#antisemitism

[notaplaceofhonour]

as a Jew I find the antisemitic trope of the Wandering Jew endlessly fascinating and there’s a version of it that lives rent free in my head that I can’t get out

because yes, we have been cursed—not by G-d, but by man; not for anything we’ve done, but for libel against us—and the curse antisemites have forced on us is that we must wander forever. we don’t get a home, here or there. we aren’t allowed to put down roots in diaspora, but we aren’t allowed to return either; regardless of which we do, the nations try to drive us out and impose their sentence on us: you must wander some more

there is a deconstructed version of the Wandering Jew that I want to reclaim, not as a testament to our sin but as a witness to the nations’, how they’ve treated the wanderer in their midst. on some level, a witness to how the nations treat all wanderers: Jew, Roma, bedouin. but ultimately, a testament to the libel & persecution we as Jews have endured & persevere through

this Wandering Jew is a weary old immortal forced to wander by hatred that goes before him through the nations, who has seen those nations come and go, empires rise and fall, and bears witness to our plight through every one, waiting for injustice to be righted so he can finally rest

[xclowniex]

It's never antizionism not antisemitism.

These are comments in Taika Waititi's comment sections. All he did was sign a letter for the hostages to be released. He has not said anything in support of Israel's actions.

Taika Waititi is a Jewish man.

As you can see from the first picture, he is being told that he can no longer make movies sharing Māori experiences because he signed a letter for hostages to he released. A Māori man is being told not to share Māori experiences because he signed a letter for hostages to be released and because he's Jewish.

This is sickening. It's disgusting. It's trying to erase his indigenous experiences as a Māori all because he's Jewish.

All the other comments are also equally gross.

[lihyot-am-chofshi-beartzeinu]

don't worry guys, it's just antizio-- oh wait, the Met officer literally said the Jewish man would be arrested for the crime of [checks notes] being Jewish in the street and that being Jewish could cause the Hamasniks to turn violent, so the Jewish man would be held responsible for disrupting the peace. also apparently it's OK for pro-Palestine protestors to threaten and vow to follow visibly Jewish people around for no other crime than being Jewish in a public space, and not get called out/arrested by the police in the UK.

BUT DON'T WORRY GUYS, IT'S JUST ANTIZIONISM 🤪

[matan4il]

I heard many allegations from my friends that Israel is explicitly founded as an "ethnostate", and claimed that "having a secular state instead of an apartheid state" would solve many issues of the ongoing conflict. What's some advice to give when discussing with people using such strong terms to describe Israel?

Hi lovely!

I honestly hope that your friends are even willing to listen to the answer. One of the big problems we have, is that it's easy to make up a lie demonizing Israel to people willing to automatically believe the worst about the Jewish state. It takes time, effort and a lot of words (which is taxing for both sides) to explain the truth. So there has to be willingness to listen and learn. I hope your friends prove worthy of your efforts. *hugs*

Okay, so here's the thing about the term "ethnostate." It means a state with a specific ethnic majority (unlike an immigrant society), but most people using this term to vilify Israel do it as if it means "pure ethnostate," which is a state with only one ethnic group having citizenship and rights. In other words, while Israel is a Jewish state in the sense that it is a Jewish-majority state, they use the term as if it means that Israel is a Jew-only state. But Israel isn't a pure ethnostate, and in fact, that doesn't exist anywhere in the world. In Israel, 26% of the population is not Jewish (21% of Israelis are Arabs, 5% belong to other non-Jewish groups).

More than that, Israel has never been interested in being a Jew-only state. I know the narrative of these people is that Israel intentionally committed an ethnic cleansing, expelling Arabs, but that's not the case. The Arabs started a war against the Jews (which they referred to as a "war of extermination") and at a certain point, the leadership called upon the Arab population to leave, so they can make way for the Arab armies which would invade Israel once it would declare independence. One historian in a documentary I watched about this, said that about 80% of the Arabs fled of their own accord, about 10-15% fled because, once the war started, there was also violence between the Arabs themselves (settling scores under the cover of the fighting), and the rest, which means 5-10% of the Arabs, were expelled by lower ranking Israeli army commanders, due to those locals' hostility, violence, and unwillingness to accept the new sovereign Israeli state. Meanwhile, Arabs who were willing to accept Israel, who did not take arms against the Jews, were allowed to stay and become citizens. Those 120,000 Arabs became the foundation of the 2 million Israeli Arabs today. More than that, Israel actually promoted a plan to allow about tens of thousands of Arabs back and give them land, so long as they were willing to accept the new Israeli state, and not take arms again against its Jewish citizens. Only a really small number seized that opportunity (in part because they were still at the stage where they thought any day now, the Jewish state would be dismantled by the Arabs anyway), but those who did are, once again, proof that Israel wasn't into ethnic cleansing.

