fromchaostocosmos

[fromchaostocosmos]

I keep hearing and seeing the chant "No one is illegal on stolen land" and to be honest I think that is kind offensive.

Because there is something about that chant that feels like it removes the agency from the Native and Indigenous Peoples of this land and gives a sort of distortion of history feel to me.

To be clear I'm not Native or Indigenous to this Land. I also don't want to be speaking over anyone who is.

Maybe "No one is legal on stolen land" would be better.

Or even better getting input from Native Americans about what they think and feel and what would be best.

Also the chant is giving a very only caring about and/or bringing up Native Americans and that USA is stolen when it is beneficial rather than actually truly caring.

If you are Native American and want to share your thoughts on this post I would really love to hear them. Be it you agree or disagree with me.

[fromchaostocosmos]

I was looking something up on wikipedia and it had a whole section dedicated to this person's view's on the "Israeli–Palestinian conflict" which was literally just a tweet and it had two footnotes which linked to the tweet and Newsweek article.

And said article was titled "Madison Beer Speaks Out Amid Rumors She's a Zionist". Newsweek dedicated an entire article to this.

Please, how is this normal? How is this sane?

Israeli–Palestinian conflict In January 2024, Beer took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to express her views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In her post, she stated, "If you think I'd ever want an innocent person to be killed, you do not know me, and that is simply outrageous." She further said, "You can be Jewish and also want peace for all people, including Palestinian people, which is, of course, what I want. No innocent person deserves to die."[96][97]

That is the whole Wikipedia entry. You need a whole entry for that. Really?

And the Newsweek article is pretty offensive and defines Zionism incorrectly.

Singer Madison Beer, who is Jewish, has finally spoken out following rumors that she's a Zionist. On October 7, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking another 240 captive. Israel subsequently launched airstrikes on Gaza, which is governed by Hamas, before commencing a ground offensive into the territory. As of January 15, 24,100 people in the Gaza Strip have been killed, according to figures from the Associated Press, citing Gaza's health authorities. Speculation that Beer was a Zionist started when people claimed she liked and unliked an Instagram post that said "the occupation of Palestine is a lie." Since then a variety of rumors have surrounded the pop singer online, with some people claiming her brother and father are Zionists, as well as some of her friends.

Zionism refers to the Jewish nationalist movement formed in 1897 that pushed to create a state for Jewish people in Palestine. It eventually led to the creation of Israel in 1948, following the Holocaust. However, some critics of Zionism have argued that this forced Palestinians off their land. While Beer has never responded to these claims, she took to X, formerly Twitter, on January 18, to share her thoughts on the Israeli-Hamas conflict. "if you think id ever want an innocent person to be killed you do not know me and that is simply outrageous," Beer said. "you can be jewish and also want peace for all people including Palestinian people. which is OF COURSE what i want. no innocent person deserves to die." Her tweet was in response to X user @betdovewanna who posted: "'madison's jewish' okay and? you can be jewish and not want any of this happening???"

The rest of the article covers people's responses. But again I have to ask was this necessary. And I have to ask would we see this sort of thing if wasn't about Jews and Zionism.

[fromchaostocosmos]

by Seth J. Frantzman

Several years ago, probably in 2021, I noted a trend among “human rights” groups where they came out with long studies claiming that they had concluded that Israel is an Apartheid state. They all came out with these studies around the same time, suggesting coordination. The studies also all relied on the same reading of history and terms.

They all claimed that the “whole land between the river and the sea” was an apartheid state since 1948. This was interesting because previously they had slammed Israel for the Occupation of areas taken in 1967. The human rights groups had backed a two state solution in the past.

This represented a new agenda. In order to get to their definition they had to define Israel as including the West Bank and Gaza and they defined the “apartheid” as applying to Arabs in Israel and in Jerusalem, essentially arguing that all the laws since 1948 were aimed at creating this discriminatory situation.

It struck me at the time that they were being purposely disingenuous. How could they include Gaza under their definition, I asked. Israel had left Gaza in 2005. It struck me that their goal was to try to force Israel to return to Gaza and take it over 8. In essence they wanted Israel to occupy Gaza.

