#except us Jews

[bill-the-dog-for-the-check]

I don't think I can say this with enough emphasis--if you are not Jewish, you don't get to decide what is and is not antisemitic.

There's no ambiguity here. Zero. I am sick and tired of being lectured at by goyim about how, 'oh, ackhtually, your explanation of how my words are antisemitic is off! You're trying to stop the discussion by being inflammatory!'

Or to be told that I am cheapening the term antisemitism, and that people used to react to it before October 7th, but now they're numb to it, which is just what happens you start using serious accusations for political means!

It's... genuinely astonishing to me. I'm consistently amazed by the arrogance, audacity, and disrespect it takes for you guys to lecture Jews on what antisemitism is.

Have any of you goyim experienced antisemitism firsthand? Is it your people who's experienced antisemitism for 3000 years? Is it you who has family members rescued by Schindler? Was it your ancestors who fled from constant, unending pogroms in with nothing but the clothes on their backs? Have you ever had someone tell lies to your friend about you sexually harassing people because you're a Jew? Have you ever had to sit and think whether you should mark down that you're Jewish on a job application? Have you ever felt unsafe and compelled to take off your Star of David because you've been afraid you'd be attacked? Have you ever had to worry about a professor who constantly brings up the war in class marking your assignment down because it talks about Israel being a democracy? Have you ever had the feeling of acid being splashed on your soul when you see antisemitic comments? The ice water rushing down your spine when someone is antisemitic to your face, and you feel the weight of 3 millennia of oppression bearing down on you?

No? Not you?

Then sit your ass down, and frankly, shut the fuck up.

[melancholic-pigeon]

also it just really sucks that if you look at my blog for 0.2 seconds you will notice that my position of "harming civilians is bad" is completely consistent with my politics and has been since I fucking made this account, it is EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY EASY TO TELL that I in no fucking way support the Likud party or Benjamin Netanyahu or the harm being done to Palestinians...

...but because I also think Jews are people and have the same stance re Jewish peoples' human rights that I have re all human rights globally, I'm apparently "not normal" about Palestine.

Which means to these jackasses, being "normal" about Palestine requires vocal, unapologetic Jew-hatred.

So yeah. I guess I'm not "normal" about Palestine, because I think human rights violations are universally bad for all humans and believe marginalized people when they provide MOUNTAINS AND MOUNTAINS AND MOUNTAINS of evidence again, dating back MILLENNIA, that they're being harmed.

Human rights for all humans, no exceptions ever. I'm disgusted that this makes me an outlier. I'm still low-key ashamed to call myself a leftist because of the gleefully, sadistically hateful cruelty that has apparently become required behavior in the supposed Human Rights Are Good party.

I keep ranting about this and it probably isn't helping much and that frustrates me too.

[autismserenity]

pretty please, my fellow progressives

Could we please all keep in mind that the concept of "The Jews In General, or A Specific Type Of Jew, Controls Education, Government, Media, and/or Banking", is a longstanding antisemitic trope?

And most of all, that it is false??

No, a marginalized group does not also control education, the government, the media, and/or banking?

No, Jews do not secretly control these things and just pretend to be marginalized? No, Jews have not secretly been accumulating power since the Holocaust, granted by too-generous gentiles, out of pity?

No, it isn't better if you just mean a specific subgroup or kind of Jews. It's still specifically Jews.

It's like when people who hate trans/queer people are fine with rich white cis gay men. So they think it's not bigoted to blame "people with blue hair and pronouns" for the downfall of society.

We all know this means, "I only see some of you as human like me. You have to speak and act a certain way to count. Everyone in your group has to pass a test to get into the Good group."

Doesn't work.

Sure, it gives them plausible deniability to the people who matter to them. But everyone else can see exactly how they feel.

We've all known for years that it's bad to think of a marginalized group as having some "good ones." Rein it the heck in, please.

