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Ireland claiming to have the moral high-ground over Israel despite their literal apartheid of Travellers. Fucking ridiculous. I am ashamed to be part Irish, and it sucks. Because I grew up in Irish culture (my family is from New Waterford, we even have a bit of an accent, Gaelic is still taught in our schools). Ugh. Disgusting.

A Jewish man was assaulted on a Dublin city bus over the weekend by a passenger shouting antisemitic slurs and accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, in an incident that has drawn renewed attention to rising anti-Jewish sentiment in Ireland.

The attack occurred late Saturday night, when the assailant confronted the man, saying, “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” and “Jews are killers,” according to video footage circulating on social media. The attacker slapped the man and attempted to snatch his mobile phone.

He also claimed he could identify Jews by their faces and criticized a fellow female passenger for intervening, saying she was “defending the Jew.” He then accused the Jewish passenger of being complicit in what he described as “the genocide of Palestinians.”

The bus driver called police, and the suspect was arrested at the scene, according to local authorities. No serious injuries were reported.

one woman tried to intervene - the only person who stood up to help. the aggressor called her a “genocide supporter” for doing so.

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This person is a Russian shill-bot, lol. They're the one going around saying Ukrainians are Nazis and Russia is justified in genociding them. They're either a bot or a shill. Hard pass.

Horseshoe theory in the flesh

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Paul Celan Richard Siken

hey lovely followers,

so I am a poet. I've taught and been published and done readings and such. however, my work has dramatically shifted in the last several years, where my Jewish identity is the thread the weaves all my work together.

I would love reblogs/comments with recommendations for some of your favorite Jewish poets. they can be of any era, but I currently am particularly interested in modern/contemporary Jewish poets.

some of my favorites:

Yehuda Amichai Emma Lazarus Allen Ginsberg Herbert Pagani Grace Schulman

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I don't get what you mean about Western anti-Israel sentiment seeming empty. The two people I know who are most anti-Israel are Israeli citizens, both served in the IDF. Neither live in Israel any more. One left voluntarily, the other was forced to leave after he was fired from his university job in response to criticism of what the IDF was doing in Gaza recently. He now lives in the UK.

The next most intense criticism of Israel I hear are from people like me with friends and/or family who have also served in the IDF, or other close ties, such my friend who became more radically anti-Israel after his rabbi heard from someone he knew personally, who was forced into hiding after people started threatening his family, in response to him publicly criticizing the IDF for actions in Gaza.

I don't know a single person who is anti-Israel, who does not have at least one close connection to such a person, so at most two degrees of separation to people with direct experience over there, including voting, serving in the IDF, and potentially being vulnerable to antisemitic terrorism in daily life.

Maybe there are such people out there, but I do not come into contact with them in real life. And when I see a bad take online, I don't know that they're real, and not just planted there to discredit a particular perspective.

To me, it almost seems like these takes that depict criticism of Israel as shallow or out-of-touch are attempts by the hardliners who support Netanyahu's authoritarian regime, to deflect criticism and paint all such criticism as antisemitism. They are attempts to enforce an orthodoxy. They are part of the same trend of censorship and enforced silence, why people like us are all unwelcome at Hillel. Why Hillel is barred from even co-sponsoring events with student organizations that have, at one point or another, criticized Israel.

So yeah, that's my perspective. Take it with a grain of salt. I'm not even Jewish, I know, since it's my dad's side of the family that my Jewish heritage is from. But your post reached me, and your characterization of Western criticism of Israel struck me as very off-base given my life experiences. And I wanted to challenge that.

If you've read this far, thank you for your time.

No, thank you for yours, Anon.

Thank you for this thoughtful, civil pushback which is clearly from real lived experience of someone who cares about the topic. I'm grateful that you took the time to share your perspective.

I think you're making six points here, and I want to address each one.

I also need to note that I'm not Israeli. I'm an interested American. I do not and cannot speak for a single Israeli.

I would love for Israelis to reply here and share any thoughts they have.

1. The most anti-Israel people I know are Israelis who served in the IDF.

That may well be true for your circle, but it's a mistake to extrapolate from that into a general rule. The overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis are Zionists, meaning they believe Israel should exist as a Jewish and democratic state. That's not an opinion, there's evidence:

In a Pew survey, 91% of Jewish Israelis said they believe in the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Among those who disapprove of the current government, only a tiny minority support international delegitimization efforts like BDS.

