#stop trying to conflict being a colonizer with judaism

[guess-how-i-stole-this-body]

It's funny how zionists like to call Palestinian activists antisemitic.

I literally didn't recognize a Jewish term, googled it, and the term (pikuash nefesh) is about saving a life and how that goes above all other religious values.

That doesn't exactly scream "Genocide is sacred to our religion!" to me.

[perfectlyvalid49]

Sometimes I feel like this blog is more Judaism focused than I really want it to be. Like, I am Jewish, but that’s only one aspect of my personality. I’m also interested in politics and linguistics and nerdy pop culture stuff and a whole bunch of other things. And I want this blog to have space for all of that.

So when I spent a ton of time late last week fighting with an antisemite, I told myself that when I was done with him (or as it turns out, when he was done with me), I’d take a break from posting about Jewish issues for a bit. Just like, a week where I’m just reblogging stuff that makes me laugh or an interesting language fact or something like that. Y’know, happy stuff.

He blocked me Friday, and on Saturday, Hamas attacked. And I’ve got a big mouth, so I can’t not say anything. Maybe when this is all resolved I can post happy stuff, but for right now, I need a place to talk, even though I’m struggling with what to say.

I guess the first thing I should say is that I feel terrible about what’s happening. Because what’s happened so far is bad, and what will happen next is even worse. Israel will take its vengeance; innocent Palestinians will die. The friends and families of the victims on both sides will be radicalized and the violence will continue. I hate it and it’s stupid and I wish there was an easy way to stop it and I know that there isn’t.

And I want to say that I support the Palestinian people. The way that Israel treats the Palestinians in Gaza is inhumane – it shouldn’t be allowed! But Israel treats them that way because before they did, you couldn’t get on a bus in Israel without worrying about being blown up. That shouldn’t be allowed either! Everything is complicated. Both sides are full of people who just want to live in peace who are being screwed over by a minority who won’t be happy until the other side is gone. Both sides have valid points, both sides have done terrible things. Anyone who is telling you that it isn’t complicated is either woefully uneducated about the history of the conflict, thinks one side does not deserve fundamental human rights, or both.

And after saying all that, I guess that I should make it clear that I’m still a Zionist – I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a self-determined state, and I think that Israel is probably the best place for it (I did not say a good place, I just don’t think there’s a better one. The best of a bunch of bad options is still the best). Having said that I’m a Zionist, I still hate what Israel’s government is doing and has been doing. Netanyahu is a monster. You can disagree with a country’s government and still think it has a right to exisit.

If you think that all Zionists are evil (and you’re still reading this), then tell me a better solution. Where should Jews go to be safe from governmental persecution? Or should they be denied that? If so, why?

And that’s the other thing I want to talk about. Every Jew I know is watching this with feelings of grief and horror, and the response from the left seems to be some variation on, “Israeli civilians deserved this,” “go back to where you came from,” or “terrorism is OK, actually, as long as it’s against a colonizer state (but not the one I live in).” And it’s soul-crushing. It is possible to be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic, but it seems like right now people aren’t even trying. The only good Jew is a dead Jew, and now that there are a bunch of dead Jews, everyone is celebrating.

I keep thinking about this video that I watched at school when I was a kid about the conflict. It was probably the mid 90s and the video showed Arab and Israeli kids playing together with a voice over from an interview with one of their moms. And I remember her saying that the kids playing together was good because then they would be friends, and when they got older they wouldn’t want to fight each other because they would remember that they were friends. I know now that it was probably a propaganda video, but that’s still what I want. I want leadership for Gaza that isn’t a terrorist organization, I want leadership for Israel that isn’t a far right authoritarian nightmare, I want Palestinians to not be locked behind a wall, I want Israelis who don’t have drills for when the rockets come. I want everyone – EVERYONE – to be able to live a life in peace and I want two little boys with different backgrounds and religions that both include a history in Israel to be able to play in a field by a river and be friends.

And if you don’t want that? Fuck you.