Because YES, all of those examples are ones I've seen implied, or stated outright, over and over, within the progressive community. This month alone.

[hindahoney]

At this point I'm starting to think that anti-zionism is just a dogwhistle for antisemitism. When you've got people openly calling Israelis "settlers" and hoping for them to be killed, when you've got people saying that they deserve to die, what else am I expected to think here???

Always has been bestie

[arabian-batboy]

Wanting to only give back the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinians while continuing to occupy the rest of historic Palestine and not allowing the Palestinian refugees who were ethnically-cleansed from there to return doesn't make a person any less of a Zionist from those who want to continue occupying all of Palestine from the river to the sea, no matter how much they swear they are not a Zionist.

[wedding-shemp]

Ok ok I can't find the post to screenshot it so you'll have to bear with me. But I saw with my own two eyes someone speculating that the "Palestine" tag was being supressed from trending (it wasn't) because th owner of Tumblr is Jewish (he isn't). And y'know. Ok. I should be mad. But it is just now hitting me how how funny it is to take the ol' "Jews run the Media" line and apply it to TUMBLR. We run the media, but only the lamest half-dead social media platforms you can possibly imagine. That's hilarious, I can't even be that upset.

[paranormeow7]

man. what a ridiculous fever dream world we live in. I eat my dinner and people get bombed. people have debates about people getting bombed. fellow humans. and people have all these labels and nuances and it’s These Guys Fault they deserved it because of This Were Doing This To Them Because They Did It To Us First and it’s like. no one’s looking at the big picture. which is that fellow human beings are dying and starving and going without healthcare and surrounded by corpses. a culture, not a statistic. all we see is their suffering. we never know who they are as people. they are dehumanized in their plight while we continue to have stupid fucking debates about Hamas and picking sides MONTHS LATER INTO THE NONSTOP BARRAGE. it doesn’t really matter why people say it’s happening or what words you use to talk about it. it’s an atrocity. and this shit is happening everywhere and has happened for pretty much all of human history. great world we live in. my god why can’t we just be good to each other and stop caring about the little things that devolve into huge things that get people killed en masse. call your reps donate esims just. please. remember the humanity of the marginalized who had lives just like you and are more than a statistic or a sad video or brownie points on tumblr dot com. post over goodnight. I’m tired. of everything

[bogunicorn]

reading the news is so exhausting bc at this point it's just wall-to-wall opinion pieces of z*onists saying the dumbest shit possible with their entire chests and then crying about how the entire world is against them because they invented a new definition for the word "genocide" and nobody with a partially working brain wants to adopt it

[meme-loving-stuck]

i remember being brought up christian like, almost concerned that i never felt a connection to any of the shit they were talkin about,

and when i was younger i was like "oh no! am i bad for not feeling connected to god?? is it bad i feel like my dead mom doesnt talk to me or watch over me?? am i horrible for pretending?????"

but turns out i just had Autism Powers that made me immune to it and i was able to completely sever myself from the idea of being Christian at the ripe old age of like 13. and it was such a HUGE comfort to see that there were all these other beliefs and spiritual sort of things that other people chose to believe in and didnt necessarily treat their beliefs as COLD HARD UNDENIABLE FACT the way christians treat the existence of god & heaven & hell

like now that i am older i know i was in fact traumatized by the culturally catholic beliefs my family held & forced on us all, but i am really immensely grateful that my child self looked at all the other aspects of christianity that would horrify most other children into behaving/conforming, and basically just went, "okay, source?"

and that was the end of that

[dirt-grub]

