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Spanish Synagogue in the Venetian Ghetto of Venice, Italy. Photographs by PG.

“The Spanish Synagogue is one of the two functioning synagogues in the Venetian Ghetto of Venice, northern Italy. It is open for services from Passover until the end of the High Holiday season…[it] was founded by Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsulain the 1490s who reached Venice, usually via Amsterdam, Livorno or Ferrara, in the 1550s. The four-story story yellow stone building, designed by architect Baldassarre Longhena was constructed in 1580 and was restored in 1635. It is a clandestine synagogue, which was tolerated on the condition that it be concealed within a building that gives no appearance being a house of worship form the exterior, although the interior is elaborately decorated.”

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People are literally arguing that the statement "kill all Jews" is not antisemitic and is in fact criticism of the Israeli government, huh. Neo Nazism is very hip with the kids nowadays I see.

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👆🏼💯 if you take problem with this statement maybe you're the problem

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Have you noticed you can just spread rumors that a group of Jews who were assaulted were chanting gross anti Palestine stuff with no evidence and suddenly everyone thinks the Jews deserved it.

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In memory of Cass Elliot

On this day, in 1974, Cass Elliot died. From 1965 to 1968 she sang in the band "The Mamas & the Papas", and after the group broke up she released five solo albums.

She was succesfull in her career, earning the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary (R&R) Performance in 1967, releasing and co-releasing several songs still famous today (like "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Monday, Monday", and "California Dreamin'"), and even earning herself a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (albeit posthumously) in 1998. She also had a daughter, Owen Vanessa, who was 7 years old when Elliot died.

She was also a fat woman.

Like every other fat woman in the US during that time, Elliot found herself in a world that hated fat people and pressured women in particular to lose weight. Elliot was not above that societal expectation: Just before her live solo debut in October 1968 she went on a 6-month-diet, losing 100 lbs. Like with most diets, this weight loss didn't last long though, and once she stopped the strict eating regimen she re-gained half of the weight.

When she died in 1974, after a 24-hour-celebration, her manager Allan Carr did not hesitate to use her struggles against her. As a journalist admitted in 2020, Carr decided to ask for a faulty article to be released in which Elliot's death was blamed on choking on a sandwich. He deemed her humiliation as "a fatty so greedy she would choke while stuffing herself" preferable to even the possibility that the press might speculate on any involvement of drugs. (For the record, she died of a heart attack and no drugs were found in her system during the autopsy. But even if there were, it hardly justifies publishing such cruel lies about her.)

Unfortunately, the lie stuck and there have been numerous pop culture references made about it by now.

However, one positive came from this outrageous treatment: It gave momentum and credibility to the fat liberation movement, in particular the Fat Underground. Judy Freespirit, a member of the group, held a eulogy for Elliot on Women's Equality Day in the year of her death. As she blamed the fatphobic medical industry and culture for Elliot's death, she was spontaneously joined on stage by about 20 other fat women.

(source 1, source 2, source 3 (p. 38, 39), source 4 (p. 144))

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"There's an underlying rage that comes out sometimes. And it's 'What are you getting all mad about? Nobody did anything to you.' But they wiped out my family. I would have liked to have known some of these people."

-Billy Joel, talking about his family history with the Holocaust.

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huda kattan claiming that israel was behind the world wars (despite not existing until 1948) should reeeeeally be a wake up call about how many people say "israel" when they really just want to say "jews"

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I don't want people anywhere to suffer or be innocent victims in the crossfire of conflict.

However, maybe instead of blaming Israel for the casualties in Gaza and expecting them to prioritize the safety and wellbeing of the Palestinian population over the safety and wellbeing of their own citizens, people should be asking why Palestinians are living in a war zone rather than getting food and safe shelter from the surrounding countries.

In other wars, the civilian population left the war zones. Those that didn't evacuate risked death. The civilians killed were unfortunate casualties, but the attacking forces were not asked to change strategies.