Bottom line is that the partial ethnic cleansing of Arabs wasn't a result of the Jewish refusal to live alongside Arabs, it was a result of the Arab refusal to live as citizens of a Jewish state, or in an Arab state which would coexist with a Jewish one, it was a result of the Arab refusal to accept the Jews as equals.

Sometimes, I feel really bad for Arabs who did not want the war, who could have lived at peace with the Jews, but their leadership and society forced the war on them. Other times, I remember they could have stayed there, remained peaceful towards Jews, like the 120,000 Arabs who were immediately a part of Israel once it was established. I also remember that they could have spoken up against the war before it broke out, at that stage when everyone was sure the Arabs would exterminate the Jews in a matter of months at most. If they would have spoken up then, it would have been them speaking up against the ethnic cleansing and intended genocide of Jews. Where were they then? Where were their voices when the Arabs were considered the strong side?

And I remember Petach Tikva, a Jewish moshava established in 1878, and how the Jews founded a new water well, that the Arabs benefitted from as well, after they had polluted the existing water well with cattle carcasses. I remember that when the Jews started working in agriculture there, they allowed Arabs to come and live with them in this small Jewish community (22 Muslims and 2 Christians), I remember the Arabs said, "Al-bracha ind al-yahud," the blessing is with the Jews, meaning they recognized the Jews were doing something right, and the Arabs themselves were benefitting from this. I remember the Arabs complimented the Jews on how hard working they were in the fields. And I remember that none of it mattered, and that by 1886 (just 8 years after its founding), Petach Tikva was targeted in an organized Arab attack, where one woman was murdered, beaten to death (Rachel Haddad Ha'Levi), and 5 people were injured, including Rabbi Aryeh Leib Frumkin (the great grandfather of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks), who the Arabs thought they had beaten to death. There was no State of Israel yet, there was no "theft" of land, Petach Tikva was founded on land bought and paid for, there was no occupation, there was no ethnic cleansing, no discrimination of Arabs, and yet seeing the Jews start to build themselves up as equals, in a community of their own, not just as second class citizens in cities where they were always a vulnerable, undefended minority, was enough to launch this violence.

To drive this point home, you can ask your friends about the ethnic cleansing of Jews by Arabs, which occurred in the Land of Israel, and are they opposed to that? Hebron and Gaza City in 1929. East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (re-named by the Jordanains during that year the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip in 1948. There are currently ZERO Jews in what is supposed to become the Palestinian State, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, promised it would stay that way. I wouldn't call the Palestinian-ruled territories a pure ethnostate, because they do have small non-Muslim, non-Arab minorities (although those minorities have been shrinking in size due to persecution since Israel gave over control of these areas to the Palestinians in the 1990's), but in terms of my specific minority group, I can't ignore that these territories are Jew-free, and that the future Palestinian state is meant to remain ethnnically cleansed of Jews. So, if your friends truly mind ethnically cleansing, will they call out the Palestinians on that? Would they vilify and demonize the future Palestinian state, the way they do Israel?

Back to Israel today, and the other allegation. According to the law, ALL Israeli citizens are to be treated the same, regardless of faith or ancestry. The apartheid in South Africa was a system where racism didn't just exist in society, it was coded into law. That means by law, government officials could only ever be white. It means the citizen rights of non-whites were by law limited, either reduced or revoked completely. That's not the case in Israel. Here, Jews and non-Jews enjoy the exact same citizen rights. For example, non-Jews were members of the Israeli parliament since our very first elections (mad respect for Seif el-Din el-Zoubi, who saved the 6 Arab villages that his family inhabits in Israel, by insisting that they don't join the fighting against the Jews, and was elected a member of the Knesset in 1949, and was even appointed at one point as its Deputy Chief). And here's a former Israeli Arab minister and member of Knesset, Isawwi Frej, refuting the apartheid allegation himself:

Also, for the record, Israel IS a secular state. The law here is secular, not the laws of Halacha (which is actually why some ultra orthodox Jews are anti-Zionists. Not because they're against a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, but because the State of Israel isn't Jewish enough in terms of its rule and laws for their liking). Israel IS Jewish, but in the same way that the US is Christian. There are certain cultural influences and indications, but religion doesn't rule the state, and there is more than enough room for people of religious minorities to practice their faith, and have all of their rights and freedoms.