If you’re currently ONLY posting about the Israelis that are doing good things for Palestine/are against what their country is doing and pointing out when certain protestors that are not affiliated with the whole of the free Palestine movement are being antisemitic know I can fucking see you. Obviously these are important things to talk about as Israel does not equal all Jews and antisemitism should be called out every time because it’s fucking serious and disgusting that another entire group of people is being blamed for this genocide other than the colonists in charge and Zionists supporting it but you’re telling on yourself as only interested in covering your own ass and it’s embarrassing. I don’t know how you can see hundreds if not thousands of entire bloodlines being wiped from this earth and instantly think well um hashtag not all Israelis and that’s it. Again. I don’t blame the majority of the Israeli people for what’s happening I blame the governments tied up in this and those in the military who happily post bragging about the shit they stole and destroyed on tiktok. You may not have technically done anything pro Israel but like I said you’re obviously only interested in covering your ass and continuing to be seen as a good person without engaging with the absolute horror the apartheid state of Israel is carrying out and checking your pre existing beliefs.

[embras-grace]

Aaaah 3 more cowardly antisemitic people blocked. They just can't resist the "I am Jewish -- I don't want politics on this blog" statement.

Moths to a flame, bringing blissful silence as their IPs are gone forever from my presence.

[stephobrien]

Is your pro-Palestine activism hurting innocent people? Here's how to avoid that.

Note: If you prefer plain text, you can read the plain text version here.

Over the last few days, I’ve had conversations with several Jewish people who told me how hurt and scared they are right now.

To my great regret, some of that pain came from a poorly-thought-out post of mine, which – while not ill-intentioned – WAS hurtful.

And a lot of it came from cruelty they’d experienced at the hands of people who claim to be advocating for Palestine, but are using the very real plight of innocent Palestinians to harm equally innocent Jewish people.

Y’all, we need to do better. (Yes, ���we” definitely includes me; this is in no small part a “learn from my fail” post, and also a “making amends” post. Some of these are mistakes I’ve made in the past.)

So if you’re an advocate for Palestine who wants to make sure that your defense of one group of vulnerable people doesn’t harm another, here are some important things to do or keep in mind:

Ask yourself if you’re applying a standard to one group that you aren’t applying to another.

Would you want all white Americans or Canadians to be expelled from America or Canada?

Do you want all Jewish people to be expelled from Israel, as opposed to finding a way to live alongside Palestinian Arabs in peace?

If the answer to those two questions is different, ask yourself WHY.

Do you want to be held responsible for the actions of your nation’s army or government? No? Then don’t hold innocent Jewish people, or Israelis in general (whether Jewish or otherwise), responsible for the actions of the Israeli army and government.

On that subject, be wary of condemning all Israeli people for the actions of the IDF. Large-scale tactical decisions are made by the top brass. Service is compulsory, and very few can reasonably get out of service.

Blaming all Israelis for the military’s actions is like blaming all Vietnam vets for the horrors in Vietnam. They’re not calling the shots. They aren’t Nazis running concentration camps. They are carrying out military operations that SHOULD be criticized.

And do not compare them or ANY JEWISH PERSON to Nazis in general. It is Jewish cultural trauma and not outsiders’ to use against them.

Don’t infuse legitimate criticism with antisemitism.

By all means, spread the word about the crimes committed by the Israeli army and government, and the complicity of their allies. Criticize the people responsible for committing and enabling atrocities.

But if you imply that they’re committing those crimes because they’re Jewish, or because Jewish people have special privileges, then you’re straying into antisemitic territory.

Criticize the crime, not the group. If you believe that collective punishment is wrong, don’t do it yourself.

And do your best to use words that apply directly to the situation, rather than the historical terms for situations with similar features. For example, use “segregation,” “oppression,” or “subjugation,” not “Holocaust” or “Jim Crow.” These other historical events are not the cultural property of Jews OR Palestinians, but also have their own nuances and struggles and historical contexts.

Also, blaming other world events on Jewish people or making Jewish people associated with them (for instance, some people falsely blame Jewish people for the African slave trade) is a key feature of how antisemitism functions.

Please, by all means, be specific and detailed in your critiques. But keep them focused on the current political actors – not other peoples’ or nations’ political or cultural histories and traumas.

Be prepared to accept criticism.

