#jewish ukrainian solidarity

[rotzaprachim]

the new odd branch of antisemitic conspiracy theories about the elders of Zion being so in control or behind Ukraine and solidarity there is like not a lil bingo card I had read for the 2020’s but here we are

[determinate-negation]

leftists in my town (a big city in germany) literally refuse to go to lectures/talks by jewish scholars who report on the current situation, for no good reason. any expertise is written off, they don't even look into the content. a friend literally said 'it souded pro isreal' - I read the description and it just didn't. It sounded like an expert trying to show a critical view of Isreali politics in fact. my jewish friends are afraid to come out to pro palestinian protests, because militant leftists burn isreali flags (mind you, these are white, german people. i wouldn't blame palestinians). all nuance is gone. people start romanticising hamas. like what the fuck happened do people no longer manage to keep two thoughts at once? nethanjahu is a fucking monster, imperialism is bad, but guess what, so is hamas? why is that controversial? also in 2014 when lots of syrians came, all arabic courses were booked out because people wanted to help and show solidarity and get to know these new people coming. thousands at airports to pick them up. i was among them. but then when ukrainians arrived, when we had protests against russia, i didn't see A SINGLE FUCKING PERSON showing up. why? is imperialism not bad when it comes to Russia because you think 'communism' there was great? eastern european voices are drowned completely. why can't we support palestinians AND jewish people in germany? attacks on jewish people have skyrocketed. we have a far right party gaining the most votes and people pretend like you're a monster if you call out antisemitism. jewish people in germany are not bombing palestine. jewish people in germany are a minority that is under constant attack. why can't be support syrians AND ukrainians? we must join together against imperialism but literally people are too stupid to see that they are being instrumentalised to influence the elections in the U.S. in particular. same happened 2016 and no one learned. it's frustrating. you don't have to sacrifice one fight for another. i support palestine. i support syrians. and then i check to see who shows up for Jewish people in germany and ukrainians who are also under genocide like conditions in Russia. and it's fucking no one. 80% of people during these ukraine protests are ukrainians. anyway. The israeli government is fucked, as is the U.S. government, as is Russia and as is Germany's and it will be a lot more fucked in the near future if everyone doesn't get their shit together.

ok this is going in my cringe compilation

1. theres nothing wrong with burning israeli flags. israeli flags dont represent jewish people in general. id be happy to see an israeli or american flag burning

2. if you expect me to condemn hamas or equate the israeli government and military with anti colonial palestinian resistance youre in the wrong place

3. your government is funding this genocide including the far right party (to my knowledge) which fully supports israel and wants to deport all non white people including (or maybe especially) palestinians and arabs- why are you conflating this with people protesting against the genocide??

4. do you not think germans are also super racist to syrians and refugees in general despite whatever it may seem about accepting them at first? people were really casually racist to me about refugees in germany when i was there

literally the only relevant thing here is that your friends didnt wanna go to an event and that attacks have increased, idk check your fucking friends and countrymen, because that predates israel, stop conflating actual antisemitism with people rightfully opposing a war their government is funding and colonized people for rightfully resisting extermination

[ghelgheli]

Bloomberg—Postmortem Sperm Retrieval Is Turning Dead Men Into Fathers

July 18, 2022

[A]bout 20 people, young and old, sit around the table in the main room of a public housing apartment in this city near the Lebanese border. They help themselves to pasta, shawarma, cakes, and coffee, and they remember German Rozhkov. Rozhkov, a Ukrainian immigrant turned soldier, was killed 20 years ago, when he was 25. One of the children darting among the mourners—sitting on laps and nodding shyly—is 5-year-old Veronica. She never met Rozhkov, of course, but she’s his daughter. Thirty hours after he was killed, his sperm was extracted, preserved in liquid nitrogen, and, 14 years later, used to fertilize the eggs of Irena Akselrod. She didn’t know Rozhkov, but she volunteered to bear and raise his child after meeting Ludmila. Persuading a judge to grant Ludmila Rozhkov and Akselrod the right to German’s sperm included testimony about his desire for children. But there was no case law covering when a dead man’s sperm could be used to produce offspring. In his ruling, the family court judge wrote: “When the law doesn’t provide an answer, the court must turn to the principles of Jewish heritage. ‘Give me children, or I shall die,’ our mother Rachel cried out. This logic reflects man’s desire to continue through his offspring the physical and spiritual existence of himself, his family, and people. We are told, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ ” Being an active grandmother is something Rozhkov feared she’d never get to experience on that day in March 2002 when officers came to visit her with the unbearable news. When she saw them, she blocked the door in an attempt to avoid hearing the truth. Later, in grief, she shouted out in Russian, “We must get his sperm!” No one, including those who spoke Russian, knew what she was talking about. After a man dies, his sperm cells live up to 72 hours and can be retrieved with an incision to the testicle, then frozen. “We checked with legal and medical authorities and went ahead,” Mor says. “Today it is becoming routine.” “Routine” may overstate it. There are a few dozen children like Veronica. But the military practice of postmortem sperm retrieval is now a familiar topic in Israel, even if it’s extremely rare elsewhere. A couple of dozen army families are eager to replicate the experience. When parents of a dead soldier go on Facebook or TV seeking a mother for their future grandkid—not only a surrogate but also a kind of daughter-in-law who’ll raise the child—the response can be overwhelming. Hundreds of women volunteer in a display of national solidarity and what seems to be a growing preference for a sperm donor who isn’t anonymous and whose family will be involved. The country’s tiny size and population clusters help with child rearing, with adult children rarely living more than an hour from their parents and often within a few minutes. “We are very postmodern in our reproductive practices,” says Zvi Triger, a professor of family law at the College of Management Academic Studies. “Now, even being dead doesn’t prevent you from having children.”

