a stupid American! I’ve never even BEEN to Israel, much less know the intricate details of a geo-political conflict whose complexities go willfully unlearned by armchair activists in favor of yelling in all caps for 140 characters.

But what really gets me, and I mean REALLY get me about the whole situation, is the hypocrisy.

Remember how awful it was when we saw waves of Islamophobic hate crimes after 9/11, American Muslims with no ties to al-Qaeda being targeted for the faith those terrorists claimed to represent?

Or do you remember standing against the wave of anti-Asian hate crimes that was spurned on by COVID falsehoods? The “China virus” as Trump so eloquently put it? You remember being pissed about that, not blaming Asian Americans but standing with them against hate?

And hell, I’ve heard there has been a rash of Islamophobic attacks again because of the Israeli-Gaza conflict. That’s fucking awful, and I will stand against that bull shit because it does not belong here, end of story.

But now there are also antisemitic attacks, hate crimes, being perpetrated around the world. And who are the perpetrators now? The left that stood against everything else. There's no widespread ally-ship for Jews like me. There's no sweeping social media campaign, no catchy hashtag, no ice bucket challenge.

Why am I allowed to be condemned for what a country on the other side of the world is doing, when I have nothing to do with it? Why can I have the finger pointed at me when I don’t want the fighting in the first place? Why must Jews be allowed to be the target of this ire when it's already been decided that other ethnicities/religions don't deserve it either?

Now, I am PROUD to be Jewish; it is my culture, in my heritage, in my literal blood. It is in my genetics, my bones, my spoken language, it is in the holidays I celebrate, the philosophies I live by.

But it is also in the generational trauma of my mother insisting I have a passport as a young child, not because we were traveling, but in case we had to flee. It is in her inherent distrust of the government; a card-carrying Democrat all her life, she would always remind me, "if you don't think the government can't turn on you, you're kidding yourself." It is her constant reminders that as a Jew, our assimilation is conditional, our acceptance is political. I felt these, but never as strongly as she did. Not until now.

I am third generation American, and yet I feel like an outsider in the only country I have ever known. People who I thought understood, who were my friends, who marched with me against the injustices of the world, are now calling after Jews to answer for Israel's actions.

I say I don't want the violence to persist and I'm told that I'm, "one of the good ones". I'm told hurt Israelis don't deserve sympathy because, "all Jews are rich anyway, right? Who cares." I tell them my fears about the rising antisemitism and wearing my star of david necklace out. I'm told, "it doesn't matter, you're white anyway."

For the first time in my life, the racists aren't just some crazy KKK members. They're not just Nazis marching around with beer bellies and ill fitting helmets. It's not just some screeching street preacher who claims I'm going to hell after he caught the glint off my star of david necklace. If needs be, I can kick and punch my way out of those. They're just idiots. Isolated, concentrated incidents. It'd be a good story to tell at a bar the next day though a gap-toothed smile and a sling on my shoulder.

But now, both sides are coming after me and my people. Now, it's not just idiots who have all of their views backwards; it's people I thought I could trust to have my back, to go down swinging with me against those Nazis. Right. Left. It's everywhere. There's no escape.

It's coming from all sides. It's coming from social media platforms, from dinners with friends, from posters on street lamps.

I live in one of the safest, most Jewish neighborhoods in America, and for the first time in my life I am truly scared.

#jumblr #antisemitism #judaism #jewish #I'm just so tired of it all #I wasn't an anxious person before this #racism #long post I guess #can we go back to the days of punching Nazis?#life was simple

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menlove · 5 months

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like yes "from the river to the sea" is not antisemitic and neither is protesting "jewish businesses" if that business happens to be a weapons manufacturer

but yall seem to think that those two things are the only things people are talking about when we say leftists are being antisemitic rn

like sure fine that's great! but are you

spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories (ie "israelis are stealing unborn babies out of palestinian women and burning them/eating them/using them in xyz ways" w 0 backup yes I've seen that)? connecting absolutely everything to zionists and saying they run the world/media/banks? making random connections to this situation w no proof? (just saw someone say puerto rico getting rid of its stray cat population "has ties to 🍉" like yall need to get serious)

are you saying "idk I just can't trust anyone wearing a star of david now like at this point the star of david is basically a swastika :/ you shouldn't use it"?