[enby-hawke]

So trying to learn so I can move on and still be mature. It’s just. I can trust myself to do right when it counts ya’ll. I can. My dad made my life hell whether he can even admit it. My families prioritized him recognizing he needs more help, but tried to always make me put him first not realizing I hate white adults with a passion. I like ya’ll better  when you’re kids. I have no war for your kids. Stop letting your kids create it. I just they chose him over me. I understand why. Family preservation and honor means a lot. A reflection of the whole family and  mine. The reflection of the filipino community is not one I like but can’t find solutions for. So when I’m a good space I try to analyze with love instead of hate. But while it is a process it does help when you just admit you’re here cause you’re  trying to understand like me. I don’t have answers lol.

I did a lot of looking at other cultures, but ended up overidentifying. Analyzed mine and my family’s bias? My environment. The people who shaped me. Jewishness feels a way to restore myself, my culture, and keep balance with conflicting identity crisis by giving me a safe avenue where  I can belong but still learn.

White people, I understand poc voice can be strong but understand we amplify our people’s wills. We all have our own visions of peace we wish to bring.  This is what you’re bottling up every time you don’t give us spaces to just let it out.

The biggest way I can think of saying I love you to them is getting to a space where I can call them out but still love them but not let them keep doing bad things that hurt. I don’t want them hurting more than their loving. I don’t want to hurting more than I’m loving. I don’t deserve this. Neither do my people and any of the people who are fucking pissed at white people.

You let it get this bad and you  still won’t change so like...what does that tell me. How does that reflect on your community. What am I supposed to learn about your people as a whole. You value individuality so much you take from other cultures to make yourself feel special while not realizing culture already makes us feel special by helping us struggle and find our place.

Does it scare you when I say that? Cause you scare me what you’re all capable of so easily. You have to push me so far to get me there. I don’t know white people see in me ya’ll. Am I Buddha to you? A Buddha trying to convert to Judaism so you won’t let Jewish people show me a path available? Ya’ll can’t let me learn from safety so you push me into danger not considering I’m trying to rest for the storm ahead? Cause let me rest right now please. I swear I’m a hard worker but g-d. I’m disabled and asian community doesn’t already give space for it.

She feels like I’m asking too much sometimes cause of where she doesn’t think she contributes and has ungrateful white children at times. She doesn’t want us to contribute though and feels uncomfortable not just not knowing. She just doesn’t value what I thought she valued. 

Fine. I do. I always do when I can cause it’s something I was already taught to value from birth. Her children had to learn but understand cause she’s just so stuck in her ways she wants everyone else to change first but doesn’t trust me to lead her to a better place when I GAVE HER A PEACEFUL KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM BY CHANGING ONE ASPECT OF HER TEACHING.

G-d, use my wisdom that I learned from others or don’t. I have discarded some aspects cause filipinos have literally just been freed from colonization too. And ya’ll can’t even give me space to talk about how serious things are in the Phillippines cause I can’t even make you care about a white girl I’m offering ya’ll art to help sometimes. So sorry if I seem bitter. Just ask if I’m without cause before you ask something. Ask questions that don’t come from judgement and I’ll answer. But I’m not afraid of you. I conquered so many of your voices with just showing you you’re bringing fear into a space you don’t even need to.

POC are peaceful people. We value peace. But  we have stories about how we’re all human. If you think I’m thinking you’re not human you’re being fucking lazy. You just are. You are a human hurting me. A human hurting me and all I ask you for is give me a space where I don’t have to perfect so when you your brothers and sisters torture me I can still come from a place of peace.

[scorpioslut-blog1]

Stupid social media

It’s probably been a year... two years... who knows? I’m still at college or whatever, oversharing with pseudo anonymity on tumblr, incapable of journaling like normal or dedicated depressed emo art hoes have been doing for centuries... 