You probably already know that society is infused with a wide array of bigotries, and that people growing up in that environment tend to absorb those beliefs without even realizing it. Antisemitism is no exception.

What that means is, there’s a very real chance that you will screw up, and get called out on it, as I so recently did.

If that happens, please be willing to learn and adapt. If you can educate yourself about the suffering and needs of Palestinians, you can do the same for Jewish people.

Understand that the people you hurt aren’t obligated to baby you. Give them room to be angry.

After I made a post that inadvertently hurt people, some were nice about it, and others weren’t. Some outright insulted my morals and intelligence.

And I had to accept that I’d earned that from them.

I’d hurt them, and they weren’t obligated to be more careful with my feelings than I had been with theirs.

They weren’t obligated to forgive me, trust me, or stop being mad at me right away.

I’ll admit, there were moments when I got defensive. I shouldn’t have. And I encourage you to try not to, if you screw up and hurt people.

I know that’s hard, but it’s important. Getting defensive only tells people you care more about doubling down on your mistake than you do about healing the hurt it caused.

Instead, acknowledge that they have a right to be angry, apologize for the way you hurt them, and try to make amends, while understanding that they don’t owe you trust or forgiveness.

Be aware that some antisemites are using legitimate complaints to “Trojan horse” antisemitism into leftist spaces.

This is a really easy stumbling block to trip over, because most people probably don’t look at every post a creator makes before sharing the one they’re looking at right now.

I recently shared a video that called out some of the Likud and IDF’s atrocities and hypocrisy, and that also noted that many Jewish people are wonderful members of their communities.

I was later informed that, while that video in particular seemed reasonable, the creator behind it is frequently antisemitic.

I deleted the post, and blocked the creator. I encourage you to do the same if it’s brought to your attention that you’ve been ‘Trojan horse’d.

EDIT: Important note about antisemitism in leftist spaces:

While it's true that some blatant antisemites are using seemingly reasonable posts to get their foot in the door of leftist spaces, it's also true that a lot of antisemitism already exists inside those spaces.

This antisemitism is often dressed up in progressive-sounding language, but nonetheless singles Jewish people and places out in ways that aren't applied equally to other groups, or that label Jewish people in ways that portray them as acceptable targets.

If you want to see some specific examples, so you can have a better idea of what to keep an eye out for, I suggest reading this excellent reblog of this post.

Fact-check your doubts about antisemitism.

Depending on which parts of the internet you look at, you’ve probably seen people accused of antisemitism because they complained about the Likud and/or IDF’s actions. So you might be primed to be wary, or feel unsure of how to tell what counts as real antisemitism.

But that doesn’t mean antisemitism isn’t a very real, widespread, and harmful problem. And it doesn’t mean many or even most Jewish people are lying to you or being overly sensitive.

So if someone says something is antisemitic, and you aren’t sure, I encourage you to:

A. Look up the action or thing in question, including its history. Is there an antisemitic history or connotation you aren’t aware of? For best results, include “antisemitic” in your search query, in quotes.

B. Understand that some things, while not inherently antisemitic, have been used by antisemites often enough that Jewish people are understandably wary of them. Schrodinger’s antisemitism, if you will.

C. Ask Jewish people WHO HAVE OFFERED TO HELP EDUCATE YOU. Emphasis on WHO HAVE OFFERED. Random Jewish people aren’t obligated to give you their time and emotional energy, or to educate you – especially on subjects that are scary or painful for them.

@edenfenixblogs has kindly offered her inbox to those who are genuinely trying to learn and do better, and I’ve found her to be very kind, patient, reasonable, and fair-minded.

Understand that this is URGENTLY NEEDED.

In one of my conversations with a Jewish person who’d called me out, they said this was the most productive conversation they’d had with a person with a Palestinian flag in their profile.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

I didn’t do anything special. All I did was listen, apologize for my mistakes, and learn.