I hope this helps! xoxox

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

[etz-ashashiyot]

You know how I was saying earlier that there is no justification for rape and torture ever, under any circumstances?

These people are calling for that to happen to Jews every. single. day.

There is no excuse for this whatsoever. I better hear the gentiles insisting that the pro-Palestinian movement is not antisemitic condemning this with your whole chest.

[applesauce42069]

so if people didn't hear what happened in calgary, essentially:

yes, that is a nazi salute. yes, that is the leader of Iran.

what is not visible in this photo is the pro-palestine protestors he was standing with. in the videos that circulated, you can see a blonde woman in a keffiyeh walk up to him, say something, and then walk away. there are people with keffiyehs and pro-palestine signs all around him.

they are the people who concern me the most. they claim to be pro palestine, pro justice and peace and equality. a man, standing in their protest, did a nazi salute, and none of them stopped him.

i'm a jew and the descendant of holocaust survivors and victims. if someone did a nazi salute in my vicinity and it was safe to do so, i would go bat shit on them.

so why did no one stop him?

i feel like is is emblematic of how antisemitism spreads among pro-palestine leftists. they don't set out to be antisemitic. they don't want to be antisemitic because its wrong to be prejudiced. but the antisemitism begins to slip through the cracks. they usually don't know enough about jewish people, jewish history, or antisemitism in general to counter it. the effect is slow, but damning. eventually these antisemitic symbols lose their meaning, become less important. so even in the face of something this overt, people don't stop it.

all i can say is that its truly disgusting that people turned the very real, longstanding oppression of palestinians by the israeli state into an excuse to spread violent, hateful, and harmful rhetoric at the expense of jewish people around the world.

and i would also like to say: my grandmother grew up in communist poland, raised by a holocaust survivor mother who had lost her own mother and sisters, likely to the nazi death squads east of Poland, the Einsatzgruppen, as they were trying to flee. Her father may have never met her, having died in the polish people's army around the same time she was born. all her life she wanted to come to canada, because it was safe and bountiful. she brought her family here, and i've always felt lucky for it. now we have people throwing up nazi salutes in our streets to celebrate the attempted bombing of our family members.

antisemitism is a plague.

[odinsblog]

With this dangerous resolution, Congress is trying to redefine the word “antisemitic” to mean “antizionist,” and this resolution could easily be configured to find its way into social media sites, workplaces, onto college campuses and to media outlets, to censor pro-Palestinian speech, much like the unconstitutional anti-BDS legislation that already exists in many states.

Antizionism ≠ antisemitism

👉🏿 https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2024/roll134.xml

[hichew76]

[2goldensnitches]

Love how the “leftwing antizionists not antisemites” crowd keeps bringing up khazar conspiracy theories, phrenology and outdated race science, and use skin colour and nationality as a litmus test but display zero knowledge of ethnicity and heritage. The crazy right wingers mostly use religion as their main arguments, so it’s as if these guys are trying to argue their prejudice has a more…scientific bent to it…

[avi-on-jumblr]

the stupid little connect-the-dots drawing 😭 that’s not even how kids’ puzzles work

[girlactionfigure]

HURT - DON'T HEAL THE ANTISEMITE

The attempt to disabuse the world of antisemitism has been a monumental failure. 

Despite decades of educational outreach things are the worst they’ve ever been. 

The hatred against us is at fever pitch and from multiple fronts. 

The alleged gains that have been made teaching the world about the Holocaust and antisemitism have not been worth the investment of time, energy and resources. 

The facts speak for themself. 

We are in the most precarious position any of us have ever experienced, with most of us wondering where our future lies.

To increase our safety we need a new approach.

This new approach requires us to stop projecting our Jewish belief in education onto the world. We need to stop expecting the world to react in the same way we do to the facts, reason and appeals for compassion we present. We need to stop assuming antisemites are simply ignorant and must confront the truth that they simply hate us and that they enjoy hating us.

We need to make this a less enjoyable pastime for them.

