#if jews talking about antisemitism are evil zionists and non jews talking about antisemitism have a savior complex

[faggotry-enjoyer]

there is SO MUCH bullshit going on at this university and i want to talk about it on here so bad but it's too specific to do so without coming dangerously close to full on doxxing myself

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

When I say I’m a Zionist, all I mean is that I want a country that already exists, that has existed for 75 years, to continue to exist. Not the current government, just the country itself. That shouldn’t be a controversial stance.

It’s not normal to need an entire movement around wanting an existing country to keep existing. It’s not normal that there’s an entire movement dedicated to the complete destruction of one singular country and no other.

Even if you insist on comparing Israel to the most evil regimes; Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa - which you shouldn’t because it’s false and antisemitic, but even if you did - the Nazis were defeated, the Nazi occupation of other countries was defeated, but Germany is still a country. Apartheid ended, but South Africa is still a country. British colonies have fought for and won independence one by one, but Britain is still a country. In the US, slavery ended, segregation was struck down, but the US is still a country. It’s only Israel where people pose the ridiculous question of whether a country should still be a country.

And to everyone who says “I don’t think the US should exist either,” bullshit. You’re not doing anything about that. There is no movement to abolish the United States, and last time there was, that movement was comprised of the racist slave owners.

The fact that the argument over Israel’s existence has been normalized when there is no such argument about any other country in the world, is ridiculous. It’s insane that non-Jews can’t talk about Israel the way they talk about every other country, that they can’t criticize its government, military, or policies without jumping right to “and therefore Israel should be destroyed.” They say this about the one Jewish country and no others, and they really pretend they don’t see anything wrong with that.

Not to mention that abolishing a country is completely impractical in ways that have never occurred to them. Like there’s a sign on a border gate that says “Israel” that they can just paint over to say “Palestine” and that will be that.

Step 1: replace all the flags

Step 2: ???????

Step 3: utopia

[edenfenixblogs]

Non-Jewish friends of Jews, a question:

There is something I fundamentally do not understand about your behavior right now. No, I am not currently talking to the non-Jewish friends who have made it clear that they consider anything less than a call for the destruction of Israel and the displacement of Israeli Jews to be an evil secret Zionist. I understand you. Your position is clear.

I am asking specifically about the friends who say that they are in the Free Palestine movement but also that they support their Jewish friends and that they do not want harm to come to Jewish people in Israel or abroad.

Genuine actual question: how?

How have you been there for your Jewish friends? How have you supported them? How recently have you spoken to them? After sending an initial message of support, have you continued to check in on them? Have you asked if your action might be harmful to the Jewish community at large or to them personally? Do you respond to messages or posts they make about their experiences of antisemitism? Or do you ignore their messages on this topic? Do you talk to them about any topic?Have you distance yourself from them? Do you think they’ve noticed your distance? If you signal your support for Palestine with flags or watermelon, how do you signal that you are also safe for Jewish people to be around? Do you want other people to know you’re safe for Jewish people to be around? Why or why not?

Do you care that Jews in your life may be afraid of you personally? Why or why not? Is your response to these questions to explain that Palestinian pain is very important and requires attention right now? Do you believe the Jews in your life disagree with this? Or do you think Jews can hold pain for Palestine in their hearts and prayers and actions while also fearing a rise in antisemitism? What assumptions are you making about the Jewish people you know personally and the Jewish community in general?

[studiodaydream]

genuinely, genuinely, in the most neutral way possible: zionism in no way claims that jews control the world. idk where you got that from. all zionism is is the belief that jews should be able to live in their ancestral homeland freely. it's not white supremacy, because not all jews are white. please stop spreading hate ❤️

There is no hate for Jews here, only for White Supremacist ideologylies like Zionism.

I have proof that Israel mutilates, and guns down African Jews, who are not the so called "Evil Muslims" that Zionist love to kill and murder for their land and resources.

Most of this is about Ethiopian Jews but the treatment of Refugees from African Countries is even more so appalling.

You cannot tell me to do my research and all I've found is Racism, Islamophobia, Genocide, Mutilation and Murder.

Talks about a Chosen Race, and Superior Bloodlines and not see the White Supremacy that has plagued America and Europe for hundreds of years.

You can not tell me to do my research about Zionism and tell me I don't know anything only to see that your so called "Jewish Nationalist Independence" came from an Antisemitic British man

So no im not spreading hate, I'm spreading facts about the White Supremacist ideology of Zionism. That believes that it shouldn't be criticized because it's Jewish White Nationalism and it's different from regular White Nationalism and if you compare the two and criticize Israel you're antisemitic and you hate Jews.

Judaism is a non violent religion. Jewish Culture is non violent. What is Violent is Zionism and its settler colonialist aggression towards its neighbors, relentlessly bombing them out of "self defense" well the world is watching what youre so called "self defense" looks like.

It looks like dead babies left in hospitals that have been bombed

Isreal's "self defense" looks like a father asking for help with his child, as his dead child's REMAINS are stuffed in bags and yet he begs for help

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joudie Kalla - جودي القلا 🧿 (@palestineonaplate)

Israel's self defense looks like White Phosphorus being dropped on innocent civilians

https://youtu.be/geqdxdNEToU?si=js5ZGZC4eajY7uO2

These links show that Israel is not only a White Supremacist Nation like its parents The US and UK but also that Zionism is a White Supremacist Ideology.

I am not spreading hate Anon, I am spreading facts. To deny these facts is to spread hate. To deny that Israel is not a criminal empire and is simply "defending its right to exist" is to spread hate.

Antisemitism is on the rise and it's not because of people like me Anon is it because of Israel and Zionist Settler Colonialist Aggression towards the Palestinians and towards its Arab Neighbors. Israel denies the Nakba and that it stole land at all claiming that "no one lived here before we came" a "empty land with no people". Well there were people and those people had neighbors who saw what Zionist did to their defenseless neighbor with the backing of terrorist countries like the US and the UK. Terrorist Nations that destabilized and murdered millions in 3 separate nations in their "War on Terror".

White Supremacy has no ally on this blog, including Zionism.

If you want to unfollow me go ahead. I will not be swayed by Zionist Propaganda that this is all in "defense" of Jewish Nationhood, and how the only way to "defend" Jewish Nationhood is to invade other countries and murder other people who look different from them because they are the "Chosen People".