I noticed the same trend among those who were writing about “one state.” They wanted Israel to return to Gaza. They wanted war to achieve this.

I didn’t realize at the time that plans were being laid by Hamas to carry out a massive attack whose goal would be to get Israel to return to Gaza and take it over. Hamas in essence was the armed wing of those new agenda seeking to force Israel back into Gaza with “any means necessary.” Some Human rights groups aided and abetted this not only through the apartheid label but also the claim that people have a “right to resist” and that this “armed resistance against civilians” is a normal reaction to “apartheid.”

I identified in 2021-2022 this agenda but I didn’t realize the extent of the plan. However I felt that there was something deep behind this. Tragically it came true on October 7 and that is why these same activist groups were ready with the “genocide” claim already on October 7. They had already written that script. They have been one step ahead. Tragedy has followed.

[fromchaostocosmos]

These two are amazing!

@x-heesy 💃🏻🕺🏻 Friday vibes!

[fromchaostocosmos]

The problem is that too many people look at the Jews and view our general unwillingness to endorse evolutionary left-wing populist movements as an indictment of our morals or our judgement, instead of an indictment of revolutionary left-wing populist movements.

Consider that we have seen this before, across continents and across centuries, and we have noticed that it never ends well - not for us, and not for you either.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Do you know how many tv shows would episodes centering around shabbat shenanigans.

every time I see someone overtly or covertly saying "the jews control the media!" all I can think is "unoriginal" followed by "clearly not or a lot of people would have shut the fuck up by now"

[fromchaostocosmos]

I’ll never forget that this is the year leftists finally did anything to put their words into actions and the words they chose to enact were the ones about murdering Jews in the street.

[fromchaostocosmos]

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — The family of a Nepali man taken captive by the Palestinian militant group Hamas appealed Thursday to his captors for his release, stressing that he has no involvement in the conflict in Gaza.

Bipin Joshi, now 25, was among 17 Nepali students studying agriculture in southern Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

Joshi had worked hard in a government competition to earn a spot to study in Israel, his 17-year-old sister Pushpa Joshi said Thursday in Kathmandu. He arrived in southern Israel just three weeks before the attack. It was his first time out of Nepal.

“Bipin Joshi is an innocent agriculture student,” Pushpa Joshi said. “He is a student who has a long life ahead of him, who is just 25 years now.”

Militants killed 10 of the Nepali students in the attack and injured six. Joshi saved multiple lives by tossing a live grenade out of the bomb shelter where they were hiding, his sister said, before he was abducted and taken to Gaza.

His family hasn’t had a sign of life from him since Israel obtained security footage from a hospital in Gaza showing Joshi, so they know Joshi was taken alive to Gaza, but have no information about him since then.

Pushpa, who was 15 when her brother was kidnapped, lives with their parents in a town in western Nepal. She travels eight hours each direction on buses to Kathmandu regularly to lobby officials to secure her brother’s release. She has met the country’s prime minister and president several times.

Nepal’s government says it has repeatedly sought help from Qatari and Egyptian officials to get Joshi freed.

“He is alive and we believe from the bottom of our hearts that he for sure is going to come back all safe and sound,” Pushpa said. “We have big hopes that he will be back.”

Pushpa said her brother is her best friend, and that they would often learn, sing and dance together while their parents were at work.

“In rainy season like now, we used to get wet in the rain and dance,” she said.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Israel should fine them for this. I think that this needs to be made as public as possible and that Greta should be asked by reporters to answer for her hypocrisy.

Sorry, they did WHAT with lithium batteries??????

They dumped all their phones, tablets, and laptops (items all powered by lithium batteries) into the mediterranean sea and filmed themselves doing it. I watched the footage, it’s fucking disgusting. “Environmentalist” my gay ass.

[fromchaostocosmos]

When Judith Butler Forgets How Identity Works

@squeeful replied on this post:

The issue is not in Butler’s work, like the work of the others mentioned, but that people, once supporting someone's work, think they must be right on other issues. Which is their intellectual immaturity, not a problem with the work

No, I actually have huge problems with parts of Butler's work - I'm just not willing to call all of it garbage because I think the concept of performative gender is important.