This has been going on, albeit at an accelerating (and ever more legally enshrined) pace, for quite some time by the way.

[hassibah]

https://commons.com.ua/en/ukrayinskij-list-solidarnosti/

Ukrainian Letter of Solidarity with Palestinian people

"Our solidarity comes from a place of anger at the injustice, and a place of deep pain of knowing the devastating impacts of occupation, shelling of civil infrastructure, and humanitarian blockade from experiences in our homeland. Parts of Ukraine have been occupied since 2014, and the international community failed to stop Russian aggression then, ignoring the imperial and colonial nature of the armed violence, which consequently escalated on the 24th of February 2022. Civilians in Ukraine are shelled daily, in their homes, in hospitals, on bus stops, in queues for bread. As a result of the Russian occupation, thousands of people in Ukraine live without access to water, electricity or heating, and it is the most vulnerable groups that are mostly affected by the destruction of critical infrastructure. In the months of the siege and heavy bombardment of Mariupol there was no humanitarian corridor. Watching the Israeli targeting the civilian infrastructure in Gaza, the Israeli humanitarian blockade and occupation of land resonates especially painfully with us. From this place of pain of experience and solidarity, we call on our fellow Ukrainians globally and all the people to raise their voices in support of the Palestinian people and condemn the ongoing  Israeli mass ethnic cleansing.

We reject the Ukrainian government statements that express unconditional support for Israel's military actions, and we consider the calls to avoid civilian casualties by Ukraine's MFA belated and insufficient. This position is a retreat from the support of Palestinian rights and condemnation of the Israeli occupation, which Ukraine has followed for decades, including voting in the UN.  Aware of the pragmatic geopolitical reasoning behind Ukraine’s decision to echo Western allies, on whom we are dependent for our survival, we see the current support of Israel and dismissing Palestinian right to self-determination as contradictory to Ukraine’s own commitment to human rights and fight for our land and freedom. We as Ukrainians should stand in solidarity not with the oppressors, but with those who experience and resist the oppression.

We strongly object to equating of Western military aid to Ukraine and Israel by some politicians. Ukraine doesn't occupy the territories of other people, instead, it fights against the Russian occupation, and therefore international assistance serves a just cause and the protection of international law. Israel has occupied and annexed Palestinian and Syrian territories, and Western aid to it confirms an unjust order and demonstrates double standards in relation to international law.

We oppose the new wave of Islamophobia, such as the brutal murder of a Palestinian American 6-year old and assault on his family in Illinois, USA, and the equating of any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. At the same time, we also oppose holding all Jewish people all over the world accountable for the politics of the state of Israel and we condemn anti-Semitic violence, such as the mob attack on the airplane in Daghestan, Russia. We also reject the revival of the “war on terror” rhetoric used by the US and EU to justify war crimes and violations of international law that have undermined the international security system, caused countless deaths, and has been borrowed by other states, including Russia for the war in Chechnya and China for the Uyghur genocide. Now Israel is using it to carry out ethnic cleansing."