We've heard it all before, when the Europeans said they were bringing "civilization" to Africa and the Americas by enslaving our people and stealing our land and resources. When America had its "Manifest Destiny" which led to the genocide of countless Native Americans and the stealing of their land and resources. To Nazi Germany and the "Superior Ayan Race" which killed millions and invaded other nations killing millions of more.

You might be familiar with that last one, the Holocaust. Where millions of Jews were brutally and systematically murdered. But not only Jews but Black Europeans, Romanian Immigrants and LGBTQ Europeans.

But it seems like Israel has forgotten history because it does not treat African Jews equally to its European Jews and is actively Hostile to Refugees from African countries. While committing Genocide against the Palestinians as I type this out.

So if you're reading this I implore you to donate if you can or spread awareness of what's happening in Gaza

https://buildpalestine.com/2021/05/15/trusted-organizations-to-donate-to-palestine/

And your daily clicks

https://arab.org/click-to-help/

Do not allow Zionist to call you antisemitic for calling them out on their lies.

Palestine will be Free, From the River to the Sea

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre

Columbia University professor Shai Davidai, a Jewish Israeli, defended his right to condemn Hamas’ atrocities on Thursday after learning that an anonymous group of graduate students has accused him of anti-Palestinian racism and demanded a professional association of which he is a member publicly censure him.

Anti-Zionist TikTok influencer Jessica Burbank first reported the accusations the graduate students lodged in a letter to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), an organization founded in 1974 to promote the social psychology field and its usefulness to society. Comprising over 7,500 student and faculty members, it provides invaluable funding and networking opportunities.

Accusing Davidai of “targeting individuals — especially Palestinians and students of color,” the students’ letter describes his efforts to hold pro-Hamas student groups accountable for harassing Jewish students and defending terror as “decolonization” as “blatant dereliction of duty with respect to his responsibilities and ethical standards as a professor and faculty member of SPSP.” The students additionally accused him of promoting “doxxing” and “misrepresenting” the views of pro-Hamas groups, all of whom have defended Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7 while calling for a ceasefire, a strategy they have employed to portray themselves as a pro-peace movement.

On Thursday, Professor Davidai told The Algemeiner that the man depicted in the letter is not someone his community, students, and peers would recognize, and he accepts that enduring assaults on his character is a consequence of defending the Jewish people wherever they are, be it Israel or New York City.

“Look, I’m speaking up against evil, and against the support of evil,” he said. “I’m willing to take the reputational hits because people that won’t like me for saying what I’m saying — I don’t need them to like me. This isn’t about the performative virtue signaling that is en vogue right now. This is about having a moral compass and standing up for what’s right.”

Davidai went on to express concern that his colleagues in the field have not defended him, a silence which suggests that incriminating pro-Israel activists with baseless accusations will not be denounced or resisted even by moderates holding nuanced views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel’s war against Hamas.

“If I have to pay the price, I’ll pay the price. Thousands and thousands of Jews and non-Jews contact me to say that calling out pro-Hamas support on US college campuses is the right thing to do,” he continued. “And the irony is that I won’t be silenced. They might take away my reputation. They might take away my job and my career. But I’m not the kind of person who will be quiet now that there’s a personal cost for telling the truth. They’re just proving my point.”

Davidai first achieved national notoriety after delivering a thunderous speech before a crowd of students and others gathered on campus in which he called the school’s president a “coward” for refusing to condemn Hamas apologists and anti-Zionist demonstrations on campus.

“I’m talking to you as a dad, and I want you to know we cannot protect your children from pro-terror student organizations, because the president of Columbia University will not speak out,” Davidai said to the students, whom he asked to film and send the remarks to their parents. “Citizens of the US are right now kidnapped in Gaza, and yet the president of the university is allowing — is giving — her support to pro-terror student organizations.”

In many ways, becoming a public figure has been a detriment, Davidai said. His email is flooded daily with notes from antisemites accusing him of being an “Elder of Zion” and a “genocidal baby killer.”

His colleagues, furious that his exposing antisemitism and left-wing radicalism at Columbia University has caused important donors to pull their support from the school, have never commented on the hate mail even though they are always copied as recipients of it, he alleged.

[stackslip]

no reblogs on purpose

haven't been to shul in a while, in large part due to how normalized racism and zionist justifications of palestinian oppression were there. talking about palestinians like they were vermin and encouraging the settlements. it came to a breaking point and i haven't been back since. since there aren't any other non-orthodox synagogues around here, i haven't been to synagogue at all for a few months now. been struggling to practice or do much on my own. but i'm still subscribed to my old shul's newsletter and oh boy! am i glad to have left! the language used towards palestinians is flat out genocidal and dehumanizing. suddenly all the rivalries and conflicts with the local orthodox synagogues have been dissolved as "we stand as jews together against this wave of savagery".

seeing all the posts from people who had literally nothing to say on palestinian oppression except now, when it's to be "yeah it's bad BUT israel isn't the same as jews and zionism isn't inherently evil and really the people suffering most here are us" makes me feel so deeply cynical. ok. are you saying anything against anti-palestinian racism in your shul and jewish spaces at all, as vocally as you are about *any* pushback on zionism online?? do you think bds is inherently evil and antisemitic while saying jack shit when your local leader talks about palestinians as being vermin and inherent dangers to jews. do you push back against the idea that any antisemitism among palestinian supporters is proof that all western governments should ban palestinian flags and criminalize very identity. no you don't. you fucking don't. maybe you are in one of the very very few anti-zionist synagogues or jewish spaces. but the reality of the matter is, zionism and the belief that palestinians are parasites, dangers, annoyances, threats--are endemic to jewish spaces in the west. there has been very little vocal pushback against any of it, no matter how much you cry on tumblr or twitter. look at how major jewish orgs are responding right now. how many are demanding deescalation or even calling for israel to not fucking cut water and electricity to gaza? a basic plead for humanity? very fucking few. as long as you are blind to this reality, shit ain't gonna be fixed.