Israelis are often critical of their government - sometimes brutally so. That’s democracy, and Israel's democracy is pretty polarized right now on a number of matters, but broad (and valid, imho) criticism of Netanyahu’s policies is not the same thing as opposing the country's right to exist.

It's precisely because Israelis have lived through wars, terror attacks, and compulsory military service that most of them are committed to Israel's survival and are not interested in dismantling it.

Regarding the IDF, the 2023 Israeli Democracy Index from the Israel Democracy Institute shows that Jewish Israelis trust the IDF more than any other government institution, at about 86%.

For contrast, only about 60% of Americans trust the US military.

Even in late 2023, please note, faith in Bibi and his government was pretty bad. It's gotten worse since. The most recent poll from Pew shows about 54% unfavorable views of Netanyahu and the Israeli political observers who I read believe public opinion on Bibi is far worse than this data shows. (Personally, I have loathed him with increasing intensity for about 20 years.)

So yes, you may know two dissidents. But the data (or talking with Israelis) will demonstrate they're the exception, not the rule.

(This is what's called an Anecdotal Fallacy. You have two self-selected data points, not a data set.)

2. Everyone I know with anti-Israel views has close personal ties to Israel or Jews.

This might be true in your social universe, but again, it doesn’t scale.

On social media and campus protests, many of the loudest voices have zero firsthand knowledge of Israel, no connections to Jewish life, and often can't find Gaza on a map. They’re not debating policy; they’re chanting slogans and treating Israel as a symbolic villain in a Western morality play. But it'd be fair to tell me that's an anecdotal fallacy too- so let's look at polling data.

A 2021 Pew study found that only 27% of Americans under 30 know someone who is Jewish - and that 27% includes American Jews.

American Jews overwhelmingly support the continued existence of Israel while simultaneously being consistently critical of its government.

(At the same time, most Jews worldwide remain flabbergasted that only one nation on earth routinely has the legitimacy of its existence - it's right to exist - questioned.)

Pew indicates that only about 1 in 10 American Jews support BDS.

So when you say you don't know a single anti-Israel person without strong ties to Jews or Israelis, I believe you - but that would make your circle a statistical aberration, not the norm.

This logical fallacy is called an Argument from Ignorance.

Just because you personally haven't met shallow, performative critics doesn't mean they don't exist, right? It just means you haven’t encountered them.

That's like someone in Maine saying, "I don’t believe in cacti because I’ve never seen one myself, ayup."

Meanwhile, the rest of us are watching protests full of people with no connection to Israel, chanting about "global intifada," while livestreaming from their iPhones. They’re not drawing from deep experience - they’re mimicking a subculture.

Here's one of the ways we know that:

Western "pro-palestine" demonstrators largely seem to believe that "intifada" means "uprising" and that "globalize the intifada" merely calls for global political protesting.

Israelis and Jews, on the other hand, hear that as a call for violence against Jews everywhere, and with good reason.

The Second Intifada (2000 - 2005) was quite violent, and included (but was not limited to) about 145 suicide bombings which killed more than 11,000 Israelis. Because these attacks targeted civilians, 78% of these deaths were civilians. "Globalizing the intifada," to Jews, is what happened to a young couple leaving the Jewish museum in DC when a man shouting "Free Palestine" emptied his gun into them. Jews feel that when 12 Jews who were marching (not for Israel but) for awareness of the hostages in Gaza were attacked with Molotov cocktails in Boulder on Sunday. One of them was a holocaust survivor. Two are still in the hospital.

To Jews, this is globalizing the intifada. It's people who claim to be antizionist-not-antisemitic...attacking Jews in the name of "freeing Palestine."

Yes, there are people with deep connections who criticize Israel, but they're not the ones shaping the dominant online narrative. Most of that comes from activists with no firsthand knowledge - just hashtags, vibes, and a deeply edited version of history. Their lack of knowledge is immediately clear to anyone who has been following this conflict, as all Israelis and most US Jews have been doing for decades.

But don't take my word for it about their ignorance and motives. Ask Gazans Hamza Howidy and Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, neither of whom are fans of Israel.

3. Bad takes online might not be real; they could be planted to discredit critics.

This is an understandable emotional reaction in today's information chaos - but it is awfully problematic.