[stephobrien]

I’m coming from my vent account because I don’t want to get found out as a Jew on my main. Please, please stop posting in the antisemitism tag. You’re clogging it up and taking away a safe space for Jews by trying to delegitimise Jew hatred. Now, I don’t know if you’re good faith or not, but I’m leaning on no. You keep on going onto posts about Jew hatred from Jews, saying what boils down to ‘wow! I’ve learned so much from this!’ and then you go back to posting inflammatory things again. I mean, you posted something from Caitlin Johnstone, I can’t believe that you give a single shit about Jews (or Ukrainians) after that

As for your most recent post on how poor you just can’t believe lying Jews when we talk about discrimination because you’re scared we’re deceiving you, you put in a comment ‘If I'd seen said Arab nations' governments massacring thousands of civilians, while painting every single criticism of said massacre as Islamophobic, yes, I would have’. This is… I don’t even know how to tackle this, do you genuinely not know all of the horrific shit so many of the Arab states have done? Qatar is known as one of the biggest countries of modern slavery. The Houthis in Yemen sex traffic Ethiopian women, and also reintroduced slavery into Yemen. Just look at the atrocities so many of these countries have committed against Shia Muslims! Is your brain mush, how can you say this when there is so, so much evidence of the horrors that these nations have committed?! And if you think these states graciously accept criticism of those horrors… you’re being ignorant on purpose. And it’s still not okay to say that you don’t believe an Arab when they talk about anti Arab racism that they’ve experienced, I think we can at least agree on that. So why’s it not the same for Jews?

For a more personal example to Jews, look up the Mizrachi expulsion. The Arab states violently expelled almost a million Jews from their countries ‘because Israel’, which they only care about because it ruined their dream of pan Arabism, not because of any solidarity with the Arabs in the mandate btw. My family was lucky, we came from Iran, which is not Arab, so the violence was coming from the people rather than the state itself. But I’ve had to heard accounts from people talking about how they watched their family get shot in the head while their homes were repossessed for no reason other than the fact they were Jews. Is that bad enough for you? Does it even make a dent in your image of the Arab states? Or is it okay because it happened to Jews?

I know I sound very angry in this, and that’s because I am very angry. And that anger is completely justified! My life, and the lives of almost every Jew on this disgusting website, have been beyond horrible for five months. The number of times I’ve had to read about a new Jew hating shooting or stabbing in the world is too many too count. And then, non Jews like you decide to play the ‘oops, I just caaaan’t believe those Jews about Jew hatred because they could be zionists!’ (Which are around eighty percent of the Jewish population, but I don’t think you’re ready for that conversation yet, it’s reserved for people who actually want to learn). All of us are so unimaginably angry. All of us are at our fucking breaking point, or we’ve completely snapped already! The people you have interacted with have been some of the kindest, most levelheaded people here, but you’d better not get used to it, because we’re all tired of this bullshit

Thank you for taking the time to call me out. Between you and the several other people who contacted me about this, I’ve come to realize that that post was a terrible mistake.

It was meant to be a vent post about people who deliberately blur the lines around what’s actually antisemitism, and about my lack of certainty about my own ability to independently assess the less obvious instances of that (which is clearly still very lacking, as the response to that post made clear to me).

But it apparently caught a lot of innocent Jews in the crossfire, making them feel unsafe, unheard, and delegitimized. That wasn’t the intention, but it was clearly the effect. I screwed up badly, and I’m sorry.

I admittedly don’t know all the details about the horrific shit Arab nations have done. I was aware of Iraq’s government mass murdering protesters, and Saudi Arabia’s horrifically sexist laws, but some of the info you shared in this post is stuff I hadn’t previously heard of.

As for why I mentioned false accusations of antisemitism specifically, it’s because that’s the one I’ve seen several times a day lately, sometimes in the form of stuff like telling people who protest child murder that “You just don’t like it when Jews defend themselves.”

That said, you and the other people who responded have made it clear to me that that focus was based on an overly narrow view on my part. I’ve been more active in pro-Palestine circles than in circles that focus on the other situations you mentioned, so naturally that resulted in me seeing more antisemitism accusations than accusations focused on groups that aren’t directly involved in that conflict. So that resulted in a less than balanced viewpoint.

While my vent post was meant to be about one specific phenomenon I’d personally seen a lot of, the fact that I didn’t mention similar behavior on the part of groups I hadn’t personally seen as much of that behavior from did result in it being unjustly targeted, in a way I didn’t intend but should’ve assessed better.

What happened to you and other Jews at the hands of Arab nations (and pretty much every nation) was absolutely not okay. The effect my post had on you and other Jews who saw it was not okay. The treatment you’ve endured on Tumblr is not okay. And I’m sorry for the pain I caused you.

You have every right to be angry at me. I won’t ask you to forgive me or trust me, because I know I earned your anger with that poorly thought out post. I shouldn’t have made my own insecurities and frustrations other people’s problem like that. I screwed up badly, and I’m sorry.

