i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

people complaining that eurovision has been ruined for a "genocidal country" is crazy considering if you look at the history of any of the countries in the top 20, they have a genocidal history towards jews or other ethnic minorities. european exceptionalism is wild.

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

“It is absolutely sickening to compare the Einsatzgruppen to everyday murderers.

They’re doing a service our Thousand Year Reich by exterminating the Jew Swine which betrays us from within. These are good, educated family men, and you’re really hurting their feelings.

Our message is clear: DO NOT be a Jew. If you are, we will arrest you, deport you, and shoot you into a ravine filled with the bloody corpses of your loved ones and you will never return to visit the graves of your ancestors.”

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

If you're actually trying to say that Jesus is Palestinian, or that he's from Palestine, you're getting a hardcover bible straight to the knees

He's known as Jesus of Nazareth

Nazareth. Which is in Israel

He's not Jesus of Gaza (i can't even use a more time accurate name because Palestine didn't even exist then)

Keep his name outta your mouth if you're gonna play stupid so well

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

"There are no [insert hated nationality or ethnicity here] cilvilians/noncombatants" is standard genocidal rhetoric, by the way. If you are saying this, you are giving a standard justification for genocide. It's right up there with the related tactic of insisting that all members of [insert hated nationality or ethnicity here] are guilty of some collective crime. I want to be clear here. These are both always very wrong, very bad, and very dangerous. It does not matter if you think you are right this time, and the people you are fighting are really evil and deserve it. Everyone who has ever said these things has believed that too.

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

Let's have a story, shall we?

Centuries ago, an indigenous people with millennia old deep cultural ties to their land are occupied and colonised and ethnically cleansed by various empires, forced into worldwide diaspora, where they suffer constant persecution, oppression, and genocide.

Finally after hundreds of years of this, and after suffering one of the worst genocides in human history, which annihilated two thirds of their population, they regain control and sovereignty over their land.

Fast forward another few decades. A woman, born and raised on her people's land, able to freely practice her culture and traditions, proud of her people and how they have endured, decides to go to a music festival with her friends. Young, happy, full of life, excited for her future.

And then, a violent militia group comprised of descendants of her ancestor's colonisers, a group whose sole aim is the complete removal of the indigenous people from their lands, rampages through the festival, and she is brutally raped and murdered, along with hundreds of others, and her body is dumped like trash. This atrocity ignites a worldwide movement blaming her and her people for their own deaths, and celebrates her rapists and murderers as "courageous freedom fighters."

Sounds utterly appalling, doesn't it? Beyond comprehension.

If your revulsion at this story changes when you learn the woman was an Israeli Jew, you are an antisemite, and there is no trying to argue your way out of it.

And this is why I post what I post every day. Because there is a monstrous injustice happening and people have to shout from the rooftops about it.

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

Every interaction I’ve ever had or seen with a Black Hebrew Israelite convinces me they know on some level that the “Black people are the real Jews” line is bullshit, and their insistence on it is far more about hurting or upsetting Jews than any sincere belief in their heritage

you could be forgiven for thinking Kanye’s shock-jock Nazi thing is an outlier, but no, other BHIs I’ve personally dealt with and seen are just as smug and ragebaity about it

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

Recently, Alana Hadid collaborated on an Instagram post that claims Palestinian identity predates Judaism. It would be one thing to try to argue that Palestinian identity as it exists today predates the State of Israel -- something not everyone would agree with -- but Judaism?

If your advocacy for Palestinians requires you to deny, revise, or rewrite Jewish history, that’s not advocacy for Palestinians. That’s antisemitism.

RELIGION IN ANTIQUITY

Let’s put a few concepts into historical context. The concept of religion as it exists today did not exist in the ancient world. In antiquity, national and religious identities were almost one in the same. Think, for example, of the Ancient Egyptians or the Ancient Greeks. Though they both observed their own pantheon of gods and practiced their own traditional religious rituals, when we think of Ancient Egyptians or Ancient Greeks, we don’t think of them as religious groups. In the Middle East, most nations had a “national god;” for example, the Assyrians named themselves after their national god, Ashur. 

The difference between Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks and Jews today is that while the Egyptians and Greeks have long ceased practicing their ancient national religions, in favor of religions like Christianity and Islam, Jews today do continue practicing the same religious rituals and rites as our ancient ancestors did. 