When confronted with bad arguments on your side, instead of addressing them, you're saying: maybe they're fake.

That’s not engaging with evidence - that’s sidestepping it. It's a way to protect your belief by treating contrary examples as inauthentic.

It’s an epistemic trap: if every bad take is fake, and every criticism of your views is a psy-op, then no disagreement is ever legitimate.

Accusing them of being plants is a bit like plugging your ears and yelling "propaganda!" (Which, by the way, I see a lot of.)

If you want to reject bad arguments, engage them - but dismissing them as false flags just shuts the door on things like dialogue, evidence, and intellectual honesty.

Even if some trolls exist to make the anti-Israel side look bad (and I think they do exist because I've seen people clumsily and transparently pretend to be Jews in just that way), that wouldn't mean all or even a significant number of bad takes are planted.

Some people just don’t know what they’re talking about. When a cause gains cultural currency - as antizionism has - plenty of people will jump on board for identity reasons, aesthetic reasons, or social validation. That's not a psy-op. That's human behavior. That's most of what I've been writing about.

If you'd like to see videos of anti-Israel protestors demonstrating their utter ignorance (like not knowing what river and what sea or not being able to find Gaza on a map), there's quite a lot of that online.

4. Your post struck me as an attempt to enforce orthodoxy and deflect criticism.

I think I can maybe understand why. Some defenders of Israel absolutely do conflate all criticism of Israel with antisemitism - and that’s neither helpful nor honest. Fuck that.

I think fact-based criticisms of Israel which hold Israel to the same standards as other nations and don't play on antisemitic tropes are not just valid, but necessary.

My concern wasn't with criticism - it was with a specific genre of shallow, selective, performative, uninformed criticism that circulates online, mostly divorced from any actual knowledge of the region.

You’ve probably seen the people I’m talking about: They can’t pronounce "Yitzhak," they confuse the IDF with Shin Bet, and genuinely believe British Mandate Palestine was a utopia of pluralism until 1948. They’re not arguing for Palestinian liberation so much as LARPing as revolutionaries, casting themselves in a resistance cosplay.

Also, by preemptively framing critiques of your position as "enforcing orthodoxy," you're setting up a rhetorical trap in which anyone who disagrees with you can be dismissed as part of the authoritarian thought police.

But disagreement is not censorship and criticism is not suppression.

Questioning anti-Zionism - especially when it veers into demonization, double standards, or delegitimization - isn't an attempt to enforce orthodoxy. It's an attempt to draw distinctions between genuine moral concern and something much more toxic.

I hope you'll respond and let me know specifically where you think I did that - and I hope you'll feel that right now, I'm engaging with the substance of your criticisms - and not misrepresenting you, silencing you, or censoring you.

5. Hillel bans co-sponsoring events with anti-Israel student groups. That’s censorship and proves hardline control.

Your wording:

...Hillel is barred from even co-sponsoring events with student organizations that have, at one point or another, criticized Israel.

I'm certain that someone told you that and you're repeating it as you understood it, but that's false.

Hillel International's standards prohibit co-sponsorship with groups that deny Israel’s right to exist, call for boycotts, or associate with antisemitic rhetoric - not merely "groups that criticize Israel."

Saying "Netanyahu is awful" is criticism (a very common one among Jews).

Saying "Israel is a settler-colonial apartheid state that must be dismantled" is a political eliminationist position. Those are not the same, and to pretend they are would be dishonest.

Would you expect Black Lives Matter to co-host an event with an organization called "University White Pride" which describes the Civil Rights Movement as a disaster?

Imagine a group called "Friends of Turkey" which favors the abolition of the nation of Greece demands to co-sponsor an event with the Greek Student Association. Would you require the Greek Student Association to work with them?

6. I’m not Jewish - I only have Jewish heritage through my dad.

That doesn’t disqualify you from caring, from engaging, or from feeling a connection.

Jewish identity is complex, and belonging is about more than halakhic status.

I'm glad my post reached you, I'm glad you read it, and I'm glad you wrote.

I want conversations. I want to reach across some difficult lines with integrity, honesty, and sincerity - and I really hope you can feel that.

Final thought:

You read my post as a blanket dismissal of all Western criticism of Israel. That wasn’t my intention and I don't think the post says that.