are you responding to the list of celebrities who support israel with "well this isn't surprising, hollywood is jewish"?

are you saying israel and every israeli should be destroyed? not "from the river to the sea" or that israel shouldn't exist as a state but I've seen multiple popular leftists saying "idc if the entire place gets bombed and everyone dies" like you realize that includes innocent civilians and people protesting their government and non-jews as well right? like you are advocating for genocide in response to genocide and at this point yall just want more violence, not justice.

are you saying antisemitism isn't a real problem anymore? or like everyone's favorite celebrity rn susan sarandan said "now jews know what muslims feel like" as if antisemitism and islamphobia don't go hand in hand? are you saying antisemitism is a "sad interpersonal problem but not systemic"? are you saying that during the holocaust the jews should have found an alternative to israel (true) by "civil resistance" implying that no jews resisted during the holocaust and that the holocaust was somehow the fault of the jews for not doing enough for themselves? are you saying that anyone bringing up your antisemitism rn needs to shut up bc "it's not about you" because you can't comprehend that people can care about multiple things at once?

are you asking every jew you meet where they stand on palestine and accusing every single jew you disagree with about literally anything of being a zionist? are you calling jews zionists who are just scared of rising antisemitism rn? are you using "zionist" as a placeholder for "jew" bc you can immediately say you're talking about zionists and not jews even if the post has nothing to do w zionism and only judaism?

are you agreeing with and marching with nazis and white supremacists and not realizing?

are you making jews afraid to attend pro-palestine protests because they're getting harassed? and yes this happens at pro-israel protests too but this is a post aimed at pro-palestine leftists bc I am one and that is my audience

are you acting, in general, like the actions of a shitty government and shitty people equate to the beliefs of every single jew on earth? are you making posts comparing judaism to christianity bc of this? saying jews have a history of violence and conquest on par w christianity when it's quite literally just israel and in the rest of history for the last SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS jews have been anything BUT a world power? do you not hear the parallels to antisemitic conspiracy when you insist on this? outside of israel, what instances can you think of where judaism has been a historically violent and oppressive religion? spoiler: it's not, israel is the baby of colonial interests and thus follows their pattern. it's not because of judaism

are you tolerating and okay with people shouting blatantly antisemitic things at jewish people bc they're shitty people? like think of it this way would you be fine w a bunch of straight people shouting "faggot" at a white gay republican? or a racial slur at a republican of color? would either of those things be fine? no? then aiming actual blatant antisemitism at a zionist is not okay either. you can shout all manner of things at them that don't involve antisemitic phrases, remarks, and threats.

#antisemitism tw #long post #like I'm tired

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weirdmageddon · 7 months

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i posted this on twitter also but it’s still eating at me. i’m so fucking embarrassed to be jewish rn. i dont want to be associated with this ongoing bullshit from israel. why do we need our own state. theyre just making every jew across the globe look bad in general even though many of us are conflicted about zionism and the legitimacy of israel as a state

people have hated jews throughout history for no fuckin reason but now israel exists but now its like. GIVING people reasons to hate us as a group. note that i DON’T conflate zionism with jewishness, but a lot of people in the world don’t know the difference because theyre uninformed and been dripfed cultural antisemitic tropes their whole life and that’s the scary part is them falsely putting two and two together. like what the fuck israel stop youre just putting fuel on the fire for people around the world to hate an entire group of historically persecuted people if youre being this shitty with your insane colonialism and apartheid like……I Want No Fuckin Part Of This. you’re spelling our own doom. you cant just swoop in and go “mine now” and then oppress the people you took land from under a regime without my blood boiling at the injustice no matter WHO you are. even if my lineage is tied to you. so when news outlets support israel it doesn’t feel like they have the best interest of jews as a people in mind. it’s in the interest of a zionist ethnostate and whatever that christian zionism belief is about the jewish people returning to the holy land as prerequisite for the second coming of jesus. its not like they care about us as a dispersed ethnocultural group, it’s all for that religious narrative that a bunch of people in the US are backing.