Butler's "work" on Jews, Jewish identity, Zionism, and Israel is pure @#&$ing excrement:

It's intellectually dishonest, academically anemic, and blatantly contradicts Butler's prior work on identity with a shameless reversal of their own theory for the purpose of condemning Jews who disagree with Butler's own fringe take on Jewish identity.

So let me explain exactly how full of shit Butler is on Jewish anything.

Why "Parting Ways" Parts Ways with Jewish Reality

Judith Butler made their name by challenging the idea that identity is fixed. In Gender Trouble, Butler asked us to think of gender not as a biological destiny, but as a performance - fluid, constructed, always in flux. That core idea reshaped entire fields, from queer theory to feminism to pop culture.

But when it comes to Jewish identity - especially Jewish identity in relation to Israel - Butler suddenly trades nuance for rigidity.

In Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, (get your copy here at no charge) they argue that "true" Jewishness is universalist, diasporic, and ethically obligated to oppose the State of Israel.

Butler says that Jews are not just required to critique Israel - but to reject its very legitimacy and existence. According to Butler, Zionism is a betrayal of true Jewish ethics and Zionists are doing Judaism wrong. In short, Butler is saying that if you believe in Israel's right to exist, you're a bad Jew.

That's not just a bold or controversial claim. It's historically, ethically, and logically nonsensical, yet people take Butler seriously on this topic.

Judith Butler isn't an outlier, they're one of the most influential voices shaping how the academic left (and by extension, much of progressive activism) understands Jews - and Butler doesn’t just misrepresent Judaism, Jewishness, and Israel. Butler erases the lived experience of millions of Jews.

Butler's Deliberate Misrepresentation of Judaism and Jewish Ethics

Judith Butler argues that Jewish ethics demand a rejection of nationalism - and therefore, of Zionism. They lean on figures like Levinas, Arendt, and Benjamin to claim that Judaism carries a moral duty to stand with the stateless, the exiled, the outsider.

There's a kernel of truth in that. Jewish tradition does emphasize care for the stranger and caution around power. But turning that into a blanket rejection of Jewish nationalism is a selective reading dressed up as principle. It's like claiming Buddhism forbids self-defense because it values compassion - technically clever, morally incoherent, and contextually blind.

That's how Butler presents their performance of Jewishness, by presenting selected works of selected Jewish thinkers, putting words in their mouths about Jewish national self-determination, then pretending that no other views exist (or are acceptable) within Jewish thought.

Bizarrely, this makes Butler's performance of Jewishness more restrictive, narrow, and intellectually dishonest than literally any I've ever encountered.

Butler preaches "Jewish tradition" like they can define it in a syllabus, telling their class what real Jewishness is.

Contrary to Butler's syllabus, Jewish ethics are much more than Levinas and Arendt. They're also Maimonides, Heschel, Soloveitchik, Spinoza, Buber, not to mention talmud. Jewish ethics is a diverse, often contradictory canon full of arguments about community, power, land, survival, and sovereignty.

Butler not only pretends this vast body of literature doesn't exist, but pretends that texts are the sole source of Jewish identity and ethics.

Jewish ethics and identity don't live in books, but in people. The overwhelming majority of Jews - across denominations, geographies, and politics- regard support for the Jewish state as an expression of their Jewish ethics. Safety after slaughter. Dignity after diaspora. Responsibility after ruin. Never again.

Butler doesn't just critique Israel, Butler claims Israel violates Judaism itself

...as if Judaism were a TED Talk on borderless cosmopolitanism instead of a 3,000-year conversation shaped by exile, return, law, myth, trauma, and survival.

Butler's erasure of Jewish history is antisemitic.

Caricaturing Zionism and Erasing History

Let's define Zionism clearly, since Butler doesn't. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people - like all peoples - have a right to national self-determination in a portion of their indigenous homeland. That's it.

To hear Butler describe it, Zionism is a colonial project - an unjust seizure of land, an inherently violent ideology, and a corruption of Jewish values.

If you know Jewish history, that reading collapses immediately, and that's no accident. Butler relies on the reader being ignorant of that history.

Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel. Our liturgy, language, and law all trace back to it. The diaspora happened because we were violently expelled from our homeland, not because we left voluntarily. When the modern Zionist movement emerged in the 19th century, it did so in response to relentless persecution - not a craving for empire.

Butler erases that history. There’s no mention of the pogroms that shaped early modern Zionist thought. There's no engagement with the Holocaust survivors who built Israel's institutions. There's no space for Mizrahi Jews who fled state-sponsored antisemitism across the Middle East and found refuge in Israel. There's no acknowledgment that the Jewish return wasn't a settler-colonial endeavor, but a survival imperative. It was, as Haviv Retiig Gur puts it, a refugee and rescue operation.

Butler only permits Israel to be seen through the lens of power - ignoring that it was born in weakness, under siege, and remains the only country in the world whose existence is regularly debated on moral terms.

Erasing Arab Agency, Legitimizing Terrorism

When discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Butler never confronts the fact that Hamas - a genocidal, explicitly antisemitic organization - governs Gaza. There's no mention of how many peace offers Israel has made. There's no mention of how Israelis (of all religion and ethnicities) live with the trauma of intifadas, bombings, kidnappings, and rockets.

In fact, Butler has worked hard to legitimize Hamas.

For Butler, Israel is a villain by default - and Zionism becomes a heresy against Judaism.

That's not analysis. That's dogma. And it isn't even Jewish dogma.

The Identity Double Standard

Here's where Butler's nose is crammed most thoroughly up their own posterior.

Judith Butler has spent decades showing how identity categories are socially constructed, context-dependent, and always in motion. Gender, in Butler’s framework, is not what you are, but what you do - and how others interpret it. Right?

But when it comes to Jewish identity, Butler flips the script.

Suddenly, Jewishness is a fixed thing - and only Jews who perform it in a particular, Butler-approved, anti-Zionist way are doing it "right." Everyone else, 90% of Jews, are heretics and apostates.

Jewishness, in Butler's view, is historically and ethically defined by its diasporic condition, which entails living among non-Jews. This means that "the Jew can never be fully separated from the question of how to live among those who are not Jewish."

Despite arguing that they're claiming to be using Jewish ethics to make a Jewish case against Jewish national self-determination...this argument hinges partly on Edward Said, partly on falsehoods, and partly on pure bullshit:

It came as a surprise to me, and also a gift, to read one of Edward Said’s last books, Freud and the Non-European, not only because of the lively reengagement with the figure of Moses it contains, but because Moses becomes for him an opportunity to articulate two theses that are, in my view, worth considering. The first is that Moses, an Egyptian, is the founder of the Jewish people, which means that Judaism is not possible without this defining implication in what is Arab. Such a formulation challenges hegemonic Ashkenazi definitions of Jewishness. But it also implies a more diasporic origin for Judaism, which suggests that a fundamental status is accorded the condition by which the Jew cannot be defined without a relation to the non-Jew. It is not only that, in diaspora, Jews must and do live with non-Jews,and must reflect on how precisely to conduct a life in the midst of religious and cultural heterogeneity, but also that the Jew can never be fully separated from the question of how to live among those who are not Jewish. The figure of Moses, however, makes an even more emphatic point, namely, that, for some, Jew and Arab are not finally separable categories, since they are lived and embodied together in the life of the Arab Jew.

Just to scratch the surface of Butler's bullshitting here (please add more in the replies!):

Moses, in Exodus, is not by any stretch of the imagination Egyptian.

The Egyptians of that era were not Arabs.

If Jewish identity is dependent on relation to Arabs, how did Jews define themselves for thousands of years before the Arab conquest reached the Levant in ~630 CE?

The only Ashkenazim I'm aware of who sought hegemonic definitions of Jewishness were the antizionist Bundists like Butler.

The assertion that seeing Moses as Egyptian says something about Ashkenazic conceptions of Jewishness is such a non-sequitur that it boggles the mind how an editor approved this being published.

Falsely asserting that the Moses of Exodus was Egyptian does not in any way imply a "more diasporic origin of Judaism", even if we took it to be true...which it isn't.