it fucking hurts, man. it hurts me more than words can say. it fucking tears at my soul, seeing so few jews stand up for justice when it's one of the reasons i sought conversion in the first place. justice you shall pursue. it hurts, seeing both the violence and the complete refusal to even acknowledge the violence's existence except to say "but hamas attacked first". in the next few months and years things are going to get so much worse for palestinians, in the name of jews and judaism, and how many are going to do shit? how many of the people who posted tepid posts about how it's antisemitic to condemn the idf and how Both Sides Are At Fault are gonna say shit when israel murders a thousand times more? if and when palestinians resist more, how many will justify the horrors of zionism?? i couldn't go to shul on yom kippur. i'm glad i didn't. i think of standing next to these people at shul i cared about and bearing my soul as we share collective repentance, and how merely two weeks later they are calling for genocide. it makes me sick to my soul. i'm glad i left shul. i want to participate in jewish life again, someday. i don't think i will be able to for a while. not as long as i enter a synagogue and find donation boxes for settlements in the west bank and for an army that has been holding two million people hostage for almost two decades.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Dion J. Pierre

Published: Feb 6, 2024

Columbia University professor Shai Davidai, a Jewish Israeli, defended his right to condemn Hamas’ atrocities on Thursday after learning that an anonymous group of graduate students has accused him of anti-Palestinian racism and demanded that a professional association of which he is a member publicly censure him.

Anti-Zionist TikTok influencer Jessica Burbank first reported the accusations the graduate students lodged in a letter to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), an organization founded in 1974 to promote the social psychology field and its usefulness to society. Comprising over 7,500 student and faculty members, it provides invaluable funding and networking opportunities.

Accusing Davidai of “targeting individuals — especially Palestinians and students of color,” the students’ letter describes his efforts to hold pro-Hamas student groups accountable for harassing Jewish students and defending terror as “decolonization” as “blatant dereliction of duty with respect to his responsibilities and ethical standards as a professor and faculty member of SPSP.” The students additionally accused him of promoting “doxxing” and “misrepresenting” the views of pro-Hamas groups, all of whom have defended Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7 while calling for a ceasefire, a strategy they have employed to portray themselves as a pro-peace movement.

On Thursday, Professor Davidai told The Algemeiner that the man depicted in the letter is not someone his community, students, and peers would recognize, and he accepts that enduring assaults on his character is a consequence of defending the Jewish people wherever they are, be it Israel or New York City.

“Look, I’m speaking up against evil, and against the support of evil,” he said. “I’m willing to take the reputational hits because people that won’t like me for saying what I’m saying — I don’t need them to like me. This isn’t about the performative virtue signaling that is en vogue right now. This is about having a moral compass and standing up for what’s right.”

Davidai went on to express concern that his colleagues in the field have not defended him, a silence which suggests that incriminating pro-Israel activists with baseless accusations will not be denounced or resisted even by moderates holding nuanced views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel’s war against Hamas.

“If I have to pay the price, I’ll pay the price. Thousands and thousands of Jews and non-Jews contact me to say that calling out pro-Hamas support on US college campuses is the right thing to do,” he continued. “And the irony is that I won’t be silenced. They might take away my reputation. They might take away my job and my career. But I’m not the kind of person who will be quiet now that there’s a personal cost for telling the truth. They’re just proving my point.”

Davidai first achieved national notoriety after delivering a thunderous speech before a crowd of students and others gathered on campus in which he called the school’s president a “coward” for refusing to condemn Hamas apologists and anti-Zionist demonstrations on campus.

“I’m talking to you as a dad, and I want you to know we cannot protect your children from pro-terror student organizations, because the president of Columbia University will not speak out,” Davidai said to the students, whom he asked to film and send the remarks to their parents. “Citizens of the US are right now kidnapped in Gaza, and yet the president of the university is allowing — is giving — her support to pro-terror student organizations.”

In many ways, becoming a public figure has been a detriment, Davidai said. His email is flooded daily with notes from antisemites accusing him of being an “Elder of Zion” and a “genocidal baby killer.”

His colleagues, furious that his exposing antisemitism and left-wing radicalism at Columbia University has caused important donors to pull their support from the school, have never commented on the hate mail even though they are always copied as recipients of it, he alleged.

==

"One of the things that is a classic trope of the religious bigot, is while they're denying people their rights, they claim that their rights are being denied. While they are persecuting people, they claim to be persecuted. While they are behaving colossally offensively, they claim to be the offended party. It's upside-down world." -- Salman Rushdie

The people chanting for the extermination of Jews and the destruction of Israel, supporting a Jihadist terrorist organization, and demanding Israel not be allowed to defend itself, are pretending they're the victims and filing spurious claims to silence dissenters.

This is how you tell who really holds the power. No matter what their stupid slogans and fraudulent scholarship say. You're not supposed to notice it because of the victimhood language they use, but they're aggressive authoritarians who have seized institutional power. The fact that Davidai's career is at risk for a completely reasonable position, while the students' enrolments are not, demonstrates this.

The sets of pro-Hamas people and pro-Palestine people are a single circle. They are not a peace movement; they are a violence movement. Like Islam itself, watch what happens when you don't submit to its demands.

[nervoustragedyluminary]

Some antisemite barely keeping the mask on/ someone absorbed in their propaganda being pipeline into neonazi shit without realising : "I'm not antisemitic look here's a link to a blog proving he's a Zionist! "

Person In the link :

"this guy is spreading Zionist propaganda and says that Palestinians are Arab colonialists and says to put 'support Israel in your bio

I'm not calling him a Zionist though , also don't trust Jewish people when they talk about antisemitism because that's how the Zionists get you with their propaganda you can't trust Jewish people talking about antisemitism because of the existence of people who say its antisemitic to not support Israels crimes against Palestine "

The screenshots:

don't show that just a collection of Jewish people talking about " wow people are using the I/P" war"as an excuse to be antisemitic and goym are eagerly jumping in and claiming Jewish people are Zionists as an excuse for their antisemitic shit "

Like you're not immune to antisemitic propaganda, nor islamophobic propaganda claiming that Jewish and Palestinians have no mutual goals and are all hivemind enemies of each other and that no Jewish Palestinians exist and that no Jewish non Palestinians have empathy or care for the Palestinian people when a lot of the loudest longest advocates against the apartheid have been Jewish people