[vasilissadragomir]

a lot of people from older generations are shocked when they see how much our generation cares about those living across the world. they simply can’t conceptualize caring that deeply about people with whom we have such little in common. we can see it in the way ukraine was presented in western media (“they’re europeans, they look like us, this sort of thing doesn’t happen in the west and in places outside the middle east and africa”). the media wanted ukrainians to appear sympathetic to westerners, and it worked.

but when the same plight befalls palestinians, and all these young people care so deeply about them as we did ukrainians, older folks are startled. we’re not supposed to relate so much to a small group from the middle east. we’re not supposed to tie our oppression to theirs. we’re supposed to sympathize with the western-backed military force with all the munition, power, and leeway it could possibly want. because we’re supposed to have empathy only for those who most resemble us.

but what they fail to comprehend is that we see ourselves in others not because of the way we look or what part of the world we’re from, but because of what we love and are passionate about. we, unlike our parents, grew up connected to one another. we made friends around the globe from very young ages, because we didn’t connect with other kids based on how far they lived from us, but rather because of our interests. a boy from england could become best friends with a guy from india in a pokémon chat room. a jewish girl from the US could befriend a muslim girl from palestine in a star wars discord. as we grew up, being fed beliefs about people from other places, the sheer reality of our friendships superseded the stereotypes and bigotry.

so when we became adults and started to obtain power of our own, it became impossible not to care about the very real people who played such pivotal roles in forming of our identities. we see ourselves in them, in their struggles, and their fight becomes just as important as our own fight.

and that’s why those in power have always been so scared of globalization. the more unified we are, the less the arbitrary differences between us can divide us. they matter, because culture and ethnicity and language and belief systems matter. but the place where these things overlap is no longer a sticking point or a barrier, but rather an intersection, where we can come together and share in our dreams of collective liberation.

this realization is nothing new. it is the crux of intersectionality. it is something that anyone who has fought for liberation across history has emphasized as the critical point of their fight. but its imperative to remind ourselves of it nonetheless.

each friendship you make from across the world is another hit at the wall meant to separate us, to keep us from realizing how similar we truly are. each time you empathize with a struggle that is not your own, you’re another voice showing solidarity with the oppressed around the world. every day, choose to live with love and passion as your motivations for every action you take. love as hard as you can, regardless of distance or differences; it’s the radical choice.

[alcestas-sloboda]

if you were ‘drawn out’ of arsenal spaces it wasn’t bc we don’t care but rather that you act like ukraine is the only country going through an invasion or the only people needing help.

most of us are bipoc and we’ve seen your posts about other countries, other situations. and yet i didn’t see you shedding a tear for roma and jewish people being persecuted in europe again, including your country. i didn’t see you worrying about how brown and black immigrants are unwanted everywhere while ukrainians are accepted. i didn’t see you caring about armenians leaving their homes fearing another genocide because of azeri invasion.

look around. a lot of us are jewish, brown or black. we’re not less important, yet our issues are treated like so - including by you. i’ve seen it far too many times and we don’t owe anyone anything. solidarity runs both ways.

it really does and yeah sorry i post mostly about my country and less often about other conflicts because I’m actually living through it all and unfortunately I didn’t see the support you are talking about. it was usually the "what about *this country*".

and no your issues are not treated as unimportant by me, it is a very unjust conclusion. once again, I’m sorry that I post less about other situations and I would never ask a person who is going through a traumatic experience to care more about my problems than theirs. I never ask Palestinians to care about Ukraine or Armenias, or Syrians but I do think that people who are lucky enough to live in a peaceful countries should.

[keshetchai]

Hi! I read your replies about ethnicity and I hadn't realized it was defined so broadly. In your readings, would all religious groups be considered ethnicities? Example, I'm ex-Catholic but still consider myself "culturally Catholic" since I was brought up in that environment.

Well, no. Not just "Catholic" alone.

I mean, put it this way: in North America, Catholics specifically syncretized catholicism into existing ethnic identities (ex: mexican-catholic is different from Metis Catholic, and the ethnic identities began to incorporate unique folk catholicism that is specific to these ethnic groups, not universally Catholic. As in, it's all Catholic, but not "catholic.")

OR groups developed ethnic enclaves wherein catholicism was part of their shared identity. (Ex: Italian or Polish neighborhoods in the US tended to emphasize their identity and connections to other Italians and Poles on their basis of their being Catholic. They tended to exclude/other Jews with the same national origins (which is what happened in the "old country" as well, so...this didn't suddenly change).

basically people didn't stop marginalizing people they used to marginalize back home. So a historical neighborhood of Polish Jews was/is often viewed as a Jewish neighborhood, an Ashkenazi Jewish neighborhood, etc, but if you just look for a "polish neighborhood" then the majority of the people there will be polish Catholics and catholicism will play a larger role in the shared polish identity, even though not all Poles are Catholic.