Butler actually asserts, despite scriptural, archeological, textual, historical, and anthropological evidence, that there were no non-Jews living among or near the Jews of ancient Israel. If this assertion was honest, we'd be appalled by the depth of her ignorance of Exodus and history.

And that's what's most infuriating about it: it's clearly, knowingly dishonest.

Butler is completely full of shit and making an argument they know damn well is intellectually dishonest and unsupportable. Butler started this book from a conclusion that Zionism is evil and worked backwards to find Jewish sources to distort into supporting that view, erasing and distorting 3,000 years of history, practice and belief. This book is one of the most shameful pieces of bullshittery I've ever seen.

We haven't even gotten to Butler's most and hypocritical, self-contradicting rhetoric.

If you're a Jew who believes in the dignity of diaspora, Butler says you're authentic.

If you're a Jew who believes in the dignity of sovereignty? Butler says you're morally suspect.

This is a total betrayal of the intellectual commitments on which Butler's career was built.

You can't defend gender self-determination, nuance, and fluidity while denying Jews the right to define their own individual and collective identity.

You can't champion multiplicity for everyone else and then enforce ideological purity tests on Jews.

You can't build a theory of liberation that demands Jews stay stateless.

Butler's issue isn't really one of Jewish identity. Butler's problem is with Jewish agency.

Why This Matters

This isn't just a philosophical dispute.

Butler's framework from this piece of shit book has spread far beyond the academy. It shows up in campus politics, activist circles, and social media discourse where Jews who support Israel - even critically - are cast as oppressors, collaborators, or frauds. Butler provides the justification.

It shapes a generation of progressives who have been taught that antizionism is the ethical Jewish position and that Jews who disagree are colonialist oppressors. It turns lived Jewish identity into a problem Butler solved by rehashing pieces of Bundism and Soviet antisemitism - but the Jews are a people to be understood and enfranchised as other peoples are: in all their complexity, fluidity, and nuance.

Butler creates moral cover for antisemitism. When an LGBTQ+ Jewish student is told they're "white" and "colonial" for supporting Israel's existence, that’s Butler's legacy at work. When a progressive space demands Jews check their Zionism at the door, that's Parting Ways in action.

We can - and should - critique Israeli policy.

Butler isn’t offering critique - Butler is offering disqualification, an eliminationist perspective which is nakedly antisemitic on it's face.

That's not justice. That's erasure.

Parting Thoughts on Parting Ways

I'm a Jew. I come from a community that has survived exile, pogroms, ethnic cleansings, the Holocaust, and 2,000 years of statelessness. Zionism is not a political ideology to me or the vast majority of the world's Jews who identify as Zionists. It's a lifeline.

It's the belief that Jews - like all peoples - deserve to exist, to belong, to build, to falter, to argue, and to thrive in a place of our own, the place which birthed our civilization.

I don't need Judith Butler to validate that - but I do need to call out the intellectual dishonesty of a conveniently inconsistent theory that makes room for every identity - except that of Jews.

The moment Jews demand dignity on our own terms, as Butler says other people should demand dignity on theirs, Butler parts ways.

I'm not discarding everything Butler has written or said (I haven't read everything they wrote), but every bit of their "work" on Jewish identity is excrement which deserves contempt and derision. It is bad faith, sloppy, pseudo-intellectual polemics of the very worst sort.

Butler is performing an inauthentic, fringe sort of Jewishness in order to insist that the 90% of the world's Jews who don't share Butler's view that Israel must he destroyed...aren't truly Jewish.

This is immediately discernable as bullshit to any Jew who knows anything about their own heritage.

Further Reading:

[fromchaostocosmos]

This year some of my favourite books I read were written by indigenous American authors and I just wanted to shout out a couple that I fell in love with

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Horror being my second most read genre, I did not think books could still get under my skin the way this one did lol. It follows four Blackfoot men who are seemingly being hunted by a vengeful... something... years after a fateful hunting trip that happened just before they went their separate ways. The horror, the dread, the something... pure nightmare fuel 10/10

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

An apocalyptic novel following an isolated Anishinaabe community in the far north who lose contact with the outside world. When two of their young men return from their college with dire news, they set about planning on how to survive the winter, but when outsiders follow, lines are drawn in the community that might doom them all. This book is all dread all the time, the use of dreams and the inevitability of conflict weighs heavy til the very end. An excellent apocalypse story if you're into that kind of thing.