What I was criticizing is the growing genre of Western anti-Israel performance that often relies on ignorance, moral absolutism, and aesthetic radicalism instead of real knowledge or constructive goals.

I dislike it because it flattens complexity, ignores context, and turns one of the most nuanced and complex conflicts on Earth into a cartoon of oppressor vs. oppressed...which is demeaning to both Israelis and Palestinians.

You, clearly, are not part of that crowd, and your Ask is proof of that.

So again: thank you for your civility, your honesty, and your perspective. We may not agree, but if more people engaged with disagreement the way you did, the discourse would be a lot less toxic and a lot more meaningful.

We can do better, and your Ask proves it.

Thanks again for reading and for writing - please do so again any time!

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imagine being hitler and finding out that you successfully caused multiple jewish languages to become endangered but no one is giving you credit because they’re blaming it on jews instead lmao

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Dara Horn, What Happens When the Last Jew Leaves Afghanistan

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it’s wild how tech literacy lasted like one generation barely before it fell off

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Me: Okay guys remember that it’s important in improv to establish your characters at the beginning of the scene.

Students: ok

Student 1: Hello. I am the president of the United States.

Student 2: Hello madame president. I’m William Shakespeare and I’m here to assassinate you.

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From the media that brought you "Millennials are killing [insert industry here]" articles for years and years and years, now we have....

"Hey, Gen Z, we're gonna relabel vacations into something else now and tell you how you really should be wary of taking vacation because it might impact your financial future."

This is a goddamn dystopia, we know this, right?

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 i recommend learning other alphabets if for no other reason than it’s very fun to see people replace latin alphabet letters with complete nonsense for Aesthetic

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I know there are bigger problems, but I fucking hate the appropriation of the word "golem".

Just say "elemental construct" or something.

I don't think there's an argument here, it's a Jewish culture term... Invent your own terms and leave ours alone.

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Goyim will do anything but center Jewish people when talking about the Holocaust

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My brother's girlfriend had HPV, so he went to get himself the HPV vaccine. There is a fee to pay (nothing much, something like €87) but it's completely free if you're in one of the "at risk" groups.

"What does that mean," he asks. "It's free if you're gay," he's told. "Ah. Would I have to like, prove it, or...?" "Just put in a check mark here."

My brother is in no way, shape or form attracted to men, but also he's stingy as it gets. So now he's officially gay. Congrats bro.

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The thing about discourse regarding Israel is that virtually the entire left has adopted this motte-and-bailey argument, with "Israel is killing innocent people and oppressing Palestinians" as the motte and "Israel therefore shouldn't exist" as the bailey. If you push back on the "Israel shouldn't exist" part of the argument, they immediately turn around and say, "oh so it's okay for them to kill innocent people, then, huh?" And it's just... so exhausting. No, I don't think Israel should kill innocent people. A lot of Israeli Zionists are upset about their government killing innocent people. I also don't think Israel should cease to exist as a country just because its military has committed atrocities, given that we don't apply that policy to Russia or China or basically any other country. And as long as "dismantling" Israel is the goal, then pushing back against that absurd, deeply antisemitic goal is going to be my top priority because I don't want my people to be stateless again.

(Also, the main reason that Israelis are as militarized as they are is because they are, correctly, afraid of people dismantling their country. So the more you advocate for it, the more you fuel the militarization you claim to be against.)

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One thing I don't think a lot of people understand when they talk about how "Ashkenazi Jews are white and therefore can't be middle eastern" or some other bullshit about converts, or how "zionism isnt compatible with judaism" they are attacking essentially the core of Jewish identity.

Yes, Jerusalem is important to our religion, culture, and identity, and there is no way around that. Breaking that connection is something that many empires have tried and failed to do over the centuries. When we hear leftists insist on using Arabic place names rather than the biblical Hebrew ones it feels like they are doing exactly the same thing that the Roman empire did all that time ago. I feels like you are trying to cut Jews out of their own history, say it never happened, say "you have no right to be here and you are delusional for thinking your history is real" and trying to assimilate us into western or arab culture.

You can argue that Israel should or shouldn't exist all you want, but you need to stop colonizing Jewish history and culture. Stop trying to sever Jews from their heritage, and stop gaslighting us with your bullshit "its just antizionism". And no I honestly don't care if one individual Jew you spoke to personally doesn't feel connected to Jerusalem, thats their prerogative, not yours.

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why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.