The future of Jewish safety is not in teaching the world to be better people - but in teaching them to watch their step. We need to stop attempting to teach our haters to be nice to us, but rather teach them there’s a cost to their transgressions. Putting it bluntly: we need to teach the world that we will fuck up anyone who tries to hurt us. That is the lesson we need to be pushing. It matters not one jot that they know where antisemitism leads for the Jews. We need to show them where antisemitism leads for them, the perpetrators of antisemitism. They don’t need to know what happened to the Jews in Auschwitz so much as they need to know what happened to the Nazis. They need to know the Nazis got fucked up, killed and destroyed. They need to know that Germany got levelled, destroyed and went up in flames. They need to know that German bodies and minds got broken beyond recognition. Antisemites need to know what happens to the antisemite - not the Jew. And we need to show them.

Those who attempt to kill us must be neutralised - and perpetrators of antisemitic speech and action need to have their lives attacked and diminished so that they experience the greatest personal cost we can extract. They need to suffer consequences to their reputations and their livelihoods. They must be shamed, exposed, humiliated, damaged and degraded. They must experience emotional and mental discomfort. The law must be used to punish them. They must lose their freedom if applicable. Whatever means is available to hurt them should be used to the fullest extent. Their suffering must be harsh and without pity and serve as a deterrent to others. If others don’t pay heed to that deterrent - then they must also suffer. And it must be without pity.

Do we risk antisemites not liking us?

They already hate us. 

Now let them fear us.

And some of you must stop this narcissistic impulse to want to redeem your abusers. This has nothing to with making the world better. It’s about satisfying your saviour complex and making you feel self-righteous. Stop prioritising your abusers. That in itself is a symptom of the abuse you’ve experienced. You have every right to prioritise yourself. Your abuser has not earned a right to your ongoing time and energy. 

Furthermore, trying to generate a couple of feel good stories about an antisemite turned good is an inefficient use of our resources - something we can ill afford when so many active enemies must be thwarted.

It also sends the wrong message. There is no deterrent if they know abusing us is a revolving door that offers them automatic reputational rehabilitation. 

Let’s hurt our haters and move on.

Let it be seen they have been hurt.

We need to stop educating people to like us. We need to teach them to fear us. We need to show them we are mean, nasty and will inflict pain without remorse. 

We need to hurt antisemites - not heal them.

Do some of you feel a little anxious hearing this kind of talk?

Does a Jew being aggressive and spiteful make you feel uncomfortable and anxious?

Good.

That’s how our enemies should feel.

Maybe then they’ll think twice about fucking with us.

LEE KERN

[xclowniex]

Radical opinion in these times but

Stop calling jewish celebrities who care about the hostages or haven't posted anything genocidal.

It's not antizionism, it's antisemitic.

Jews don't need to meet a quota of posts to be seen as "good jews"

Jews don't need to do anything to be a "good jew" as the idea of there being good jews and bad jews is inherently antisemitic

[matan4il]

As we still don't know how and when Israel is going to respond to the massive Iranian attack, the Iranian-funded terrorist organization Hezbollah hits Israel with a drone attack for the second day in a row, this time it hit a Bedouin (Muslim Arab) Israeli town and injured 18. On TV, they're reporting that the 18 people injured are Israeli soldiers, who were stationed in the town in order to protect its Muslim Arab population. Six of the soldiers are said to be in a serious state.

And here's an Iranian woman to remind you all that if you're standing with the Islamis regime of Iran, just so you can stand against Israel, then the regular Iranians are judging you...

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

[homochadensistm]

its so fuckin strange that every single person in my uni who were adamant that theyd totally help them jews during holocaust is... well, actin like most leftist students do these days

meanwhile my gentile friend who constantly mocks them to thrir faces (she actually got in a pretty scary confrontation once) always said somethin along of 'i wanna BELIEVE that id help? i dunno if im brave enough'

the difference is that ur friend gave a genuine response and is behaving genuinely while regular drones just want to boast about their virtue which makes them incapable of having anything genuine

[jewishbarbies]

the swiftie who added this: No no guys, he’s not a nazi! he did that nazi salute ironically! he only listens to the neo nazi podcast bc the host is hot! watching violent porn that degrades black women isn’t THAT bad! mocking asian women for their accents doesn’t make him racist! none of these things are connected at all and you’re REACHING because you hate to see a WOMAN winning!!!!!!

[dragoneyes618]

"As a minority, Jews often are identified collectively with their most troublesome or evil members. Thus, antisemites who were also anticommunist invariably noted that Karl Marx was a Jew, although he was converted to Christianity at age six and was himself fiercely antisemitic. The Soviet Union, a government established on Marxist principles, was also antisemitic."

- Jewish Wisdom, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, page 95.