saying you want all jews to die is antisemitic. beating someone up because they’re jewish and no other reason without knowing their views is antisemitic. criticizing human rights violations perpetrated by israel and the belief that one group deserves more rights another is not antisemitic. and the fact that israel has the ability to pull that antisemitism card in response to criticisms of the violations they commit because their state is the “jewish homeland” drives me fucking insane. take fucking accountability for your actions. and yes, there do exist full-on anti-jewish groups in the middle east that go beyond hatred of israel’s policies and existence as a state and i’m tired of people pretending there aren’t in fear of appearing to seem like they support the state of israel. on the other side of things many people overestimate this by fearmongering and saying EVERY arab is out to get jews worldwide, telling people like me “they want YOU dead”. this is not the belief every person in the middle east and it really rubs me the wrong way that people group millions of individuals into all-encompassing lumps like this. many people there do understand nuance of this political situation.

even if i have that “right of return” by israeli law or whatever, i don’t feel obliged to it; it does not register as fair. why do i have a “right of return” when i’ve never even been there in the first place while palestinians who have homes there can’t return to them? what’s the basis for that? substituting objective reality with an imaginary reality? i don’t think like that. i can hypothetically come and go whenever i please but palestinians are severely limited in mobility? what makes me more entitled to that land than the people who lived there for centuries? nothing that comes from natural law thats for sure. it’s all artificial and inflated.

but at the same time i also dont want to be the target of antisemitism and caught in the fray just for being ethnically jewish. once people start calling for the genocide of entire groups we’ve got issues (and you better believe this absolutely applies to the palestinian victims in gaza too), because people who dissent to the violence perpetrated by the loudest are caught in there with the people who are perpetrating the violence. lack of nuance. people conflating israel and its zionist apartheid policies with jewish ethnicity and culture worldwide. other people conflating being terrorist anti-jew with muslims worldwide (like that 6-year old palestinian-american boy that was just stabbed to death in chicago). scary times man. but as a jew i can’t just opt out of this if it’s how i was born as. i don’t have control over that. but i can control what i think and what my beliefs are

#israel palestine conflict #israel #palestine #what i feel is right most strongly resonates with secular humanist philosophy #never really found the right way to explain my worldview until i read about it

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doberbutts · 3 months

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I’m wondering if you have thoughts on James Baldwin’s “open letter to the born again”? I’m struggling a bit with what his point is in that piece; it feels kinda dismissive on Jewish zionists agency in creation of Israel? But I may be missing parts or not getting things

The text in question.

And the segment I think anon is struggling with:

I know what I am talking about: my grandfather never got the promised “forty acres, and a mule,” the Indians who survived that holocaust are either on reservations or dying in the streets, and not a single treaty between the United States and the Indian was ever honored. That is quite a record.

Jews and Palestinians know of broken promises. From the time of the Balfour Declaration (during World War I) Palestine was under five British mandates, and England promised the land back and forth to the Arabs or the Jews, depending on which horse seemed to be in the lead. The Zionists—as distinguished from the people known as Jews—using, as someone put it, the “available political machinery,’’ i.e., colonialism, e.g., the British Empire—promised the British that, if the territory were given to them, the British Empire would be safe forever.

But absolutely no one cared about the Jews, and it is worth observing that non-Jewish Zionists are very frequently anti-Semitic. The white Americans responsible for sending black slaves to Liberia (where they are still slaving for the Firestone Rubber Plantation) did not do this to set them free. They despised them, and they wanted to get rid of them. Lincoln’s intention was not to “free” the slaves but to “destabilize” the Confederate Government by giving their slaves reason to “defect.” The Emancipation Proclamation freed, precisely, those slaves who were not under the authority of the President of what could not yet be insured as a Union.