Yes, it feels good to be acknowledged. But I feel like I’ve been praised for peeing IN the toilet, instead of beside it.

Apologizing, learning, and making amends after you hurt people shouldn’t be “the most reasonable thing I’ve heard from a person with a Palestinian flag pfp.”

It should be BASIC DECENCY.

And the fact that it’s apparently so uncommon should tell you how much unnecessary stress and fear Jewish people have been living with because of people who consider themselves defenders of human rights.

By all means, be angry at the Likud, the IDF, and the politicians, reporters, and specific media outlets who choose to enable and cover up for them.

But direct that anger toward the people who deserve it and are in a position to do something about it, not random people who simply happen to be Jewish, or who don’t want millions of people to be turned into refugees when less violent methods of achieving freedom and rights for Palestinians are available.

Stop peeing beside the toilet, people.

[andersunmenschlich]

The Song of Moses

In which Moses finally finishes listing all of Yahweh's laws and does some preemptive scolding. Feel free to turn to Deuteronomy 32 and read along!

First he tells the sky and the ground to listen to him. If you check the last bit of the previous chapter, you'll see that this is because he wants those two things to act as witnesses, so they can be called upon later to testify that yup, the Israelites were told how awesome Yahweh was and also what all of his laws are.

It made more sense when he said he wanted the record of all the laws to be a witness. That does tell people that the Israelites had all those laws. The sky and ground? Not so much.

Next he wishes that his words will drop like rain, distill like dew, and be like gentle rain on plants that need gentle rain, and heavy rain on plants that need that. Why? Because (he says) he's about to say Yahweh's name and tell everyone how great the supreme god is. These two things, apparently, are as important to the Israelites as water is to plants.

Then he begins.

The Rock, he says, does work that can't be criticized because everything the Rock does is in accordance with law.

This can't be argued. If what you do is up to divine code, it's definitely flawless! Who is the Rock, though? Odds are good he isn't talking about Dwayne Johnson. Perhaps he'll elaborate later.

The Rock, Moses says, is a certain type of god: a god that holds firm and steadfast, a god that stands by the law, who judges according to it and never breaches it. Like a rock, basically. Immovable. Unbending. Unchanging. Incorruptible.

The Rock's sons, however, have acted contrary to this. Rather than acting like rocks, they have become not-sons to him by acting like a generation of twisted, tangled up things.

Yes, the words here are specifically male.

Moses says this is no way to treat Yahweh (thus clarifying that the Rock is Yahweh), and insults the Israelites by calling them stupid and not a people—that is, not a cohesive tribe, not a family. "Isn't Yahweh your father?" Moses asks. "Isn't he your owner? Didn't he make you? Didn't he give you everything you have?"

Then he goes into a kids-these-days rant in which he tells his listeners to ask their fathers and grandfathers what things were like in the past.

The especially interesting part is coming up.

Once upon a time, apparently, the Most High god divided up the sons of Adam into separate nations. Obviously each of those nations would need to live somewhere, so he gave them territory—and what decided how many territories there were? According to what were the borders fixed?

The most obvious thing to do would be to fix the borders according to the number of nations.

The Most High god did not do that.

This is where the text diverges. The oldest versions we have (the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint) say that the Most High used the number of his sons to decide. He gave the sons of Adam their inheritance in land, and his own sons their inheritance in peoples. Yahweh got the Israelites: they were the people he inherited from the Most High, his father.

Later versions say the Most High used the number of Israel's sons. But Israel (also known as Jacob) didn't have any descendants at all back when the Most High was splitting Adam's descendants into nations. Now he has millions. What number between zero and millions do you suppose the Most High used? Or do you suppose he used a still farther future number, and went into the billions? And what would it mean for Jacob and his descendants to be Yahweh's allotted heritage if no one was assigning the various bundles of Adam's descendants to the different sons of the Most High god?

