narcolepticgnome

[narcolepticgnome]

Obviously preaching to the choir here, so I hope this breaks containment, because I want to see the lay of the land on this site.

Reblog so this breaks containment. Thanks.

[narcolepticgnome]

It's been a weird week.

Last Thursday, my husband asked for divorce.

Sunday, the awful attack in Boulder happened. I am a synagogue administrator about an hour from Boulder.

All week long, I've been getting "Oh my G-d, I'm so sorry" messages from various people. I have to check and see who it is from and actually read the message so I know what event they are referring to.

I am hurting a lot right now from both events.

[narcolepticgnome]

I was not surprised that the suspect behind the cowardly assassination of two young Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. last night screamed “Free, free Palestine,” as he was apprehended.

I’m a Palestinian American who grew up in Gaza. I speak regularly on college campuses about Hamas and Gaza, the realities of life under a terrorist regime and how pro-Palestine activism can better reflect Palestinian sentiments in the coastal enclave. My goal is to promote a new discourse characterized by radical pragmatism and moderation, in a desperate bid to sideline this sort of extreme and pro-Hamas perspectives which have become mainstream within the pro-Palestine movement

Strangely and bizarrely, “pro-Palestine” protesters raucously interrupt some of my talks and screech “free Palestine” at me, as if I am somebody who is opposed to Palestinian freedom and independence.

If you can scream it at a Gazan who has lost dozens of family members due to Israel’s bombardment, then it was only a matter of time before this slogan would be weaponized for a hate crime and an act of terror.

Right when the extremism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his far-right extremists and partners was attracting international outcry, this immoral act of antisemitic hate is sucking the oxygen out of the room and diverting crucial attention away from Palestinian suffering.

It is time to rid the pro-Palestine movement of the violent extremism that has gripped it in recent years.

This ubiquitously stated chant has become one of the most meaningless declarations of support for the Palestinians, a hollow expression of solidarity that says nothing about what is a free Palestine and what should it look like. At best, it’s the rallying cry of the ill-and misinformed masses who have nebulous goals and unachievable objectives. At worst, “Free Palestine” as a slogan has, sadly, devolved into an expression of hate and violence, as evidenced by the Capital Jewish Museum suspect (who is not of Palestinian or Arab background).

Since the tragedy on Wednesday night, social media and online commentary has been littered by support for the attack, dismissal of this tragedy as a false flag operation, attempts to justify by saying look at what is happening in Gaza, or saying that all Israelis are implicated in a genocide and therefore should expect consequences.

Online, a toxic union of deranged far-left and extreme far-right is peddling in exaggerations and misinformation which have the deadly potential, as we now see, to motivate violence, all mobilized by the Palestinian cause in the most unhelpful ways.

A few days ago, I encountered many large “pro-Palestine” accounts on X and other social media platforms sharing incendiary and inaccurate claims, riling up anti-Israel sentiments in incredibly dangerous ways. They have claimed that Israel has killed a million Palestinians in Gaza. They have repeatedly said that the “genocide” in Gaza is “the worst in human history,” at times going as far as claiming it to be even worse than the Holocaust. One white “activist” with more than 420,000 followers claimed that the entirety of Israeli society is “uniquely evil and psychopathic.”

Some of the most vicious attempts at delegitimization, incessant harassment, and credible threats to my life that I have experienced since Oct. 7 have not come from Palestinians who are upset with my views. Instead, they were from far-left, extremist online, social justice “activists.”

These are the people who have made it critical for me to always have security at events where I speak. They have made it difficult for pragmatic and moderate Palestinian and Arab voices to come forward and share new perspectives about the pathway forward. And they inspire individuals like the Capital Jewish Museum suspect.

For the sake of the Palestinian people’s just and urgent aspirations for freedom, independence, and dignity, the movement alleging to care about Palestinians must make decisions not to self-immolate at a time when the Palestinian people are in desperate need of true allies.

Impulsive sloganeering has consequences. Being good custodians of the Palestinian message is not only beneficial to the Palestinian people in Gaza and beyond; it is also critical to prevent the incitement of violent lunatics who engage in vigilantism that hurts the entirety of the Palestinian cause and those who care deeply about it.

The victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were at an event of young and aspiring diplomats who cared about interfaith exchanges and engagement, and were open to pragmatic ideas about Gaza and beyond. This tragedy, like Oct. 7, will shrink the pool of those who reject extremist tendencies and will likely cause more to harden their minds and hearts to the prospect of peace in coexistence.

My work is to normalize multiple truths: We can hold space for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and a rejection of Israeli unjust policies in the war, while also rejecting Hamas’ violent extremism that harms Palestinians and Israelis alike. I want to provide a new political home for Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims and their true allies who are not represented by the current toxic discourse being carried out on college campuses, in the streets, online and beyond.

If there is any hope for a new pathway forward, it must entail the wholesale rejection of maximalism, zero-sum equations and black and white thinking. The pro-Palestine movement must be purged of radical extremists, hateful antisemites, and promoters of armed resistance.