"the reason Zionists have gotten as far as they have is that they can use antisemitism as a defence" is pretty antisemitic and erasing the christofacists who want their prophecy to be fulfilled by Palestine being eliminated and are a much larger more powerful majority the world over than Jewish people

"focusing on Jewish suffering alone" is also blatantly false but antisemites never let the truth get in the way of their lies

"Calling out antisemitism is bad and means you support genocide" as the use of these screenshots the op has taken as "evidence of Zionist propaganda" suggest sure is a choice

I mean yeah "pro Israel" looks sus if you divorce it from "it is a call and a reminder that Jews will always survive" context like you can not like the tone but I fail to see"pro Bibi we love genocide" in a message that's basically "hey a bunch of people in the only Jewish country were murdered and taken hostage and we can condemn that and mourn for those lost while also condemning the apartied and genocide of Palestine and mourning for those lost..... but antisemites are using this as an excuse to celebrate and call for all Jewish people in Israel to be genocided and many people seem to be throwing aside their leftism to join in where they see antisemitism as justified"

Like this isn't a sports team thing this is people's lives and families and there very much are antisemites who talk about "abolishing Israel" when what they mean is "kill all the Jewish people in Israel to keep all the Jewish people in the world in line because we've brought into antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish people having all the power and riches and controlling the media"

And you need to realise that and not treat this like it's a freaking soortsball "good team versus the evil jew-i mean ((Zionists))"

Like the OP is literally called fiteclub and seems to behave as if tumblr is a place for "fighting"\ harassment and takes glee in it which is why I had the OP blocked for a while because I got sick of seeing the constant harassing replies to @transmascpetewentz whenever he posted anything...like harassing people on Tumblr isn't activism and doesn't save lives let alone justifying harassment campaigns where people are being told to suicide and people are saying "this specific individual needs to be ended for the good of trans unity uwu but trust me I'm totes against transphobic dogpiles and hate campaigns based on misinfo" it's hypocritical as fuck and the antisemitism and transphobia are transparent as fuck

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

I have some different opinions about religion than when I started on here. I was a lot angrier towards Christianity as someone growing up in an evangelical home when I first started posting and was pretty vocal about it. In hindsight, there are some things I said that were perhaps not my place such as about Islam, because I was angry with how some people here view any criticism of non Christian religions as “cultural Christianity” and would shut down apostates. My view now is that “not every religion is Christianity and there are things that aren’t your place to talk about”, “Christianity is not inherently evil or abusive” and “viewing every other religion as more progressive or better than Christianity invalidates those who suffered and leads to Chauvanist attitudes” are all statements that can coexist. Before I created even an account, I was browsing tumblr a lot and came across many Jumblr blogs here that portrayed Judaism as the progressive religion that was the opposite of American Christianity. I fell for a lot of the jumblr rhetoric that claimed “Christianity, atheism and Islam” are inherently antisemitic and it made me hold some prejudice against people who did not deserve it including Muslim classmates I had and that view basically condemns billions of people as evil or bigoted.

So many people using that talking point turned out to be Zionists which makes their view that anyone born in a religion is part of it forever make a lot more sense. I am not sure if atheist or ex Christian works as a label for me as I am still figuring that out. I still respect and validate ex Christians who have suffered and are treated poorly by progressives here but I am starting to think some of the ways trauma is expressed here is detrimental to the cause and only fuels persecution complexes. @roundearthsociety talked about this, but a lot of people here on both left and right view religion as a club people join because of their moral or political beliefs and don’t understand how some can just have faith in it.

I still am a bit angry that I fell for the Chauvanist attitudes of Zionist jumblr converts and had times I agreed with Zionism myself. Avoidance is not a good way to deal with trauma or emotional baggage and I had a phase where I considered conversion to Judaism to escape what I saw as an irredeemable and hateful religion. Talking to people on r/exjew and @bringmemyrocks sort of changed that. Before anyone comes at me, I don’t hate Jews or Judaism and I do condemn Christian, atheist or Muslim antisemitism, but viewing any criticism of it or Zionism is not that different from evangelical persecution complexes, same with viewing anyone outside the religion as the enemy. I am sorry for some of the things I have said before like calling Islam toxic, but I am in a different place now than months ago.

[penguicorns-are-cool]

I'm so fed up with the "every person needs to make a statement about Palestine or else you're secretly an evil zionist" gang cause it's like

no people who don't know the history shouldn't make statements that's how misinformation happens and also like, there are many reasons someone might not have made a statement on this specific social media or even online at all and omg just shut up

very few of y'all were demanding a statement when 1,400 Israeli citizens were killed, tortured, and mutilated in one day and over 200 were taken hostage with antisemitic motivations not even before Israel responded. actually a lot of y'all were dismissing it.

Do you know how many Nazis have been seen at pro-palestine events, how many videos there are of pro-palestine rallies chanting to kill all Jews in one way or another, how many synagogues have been vandalized or burned down this month, how many Jews have been killed in hate-crimes, how much more confident antisemites are to yell stuff like "6 million wasn't enough" in public right now. And it's definitely not just because it's off the topic of Palestine or whatever cause you've all been sharing the articles about the 6-year-old Palestinian kid. And like, I'm not against that, talk about him, share the articles, talk about the rising Islamaphobia. But it's very clear when you're bringing attention to the rising Islamaphobia and completely ignoring the rising antisemitism. There was an airport in Russia that was recently overwhelmed by antisemities who just went around trying to find and attack Jews and who were waiting for a plane from Tel-Aviv with the intention of attacking the passengers (the plane was diverted fortunately), and I haven't seen any non-Jews talking about it. There are nazis at your rallies and none of y'all are speaking out against them

[wathanism]

hello hello ❤ your local arab pagan here. my name's aya. this blog has kinda gone through a few changes, but mainly i'm here to be very arab and very pagan in everyone's faces, and that means a lot of politics. i also semi-often talk about science, specifically my field of biology and how scientific language is misused to further reactionary political agendas (see my #scientific racism tag).

what to expect on here:

wathanist practice ⁠— i.e. the pagan religion of the pre-islamic arabs. i'm still new to this practice and will figure out step by step what that looks like for me! currently i'm interested in animism, ancestor work, sun/nature worship, tarot, & djinncraft.