It has always astounded me that no one appears to be able to make the connection between Franco’s Spain, for example, and the Spanish Inquisition; the role of the Christian church or—to be brutally precise, the Catholic Church—in the history of Europe, and the fate of the Jews; and the role of the Jews in Christendom and the discovery of America. For the discovery of America coincided with the Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Does no one see the connection between The Merchant of Venice and The Pawnbroker? In both of these works, as though no time had passed, the Jew is portrayed as doing the Christian’s usurious dirty work. The first white man I ever saw was the Jewish manager who arrived to collect the rent, and he collected the rent because he did not own the building. I never, in fact, saw any of the people who owned any of the buildings in which we scrubbed and suffered for so long, until I was a grown man and famous. None of them were Jews.

And I was not stupid: the grocer and the druggist were Jews, for example, and they were very very nice to me, and to us. The cops were white. The city was white. The threat was white, and God was white, Not for even a single split second in my life did the despicable, utterly cowardly accusation that “the Jews killed Christ’’ reverberate. I knew a murderer when I saw one, and the people who were trying to kilI me were not Jews.

But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests. This is what is becoming clear (I must say that it was always clear to me). The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of “divide and rule” and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.

Finally: there is absolutely—repeat: absolutely—no hope of establishing peace in what Europe so arrogantly calls the Middle East (how in the world would Europe know? having so dismally failed to find a passage to India) without dealing with the Palestinians. The collapse of the Shah of Iran not only revealed the depth of the pious Carter’s concern for “human rights,” it also revealed who supplied oil to Israel, and to whom Israel supplied arms. It happened to be, to spell it out, white South Africa.

Well. The Jew, in America, is a white man. He has to be, since I am a black man, and, as he supposes, his only protection against the fate which drove him to America. But he is still doing the Christian’s dirty work, and black men know it.

My friend, Mr. Andrew Young, out of tremendous love and courage, and with a silent, irreproachable, indescribable nobility, has attempted to ward off a holocaust, and I proclaim him a hero, betrayed by cowards.

For context: Andrew Young, considered the right hand of MLK Jr, had a longstanding and occasionally fraught relationship with the Jewish community. He stepped down from Congress shortly after being forced to choose between voicing support for Palestine and continuing to work towards black-jewish interests by his constituents and fellow politicians, as he felt very strongly about supporting both. This was a fairly unpopular move. While I don't believe he ever called himself Jewish by the strictest sense, he was actively involved in Jewish communities and the known "white" ancestry within him is a Polish Jew in his great grandparents.

To be honest, I don't really see much a problem with this as I think it fairly closely matches up not only with my understanding of the history of this problem but also my own country's part in it as well as my personal feelings on it decades later. It pretty blatantly says that Zionism is utilizing a machination of white supremist colonism due to the extensive history of antisemitism and having had the ancestral land dangled in front of them like bait on a hook from the British Empire, which owned Palestine at the time. It also goes on to say that many Zionists aren't even Jewish and are antisemitic in nature, but are Christians happy to get rid of as many Jews as possible and how that tracks due to the Christian church's millennia-deep history of antisemitism.

I don't think it lets anyone off the hook. I think it pretty much flat out says this is a problem caused first and foremost by white Christians who hate Jews and Arabs alike and have a vested interest in getting the two populations to fight because it'll be easier to kill off just the one group instead of both of them, if one ends up eradicating the other. It even talks about the friction between the black community and the Jewish community, what caused it, what drives it, how that friction in itself is a tool of white supremacy to hurt us both.

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jewishvitya · 5 months

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Saw an interview with the Israeli ambassador in the UK where she openly rejects the idea of a Palestinian state at all. Including in a two-states scenario. Which, I knew this is the position of our government, Netanyahu was recently trying to push the "I'm the only one who can prevent a Palestinian state," but she was unusually open and explicit about it for an international interview.