[narcolepticgnome]

An EXCELLENT resource for combatting Talmud misinformation.

This website also provides more information

[narcolepticgnome]

Can you whistle?

[narcolepticgnome]

When we say Israel is a Jewish state we don't mean that it represents Judaism. We mean it is culturally Jewish. It is the only country that functions on cultural Judaism, where you automatically get off on Jewish holidays, the calendar works on the Jewish calendar, the weekend is over Shabbat, the language is the Jewish language, media in all forms are often expressions of Judaism etc.

This does not mean that there are no goyim in Israel. Au contraire, Israel is one of the most welcoming places for people regardless of ethnicity on the ME, and over 25% of the population are nonJews.

But the culture that is in Israel is Jewish.

So when you say death to Israel or that we should be destroyed or there doesn't need to be a Jewish state or whatever else, you are saying that there should not be a place in the world where Judaism is a dominant culture, that of all the different people in the world, Jews are the only ones who do not deserve a place where they can set the rules. That we should always be minorities and fighting for our rights.

And that boys. is antisemitic.

[narcolepticgnome]

Comparing every horrific thing to the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial. You can talk about how terrifying, cruel, and tragic something is without understating how the Holocaust turned death into a science, used literal assembly lines in an attempt to completely eradicate Jews, something that they succeeded at in several countries.

Around 17 million people were killed in the Holocaust, which is a little under the population of the entire state of New York. Jews, the primary target of the Holocaust, made up about 6 million of those victims; that's about the same as the population of Wisconsin. Around 1.1 million (1 million of which were Jewish) people were killed at Auschwitz alone, with somewhere between 6,000 and 15,000 people being murdered per day depending on the date.

I don't want to go into more gruesome detail because I know I have a lot of Jewish followers and they don't need to be exposed to that more than they already are. But you all have to understand these numbers and the realities of the Holocaust, especially the way that Jewish and Romani people still have not recovered 80 years later. You have to understand how deeply cruel and absurd these comparisons are.

You also have to understand how the Holocaust was not a singular event that came out of nowhere, it was the culmination of decades and CENTURIES of increasingly violent and normalized antisemitism.

Internalize this. Research Holocaust using resources from Jewish scholars. Read firsthand accounts of survivors and victims, not just the version of Anne Frank's diary read in high school and feel-good stories written by goyim. Really let these numbers and facts settle in. Think about what you are actually saying when you make those comparisons.

And stop using a handful of Jewish people as tokens to justify your comparisons and Holocaust denial! If you're against the tokenization of any other marginalized community, why is it okay for you to tokenize Jews?

[narcolepticgnome]

Shabbat shalom!

My 16yo son, who usually is never in the room when we say the Shabbat blessings, made a point to participate this weekend because it's Mother's Day weekend. I am so touched!

[narcolepticgnome]

when i say i can't stop thinking about this

[narcolepticgnome]

I really love how much of Judaism is focused specifically on living! I love how the reward for living a Jewish life isn't some afterlife you can't prove exists but instead is the here and now! In other words: The reward for living a Jewish life is living a Jewish life, and that is beautiful! <3

[narcolepticgnome]

If you're not following @no-context-daf-yomi you should be.

Sanhedrin 106a: messing with Jews is like trying to cockblock lions

[narcolepticgnome]

MISS CONGENIALITY (2000) dir. Donald Petrie

[narcolepticgnome]

Shtisel challah! Made by my amazing friend Helen.

[narcolepticgnome]

(1) The Axis Powers’ concentration camp network extended past the borders of Europe.

The Nazis and the Axis powers created a network of 17 concentration camps in North Africa. Some prisoners were also taken to concentration camps in West Africa. Jews were forced into slave labor, starved, tortured, and murdered. Many died from diseases. Many prisoners in North African labor camps were tasked with the completion of the Trans-Saharan Railroad, a project that was never completed. Though it was a French project, the Nazis were highly supportive of it.

(2) The Mountain Jews of the Caucasus were ultimately saved from extermination because the Nazis considered them “religious,” rather than “racial” Jews.

When the Nazis occupied the North Caucasus in 1942, the Mountain Jews of Na’alchik, Russia, were quick to think on their feet. With the help of their Muslim neighbors, with whom they had good relations, the Mountain Jews promoted the lie that they were ethnic Tat converts to Judaism. 

The Nazis took the issue to the Reich Genealogical Office, which ultimately ruled in their favor, and thus the Mountain Jews were left alone. 

That said, before the Reich Genealogical Office reached their final verdict, the Mountain Jews were treated just as poorly as their Ashkenazi counterparts. On August 19 and September 20, 1942, a total of 850 Jews were executed point-blank with machine guns in Menzhinskoe and Bogdanovka.

(3) The Catholic Church could’ve possibly put an end to the Final Solution. Instead, Pope Pius XII chose silence – and, at times, complicity.