Like if I look up polish neighborhoods and find Chicago's massive polish downtown neighborhood on Wikipedia, it says this:

"this district was not exclusively Polish," and "Italians, Ukrainians, and Jews each possessed their own enclaves within the area."

Which might sound fine but also is revealing of the fact that say, the majority of poles (who were/are a majority Catholic!) didn't see Polish Jews as identical to other Poles. Further, it's very vague — there are Polish, Ukrainian, and Italian Jews. But the ethnic identity of being Polish, Ukrainian, or Italian immigrants in the US wasn't solely defined by country of origin.

So. Could I say that "Polish Catholic" is an ethnic group? I think it's context dependent in some ways: if someone American tells me their family is descended from Italian, or Polish, or Irish immigrants I can usually assume they mean their ancestors were catholic++

and they usually don't identify with being a polish or italian national — instead, they're identifying with the history of x nationals immigrating and developing ethnic enclaves/assimilating or not/and the culture they brought with them as an ethnic group/identity. An Italian American usually identifies as proudly Italian in the sense of a solidarity based on an ethnic identity within the US context, theyre usually not like, identifying with being an Italian national.

But in Italy, surrounded by Italians, the ethnic grouping of "Italian" is pretty unspecific. Are they Latin? Sicilian? Sardinian? (There are roughly 30 languages native to Italy, so it's not like we can go off of "they speak Italian"!)

++ in my singular individual experience: most Jews don't phrase it like this without first establishing some baseline understanding of aforementioned ancestors being jews. by this I mean when I go to the Jewish museum and folks start talking about where their family left in order to come to the US, they might say "my ancestors fled Russia." Or "they came from Ukraine and Lithuania." Because in context it's clear already this is in relation to the Jewish experience. But if you were talking with a group of people who may not all be other Jews or who don't necessarily know you're Jewish, I find people usually don't just say: "My family's polish," they usually instead say "oh my grandparents are Polish Jews," or "my great-grandparents were Jews who left/fled Poland."

...anyways anon I suspect your ex-catholicness has some kind of regional identity beyond that which is a part of your ethnic identity (shared culture, including religion!) but no, being Catholic is not the ethnic identity itself. Especially since catholicism as a religion has a few millennia of espousing universalism beyond ethnic identity and in the earliest church outright rejecting the notion of ethnic belonging to the Jewish people. To the point where a lot of the Greek biblical uses of "ethnos" specifically meant "people who are not-catholic —meaning the heathens and Jews."

So the religion itself is pretty anti-being an ethnic identity but I would say can be a fundamentally big point of community commonality in existing ethnic groups.

[marirph]

I’ve been meaning to say this for a while, but your support for terrorists is disgusting and I cannot believe that you were so quick to turn your back on your own people while we are suffering and facing violence across the world due to the current situation. Your complicity with violent antisemites makes you no better than the Jews that sold out other Jews out to the Nazis during WW2. I hope you change. I hope you wake up to the truth and see that these people want nothing more but the annihilation of Jews. It’s a shame, too. I really admired your work but I cannot support antisemitism.

hi! i definitely don’t know you and thank g-d i don’t because seeing this in my inbox made me physically recoil. but i’m going to respond to this anyway because you clearly don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

i have always been anti-zionist. i will always BE anti-zionist. my father, the man who taught me everything about judaism, is an anti-zionist and so was my grandmother. no amount of zionist media or consumption of zionist reading material is going to change my thoughts on the illegal occupation of palestinian land, especially since i have seen the consequences and effects of the occupation with my own eyes. i have visited israel. i have visited the west bank. i have stayed with my father’s palestinian friends in the west bank and heard their stories. i have fucking seen the class differences between palestinians and israelis. what is there to learn? what could possibly condone that? what is the point of calling me a kapo when several of my polish relatives died in shoah and my ukrainian relatives were at the forefront of nazi resistance????

this isn’t even a matter of jewish presence in palestine. some of the oldest jewish, muslim, and christian communities reside in palestine. the issue is that an colonial ethnostate was established and ethnically cleansed an entire people through events like the nakba and the current genocide in gaza and even the west bank, where hamas is not present in.

i’m assuming you’re jewish by the way you speak. how do you not notice the similarities between the current carnage in gaza to that of world war two? are you deliberately turning your gaze away? are you deliberately ignoring palestinian journalists showing you their dead and begging for your solidarity? how is the death of children and generations fighting hamas? how are you ignoring the fact that many reports from the iof have been debunked? how do you not see that all crimes in gaza are betraying pikuach nefesh, one of the most important principles in jewish religious law?

the fact you, a jewish person, have the gall to defend the very crimes that our people suffered is disgusting and every single day my own hatred for israel festers and grows because of how they have and continue to use jewish trauma and fear to further their own goals. generations of old and young have been conditioned by this imperial state and the communities that support it into believing ethnic cleansing is the only way to protect themselves from antisemitism and they continuously pull the wool over your eyes to keep you in the dark of what’s going on. FUCK waking up, man. i hope YOU wake the fuck up to the fact that israel doesn’t actually give a shit about jewish people that don’t fit their quota, because guess what buddy? they don’t care for palestinian jews, and that’s not even touching upon how they treat them and other non-white jewish people.

take a look at palestinian resources, read palestinian literature regarding colonization, and don’t send me another anon.