And I didn't realize it at first (because I'm awful with faces... and names) but that's Tzipi Hotoveli. She's so right-wing that she was a popular name in the settlements when I lived there. And this is something I can say about many politicians currently running the government, they are the names that aligned politically with the most extremist community. And this is why she's so bad at being diplomatic about it - the people with that mentality rarely care about watering down their goals.

A mutual of mine on a different platform, an American anti-zionist Jew, talked about a trip they took to the West Bank. It was organized to show the occupation, the checkpoints, etc. Someone asked in response if they visited settlements too, and said that he was glad they enjoyed the trip, but it seems to be all one color.

This was a weird comment. What can you see in the settlements to change your mind, if you care about human rights. What can you see that would erase the suffering of Palestinians there, or give context to justify it. Even if settlers knew to say all the right words, this shouldn't be enough to make you forget what Palestinians are living through.

But they don't say the right words. Especially there, the people openly dehumanize Palestinians. And if you talk to them for a while, they will do it to your face. And they will be open about wanting no Palestinians living on any part of the land. Israeli Arabs are often seen as a different story, as long as they accept Israeli sovereignty. Still not fully trusted, though.

I saw someone confusing the electric fence I mentioned in a few posts, with the separation fence, which is the wall around the West Bank. Not the same thing.

The separation fence is built within the territory of the West Bank, but it's a large wall all around that cuts them off from other areas of the land.

The electric fence is smaller, and it's specific. The one I'm referring to is in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. That's the settlement I grew up in. It's one of the more established settlements, and it's basically a small town. Right behind the apartment building I lived in, there was the electric fence. And in a distance of maybe a couple of traffic lanes past the fence, were Palestinian homes. They could see us, we could see them.

The fence was there for our sake, not for the Palestinians. But sometimes the settlers would tear it down, forcing the border police and the military to guard that spot and rebuild it. I wondered why, because a hole in the fence near my home scared me. And then I learned they were protesting against the feeling that they're being contained. The settlers, with how they're constantly expanding, felt that they're not given enough. Settlers treat "we can't expand as fast as we'd like" as if that's oppression.

They would regularly get into conflicts with border police and with the military over this. They'd go out to claim another hill, and their temporary homes would get torn down. Individuals from the West Bank settlements would have the Shin Bet keeping track of them in case they'll do something that could provoke an escalation of violence. And this isn't to claim that Israel was being fair to Palestinians or protecting their interests. It just means that Israel tried to be strategic to an extent, and the settlers are inflammatory. Their stated goal, openly talked about, is to establish a presence on the ground, so that any agreement that gives land to Palestinians won't be possible. I kept hearing sentences like "not even a square centimeter." Meaning that they want to leave nothing for Palestinians. They aren't trying to think about what Israel can get away with, they feel entitled to everything.

And these are the people that the current Israeli government aligns with. Which puts a lot of things out in the open, and pushes a lot of other things into further extremes.

#I'm not trying to pretend other Israreli governments were GOOD #I'm just trying to illustrate the current mentality #riki babbles

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jewish-sideblog · 6 months

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hey, so im Palestinian and a strong activist for my people's liberation. i wanted to ask for some info/advice on avoiding antisemitism in my activism for Palestine. im on anon bc i don't want to be called a racefaker for caring about Jewish ppl. i know antisemitism is on the rise right now (and generally over the past few years) and i want to make sure i'm not unintentionally contributing to it.

Hey there! I wanted to start by genuinely thanking you for asking this question. Partially because I don't actually get any well-intentioned or helpful questions in my inbox anymore, but also because I understand the amount of bravery it takes to reach out with a question like that at a time like this.

Next, I want to apologize to all my followers who hate long posts. Judaism is a very complicated ethnoreligious group, antisemitism is a very complicated form of bigotry, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is arguably the most complicated international issue that has ever existed. I'm going to try to go through everything as succinctly as possible below the cut-- I am also going to ask other Jews to contribute to and make edits to this list as needed.