Just like the Ancient Egyptians made no differentiation between their national and religious identity, Jewish national and religious identity is still deeply intertwined. In fact, there is no word for “religion” in the Hebrew Bible. The closest would be “dat,” meaning law, or “emuna,” meaning belief.

BEFORE JUDAISM: YAHWISM 

The precursor to Judaism, Yahwism, dates back to the 12th century BCE. The most significant difference between Yahwism and Judaism is that the Yahwists only followed the Hebrew God -- YHWH -- but did not necessarily reject the rest of the existence of the Canaanite pantheon. 

The cult of YHWH was the national cult of the Kingdom of Israel (1047 BCE-930 BCE), though it seems other Canaanite cultures may have worshipped YHWH as well. Interestingly, the Hebrew God as depicted in the Hebrew Bible seems to be an amalgamation of YHWH and El, the most important god in the Canaanite pantheon.

FROM YAHWISM TO JUDAISM

In 930 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel split into two: the Kingdom of Israel to the north, also known as Samaria, and the Kingdom of Judah to the south. The term “Jew” comes from “Judahite,” as in a resident or citizen of the Kingdom of Judah. In Hebrew, the word for “Judahite” and “Jew” is the same, “Yehudi.” 

In 587 BCE, the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and exiled its educated class to Babylon. It was around this time that the transition between Yahwism and Judaism -- which had been happening slowly over centuries -- became complete. The Jews came to reject the very existence of the rest of the deities in the Canaanite pantheon and, due to the Babylonian Exile, Jewish practices also picked up Babylonian influences.

ETYMOLOGY OF JUDAISM

The term “Judaism” itself does not come from Hebrew. Rather, it comes from Greek, and dates to the period of the Greek occupation of Judea (i.e. around the time of the story of Hanukkah). “Judaism” comes from Ἰουδαϊσμός” [Ioudaismos], a variation of the Greek term “Hellenismos.” It’s how the Greek occupiers described Jewish culture, religious ritual, and religious belief.

"Ioudaïsmós [was not] reduced to the designation of a religion. It means rather 'the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish).'"

Biblical scholar Shaye J. D. Cohen

To reiterate, for Jews themselves, there was no distinction between their national identity and their religious identity.

JUDAISM AS A RELIGION

Given that the concept of religion is a foreign one to Jewish identity, when did Jews start seeing ourselves as a religiousgroup? It all goes back to Napoleon and the French Revolution. 

For hundreds of years in Europe, Jews were denied citizenship, equal rights, and confined to living in ghettos. It was during the French Revolution that Jews were finally emancipated. Shortly after, Napoleon instituted a policy of Jewish emancipation that guaranteed Jews freedom from discrimination -- so long as we stripped the “national” elements from our Jewishness and instead reduced it merely to a religious identity. 

In 1806, Napoleon wrote: “[It is necessary to] reduce, if not destroy, the tendency of Jewish people to practice a very great number of activities that are harmful to civilization and to public order in society in all the countries of the world. It is necessary to stop the harm by preventing it; to prevent it, it is necessary to change the Jews…Once part of their youth will take its place in our armies, they will cease to have Jewish interests and sentiments; their interests and sentiments will be French.”

Napoleon’s assimilationist policies fundamentally shifted how Jews understood their identity. This set the groundwork for the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and the establishment of “religious” Jewish movements, such as the Reform and Conservative movements.

JEWISH IDENTITY

A NATION

If we are looking at Jewish identity through a Jewish lens, it’s important to understand that first and foremost, Jews consider ourselves a nation, which is why we call ourselves Am Yisrael, or the Nation of Israel. 

In this context, a nation is not necessarily a nation-state but rather, a group of people whose collective identity includes shared language, history, ethnicity, territory, and/or culture. It’s a term more political in nature than “ethnicity,” as a nation sees itself as having a common political destiny.

AN ETHNORELIGIOUS GROUP

In modern terms, we’d call ourselves an “ethnoreligious group,” meaning an ethnic group with a common religious practice.

A TRIBE

Jews also often refer to ourselves as a tribe, though technically we came from a confederation of tribes. In fact, the word “tribe” comes from “tribus” in Latin, which was first used to describe the 12 tribes of Israel.

WHAT ABOUT THE PHILISTINES?