swana politics & anti-colonialism ⁠— i follow the old gods as a proud arab and as a way to decolonize my mind. while that is of course spiritual, it's also largely political. advocating for the rights and freedoms of all swana people (arabs and non-arabs alike) is inseparable from my religion. this also means advocating for reparations and accountability; i'm not denying the very real harm that has been caused by arabs and i believe it's our spiritual and moral duty to give reparations for that harm.

arabic literature, history, & culture ⁠— like i said, this blog is an expression of love for my people and all the beautiful things we bring to this world. my arabic is rusty, but i'm getting back into it!

what not to expect:

don't expect even the slightest tolerance for right-wing, centrist, zionist, or radfem ideology. just to get it out of the way: black & indigenous lives matter, trans rights are human rights, love is love, no human is illegal, forced birth is femicide, free palestine, prisons are obsolete, capitalist greed is the root of climate change, science is real, get fucking vaccinated. not one of these things is negotiable. only commies beyond this point, xoxo.

don't expect any tolerance for islamophobia. i'm an ex-muslim, and while i do have boatloads of religious trauma, i think the vitriol you'll see in ex-muslim communities online only opens people up to reactionary and right wing politics. i want my blog to be a place for muslims, and i also want it to be a space for ex-muslims to feel supported and validated without being pushed into harmful ideologies.

don't expect any tolerance of antisemitism. i'm a firm anti-zionist and i'm well aware that false claims of antisemitism are being weaponized right now, but it's on us to make sure we don't fall into "the jews control the world" conspiracies. i'm for a multicultural one-state solution.

just bc i don't fuck with islamism does NOT mean i support anti-theism. i am a deeply religious & spiritual person, so don't expect me to be on your side if you think all religion is evil. and definitely don't expect me to be on your side if you think islam, christianity, or judaism are uniquely evil religions.

[spacelazarwolf]

I've seen people say that because you don't talk enough about the genocide in palestine and instead talk about the antisemitism in leftist pro-palestine spaces (even though you have talked about palestine before and don't support israel) that somehow makes you a zionist. It's like ??? That's not how that works. Honestly I'm sick of this performative activism where you must disavow anyone Jewish who dares to talk about antisemitism during this time. Then these people turn around and say that they don't hate Jews they just hate Israel

yeah it’s exhausting. i’ve got complicated feelings abt calling it a genocide — mostly bc of the way non palestinian gentiles are just parroting words without actually understanding why people are calling it a genocide, and also using it as an excuse for gratuitous holocaust inversion — but at the end of the day i think arguing a semantic issue isn’t going to help gazans who are dying right now. i don’t think it matters if we say it’s genocide or if we say it’s a precursor to genocide or if we say it’s a catastrophic loss of human life, it’s all just words. what matters right now is not if one single random disabled jew thousands of miles away uses the right word. what matters right now is that people are dying and that needs to stop. and apparently saying that means i’m an evil genocide denier who’s basically a nazi.

and like. it doesn’t matter how many times i explain my position in excruciating detail. it doesn’t matter how much nuance i give and how many personal feelings and insecurities i share, bc it has never been abt if i’m actually a zionist. they don’t care. in fact, it’s better for them if i don’t openly identify as a zionist, because that strengthens their use of zionist as a dogwhistle. if they only targeted jews who openly identified as zionists, the dogwhistle wouldn’t work.

and for the antisemitism stuff, i’m very unsurprised that’s why they’re targeting me. ppl have made it clear that they not only don’t care abt antisemitism but that antisemitism is necessary for their “activism” so they see me telling them not to be antisemitic as me telling them not to advocate for palestinians, and at this point i can’t help it if they’re idiots.

zionism and antisemitism aren’t a chicken and the egg situation. zionism is a direct response to antisemitism in the diaspora, and by actively participating in making it worse and mocking jews for being afraid of the antisemitism we’re facing, you’re doing political zionists’ work for them. i want to talk about this, about the rhetoric i’ve seen used in some jewish spaces and how antisemitism in antizionist movements just bolsters it, and what they can do to instead connect with these jewish institutions and leaders to address the very real concerns jews have and show them that israel is not the solution. but people don’t want to hear what they can do better. they want to hear that “zionists” and “zionist institutions” are all evil groups plotting world domination and weaponizing the holocaust. i might have more success doing this work in irl spaces but i’ve very much given up on doing it here.

[astrabear]

Thank you for voicing what I've been thinking and saying. Right now, there is a lot of distrust and hate for Jewish people. I am not Jewish and for a very long time obviously my focus were the Palestinians and getting them free. That still is and will always be my goal. (They will be free. I see a lot of people giving up and saying Palestine will be wiped out and erased but I know in my heart they will survive and they will get their home back. May Allah bless every single one of them who has lived on this Earth.)

However I cannot and will not allow and accept the antisemitism that is rampant in Pro Palestinian people. Note: I am fully aware that not all pro Palestinian individuals are antisemitic. I am also not saying to support Palestine is antisemitic. Zionist propaganda has made everyone believe that Israel = all Jews. Zionist propaganda has fooled everyone into thinking it is Jews versus Arabs.

I know everyone views it as Jews versus Arabs because people keep saying Jews and not Israel/Zionists (in their minds all are the same thing.) I know this because people keep saying "How could the Jews do this?! The Arabs never oppressed them! If the Arabs oppressed them like they oppress us the world wouldn't support that!" But the world doesn't support Israel because they're Jews. Israel is just another weapon for the West to use. White USAmerican conservatives who obviously hate Jewish people back Israel because it is a weapon. I am also witnessing people view Jewish people as being just another group of white people who faced a little bit of what nonwhite people experienced (which is obviously antisemitism and not the case.)

I am seeing people who are anti Jew even deny the existence of Palestinian Jews because they think people who mention them are centering "the oppressors." I am seeing people outright say Jews don't belong in Palestine when Palestinian Jews, Christians and Muslims lived there together long before "Israel" was created. It is so hard to talk about anti Jewish behaviour right now because 1) people will automatically view you as a zionist which is fucked up and 2) people will think you're trying to center the "oppressors" and hate the victims. (I even saw people say that the Jews aren't hurting like the Palestinians so there's no need to think or talk about them. Yes the Palestinians are suffering the most but Jewish people are suffering too and to undermine that is evil.)