And finally-- I'm writing this as though I were speaking to someone with very little knowledge of the subject. I understand that as a Palestinian, you probably know a lot about what's going on here. But I want to make sure that I'm covering bases for anybody else who might need to use this post. So if you're like, Yeah, Obviously I Knew That. Please remember that a fuckton of people on tumblr are engaging in Israeli criticism without obviously knowing that.

There are two primary forms of antisemitism in anti-Zionist spaces-- antisemitic conspiracy theory, and criticism of Israel that no other country receives. The first kind is the easiest kind to pick out, and it makes a nice bulleted list, so we'll start there.

Dual Loyalty. A global stereotype that has skyrocketed since the establishment of Israel, but it's been around for a lot longer than that. Simply put, it's the idea that Jews are more loyal to Israel (or some global secret kabal) than we are to the countries we currently reside in. With I/P, it manifests as the idea that All Jews are directly responsible for Israel or the idea that All Jews secretly support Israel. If you see a Jew who isn't directly engaging in I/P topics, don't ask them what their stance is. Plenty of us have never even been to Israel, and it's fucked up to assume that we're all experts in geopolitics.

The Holocaust was a Fabrication or a Lesson. The idea that Jews made up the Shoah has been around since the Shoah was still happening, and it's always been ridiculous. Today, you'll see three primary lines about this. Either it's that Jews made up the Shoah as an excuse to establish Israel, that the Jews deserved the Shoah because of what's happening in Israel today, or that the Jews "should have learned their lesson from the Holocaust" because now Jews are "the new Nazis". Frankly, I wish goyim would stop treating the deaths of millions of Jews like a TV show. Palestinian deaths are genuinely horrible, but this isn't some kind of "narrative parallel" to the Shoah.

The Kazars Theory, or All Jews are White. This is the DNA test nonsense. The idea is that Israel (or Jews at large) are only pretending to be indigenous to the Levant and that secretly Jews as a whole are actually indigenous to Eastern Europe. It's a lie, started by a German professor of Russian history in the early 1800s. Meanwhile, the vast majority of genetic, historical, and archaeological evidence points to Jewish origins in the Israeli/Palestinian region. There have been literal hundreds of genetic studies on this. Most of them suggest that Jews, even "white" Ashkenazim, are nearly genetically identical to Palestinians.

World Domination. The idea that Jews control the world began with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903. If you're encountering criticism of Israel that suggests that world governments, particularly European or American ones, are being controlled by Jews, you've got yourself antisemitism. White supremacists like to use the term "Zionist Occupied Government" or "ZOG" as shorthand for this conspiracy. The next two points are born out of this same ideology.

Controlling the Media. The idea that Jews are in charge of Hollywood and/or major news organizations around the world. Regarding I/P, I've seen a bunch of people say something like "Western media outlets won't cover this! (Because you know who controls them!)" only to look online and see... Western media outlets covering it. See also: "My source is tiktok! I don't trust the news!" While it's obviously a fair criticism to say that some Western news outlets certainly have a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias, it's certainly not every single one of them. Reuters and the AP are once again my go-to's here.

Controlling the Financial World. I haven't actually seen this come up regarding I/P, but considering how things have been going, it's only a matter of time. We don't control the banks. We don't control the stock market. We're not in charge of American aid being sent to Israel. HaShem knows that if we controlled all the money, I'd certainly be living larger than I am now...

Those Bloodthirsty Jews. This one arguably started with Blood Libel in the 1100s, when Christians started accusing us of stealing and eating their babies. Straight up, I have met Christians who still believe this in 2023. You see this a lot with I/P-- the Al Ahli Hospital is the biggest example. More than a month later, most reliable intelligence organizations agree that a misfired Hamas rocket landed in a parking lot, killing about 100 people. But a ton of people are still saying that Those Bloodthirsty Jews intentionally bombed the hospital dead on, killing 470 people. I want to be clear-- Israel is killing a lot of civilians. But if you see a bandwagon of people focusing on the one group of deaths that Israel probably actually didn't cause? Consider why.