The Philistines were an ancient seafaring people of Greek origin. They settled in Gaza and parts of what is now southern Israel in 1175 BCE. They are ethnically and culturally unrelated to today’s Palestinians and were exterminated by the Babylonians in the 7th century BCE.

“Philistine” is not what the Philistines called themselves, but rather, what the Israelites and Ancient Egyptians called them. We don’t know what the Philistines called themselves. The word comes from the Hebrew word “peleshet,” meaning “invader,” “squatter,” or “foreigner.”

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and  Patreon. 

rootsmetals

stop lying about Jewish history challenge 😃 the rest of the post is debunked in my DBAPP 4 highlight but I thought I’d fully address this particularly egregious lie because WOW! on second thought I do find this topic super interesting to talk about, so thanks I guess 😅

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

Randomly remembered when I was still an anarchist and I wanted to join this anarchist server they asked for your ideologies and i was innocently like "I'm an anarchist and a dubnowist/Jewish autonomist :3" and they like aggresively purity checked me and were all like "your not an evil evil zio right????" And the mods were literally fighting in the ticket with eachother over whether "Jewish autonomism" was a "dogwhistle" for zionism (they could've easily googled Simon Dubnow and i pointed this out several times)

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

CUAD not only disrupted a class in Israeli history, they proudly posted about it and encouraged other students to do the same.

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

If due process is followed and documented, I'm okay with the State Department detaining and deporting Mahmoud Khalil because it is legal for them to do so.

But this? "Shalom Mahmoud?"

This hurts Jews.

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

mahmoud khalid deserves due process and the right to a fair trial because he is a permanent resident and green card holder. those rights are guaranteed by the constitution. i do not agree with him AND he has rights.

more than anything, the trump admin making an example out of him is deeply immoral and deeply evil. they are citing “jewish safety” so they can set us up to be scapegoats for his fascism. they’re parading around his arrest with “shalom” to make us scapegoats. he wants the people to blame us for his fascism. cause after all if the people are angry at the jews and hating the jews, he can keep being evil while everyone is distracted.

this is state sponsored antisemitism in the united states. do not get it twisted. he’s not promoting “jewish safety” he is setting us up for the next bloodbath

you don’t have to agree with him or be an apologist for his cause to see what this admin is doing and how dangerous things are about to get here

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

"They build their morality on the backs of dead Jews and then abuse living ones for failing to draw their conclusions from our own dead."

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

Magen David Pride Flags except I fixed the sizes and the colors to better soothe my neurodivergent brain

Feel free to use them for whatever without credit. I wouldn't stop you even if I could, it's all in the public domain anyway

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

Hitler and the Nazi party took over Germany in 53 days. March 1st marks 41 days of the Trump administration. My hope for March is that the list you’re about to read won’t be the in-real-time evidence of America sliding further into autocracy.

Here we go again…

January 2025

February 2025

March 2025:

Trump has made English the official language of the country [x]

Trump pauses military aid to Ukraine [x]

Trump has imposed new tariffs on China and Canada and they have retaliated [x]

Linda McMahon has been confirmed as Secretary of Education [x]

The Department of Education has set up a witch-hunt for DEI in schools [x]

Trump has delayed his tariffs on the auto industry [x]

Trump suspends tariffs on Mexico [x]

ICE is now targeting migrant families who entered the US with their children [x]

Trump is threatening new tariffs on Canada, including 250% tariffs on dairy products [x]

The Department of Homeland Security is performing polygraph tests on employees [x]

Miscellaneous News:

A federal judge has ruled against another one of Trump’s attempted firings. [x]

Federal workers are fighting back against DOGE cuts [x]

Musk had a closed-door meeting with Republican senators to cement DOGE cuts in law [x]

This post is constantly being updated so if this comes across your dash, check OP’s blog to see the most up-to-date version.

Remember that you have a voice. Remember that Donald Trump and his spineless cronies want you to just give up and accept their control. REMEMBER: NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL INFERIOR WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

see how easy it is for arabs to talk about this? thank you tamer 💙💙

[i-swear-my-name-isnt-raz]

saw an antisemitic hate comment that i shit you not started with “as a trans woman” so here’s ur reminder that we would not have modern gender affirming healthcare without a Jewish man who had his work destroyed by Nazis and was forced into exile where he died as an officially stateless refugee