#because the only Jews you actually like

[bitegore]

Zionists want you to conflate Judaism and Zionism. Zionists want you to believe that Judaism cannot exist without Zionism and that all Jews are Zionists. Zionism would have Jews believe that a Jewish state is the only way that they can be safe from antisemitism and will point to any instance of antisemitism as proof that Zionism is the solution- so Zionism wants gentiles to be antisemitic in their support of Palestine. They want you to conflate all Jews with Zionism and the state of Israel, and they want you to treat all Jews regardless of political affiliation as the face of Israel. Antizionist Jews exist, and incidences of antisemitism ostensibly acting against Zionism will not help dismantle the forces propping Zionism up.

Don't do their work for them.

[hazel2468]

Something that I need people to understand, especially on this hellsite. Is that oppression does not depend on who you actually are.

It depends on how the world sees you.

If the world sees you as X identity. They will treat you as X identity, whether you are or not. If the world sees that you are not X identity, but they can use the oppression of X identity as a cudgel to make you act the way they want you to? They will use it.

Oppression is NOT dependent on who you actually are. It depends on how the world sees you. It depends on how people see you and what they decide to put on you because of that.

Oh. And when someone experiences a form of oppression that is NOT based in the reality of who they are? It's still that kind of oppression. It's not "misdirected"- it is still that kind of oppression being leveraged to maintain the current social climate.

[uncanny-tranny]

Big reminder that your country is not immune to bigotry. I've seen so many people, for example, pretend like antisemitism doesn't exist in the USA because we were part of the allied forces in WWII (of course, they conveniently don't remember that we rejected jewish refugees when WWII broke out and we only really joined because Pearl Harbor was bombed, but I digress).

If you think your country is immune from antisemitism, racism (including anti-Indigenous racism), class issues, ableism, whatever else it may be, look deeper because you will find it.

[rotzaprachim]

i think one of the lingering aspects of antisemitism in media is the whole idea of jewish culture as something not only so specific that goysiche audiences aren’t interested but outright lurkingly suspicious so that jewish culture can’t be shown. the range of possible cinematic jewishnesses is narrow - a menorah, maybe, or someone saying I’m jewish but maybe in response to a joke. no prayers in hebrew, no davening or brachot, no non-joke casual uses of yiddish or ladino or arabic or hebrew in spoken dialogue, nothing that uses yisrael or yerushalayim or tzion because What if the audience took thousand-year old concepts far older than modern nationalisms and punched it through that lens and it was Suspicous? no casual references to the ways in which jewish people and communities might organise their lives in ways that might be different. no mezuzot, havdallah, kiddush cups, jewish cultural and social and political organisations, kabbalat shabbat, scenes with tallises and kippot, nothing that might inconvenience the narrative, no passover cleaning or sitting shiva. just... a lot of the aspects of culture and communal organisation are to specific, too in-group, to lingeringly not normal to show. but too outright sus, y’know? 

[unopenablebox]

ugh i'm trying not to be a dick to my mom, who suffers enough. but i cannot believe she's decided to go in on "desecrating flags is a bad look for anyone" re: the student protests like a) that's obviously not the principle you're actually using to decide who and what to criticize here b) it's not desecrating a flag to take it down and replace it with another flag c) every time my parents say shit like this it makes me feel like maybe i alone retain memories of my family's beliefs and experiences during the bush administration, which is bad because i was like six at the time

[biblicalhorror]

The most frustrating part of engaging in any of this discourse with pro-Israel people is that they claim there's just something ineffable about "seeing and understanding" how supporting Palestinian liberation is directly calling for the eradication of Jewish people (as if that type of rhetoric isn't exactly how actual antisemitism often manifests in online spaces but that's a topic for another day)

They get through people debunking the "the land belongs to the people of Israel anyway" argument and the "LGBTQ Palestinians are safe in Israel" argument and the "Genocide isn't what's happening here so you should educate yourself" argument and when all of those points are meticulously disproven over and over they still stand with "Well, myself and your Jewish friends see the hate you have in your heart for us" and it truly doesn't matter what you say at that point because even if you yourself are Jewish they will claim that refusing to support the state, government and military of Israel is inherently hateful and bigoted, as if a religious ethnostate is some inherent human right that is being taken away from them. I know many of them are blinded by the relentless propaganda that's been around their whole lives and how hard it is to break free from a belief system that is so tied to your core identity as a human being but it is so frustrating watching people being led straight to the point over and over again and just turning around and refusing to see it.