My heart hurts so much for both Arabs and Jews. Please know that there are non Jews who will fight antisemitism just as we fight the hatred of Palestinians/Arabs. As a nonwhite person, as a human being, I am not letting the colonisers, who are 100% the reason for all this and are definitely laughing as marginalised peoples turn on each other, just continue to ruin this world and ensure a worldwide hatred for both Arabs and Jews. Stay safe and have a great week.

I have read this three times already today. This is so kind and thoughtful, and I really appreciate it.

I wish people would stop trying to divide the world into "oppressors" (who it's ok to hurt and dehumanize) and "oppressed" (who can never do anything wrong.) Marginalization is fluid and context-dependent, intersectionality is real, and there is a difference between systems and individuals.

Back in 2014 I attended a rally, "[city] Stands with Gaza." The organizers invited multiple clergy to speak, including a rabbi. I made a sign that read "I am Jewish and I stand with Gaza." I never felt at all unsafe, and in fact some of the interactions I had with other attendees were so moving that I still get choked up when I talk about them. One woman hugged me and cried because it meant so much to her just to know that people outside her community saw and cared about what was happening.

Your ask made me feel seen and cared about. Thank you and be well.

[momowho34]

Here are some jewish myths you might still believe!!!!

(Pls read and reblog I’m tired of people echoing shit like this)

Jesus was not a rabbi. He lived a hundred years before rabbinic judaism even started to develop. Please stop saying this as if it lends him credence in our religion, because no. It doesn’t.

Yeah, Jesus was jewish, but he also rejected mainstream Judaism and hated it. Stop pretending he means anything to us. Idk if you guys have even read your own books, Matthew is like 60% about how the Pharisees are bad and wrong and evil for sticking to the traditions that have kept them alive for 100s of years. It’s also, y’know, historically inaccurate to the actual behavior of the Pharisees in that time period. Seriously man he is not ours and means nothing to us, keep your Jesus and stop trying to shoehorn him into judaism.

Our god is not yours “minus the Jesus.” In trinity terms; divide the Holy Spirit by the Father and then subtract the Son and that is a bare bones grasp of what god appears as for Jews.

Jews are not white as a whole. Are there white Jews? Yes. Are there jews who are literally every other skin tone? Also yes!! We are all over the place. India, numerous Middle Eastern countries, Morocco, Spain, and a lot more I can’t be bothered to list. You are actively hurting poc jews by pretending that all jews are European, holy shit stop doing that please!!! Most white jewish people are Ashkenazi, which is just one type of judaism.

Actually, the historical relationship between Jews and Muslims is a lot more complicated then you think it is. Sometimes we got along, sometimes we didn’t. Some would argue that Jews were treated better by Islamic caliphates in the Middle Ages then they were by Christian kingdoms. Stop trying to pretend we are and have always been “arch nemeses” or some fucking bullshit (that would be the Amalekites for us, actually, and not the Muslims) Also we’re honestly more similar to them when it comes to traditions then christians so like take that into account thanks

Hey guys listen to Romani when they talk about the Holocaust too!!!!! Please, they have a different experience/perspective and deserve to have their voices heard. Don’t pretend they don’t exist and that it didn’t effect them because uh.... it did. To a degree that I don’t think I can properly explain. Do not overlook them and then pretend it’s just because ur a “jewish ally” or whatever the fuck.

Stop pretending that we’re the same as Christianity. We aren’t. Stop stop stop holy shit stop. That’s not how any of this works at all. Christianity is so so so different, it takes like a handful of jewish beliefs and runs with them. Christianity is its own thing and so is Judaism, stoppp.

Not all Jews are zionists. some are explicitly anti-zionists. Not all zionists are anti-Semitic, but some of them are. Basically, jews aren’t inherently zionists and anti-Zionism isn’t inherently antisemitic. That being said, some people do use anti-Zionism as a cover for their anti-semitism. Watch out for those people, they’re not that hard to spot. That’s all I’m going to say about that, don’t want to start on this issue because it isn’t what this list is about.

Jews never actually lived by the literal laws of the Torah. We did not stone people. There is no archeological evidence of that and actually more evidence pointing to the opposite. jewish communities actually held capital punishment as being inherently immoral and was very very very rarely used in some communities. Understand that. Don’t ever say shit like “but the Jews used to live by the Bible too, and they stoned gay people!!!” No. No we didn’t. Ever. Nobody did that in ancient times.

Guess what, jews are not rich or greedy! what the fuck are you talking about??? Quit it please. This stereotype has literally been used since the Middle Ages to alienate Jews as a more privileged “other” that deserve their prosecution. Stop stop please stop, please!!!!! People actually believe this shit and commit hate crimes, stop, even as a sarcastic joke.

The Old Testament is not the same as the Torah/Tanakh. It’s just not? For one thing, the Old Testament is a translation of a cut down version of a translation of a different modified version, so no. Not the same. Also the books are ordered differently and the sections are mixed up.

God does not abandon the Jews in the Tanakh or the Old Testament for that matter. It’s like... sort of implicated to happen between the two testaments in Christianity. The Old Testament basically structured the books non-chronologically so that the last one would be Malachi because his prophecies are supposed to echo Jesus. We end the Tanakh on Nehemiah, and there is no “New Testament” for us because there’s only one and it ends at the end of the story.

Antisemitism is definitely still a thing. I don’t know who the fuck told you about this one? The Jews got treated like shit after the holocaust, and some of the few survivors 70 years later got reparations so now everybody’s acting like antisemitism doesn’t exist. It does. It really, really fucking does. Please listen to us.

Holocaust denial isn’t “a fringe conspiracy theory,” it’s genuinely awful and dangerous and hurts real people. I’m serious about this one, holocaust denial (and any genocide denial for that matter, whether it’s talking about the Armenian genocide or Holdomer or any others) is legit dangerous. Pay attention to it and have 0% tolerance for that shit

You are allowed to be invited to a jewish event if you’re not jewish! We literally do not care. Respectfully participating in traditions if you’re invited to is fine! The issue is when people take a jewish tradition and twist it into something for them. That’s a no-no, but getting invited to a seder/bar mitzvah/bris is fine. just show respect to traditions you see, even if you don’t entirely understand them. Do that and you’ll be fine.