Anyways, I guess I went off social media mostly for the first time in my life... temporarily deactivated twitter (until christmas) and instagram (until further notice), still have my finsta which i'm sworn off of, my spam ~aesthetic~ account which literally keeps me going, my art acct which is sort of stagnant as the moment as i dive into my new hobby/class mandated photography obsession, and my new food diary instagram which is pretty lame and literally just for me to reflect on eating habits. oh i'm on adderall right now. which i looove... it just feels good, ur mind feels good, u think hard but like i feel like i could write a novel, clean my room, text everyone i need to catch up with, or i dont know, write on tumblr like a teenager (i’m 21 fucking years old now). Anyway I’ve been thinking a lot recently about anger.... anger as a coping mechanism, justified anger, repressed anger, anger at yourself, hatred for yourself. anger that is productive and unproductive. at cal, anger at white people, at men, at the world, at people. i’m also thinking a lot about paul, the founder of the palestine decal that i’m taking. and how he spoke to our class on tuesday and explained how israelis, like 18 year olds in the IDF, are taught to hate, are conditioned to hate--not even hate--dehumanize. like how by the time an israeli teenager turns 18 they have already been trained for the military--not physically, but psychologically--to see palestinians as less than human. he frames settler colonialism and israeli occupation of palestine as not an ethnic conflict, not ideological, not religious, or cultural--but about LAND. israelis are murdering, dispelling, bombing, etc. palestinians for the cold, painfully simple reason that they are on land that israel wants. it is not because israelis hate palestinians. while that may be true for many individuals, in which israelis may be racist or islamophobic or for whatever reason hate palestinians or see them as less than, that thought process is a result of government conditioning and hegemony. while america is, in some ways, its own unique case study of cultural, religious, ethnic, social, economic “diversity”, paul also said that we’re all the same. in that, there is nothing unique about the palestine/israel instance compared to, say, the british in south africa. or in india. or australia. or the US in the americas or hawaii or the caribbean. there is nothing unique about palestine/israel, except that their colonization was put in a historical context so close to our current timeframe that we are forced to analyze it as if it were an anomaly. but that’s besides the point. anyway, anger. and hate. in america, it made me think a lot about two communities i was somewhat a part of, whether i felt like it or not---percussionville and berkeley. and how similar they are, and how different i feel in both. back home, i was so angry. i was soooo angry. angry at my parents for putting me there, angry at the people i went to school with, angry at admin, at my teachers, at my peers, at boys, at girls, at white people, at the government, just angry. and i stayed angry in college. i removed myself from that environment but still it haunted me. i never let go of that anger, it blinded me, i couldnt even allow myself to process those four years. and i was still so colonized and following a series of unfortunate events, or fate, or my own hypocrisy or internalized white supremacy, i was surrounded by all white friends, while still trying to understand my own relationship to whiteness, how i was similar to my white friends but also how they could never understand. so i was just blindly angry at white people--and after i stopped being friends with them, anger was almost how i coped. and the poc friends i found myself building relationships with shared this anger, encouraged it. they were angry too, for different reasons but also the same, in different contexts, different levels of anger, manifestations, outbursts, and copings. it was easy to hate these individual white people. before, it was easy for me to hate the idea of white people. in high school i hated white people, but i was always surrounded by them, friends with them because there were no other options really. i mean, i was literally living in it. people here don’t get that, i think, except other poc who really were that heavily immersed in that. like i didnt have a choice. isolation is hard. i spent a lot of high school alone, of course, but i'm a social creature no matter how hard i try and fight it. and this summer i think the idea of hating individual white people for the ways in which they wronged you was almost glorified. and i understand that people are angry. but our anger is all different. i can never even begin to understand the anger of a Black person, especially a Black woman, or a woman who has been sexualized constantly for her beauty, objectified and harassed her whole life, or someone who is currently decolonizing and realizing how much they had ignored or allowed their whole lives... these are just examples of people i think about when i try to think about others’ anger. but my anger is my own. i experience it in my own ways; i have been angry my whole life. i think i came out of the womb angry. i've always just been an angry person, and been suppressing it my whole life. that resulted in me mostly being angry at myself my whole life. and the world. i've had healthy anger, misplaced anger, toxic anger, unjustified anger, genetic anger. and i truly believe that healing is knowing how to cope with this lifelong anger, anguish, sadness. i was angry this summer. i was angry because it seemed like the only way to cope, to be angry at the people who i had failed to set boundaries with, people i had hurt, people who had hurt and confused me. angry at white people, men, starting drunken fights at parties, outside bars... 