It's also so frustrating to see people using the momentum of this movement to casually tack on actual antisemitism to these discussions, as if having Jewish people in positions of power is why the US bends over backwards to excuse the actions of Israel and not, yknow, the fact that our government directly benefits from having a military stronghold in the middle east. I've talked to some well-meaning pro-Palestine friends irl who casually use antisemetic talking points because they've ALSO bought into the narrative that Israeli = Jewish and so they blame the actions of Israel and the IDF on Jewish people's "religious values" and ignore the fact that this conflict really has almost nothing to do with religion itself and everything to do with capitalism, imperialism and maintaining the US's status as a so-called "global power".

[cruelsister-moved2]

this letter?

[bijoumikhawal]

People discussing Israel's racist policies and Israel's policy of fucking over non Rabbinic communities and fucking up the transmission of diaspora cultures (such as the teaching of languages) is not the time to go "we don't need gentiles in our intracommunity politics". Foundational to Israel is "maintaining a Jewish majority". These communities are attacked in lathe part because they are seen as not being as Jewish as White, Ashkie, Western European Jews (with respect to how Eastern European Jews are also often mistreated), or their Judaism is otherwise seen as deficient. The maintenance of this majority is also why Palestinians generally, cannot really get an Israeli citizenship, even if they wanted to, and sometimes even if they can prove they are of Jewish descent. "Who is a Jew and what is a Jewish culture" is a constructed boundary: for the past 70 odd years it has been a boundary used for violence. If you want anti-zionists to have politics informed by the needs of Jews, they must be party to these discussions.

[s-c-l-n]

i need the internet to sit down and realize that screaming and shouting about palestine at random jewish people online is not productive nor helpful. i would actually argue its only harming your cause.

naturally this does not count for podts explicitly about palestine/israel, rather seeing someone talk about judaism and writing “free palestine” as a comment or harassing jewish people on the streets because they are jewish

suddenly it feels very obvious why american jews feel unsafe post-october 7th.

if your “activism” includes harassing people for their culture, youre not being helpful.

[autismserenity]

if your Jewish friends aren't talking to you about anything that's happening right now, it's because they know that at its core your take is probably rooted in greedy-grasping-jew stereotypes with a hefty helping of i-don't-mean-you-of-course. And they're doing both of you the favor of pretending it isn't.

[monachopism]

being jewish with zero affiliation to israel and rather a generational line of activists for palestine is a hard line to walk and sometimes i wish i could just fall off

[deadtower]

“progressive leftists” just going full mask off with the antisemitism huh

[prokyon]

.

[mockiatoh]

ONE LAST POST AND I’M DONE especially because I’m going to be a cunt here, but it’s always so funny seeing people who’ve taken a stance try to act like everyone who disagrees with them is clearly a member of the oppressor class instead of like… a disagreeing member of their own community. Like there’s at least six or seven Jews saying ‘actually this is completely normal’, ‘my rabbi says this’, ‘this phrase is literally in a prayer’, ‘my community doesn’t use that alternative phrase at all’…

And the response is to act like it’s some goyische asshole overstepping. It makes it very clear that you’re used to being able to leverage your Jewish identity in lieu of an actual argument. To which I can only say, perhaps spend more time around Jews offline, idk.

[bijoumikhawal]

"leftists don't fall for/into right wing hate campaigns for other groups as much as they do for antisemitism" is a really funny way of broadcasting which groups you pay attention to. Anyway we all do remember V*ush and his sycophants constantly claiming "land back is a call for ethnostates" and baiting WOC to intentionally misrepresent their politics on race up to and including claiming they want white genocide, right.

Acting like somehow people on the left are often progressive about every other thing but are antisemites is absurd. It happens, but its not common. An antisemite is often also a racist, a xenophobe, religiously intolerant overall, etc. There are plenty of racist, xenophobic, shithead leftists. Anyone who's actually a leftist would know there's constant tumbling online with shithead leftists and they never have just one shithead opinion.

[glompcat]

Fun fact (sure to fuck with the antisemites who love nothing more than to claim all Jews are connected to Israel) - under the laws proposed by the incoming Israeli government, the vast majority of the world’s Jews will not be considered Jewish in the eyes of that state!