Jews are a ridiculously diverse group of people with a lot of different beliefs! We all have vastly different ideas of fucking everything from god to the purpose of pomegranates (not a joke). Accept that we think differently form eachother and aren’t a monolith please

These are all the ones I could think of lol, jewish friends add more if you can think of some. Ok and encouraged to reblog for everyone.

[sapropel]

The main things that turned me off of conversion for now were

1. I have alot of shit on my plate and am low income as a result so finding a place that will help might be hard because locally there really aren't any synagogues around

2. The synagogue I did find locally was uhhh...... Hhhhh. Their web page had a huge section about Israel in a positive light..

I love the religion, I love certain values it holds however I refuse to align with anyone who justifies colonialism and bloodshed against another group of people while ignoring past bloodshed done onto themselves. It makes 0 sense to me and is highly hypocritical.

Hypocrisy was one of the reasons I hated Christianity so much. Constantly causing bloodshed, huge present and past history of colonialism, huge present day history of wanting people like me who are gay or trans dead and in the ground.

the difference with Christianity is that there isn't even a present day persecution or justified worry of safety despite the fact that I've seen jack chick esque evangelical fuckers unironically act like they're holocaust survivors whenever a pride parade happens within 1 mile of them.

It makes me sad, I don't see the point in colonizing or maiming a group of people who should be your equals.

It's racist at best, dangerous and actively contributing to more death and violence at worst.

The thing is there isn't really a "point." It creates its own point. Real actionable Zionist sentiment was basically non-existent until the rise of European nationalism. It's literally the exact same brand of nationalism that gave birth to fascist Italy and other great failures of modernity. And when "Israel" was a proto-state basically its entire existence was contingent upon its continued usefulness to Britain as a tool of control over India through the Suez. Zionist claims to the land are super shaky at best and straight up revisionist at worst. Post-facto Israel has tried to give itself legitimacy through fearmongering, genocide, and forging alliances with other imperialist powers. It's doing what America did (and is doing) but it's happening in the age of mass media and we are all watching colonial revisionism happen in real time.

If you are letting the prevalence of Zionism keep you from Judaism, I would say you should keep thinking about it. If you treat Judaism as too thoroughly engulfed in Zionism, you do the work of Zionists for them--you legitimize their claim that Judaism is Zionism is Israel. You legitimize the idea that anti-Zionism is antisemitism which is incidentally exactly how my local rabbis have been fucking me over since June. You are of course totally within your rights not to convert to a religion that doesn't work for you, but I hope you rethink the implication that converting to Judaism is akin to aligning with Zionism.

And yeah, Zionist hypocrisy is a systematic issue within American Jewish institutions in a feedback loop with Jewish populations. Any institutional apparatus is going to have systematic issues that reflect the dominant discourse of the greater cultural framework--mainstream Jewish institutions are going to, both by the nature of maintaining relevancy in America and by the natures of fearmongering and cultural amnesia, have a vested interest in participating in capitalism, imperialism, racism... You are not going to find mainstream insitutions that don't perpetuate them. That's why they're dominant. You are no more aligning yourself with Zionism by going to a synagogue than you are aligning yourself with capitalism by shopping at Wal-Mart. Anything you meaningfully do in public is in some way going to be "problematic" on some level because public space is designed to keep itself alive by those values.

It's exhausting to make yourself never come close to anyone or anything bad at all--refusing to associate with anyone with a problematic ideology is a doomed enterprise. I've been there. A lot of Zionist sentiment is implanted in people's minds with lifelong propaganda and destructive mind control techniques, and it's important to recognize that. That doesn't mean Zionist adults don't have a responsibility to unlearn it, but I think it's possible to have compassion for people who do try to do their best with improving themselves. Most people you meet want to be good and don't want to be willfully ignorant. I try to think about how difficult it is to convince the average well-meaning white American of the merits of decolonization/land back. Most well-meaning Zionist Jews are going to feel the same way about Israel--actual systematic justice and decolonization are not in their lexicons. Decolonization is hidden behind thought-stopping techniques that they have been inundated with from day 1. But most people do have a basic sense of goodness and are willing to sacrifice something for it. Most people are willing to give ground for the sake of human decency. The only way I can survive talking to people I know are Zionists is by understanding that we both want the world to be a better place and if I dwell on the specifics of how I perceive them to be evil, the possibility of us having a working relationship and any hope at productive dialogue drops to zero.

You don't have to be patient with Zionists or Zionist institutions. You don't have to forgive them. You don't even have to be compassionate. But you do need to understand, intellectually, that imposed cognitive dissonance is a very powerful tool of mind control (and I'm not talking about woo-woo shit I'm extrapolating from cult research and personal experience) and that the pathos of Zionism isn't supposed to be logical. Fear trumps hypocrisy. Fatigue trumps informed consent. Charisma trumps logic. Any bigoted ideology is going to fall apart under logical scrutiny, and that's why the only battleground for maintaining bigotry is necessarily charismatic and emotional.

We haven't yet, of course, acknowledged that there are also tons of anti-Zionist Jews and that the concept isn't absurd or fringe, no matter what the dominant Zionist discourse says. It's important for us not to let Zionists be the stewards of Judaism--Zionists do not OWN Judaism. Just like the most Orthodox of Jews also don't OWN Judaism. Judaism is only what you make it to be, and if you leave it alone because you are too worried about Zionism, that is all Judaism is ever going to be for you. Of course, you still have to contend with Zionism, and if you actually are interested in being a Jew, you would have to find a way not to let it kill your Judaism. I've come close (ish) to giving up on Judaism a couple of times because of Israel and Zionism, but I'm glad I haven't. I've stuck it out long enough to give myself to tools I need to separate the two and see the situation with more clarity.

[schraubd]

Should We Retire "Hasbara" From Our Vocabulary?