anyway, that was a huuuge tangent but my point is. in relation to the palestine decal guy, paul. he’s a few years older than us, and he was clearly still angry as well. angry at the university, for starters, angry at hypocrisy. but the surprising thing to me was that he did not seem angry at israelis. which is a good thing. and he has every right to be angry, to hate the 18 year old IDF soldier, despite the fact that this might be all they’ve ever known, despite the fact that hate is taught, despite the fact that there might not be anything to make that soldier change, or to change how they see paul. but he wasn’t angry. he didn’t blame individuals. he said this was structural, that zionism was not judaism, despite the constant conflation of the two, especially at cal, especially with people who sit in the same classrooms as us every day. it’s easy to be angry. i’ve been angry at so many people. and i have always accepted that i am flawed, i hurt others, people are angry at me. but i don’t know. i don’t know how it is productive for me to be angry. most recently i got angry at felix. and i definitely am still frustrated by him and don’t think it’s even worth talking about at the moment, or that i have the capacity, but i don’t want to be angry at him. i love him, miss him, wish him the best. just texted him that i miss him actually. anyway, on anger--i tried to make him hold my anger, and just sort of lashed out on him over text. which isnt really productive. at the time i was going through a lot with other people, and i think i was so frustrated with always being painted the bad guy that i wanted someone else to hold my anger. i have held others’ anger, and tried to understand it, so i guess i just wanted someone to do the same for me. it did feel good to yell at him honestly. but anyway. back to my point. 

i think about where i'm from, where i grew up, and i have to claim it. i’ve been so angry for the past two years, running away from that place and everything about it. coming to a place that seemed so drastically different at first, but eventually realizing that everywhere is, in many ways, the same. like paul said. i can’t be angry at felix, even if it’s warranted, even if my friends applaud me on the text i sent him. i mean i can. i can be angry at my old friends. but i dont know. i just am so so tired. i'm old. i'm 21. 

[thedailyducky]

I’m trying to learn more about the Israel-Palestine conflict

I know it is an awful quagmire, but in particular, the settler issue sticks out to me like a sore thumb

I watched a Vox documentary and was surprised to see so many, well, white people in the west bank.

The movement of Israeli settlers into the west bank shortly after the 6 day war was ideologically motivated: to take back, by simply laying stake, the “ancestral” land they thought was their right. I will address the scare quotes in a minute.

On the face of it, this is very clearly colonialist behaviour. Drop some people in, slowly populate and expand until you’ve got some strong roots of innocent civilians occupying the territory. However, given the outcome of the war, the argument goes that it was Israel’s to take, so deal with it. The international community, however was not pleased. Nonetheless, after a few decades, Israel began to tacitly endorse the colonization by steeply subsidizing settlements in the west bank, thereby making this occupation state-sponsored. 

What pushes this over the edge for me, though, is the proportion of israelis who are of european descent. On the one hand, of course this is the case because Israel was mostly formed in reaction to WW2 where Jews had been suffering eradication by the nazis (and oppression of different levels elsewhere as well). They fled to Israel for religious reasons, and then for political reasons after the formation of the jewish state. 

What gets me is that part of the claim to the west bank, in particular, is that it is the ancestral, ethnic homeland of the jews. I have a hard time with that. While it is the ancestral, ethnic homeland of some people who may also be jews, judaism is ultimately a religion, and a religion to which many people practice/belong, who cannot meaningfully trace their ancestral or ethnic heritage to that region.  

Now, I’m willing to be open to other types of arguments for why the people settling there ought to be allowed to settle there. But to me it seems that this settlement on ethnic, ancestral grounds, is no more legitimate than if me and all my white Canadian friends, finding a deep spiritual connection with hinduism converted, handed down our religion for a few generations, then moved en masse to india and claimed lands on the grounds that it is our ancestral, ethnic hindu right.

I’m not sure about the legitimacy of such a claim. By the same token, its hard to understand, especially given my own socialization and set of experiences, why this divide has festered this way. What is stopping the state from just being an Arab + jewish state?  Well of course, thats what I need to learn about now...