[the-racer]

marlene, remus, and lily are jewish in my head. so i'm gonna share my (modern) hcs!!

marlene

marlene converted when she was, like, fourteen, for remus since she viewed him as her adoptive brother. she wore a magen david around her neck at all times ever since then. she lit candles with lily every shabbat and took to learning jewish holidays and customs all the time. her favorite holiday is forever purim. she gets dressed up and her costumes always go hard. learned hebrew and yiddish from lily and remus. learned how to chant torah, megillah, and haftarah, as well as lead services. she's conservative and goes to shul with remus every weekend. one of those jews that hits the table while benching. hates fasting for holidays but does it in solidarity with lily and remus. loves kabbalat shabbat.

remus

full name is remus avichai lupin and his imah and tatti only call him avi. went into his bar mitzvah training intending to only do more than his dad did. polish heritage and put sugar on his latkes because of it. screamed like a child when he got lifted on a chair at his party. chassidic accent, despite the fact that he is not chassidic. got special tallit from his imah for his bar mitzvah. favorite holiday is channukah, forever. he has a big book full of traditional jewish recipes. can speak yiddish and hebrew. yiddish is what his parents usually speak in the house. badmouths people at his shul with marlene. has a small magen david tattooed behind his ear. he fasts but it makes him more miserable than anything. can blow shofar.

lily

most of her heritage is buried in spain. a little ukrainian, too. her name is actually liliya, but she goes by lily. she was raised in a very orthodox household. covered her hair with her scarf, starting when she was about thirteen. covered her elbows and knees too. cried when she first went to a conservative shul and was allowed to take an aaliyah. visits israel every summer with her family. lights candles every friday with her imah. reads a lot of books about judaism. favorite holiday is rosh hashanah. loves apples and honey. loves hearing the shofar blown. knows a lot about jewish theology. always says oy vey when things go wrong. raises hari very connected to his judaism.

[eretzyisrael]

by David Swindle

HIAS generated critical headlines earlier this month when Ashley Chteh, a volunteer at  HIAS Pennsylvania, was recorded helping to burn an Israeli flag and saying “Down with the Nazi regime.”

The nearly 145-year-old nonprofit founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society quickly noted that HIAS Pennsylvania was an independent partner of HIAS. “This person is not and never has been affiliated with HIAS, and is no longer affiliated with HIAS PA,” it stated. “We strongly condemn antisemitism in all its forms. Hate has no place in our world.”

HIAS has been drawing additional criticism, including that it has contributed to rising antisemitism stateside since Hamas’s terror attacks in Israel.

“Sadly, since Oct. 7, HIAS has again failed to prioritize Jewish safety, as HIAS did in decades gone by,” Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS. “HIAS works to bring Muslims to America, most of whom are Jew-haters and Israel-haters.”

On Oct. 7, HIAS posted: “We are horrified by the attack against civilian populations in Israel on Shemini Atzeret, one of Judaism’s holiest days. Civilians throughout the region are living in fear of even more violence, more suffering and more loss.” It has since posted that it is “heartbroken by the violence that continues to devastate Israeli and Palestinian families.”

The nonprofit was “originally set up by Jews to help fellow Jews for reasons of religious imperative and communal solidarity,” and worked to help the American Jews find relatives in Europe post-World War II.

Today, its mission has changed. It is now “a multi-continent, multi-pronged humanitarian aid and advocacy organization with thousands of employees dedicated to helping forcibly displaced persons around the world in keeping with the organization’s Jewish ethical roots,” per the HIAS website. It has also quoted the Talmud on X.

Klein, however, charges that HIAS has “failed to call for the defeat or surrender of Hamas, even though this is absolutely necessary to stop more Oct. 7s from occurring.”

A JNS review of HIAS’s X account returned no references to “Hamas.” The terror organization, which the United States has designated for 26 years, is mentioned several times on the HIAS website, but the organization doesn’t appear to have called for Hamas to be removed.

HIAS has also “promoted untrue accusations about Islamophobic and anti-Arab attacks in Israel and the ‘West Bank,’” Klein said.