Causing wars, revolutions, and calamities. Hamas has straight-up got this one in their founding charter. No, the Jews are not responsible for any major global conflicts, revolutions, or counter-revolutions that don't directly involve Israel. We didn't do WWII. We didn't do the October Revolution. See above-- we're not secretly plotting massacres on Shabbat. A lot of people are saying that Netanyahu and Likud let Hamas in to justify the invasion of Gaza... I'd be shocked if that was the case. All evidence points to a classic intelligence failure. We're not orchestrating bloodbaths.

Section 2: Criticisms only levelled at Israel

It's important to recognise that Israeli civilians are no more collectively responsible for the actions of the Likud coalition than Palestinians are collectively responsible for the actions of Hamas. No Palestinian deserves to be stripped of their rights to self-determination in their ancestral lands because of the October 7th attack. Likewise, no Chinese person deserves to be displaced from China because of the CCP's human rights violations in Tibet, Uyghur and Hong Kong. No Russian person deserves to be ethnically cleansed from Russia because of the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine. But plenty of people do believe that Jews should be stripped of their rights to self-determination in historically Jewish indigenous lands because of the actions of the Israeli government.

After October 7th, I've seen people argue that Israeli babies deserved to be kidnapped because of their national origin. I've seen people argue that Israeli women deserved to be sexually abused because of their nation of origin. I've seen people argue that the seven million Jews living in their ancestral homeland deserve death or displacement because of their nation of origin. Justifying or allowing brutal harm against people because of their national origin is hateful.

I want to make this part very clear-- I do not have an issue with calling out Israeli war crimes or crimes against humanity. But I do have an issue with treating Jewish civilians differently than civilians of other nations responsible for similar horrors. Amplifying bias against a particular group because of that group's nation of origin is called bigotry. Taking a stand against Israeli settlements in the West Bank is anti-Zionism. Collectivizing the label of "white colonialism", and forcing that label upon refugees forced to move to Israel, or Mizrahim with uninterrupted 8,000-year histories in Israel, is antisemitism.

Part 3: Moving Forward

So where do we go from here? If advocating for the destruction of Israel is advocating for the elimination of Jewish self-determination in our ancestral lands, but advocating in favour of the Israeli government is advocating for the elimination of Palestinian self-determination in your ancestral lands, then we must find some middle ground. A solution that allows seven million Jews and five-and-a-half-million Arabs to share the same holy land, without fear of persecution, displacement, or death. For me, this means a few things.

First of all, the recognition that most Israelis disagree with Netanyahu's approach to Palestine, and most Palestinians disagree with Hamas's approach to Israel. And that brings up a question-- why are Likud and Hamas in charge of Israel and Gaza respectively if most people disagree with them? Without getting into the complicated intricacies of the Knesset and the PNA on an already very long post (and without explaining your own government to you), the simple answer is international funds.

Israeli crimes against Palestinians are bankrolled by American Evangelical Christians, who believe that when Palestine is gone, all the Jews will go to Israel, and Jesus will come back to kill the world's infidels. They actually fucking believe that. Meanwhile, Hamas is bankrolled by Iran, which believes that the more often Jews and Sunni Muslims kill each other, the easier it will be for Iranian Shiite Jihad to take over the world. They actually fucking believe that.

So what steps can we take during our advocacy? Not for the destruction of Israel nor the destruction of Palestine, but for America and Iran to get their noses out of our damn business. I genuinely believe that a defunded Likud and a defunded Hamas will allow Israelis and Palestinians to work together for a peaceful two-state or joint-rule solution. Something that will keep my Palestinian friends from feeling like they can't safely travel from Jaffa to Tel Aviv. Something that will allow my Jewish family to visit and pray at the Cenotaphs of Isaac and Rebecca and the Temple Mount. Something that will let Israeli children from Kibbutz Nirim and Palestinian children from Khan Yunis play on the same playgrounds together, instead of sheltering from missile fire.

Frankly, we nearly had that when the Supreme Muslim Council and the Assembly of Representatives began collaborating against the British Mandate instead of against each other. Clearly, it's possible, we just need to stop being pitted against each other by foreign powers.

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