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

This book follows Jade, a deeply troubled mixed race teenager with a shitty homelife who's *obsessed* with slasher movies. When she finds evidence that there's a killer running about her soon-to-be gentrified small town, she weaponises that knowledge to predict what's going to happen next. I don't think this book will work for most people, it's a little stream of consciousness, Jade's head is frequently a very difficult place to be in, but by the last page I had so much love for her as a character and the emotional rollercoaster she's on that I had to mention it here.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Taking a bit of a left turn but this charming YA murder mystery really stuck with me this year. Elatsoe is a teenage girl living in an America where myths, monsters, and magic are all real every day occurrences. When her cousin dies mysteriously with no witnesses, she decides to do whatever she can, including using her ability to raise the spirits of dead animals, to solve the case. The worldbuilding was just really fun in this one, but the Native American myths and influence were the shining star for me, and the asexual rep was refreshing to see in a YA book too tbh

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq

The audiobook, the audiobook, the audiobook!!!! Also the physical book because formatting and illustrations, but the audiobook!!! Tanya Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer, and this novel is a genre blending of 20 years worth of the authors journal entries, poetry, and short stories, that culminates in a truly unique story about a young girl surviving her teenage years in a small tundra town in the 70s. It is sad and beautiful and hard but an experience like nothing else I read this year.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Anyway, daily reminder from a culturally isolated Romani person.

Gypsy does not mean wanderer.

It literally means ‘people from egypt’ or similar, as europeans believed Romani people were from Egypt. It has become known similar to nomad due to how our ancestors have been forced to be nomadic due to racism and ostracization, but it is a SLUR.

Romani people are STILL being forcibly sterilized.

Romani people are STILL being forced into ghettos.

Romani people are still facing violence and danger in countless European countries- and recently, I’ve seen the beginnings of the extremes in the United States.

Have a little fucking respect and DON’T USE A SLUR THAT’S BEEN USED FOR CENTURIES AGAINST US.

And for the love of whatever’s up there, ESPECIALLY do not use it to describe your witchcraft. It is playing on the ‘magic gypsy’ trope, and is EXTREMELY insulting.

non romani people, please reblog this.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Let's imagine for a minute:

Imagine that Mecca was invaded and taken by force and the invading forces destroyed the Great Mosque, and then built a temple for their religion around the Kaaba. They forbid Muslims from praying at the site or performing the Hajj under threat of violence, and consider even wearing religious garb within the temple provokation.

This would be incredibly cruel.

Here's another scenario:

Imagine that an invading force took the Vatican city and destroyed St Peter's Basilica and built their own church for their religion on top of St Peter's tomb. They forbid Christians from praying or holding Easter mass at the site under threat of violence, and consider icons and crucifixes as desecration and provokation.

This would be incredibly cruel.

Now, you don't have to imagine this one because it is real:

Jews are not allowed by the Jerusalem Waqf authority to pray on the temple mount where the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock now stand on the foundations of the Jewish Temple. When the Temple was still standing, all able-bodied Jewish men were expected to make a pilgrimmage to the Temple 3 times a year to make offerings, these being Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. While not required currently, due to the destruction of the Temple, many people wish to continue to make this pilgrimage to the site of the Temple for prayer. The Jerusalem Waqf Authority considers this as a hostile act, and an act of desecration of Al-Aqsa.

Does this sound fair?

Not to mention there was a graveyard intentionally built around Jerusalem's golden gate due to a theological misunderstanding. The Mashiach is supposed to enter Jerusalem through the golden gate. A misinterpretation that the Mashiach would be a priest prompted the building of the graveyard, since it is forbidden for a priest to defile himself buy coming into contact with corpses, and therefore would prevent the Mashiach from entering the city.

[fromchaostocosmos]

This event, a weekly walk to raise awareness of the hostages in Gaza, was attacked. Early reports suggest with molotov cocktails. 5 people were injured.