He also criticized HIAS’s efforts to push Israel to resettle 30,000 illegal Eritrean and Sudanese immigrants, saying that “HIAS inaccurately calls these economic migrants ‘asylum seekers,’ despite their lack of legal or moral entitlement to asylum.”

“There have been huge problems with these illegal economic migrants committing crimes and attacking elderly Jews in southern Tel Aviv, making life unbearable for many poor elderly Jews,” Klein said.

“Especially at this time, when there are so many displaced and injured Jews who need assistance in Israel—and antisemitism is hurting Jews throughout the world—HIAS needs to return to prioritizing Jewish lives and safety,” he stressed.

‘Aiding displaced persons, regardless of their faith’

JNS asked HIAS how, if at all, it has done its work differently since Oct. 7, particularly given rising Jew-hatred.

“With growing antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred around the world, HIAS will not stray from our mission,” Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, told JNS. “In Israel, we are assisting Jewish evacuees as well as non-Jewish Ukrainian and African asylum seekers.”

“Our work in Israel is a reflection of our work around the world—aiding displaced Jews and, as a Jewish organization, aiding other displaced persons regardless of their faith identity,” he said.

JNS asked what percentage of the refugees with whom HIAS works are Jewish, and the nonprofit did not respond.

[redjaybathood]

Ukrainians like you who are raging zionist and anti-Palestinian bigots are a proof that solidarity between white supremacists is stronger than the solidarity between victims of imperialism.

... please explain to me what you think a zionist is. Because if it's "Jewish people have a right to live in the land they are formed as people in" is zionism then why are you not a zionist? Do you think native people have no right to live freely on their native land? Then you are quite anti-Palestinian, my friend. Repeat after me: people native to the land have the right to live on that land. Regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or whatever else. Yes, both Israelis and Palestinians have that right.

If you have a problem with Jewish people only... then you're just a Nazi. And by vocally supporting Palestinians... yeah, this does not, in fact, paint the Palestinian cause in a good light.

as for solidarity between victims of imperialism - I do not see any solidarity from people who spread anti-Ukrainian misinformation and use Russian propaganda talking points. I do not see any solidarity from you. So, again, by siding with Russia, are you aware that you support imperialism and genocide? And, it follows, your defense of Palestinians is nothing more than antisemitism?

Lastly, I have no fucking idea why a Ukrainian with tiny following like me was even called a raging zionist today. Is it the last reblog showing how Al-Jazeera didn't allow a Palestinian man, suffering from Israeli air strikes, to complain about HAMAS on video in an interview? I mean. If that's what you call anti-Palestinian bigotry, you have a funny way of understanding what it means. Because the tactics HAMAS employ now are awfully familiar to me, as they are not that different from what Russian forces and pro-russian militia did in 2014 and since, in my hometown. In my oblast. In my country.

Talk about being in solidarity with Palestinians when you actually went through what we went through. And do remember, being in solidarity with Palestinians never means spreading lies about Israel. Being in solidarity with Palestinians does not mean being in solidarity with people who take babies as hostages, or slaughter civilians on camera for your little revolutionary heart to enjoy on tumblr.

Unless, of course, you think that Palestinians just hate Jews (and that's the part you are in solidarity with).

[psychotrenny]

Gooooood boy. Now roll over. Now paw. Now play dead. Who's a good boy? Yes you. Yes you are

[myroslaw]

🌍 Mapping 13 Countries Inside Ukraine 🇺🇦: A Fascinating Thought Experiment! 🌍

Ever wondered how big Ukraine really is? Let's play a game of geopolitical Tetris! 🎮 📍 Countries Inside Ukraine's Borders 📍

🇦🇱 Albania finds its place in the Northwest, specifically in Volhynia.

Historical Note: Like Ukraine, Albania also struggled for its independence and faced various invasions.

2. 🇨🇿 Czechia snugly fits in the West, in the regions of Galicia-Podolia.

Did You Know?: Both the Czech Republic and Ukraine are Slavic countries with historical ties that span over a thousand years. They have shared moments of solidarity, especially during the Velvet Revolution and Ukraine's own struggle for democracy. The Czech civil society has often been supportive of Ukraine's European aspirations, and both nations have a rich folklore tradition.

3. 🇸🇮 Slovenia nestles in the Southwest, in Transcarpathia.

Cultural Insight: Slovenia and Ukraine share a love for mountainous landscapes.

4. 🇦🇹 Austria takes its spot in the North, covering areas like Polesia, Kyiv, and Siveria. Historical Insight: the Austrian Empire once controlled the region of Galicia, which is now part of modern-day Ukraine. The Austrian rule has left a lasting impact on the culture and architecture of the region.