The Israelites are Yahweh's people because the Most High god (Yahweh's father) gave the Israelites to Yahweh. They're his heritage.

Yahweh met and took possession of his human inheritance (Moses says) in a desert land. A howling wilderness waste, in fact. Yahweh surrounded his inheritance, watched it at all times, and guarded it like you do the center of your eye—that is, reflexively and as violently as necessary.

Next Moses compares Yahweh to an eagle. Eagles, Moses says, wake up their nestlings and then hover over them checking to be sure they're all right. Yahweh does that, metaphorically speaking. He also metaphorically spreads his wings and carries the people his father gave him on his pinions (because flapping wings are a nice safe place to sit... or maybe eagles are strictly gliders, and never need to flap).

Never mind ornithology.

Moses emphasizes that Yahweh was the only god taking care of Jacob's sons. And that's as it should be, because Jacob's sons belong to Yahweh—other gods are alien to them, foreign.

The Israelites are Yahweh's inheritance. He is their owner; their master; their father; their lord; their god.

And (this is the important bit) their god is the one who has been taking care of them all this time. They have no right to desert him: he was the one taking care of them. Him alone. No other god has ever done anything good for them.

Next Moses tells us about all the good things Yahweh has done for Israel: the high places in the land are great and he made Israel ride them, he fed Israel the fruit and grain produced by the land, squeezed honey out of rocks and oil out of boulders for them, got them ox cheese and goat milk and fat tasty sheep, the best rams, the richest wheat, the finest grapes, etc.

And then darling little Israel got spoiled, and started disrespecting the god that had made him so strong and healthy. Decided he didn't want to hang out with the rock that had saved him.

According to Moses, the Israelites started hanging out with Yahweh's brothers—foreign gods! They were his people, his inheritance, his father gave them to him, and here they were treating his brothers like they weren't his property! You know what that is? That's an abomination. That's idolatry. That's adultery. Yes! It's like when your female who belongs to you starts treating some other man like she's his, that's what it's like! Israel made Yahweh jealous. They grieved him. They enraged him.

What's more, they even cheated on him with supernatural beings who weren't even sons of the Most High—with Johnny-come-lately deities their ancestors had never even heard of! Why, those aren't even gods at all, and here the Israelites were killing animals for them!

They ignored the rock that was a father to them, and forgot the god (a proper god, an actual son of the Most High) who had exerted himself extremely to make them what they were.

Obviously Yahweh saw this.

He saw it and rejected them the way they rejected him, because that's how a mature father responds to disrespect from his children: he says, "Oh, so you'd rather hang out with adults who aren't me? Give them kisses and gifts instead of me? Fine! You don't want me—I'll go away! No more support from me! Let's see how you do without me, you perverse, unfaithful brats! Make me jealous with people who aren't even family, will you? Make me angry by showering affection on non-people? I'll show you. I'll make you jealous with random kids who aren't even a part of any family; I'll make you angry with another, stupid group of kids!"

No, seriously. That is how mature Yahweh is in the Bible (at least according to Moses).

"They're giving sacrifices to non-elohim gods?" Moses shows Yahweh reasoning. "That makes me jealous, so I'll go find non-tribal people to bless, to make Israel jealous. They're (pointlessly) setting up idols to gods that aren't about to so much as give them the time of day? That makes me angry, so I'll shower blessings on a nation so stupid they won't ever thank me for it. (Another one, one that's not Israel. A different foolish nation.) That ought to make Israel as mad as I am!"

And he is very angry. According to Moses, he's so angry he could burn the entire earth right down to the bottom-most part of it, devouring the whole earth and every tasty and/or valuable thing on it, right down to the foundations of the mountains.

Note that the earth is flat.

In the Bible, the earth is always flat. You have to twist the words to make it mean anything else: in a plain reading, the earth of the Bible is flat.