It's not Israel's fault that no one else will take the Palestinians in. Israel still needs to eliminate the constant threat of terrorists that are in Gaza. The fact that citizens don't evacuate doesn't stop a war. I don't know why people expect that of Israel.

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https://www.tumblr.com/sizhens/779378731420647424/this-kind-of-rhetoric-is-trotted-out-for?source=share

"This kind of rhetoric is trotted out for settler-colonial project after settler-colonial project, btw. "A land without a people, for a people without a land" was famously used by (although not originally coined by) Zionists as a snappy slogan for the settlement and colonization of Palestine. The JNF loved to use the phrase "Make The Desert Bloom" for its Tzedakah drives, infamously embodied in these little blue boxes passed around among Jewish schoolchildren:

Zionists also loved to use the phrase "The Villa in the Jungle" as a racist description of the Zionist Entity's (The "Villa") relationship with the surrounding area ("The Jungle"). These kinds of rhetoric have a violent colonial history!!!!"

awww someone wants the arab desertification to stick sooo bad and are big mad that it’s a symptom of colonialism

the people without a land is pretty anti arab I will admit, sometimes early Zionism was super bigoted

what fucking villa in the jungle? The one your nazi granpa lived in South America?

No actually what the hell is villa in the jungle canard?

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I watched a podcast episode last week in which people openly called for the genocide of Jews, and no one in the room flinched. In fact, they laughed.

It was the Fresh and Fit podcast, a show with over a million followers. Its panelists, smiling and relaxed, told the audience that “Hitler was right,” that “Jews deserved it,” that the Shoah was necessary, and that “getting rid of those motherf**kers” would “save the world.” They casually offered genocide as a “solution” while the hosts nodded along. Not one person pushed back.

They said it out loud because they know they can.

Because the ground has been prepared by years of social justice discourse that painted Jews as fundamentally harmful, oppressive, inhuman. Once that narrative is accepted and even cloaked in the language of justice, it becomes easy to justify our erasure. First symbolically. Then violently.

This is where we are now.

Click here to see a segment of this podcast

The Betrayal That Opened the Door

Five years ago, I co-founded a feminist collective in Israel called Hastickeriot. We collaborated with feminist movements across the West. Everyone knew we were based in Tel Aviv. It was never a problem—until October 7th.

After the massacre, the same voices that once shouted about rape culture and patriarchal violence went silent. At best, they ghosted us. At worst, they said the slaughter was justified.

Jewish women were raped, mutilated, burned alive, and Western feminists said nothing. That silence wasn’t neutral. It was betrayal.

Most feminist movements chose antisemitism over feminism that day. And in doing so, they didn’t just abandon Jewish women—they made space for the idea that we deserved it.

That silence was the real turning point. It gave moral permission. It created legitimacy. It said: violence against Jews is acceptable if it can be framed as resistance.

From Silence to Bloodlust

What happened next was a chain reaction.

Israeli civilians were murdered and called “colonizers.” Jews mourning their dead were accused of “weaponizing trauma.” Jewish students were locked in libraries. Jewish businesses vandalized. Synagogues set on fire.

Every time we cried out, we were told to be quiet. Every conversation about Israel’s right to exist, let alone defend itself, was met with outrage. Every Jewish claim to indigeneity was mocked. Every expression of grief was seen as manipulative. Every act of self-defense called aggression.

We were told: there must be a diplomatic solution. Violence is never justified.

But that only applies to us.

No one demands nonviolence from Hamas. No one suggests they “try diplomacy.” Apparently, murdering Jews is the one form of political violence that remains sacred.

Jewishness Is Once Again Redefined to Exclude and Blame

The bad guys in today’s narrative are white. So Jews, suddenly and conveniently, have been rebranded as white. Not just white, but the whitest—the stand-ins for Western colonialism, for capitalism, for empire.

Never mind that no Jew is white. Whiteness is not about skin tone; it is a structure of power we were never part of. Jews were not white in Christian Europe, just like we were not Arabs under Muslim rule. We were Jews. In every land where we were told we didn’t belong. And we were persecuted for it.