5. 🇸🇰 Slovakia finds its home right in the Center of Ukraine.

Historical Ties: Slovakia and Ukraine share a border and have a complex history of interaction.

6. 🇷🇸 Serbia is located in the Black Sea Coast and Zaporizhzhia region.

Conflict Legacy and External Influence: Both countries have recent histories of conflict and are still dealing with its aftermath. Russia often leverages shared historical narratives to influence Serbian politics, further complicating Serbia's geopolitical stance.

7. 🇲🇪 Montenegro fits into Southern Bessarabia/Budjak.

Tourism Angle: Montenegro is a tourism gem, something Ukraine is aspiring to become.

8-9. 🇨🇾 Cyprus and 🇹🇷 Northern Cyprus share the southern part of Kherson region.

Political Intrigue: The division of Cyprus into two entities echoes Ukraine's own territorial issues.

10. 🇭🇺 Hungary is situated in the East, covering Poltava region and Sloboda Ukraine.

Historical and Current Ties: Hungary ruled over Transcarpathia for centuries, a region primarily inhabited by Ukrainians. During its rule, Hungary implemented policies aimed at assimilating the local population. Even today, Hungarian politicians occasionally make territorial claims against Ukraine and other neighboring countries.

11-12. 🇮🇱 Israel and 🇵🇸 Palestine are located in the Azov Sea region.

Historical Trauma: Prior to World War II, Ukraine had one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. In many cities, Jews made up between 20% to 50% of the population. Tragically, most were exterminated by German Nazis during the Holocaust, with estimates suggesting that around 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were killed.

13. 🇦🇲 Armenia finds its place in Crimea.

Historical Trauma: Both Ukraine and Armenia have faced historical tragedies, including genocides and wars.

📊 By the Numbers 📊

Total Area: 511,000 km² (That's 92,000 km² less than Ukraine! Enough room left for Switzerland and Denmark 🇨🇭🇩🇰)

Population: 66.1 million (That's 42% more than Ukraine! 🤯)

Wealth: Only Austria 🇦🇹 and Israel 🇮🇱 are considered wealthy. The rest range from average to poor.

GDP: A staggering $1.9 trillion (nominal) and $2.8 trillion (PPP), which is 9 times Ukraine's GDP pre-Russian invasion. 💰

🤔 What Does This All Mean? 🤔

All these countries have faced historical challenges similar to Ukraine, especially the scars left by the World Wars. Yet, their paths have diverged significantly, leading to different economic and social outcomes.

💬 Your Thoughts? 💬

What do you think led to such drastic differences? Share your thoughts, theories, or even personal stories related to these countries.

[balsa-margarita]

How about the tra community stops crying over a non issue, a game that Jk has no involvement in and instead channels that energy into an actual issue.

Atomic heart is releasing soon and even giving them a cent, gives their investors who are pro putin more and more money to continue this tragic war longer.

If nothing else it is an issue of solidarity - and also it's not just the trans community. Hogwarts Legacy itself is much more obviously offensive to Jewish people than transgender people, though that bar is six feet under. But if you buy the damn game then you are telling a large number of people that you're willing to give money to a person who very openly uses it to harm people. It's upsetting when people don't want to do minor things like that. Does that make sense?

As for Atomic Heart? Another case of making a statement. I wouldn't want to buy a game with some very shady investors that's released on the anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine. Shatterline exists, buy that instead - it was made by a Ukrainian team.

[autokratorissa]

I think the west is propping up Palestinian claims to Israel to create the same war situation there and like Ukrainian Russo war they make it look like they support Israel in a right wing way, and Palestine in a left wing way, but really they instigate conflict between both in a imperialist war profiteer way. Like Ukrainians I don’t blame some Palestinians and Jewish Israelis for not seeing it this way but sorry, it is. Neither side in that conflict is real and like you say it exists to divide the proletariat.

I’m going to assume you’re trolling because I can’t even begin to imagine how anyone could think the anticolonial struggle in Palestine is in any way comparable to a bourgeois army fighting in an imperialist war. There can be no class solidarity between the different sections of the proletariat in Palestine while some parts of it are committing genocide against others. Class solidarity can only be found in the proletariat coming together as one and fighting colonialism; if the reactionary strata and fractions within the class cannot do that, then their eclipse and defeat by the revolutionary elements is unavoidable if a workers’ dictatorship is ever going to be built in Palestine. Israel is structurally incompatible, at its most fundamental levels, with workers’ rule because its existence is predicated on the subjection and neutralisation of the mass of the population, something which is not true for Ukraine or Russia as has been demonstrated by the period of workers’ rule that has already happened in those countries.