When Yahweh (through Moses) says his anger burns to the depths of the lowest pit, turning the earth and everything on it to ash and setting the very lowest parts of all the mountains on fire, he's picturing a flat earth burning. That's the image he's evoking for us: fire falling from the firm arch of heaven and burning straight down through the flat earth itself until there's no place lower to go.

The fact that the core of the earth is already molten will never be mentioned.

Because the writer of Deuteronomy didn't know.

In any case, Yahweh goes on to threaten far worse than just leaving the people his dad gave him—he plans to hurt them as much as he possibly can. He'll heap disasters on them, spend every last arrow he has shooting them: he'll use famine to turn them into shriveled husks, burn them up with fever and poison them with plague, order in some sharp-fanged wild beasts to attack them, get some venomous snakes to bite them, make sure their kids are hacked to death outdoors and everyone indoors will be terrified no matter how old or what sex they are... he really gets into the list.

This is the way Yahweh treats his people, and it sets a pattern, doesn't it? If your wife cheats on you, this is how you treat her. If your kids don't appreciate you, this is how you treat them. Remember, this is the Rock! Everything he does is lawful and upright.

Some of his people started worshiping his brothers instead of him (and even gods who weren't members of his family at all and might not even exist).

The Most High gave them to him. They're his people. They don't get to choose who they worship. They worship him, or they die horribly. Simple as. And if they do worship him, like they're supposed to, like they're lawfully meant to, because they're his property—why, then he'll treat them so well! Of course he will! That's the law too, after all. Let no one say he isn't just.

In fact, there's only one reason why he isn't going to wipe his people out so entirely that it would be like they never were: Yahweh is afraid that if he does that, the Israelites's enemies will think they're the ones who did it.

That's right—he hates the thought that someone else might take the credit for his holocaust!

He's not worried about other gods taking credit. Apparently if some other god said "I'm the one who wiped out the Israelites!" he could do something about that. But if a group of humans said it, he'd be completely powerless to correct them! There would be nothing he could do at that point. They'd walk off happily thinking they'd won because they were stronger than their Israelite enemies, rather than that they'd won because Yahweh was murdering the Israelites.

If those enemies had any sense, Yahweh assures us (through Moses), they would understand the fate he had planned for them, too. Obviously they're not stronger. One of them would only able to chase off a thousand Israelites if he, Yahweh, had given his people up.

Those unspecified enemies, after all, don't have a god as awesome as Yahweh "the Rock" El. And they suck as people, too.

If we think of this unspecified nation as a vine, they're a vine from Sodom, that grew in the fields of Gomorrah, with poison grapes that taste bitter and make wine that might as well be snake venom.

Yahweh knows that. He knows they suck. He's a very just and righteous deity, and this unspecified nation has definitely been breaking his laws right left and center. He'll have his vengeance! And soon, at that. They'll definitely fall and be destroyed soon. In the meantime, Yahweh will judge his people, and then he'll be sorry for the ones who were his slaves—after he sees how horribly weak and few they've become, of course. And he'll make fun of them a bit first.

"Oh no!" he'll say. "I wonder where my brothers went? And whatever happened to the rock they used to run to for protection? Say, maybe the not-elohim you sacrificed animals and wine to will come and help you out!"

And then he'll gloat.

"See?" he'll say. "I'm the only one you can rely on. No god can stand against me. I can kill you. I can make you live. I can hurt you. I can heal you. And there is no one who can take you away from me."

Such amazing compassion! He's talking instead of killing you. And it gets even better.

"I lift my hand to the sky," he says, "and swear on my own immortality that when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will most definitely revenge myself on those who have opposed me and reciprocate the hatred of those who hate me. My arrows will drink so much blood they'll get drunk on it, and my sword will eat flesh and drink the blood of those slain in battle, and those who surrendered and were taken captive, and the heads of the enemy leaders!"

Proportionate, isn't it?

