#they're not humans...the Israel politicians and army and everyone who supports them

[redvelvetwishtree]

[jay0fspad3s]

Hi I'm a porn blog but I'm also Jewish so I'm answering your support question anonymously.

I have a few pieces of advice, and I think other people will have other advice. I may ask more than once. The first and most important thing you can and should do is, if you can, ASK YOUR JEWISH FRIENDS HOW THEY ARE DOING, and be a human being who can listen and emphasize with them. For context, after the massacre I went to a vigil at my temple, which had politicians there. The Rabbi asked everyone who had either lost family or had family in the IDF to stand up. A third of the congregation stood up. From my personal experience, most of my Jewish friends have family who are impacted; only one lost a family member. Even if you don't want to support Israel or the Israel army, understand that the country has conscription and reserves who can be called up. You do not need to take a political position to comfort people who are hurt. I'm doing a lot of emotional labor for my friends and I see a lot of Jews saying things like "I wish more of my goyim (non-Jewish) friends would check up on me." It costs you $0 to say "hi. I know a lot is going on in Israel, are you okay?"

Whenever stuff like this kicks off, anti-Semitism and islamophobia skyrocket, so you may want to check on your Muslim friends as well. You asked about Jews specifically so I'm going to focus on that.

It's not unreasonable to call your local synagogue and ask how you can help support your local Jewish community. You may or may not be welcome depending on the security situation. If you're asking about charities, I'd very strongly recommend either very accredited charities or asking a synagogue about charity drives. There's a lot of social media disinformation out there so I'd be very wary of donating money to an organization you've never heard of that claims they're helping.

This is a little more controversial, I think, because it's hard for me to be a-political here, but you should also understand what you're advocating for in what you ask for. I'm going to freely admit I have a bias here.

If you're going to engage in political advocacy, please understand what you are advocating for. Let me give you a couple of examples.

There currently is a depressing amount of debate about if the international community should call for a cease fire, or not. The argument to call for a cease fire is that the loss of Palestinian life is unacceptable. The argument against calling for a cease fire is that Israel can only realistically secure the release of hostages via military intervention or threat of military intervention.

Understand what Hamas' strategy is. Hamas wants to maximize human suffering in the Gaza strip so that the international community demands Israel stop fighting. If this happens and Hamas still has "gains" from their attack, the general consensus is that they will do this again. There can't be hostages in Hamas custody when a cease fire is declared, or Hamas will believe they have won and they should do this again. So if you want to advocate for something, I think you should keep the demand to free the hostages first in your minds.

Two more personal opinions in "know what you are advocating for." You should understand the implications of peace deals that groups are proposing and not support deals that don't align with your beliefs. I'm 1948, neither Jews nor Arabs in mandatory Palestine would ever accept a one state solution if the other party lived there. This has never changed. A Free Palestine, "from the river to the sea", means "a Palestine without Jews". There is no serious proposal on the table for a harmonious one state solution that has popular support in the region. That's not what people actually involved in the politics of the region hear when you chant that. Someone is going to argue with me about this, and it's true that Jews aren't a monolith, but the "secular democracy one state solution" plan that people would like was overwhelmingly rejected by both sides in 1948 and the relationship has gotten substantially worse since then. People are absolutely trying to bridge that gap. It hasn't happened. I'm not going to tell you what to advocate for. If you want "an Israel without Jews", I probably don't want to be your friend, but you don't know me. I don't want to exterminate the Palestinians, either, so I'm not gonna be your friend if you advocate for that. All I'm trying to say is understand what you're advocating for, and make sure you center that in your messaging.

The last thing I want to say is that you should think about why we have Israel and what it says about the world, and what we can change at home. Israel accepts Jewish refugees from pretty much anywhere. I'm a Jew in America. If America decides that they're going to get rid of the 7+ million of us who live here, the Israeli government will do everything in its power (probably not literally) to get me to Israel safely, and will let me resettle there. Compare this to basically every other fucking nation on the planet. We (America) have hundreds of thousands of people on the southern border waiting in camps and shantytowns to claim refugee status. Look at how Jordan and Lebanon treat their Palestinian refugees. Ukrainian refugees are doing better than Syrian refugees, but I don't think they're doing well, exactly. Look at how the world deals with migration, especially from people we don't like. So what I'm saying is that I think the best thing we can do for peace is make it so that every nation in the world is safe for basically anyone to live if they need to flee their home. That's something you can advocate for at home.

I hope that makes sense.

Thank you so so much for this!!! I will definitely check up on my Jewish friends literally after I'm done with these messages. My childhood best friend's family is Jewish and his grandma is like another grandparent to me and I've been meaning to see how she's been doing in general anyway. I also have given donations to the local synagogue before, so I could probably call them or even ask my friend's grandma if she knows anything I can do, and maybe I can ask them about charity drives and such I can donate to when I get paid next week. I'm always happy to donate to those who need it when I have the money

I'm also glad to hear about arguments against a one-state solution. I was considering that both sides may be unwilling to coexist with each other in a single state due to the decades of conflict with each other, but I haven't done enough research into a two-state solution to really have a fully formed opinion. I definitely have been withholding a full opinion until I have more information (which in a previous post that blew up I was writing about some conclusions I was drawing that were worded badly and incorrect regardless, and I asked to be corrected on if I was wrong, I learned a bunch of stuff from about Zionism and some Jewish history and I now think that it's good that a place like Israel exists, even if the situation with Palestine is so so complicated)

I live in the US too and I've been yelling about the detention centers at the southern border for years now, it's so appalling and genuinely terrifies me to know that human beings are being treated so poorly, even if I know historically stuff like this has happened before

You definitely made sense and I'm so so grateful for your response <3