If you ask someone on the street "What does 'hasbara' mean?", they will stare at you blankly. That's because, contrary to what the internet might have you believe, random people on the street do not know the ends and outs of rhetorical tropes involving Israel or Israeli society. But if you ask someone somewhat more engaged "What does 'hasbara' mean?", they'll probably give an answer that is something like "propaganda". Hasbara is Israeli propaganda. Of course, that's not actually accurate. The Hebrew word "Hasbara" translates to "explanation", not propaganda. Now to be sure, it's a particular type of explanation -- a justificatory explanation. Explaining to someone the physical processes by which the moon revolves around the Earth is not hasbara. Explaining to your skeptical spouse why your cable bill is so much higher this month (you bought a big boxing pay-per-view), that would be hasbara. But right from the get go, this mistranslation should alarm us. There's something very revealing, after all, about a world where Jewish "explanations" are literally heard as "propaganda". All this time we've talking about antisemitic tropes where Jews deceive, manipulate, or hypnotize the world -- and "hasbara" fits right into that. When people talk about how this argument is "hasbara" or how back in the day they had been subjected to a ton of "hasbara", they're saying more than that they disagree with an argument or that their views have evolved. They're saying that the argument was dishonest or manipulative, that they've learned to recognize the string-pulling. Even when it's Jews doing it, the rhetorical power of dismissing something as hasbara stems almost entirely from antisemitic roots: these Jews are the bad Jews, the manipulators and spin-doctors; I'm an honest Jew who not only sees through the lies, but recognizes the Jewish pattern when I see it. Ultimately, the way "hasbara" is used is almost always an effort to degrade Jewish claim-making. It relies on tropes of Jewish manipulation and insincerity; it literally collapses, in the Jewish case, the distinction between explanation and propaganda. For those reasons, I don't really use "hasbara" much myself (at least not unironically), even when speaking of right-wing arguments defending various Israeli actions that I find utterly ridiculous. I've made an effort (not wholly successful) to remove it from my vocabulary. And so if you go through my archives, I mostly use it either (a) ironically, to refer to people dismissing Jews as "hasbara shills" or (b) in literal reference to Hasbara Fellows on campus. The existence of Hasbara Fellows offers up a new dimension on this discussion. Most obviously, Israel is not the Empire from Star Wars; it does not give its own actors self-consciously evil names like "Death Star" or "Avarice". So the fact that it uses the term "Hasbara Fellow" is a pretty strong hint that the word itself does not have an intrinsically malicious meaning. It'd be like sending off "Deception Fellows" to campus -- who would do that? On the other side, promoters of calling out "hasbara" might contend that they are referring to something specific -- official Israeli governmental efforts to cast Israel in a good light and foment positive dispositions towards the country. That's hasbara (and that's, literally, what Hasbara Fellows are for). So it can't be wrong to call it by its name. One problem with this is that the term hasbara is not limited in application only to Israeli government speakers. Pretty much any Jew who speaks in a remotely apologetic tone for Israel -- no matter their capacity or connection to Israeli governmental actors -- can and will be accused of engaging in hasbara at one point or another. If anything, the government linkage serves more to expand the scope than to limit it: Jews who sound "hasbara-ish" will typically be accused of being outright Israeli governmental agents -- because who else would spout hasbara other than someone on the Israeli payroll? But the larger problem is that we already have a term for states seeking to present themselves in a good life and make people feel positively towards the country: public diplomacy. Now, to be sure, public diplomacy is motivated -- the "explanations" it will give regarding questionable state conduct are in service of a diplomatic end; they aren't the pure dispassionate appraisal one might get from a wholly disinterested scholar. Obviously, anyone who is listening to acts of public diplomacy should listen with a critical ear. But there's nothing wrong with public diplomacy per se, it's an unremarkable fact of everyday statecraft. And so the real function of "hasbara", as its used in public discourse, is to take something normal and mundane and delegitimate it by slapping a scary-sounding foreign word onto it. Public diplomacy is a fact of life, you handle it by not shutting down your critical facilities. Hasbara is something undefineably more nefarious -- we don't know exactly what it is (the fact that the average person probably has no idea what the words means helps, rather than hurts), but it sure sounds scary. Any country can engage in public diplomacy (hell, any country can engage in propaganda), but only Israel can do hasbara. It's another way of exceptionalizing Israel and suggesting that nothing it does can be analyzed through "normal" processes -- we need new and special words, new and special concepts, new and special standards to accurately assess anything it does. And, I'd suggest, it's implicitly orientalist as well. It is the foreignness, the mysterious impenetrability of the word hasbara, that gives it such power. Is it fair to say that there are arguments made by Israeli government defenders which strike me as ludicrous, bad-faith, or just impossible to take seriously? Of course -- I can think of a half-dozen examples instantaneously. And so I can understand the desire to have a pithy word which just puts those arguments in their place. "Hasbara" can fill that niche nicely. But really, what we do get by keeping "hasbara" in our vocabulary that we wouldn't otherwise have? When Rep. Ilhan Omar apologized for her "hypnotize" tweet -- and I give her credit for that -- it was striking to see how many people rushed in to condemn her for the apology. They were insistent that Israel really does "hypnotize" the world, that hypnosis is the best way to describe how it is that Israel ever persuades anyone of anything. In effect, they really do believe that all Jewish "explanations" for Israel are naught but propaganda. In this way, the main utility of "hasbara", as a term, isn't to enable us to call out bad-faith arguments when they appear. The main function is to suggest that the entire sweep of the discourse is bad-faith, manipulative or hypnotic. It's not that this argument is a bad argument; the entire discursive sphere about Israel (or more specifically, the Jewish and non-explicitly anti-Zionist contribution to it) is defined by manipulation and deceit. Hasbara, we might say, is a structure, not an event -- it's not a discrete set of bad arguments we reject as failing the smell test, it's the entire state of the world where Jews endeavor to bend reality into unreality. That sort of outlook just can't be sustained -- at least, not in a way that is compatible with the fair inclusion of Jewish voices in deliberative arenas. The fact is that there are certain words and terms which have genuine usefulness but which do far more damage than good, and whose use is consequently not justified. For me, "self-hating Jew" is one such term -- I understand the desire to put down Jews whose public persona seems entirely dedicated to slamming other Jews, but the degrading, marginalizing character of "self-hating Jews" is just too harmful to justify its usage -- and so I don't use the term. The more I think about it, the more I think "hasbara" falls into the same boat. And so I think it's time that it gets retired as well. via The Debate Link http://bit.ly/2UjsR2G