Moses then announces that the sky itself should rejoice with Yahweh at such a time, and that all the other gods should bow down to him. Why? Because he's avenged the blood of his sons (which, if you'll recall from earlier, he spilled himself) and taken vengeance on the people who opposed him.

He repays hatred for hatred, and (through vengeance and blood-spilling) cleanses his people and their land.

Having recited this poem, Moses emphasizes that all the rules he listed earlier are not just words, they're the Israelites's very life, and they need to follow those laws as closely as possible or else.

The end!

[storiesfromgaza]

A message to everyone :

Ever since I began this blog and continuously shared its content, I never asked any of you to follow me, share these posts, or use the Blaze feature to promote them. I've been entirely absorbed in writing articles and translating stories and posts from the people of Gaza without concerning myself with whether they will reach a broad audience or not. My initial goal was to reach any number of individuals, even if it was just one person, in the hope of increasing their awareness. That would have been sufficient for me.

But today, particularly after the recent news confirming the complete shutdown of the internet, electricity, and communications in Gaza, along with the isolation imposed by the Israeli occupation and the brutal and savage bombings happening now as I write these lines, I want everyone to share what's happening. Not just on Tumblr but everywhere you can. Share on WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, and for those who are proficient in Russian, share on platforms like VK. If you know Korean, share in Naver cafes. Share with your family, your loved ones, and those you meet on the street. Let everyone know about the monstrous massacres the occupation is committing against Palestinian civilians, teenage girls and young women who have become widows due to the bombings, young children whose lives were forcibly taken from them while they clung to life, and the elderly who hoped for a longer life or a peaceful death beside their children and families, but the occupation robbed them of this, making the old man witness the deaths of all his family members, his children, and his grandchildren, and then he dies alone, hoping to join them.

O People, humans, whether you are Muslims, Christians, Jews, or followers of any religion, my message is for those of you who have humanity, whatever your identity may be. Your silence today means you are participating in an extermination worse than what Hitler did to the Jews, even worse than the victims of all the world wars combined. At that time, there weren't sufficient means of communication, so everyone's excuse was that they couldn't do anything except publish in newspapers. But today, in our current era, there are many available options. So, what's your excuse now?

Your silence and inaction are permission for them to continue their slaughter and the extraction of souls from their bodies. Let everyone do whatever is within their power, and all of us should know that we can do a lot. Edit: I've created a Telegram channel for us and posted all the articles and stories that have been published here, so you can easily share them with everyone. Join it through the following link: https://t.me/storiesfromgaza

Edit²: we now have an Instagram account, which we created to make it easier for everyone to share the stories and articles published here. Some of them have already been shared with beautiful designs, and we are in the process of posting the remaining articles after formatting and finalizing the designs. I had to use my personal account because when I created an account with the name "Stories From Gaza," Instagram suspended the account immediately, even before I could change the profile picture or post anything! Account username: @amrshater

Your interaction on Instagram will greatly help in spreading the stories and articles to the Instagram audience https://www.instagram.com/amrshater/

[unbidden-yidden]

Honestly, a lot of the left-wing erasure of Jewish ethnicity by considering all Jews to be white people like all the other white Europeans, except possibly even *more* white and privileged, strikes me as being less psychologically about intentionally excluding Jews and more about, like, not having to deal with the logical fallout of the consequences of structural antisemitism.

Because here's the thing: if you acknowledge that structural antisemitism exists, you then have to support efforts to undo structural antisemitism and consider the fallout of historical antisemitism.

If you contain it to one tragic event (no matter how huge) and also minimize it (because it's not the only genocide, have you considered __?) and universalize it (this teaches us about the inhumanity of people towards those who are *different*) and atomize it (people can be so weird about Jews and Judaism, they must really be an unusually hateful person)

Then you don't have to consider things like "hey are we still benefitting from structural antisemitism today?" and "are Jews still dealing with the consequences of structural antisemitism?" and "are our politics contributing to ongoing antisemitism, including structural antisemitism even now?"