In August of 1941, the Nazis put an end to their Aktion T4 “euthanasia” program – a euphemism for “eugenics” – in response to public uproar. The Catholic Church, in particular, was at the forefront of the protests against the Aktion T4 program. The effect of these protests was enormous, especially within Germany. In Hof, Germany, an angry crowd openly jeered at Hitler over his eugenics policies, the only time this ever happened during 12 years of Nazi rule.

By contrast, the Catholic Church refused to publicly condemn the German persecution of Jews, even after the Nazis’ plans for the Final Solution had long become public knowledge. Claiming “neutrality,” Pope Pius XII rejected the desperate pleas of the Jewish community and even refused meetings with rabbis. This despite the fact that the Vatican was well-aware of the Nazis’ plans for the Final Solution as early as 1942.

(4) The Nazis primarily targeted the Scientific Humanitarian Committee because Magnus Hirschfeld was Jewish.

There’s recently been an attempt to reframe trans individuals as the “first victims” of the Holocaust because the Nazis burnt down the library and archives of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1933. The Scientific Humanitarian Committee provided a plethora of medical services for LGBTQ folks, including contraceptive treatment, gynaecological examinations, treatment for STDs, marital and sexual therapy, and other treatments, such as treatment for alcoholism. Most significantly, the organization pioneered gender-affirming surgeries, including one of the earliest sex-reassignment surgeries in 1931. Other surgical and medical services included facial feminization and masculinization surgery and early forms of body hair removal.

What’s imperative to understand is that the Committee was targeted, above all, both because Hirschfeld, its founder, was Jewish, and because the Nazis associated homosexuality and “sexual deviance” with the “Jewish race.”

(5) The Nazis devised of the gas chambers because Nazi soldiers found it too “psychologically taxing” to execute millions of Jews face-to-face.

Early during the Holocaust, Jews were predominantly murdered via machine gun execution. However, the Nazis considered the method too slow and inefficient. Frustrated with the “inefficiency” of shooting Jews, the Reich Security Main Office soon ordered the use of gas vans for murder on a mass scale. The first extermination camp to use gas vans was Chelmno; by June of 1942, there were 20 gas vans in operation, with many more being prepared. Some gas vans could hold up to 60 people, while others held around 30.

Soon the Nazis found that gas vans, too, were not efficient enough. A big problem was that gas van operators experienced high levels of mental distress due to their proximity to the victims. Sometimes gas vans broke down due to bad roads. Ultimately, they simply couldn’t exterminate Jews quickly enough, so the Nazis built permanent gas chambers.

(6) Before the Nazis’ rise to power, Jews in Germany were the best-integrated in continental Europe.

One of the most historically shocking facts about the Holocaust is that it was devised of in Germany as opposed to somewhere like Eastern Europe, where Jews were much less assimilated into general society. Before World War II, Jews elsewhere in Europe often joked that German Jews were “more German than the Germans.”

In 1929, for example, Dr. M. S. Melamed wrote for The Jewish Criterion, “The German antisemites have a much deeper hatred against the Jew than the Russians, but the German antisemites do not pogrom the Jew. They write articles and books to prove that the Jew has no right to live, that he is wicked, that he is dishonest, and that he should not enjoy any rights and privileges but it would not enter his mind to embark upon a policy of murder, loot and rape.”

Yet by 1945, the German antisemite had exterminated 2 out of every 3 Jews in Europe.

(7) The international community did not assign a day for Holocaust remembrance until 2005.

The Jewish community began memorializing the Holocaust yearly as early as 1949. The Israeli Knesset officially observed a Holocaust remembrance day for the first time in 1951; by 1958, the observance of Yom HaShoah had been codified into Israeli law. 

By contrast, the United Nations did not assign a day to Holocaust remembrance until 2005, when it passed Resolution 60/7, establishing International Holocaust Remembrance Day to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27th.

(8) There was one group of Jewish partisans that sought revenge after the Holocaust.

As the Allies closed in on Germany, the German population listed “Jewish revenge” as their biggest fear, owing largely to over a decade of Nazi antisemitic propaganda about how Jews were a threat to Germany. In reality, Jewish acts of revenge in the aftermath of the Holocaust were extremely rare, especially in comparison to vengeful acts from other groups like Poles and even the Allied forces. Jews were far more concerned with finding family members and rebuilding their lives. 

There was one group of Jewish partisans, however, that did devise a plan for revenge. The group was named “Nakam,” meaning revenge in Hebrew. Their plan? To murder six million Germans. 

In the end, the plan was obviously entirely unsuccessful. Only about 2000 SS members got ill with food poisoning, but none died. Many Nakam members reflected many years later and were thankful their plan failed, calling it “a Satanic concept” and “an utterly lunatic idea.” Simcha Rotem said in hindsight that he guilt of murdering so many children would've driven him to suicide.

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

rootsmetals

please support my fundraiser for Holocaust survivors living in poverty, especially today as it’s Yom HaShoah 🙏🏼

[narcolepticgnome]

[narcolepticgnome]

Just spotted a kid on my son's track team hoovering some matzoh and charoset, and it's taking all I got not to be that creepy mom going over and saying "HEY FAM"

[narcolepticgnome]