The West promotes “land back” campaigns and romanticizes indigeneity, but somehow, the only indigenous people who must not return to their land are the Jews. The only nation whose sovereignty must be questioned is the Jewish one.

From Insult to Aspiration

First, Israelis were called Nazis—to mock our history and weaponize our trauma.

Then, the language shifted: maybe the Nazis were right. Maybe Hitler “had to do it.” Maybe exterminating Jews was necessary to “save civilization.”

This was said. On a public platform. Between bursts of laughter. It is no longer shameful to say these things. They are now “opinions.”

When Jewish existence is constantly framed as dangerous, when the Shoah and Hitler are glorified, people begin to see our eradication as justice. When that idea is normalized, it becomes contagious. And when it spreads, it kills.

A System Built to Exclude Us

In today’s West, social justice movements call for dignity and equality—for everyone except Jews.

Anti-racist activists treat othering Jews as progress. Human rights groups go silent when Jewish women are raped, when children are murdered. Progressive coalitions demand every voice be heard—except the Jewish one.

The moral clarity they demand for everyone else collapses when we speak.

Our pain is offensive. Our grief is manipulative. Our survival is violence. Even asking to be heard is framed as aggression.

This isn’t just hypocrisy. It’s an intentional boundary—one that excludes Jews from the circle of care and concern.

Selective Outrage Is the Opposite of Social Justice

When Jews are hated, we’re told to reflect and take accountability.

When Jews are murdered, we’re told not to overreact.

And when we speak, we’re told to shut up.

We are done with that.

If your values don’t include Jews, they’re not values. They’re just politics dressed in principle.

If justice excludes Jews, it’s not justice.

If you only care about some people’s pain, it’s not solidarity.

And this isn’t just offensive. It’s dangerous.

Every act of antisemitism—whether Jewish children are forcibly removed from a plane, insulted in a museum in Melbourne, an Israeli cellist is kicked out of a Vienna restaurant, American Jews are set on fire in Boulder, or Israeli diplomats are murdered—becomes encouragement.

And when antisemitism is given cultural legitimacy, it doesn’t stay cultural. It becomes violent. It tells others: this is allowed.

So let’s be clear: Jews are not asking for special treatment. Only for the same outrage. The same empathy. The same humanity.

But whether you offer it or not, and no matter how loud your hate gets—we are not going anywhere.

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President Reagan once celebrated the United States as a “shining city on a hill,” a “beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.” That is apparently no longer the aspiration of the American government, which now sends its foreign pilgrims to a dehumanizing prison in El Salvador, arrests judges, and suggests that following the country’s Constitution may be optional.

For democracy to flourish, citizens must yearn for it—and demand it of their governments. At the moment, few can be looking with admiration to the United States as a model. Already in 2024, according to a 34-country survey conducted by Pew Research, the most common perception of American democracy was that the United States “used to be a good example, but has not been in recent years.” The first months of the second Trump administration can hardly have improved that impression.

Nonetheless, democracy—which provides citizens with a meaningful say over how their lives are governed—still has mass appeal across the globe. Brave, principled activists continue to stand up to despots, even though they do so at much greater peril today than even just a few months ago.

In Serbia, for example, pro-democracy, anti-corruption protests have persisted for months. Students and workers are demanding immediate reforms and calling on Vučić to resign. In years past, precisely this kind of movement would have provoked White House press releases, diplomatic visits, and barbed statements from the Oval Office. In April, at long last, came a high-profile visit to Serbia from someone closely linked to the Trump administration. But instead of offering support for the pro-democracy demonstrators, this American emissary condemned the protests and implied that they were the sinister work of American left-wingers and USAID.

That visitor was none other than Donald Trump Jr., who had arrived in Belgrade to fawn over Vučić in an exclusive interview for his Triggered with Don Jr. podcast, in the months before the newest Trump Tower opens for presales.

The Death of Democracy Promotion: Despots and human-rights abusers can rest easy now that America has gotten out of their way.

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