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Antisemitism - Blog Posts
The golden rule is, essentially, this: don’t be a fuckin’ dick. I’ve seen a lot of people violating this rule. Racism, sexism, anti-Semitism (note: NOT BDS and other Palestinian support groups. Those are not anti-Semitic and to argue so is problematic af. Not up for discussion.), anti-LGBQT+ behavior are all things you that we all need to work towards eradicating. These realizations can be uncomfortable and painful and you’ll make mistakes in your journey forward, but this is work that needs to be done. Be a good human. If you wouldn’t say something to someone’s face in real life, please do not be an Instagram bully. . . . . . . . . . #bravotv #bravotvaddict #bravotvmemes #bravotvnetwork #bravotvjunkie #bravotvnews #bravotvhousewives #bravotvshow #bravotvmeme #bravolebrities #andycohen #rhoa #rhop #rhonj #rhony #rhoc #rhobh #rhoslc #rhod #shahsofsunset #andycohen #antiracism #antisemitism #antisexism #dayofsilence #dayofsocialmediasilence #amplifymelanatedvoices #millenialmemes #bravocon #belowdeckmed #southerncharm https://www.instagram.com/p/CS9zPu4riAh/?utm_medium=tumblr
I’m not Jewish but that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue. I can’t believe this is the first I’m hearing about it wtf.
Because I'm only seeing other Jews posting about this, non-Jews I need you to be aware that for the past month or two there has been a wave of bomb threats and swattings at synagogues all across the US. They usually do it when services are being livestreamed. I haven't seen a single non-Jew talking about this. High holidays are coming up in a few weeks, which is when most attacks happen against our communities. We're worried, and we need people to know what's happening to us.
SEMANA DO STRIKE #2 (18/02 - 25/02)
LINKS:
Enciclopédia do Holocausto
Colonialismo e Apartheid
Sionismo
I just want to make it clear that Hamas shot and mutilated and burnt alive 38 children on October 7th including seven children under the age of six. They also kidnapped 42 more. Hamas shot and killed one of the child hostages, a 12 year old autistic girl, and her grandma, a few hours after kidnapping them, presumably because they decided that keeping them as hostages would be too much of a hassle because of the girl's disability. They burnt an entire family, including a two year old toddler and twin five year old girls, alive. They shot a different nine month year old baby than the one who is being mourned today in the head. Another 12 year old girl was burnt alive that day along with 13 other civilians who were kidnapped, and her body was so mutilated it took a month to identify her remains. What happened to the Bibas children is not an anomaly. This is the organization that people around the world have chosen to celebrate and the organization that student groups at elite universities globally are choosing to very bluntly support and champion as #resistance against imperialism or colonization or whatever the justification for child murder is today. They are antisemitic terrorists and absolutely nobody has the right to act like what they have done is a shock. They announce over and over that this, Jewish civilian death, is their goal, and they repeatedly attain it because the entire world enables them and celebrates it when they kill Jewish kids.
France’s politicians and community leaders have criticised the “intolerable” violence against Paris’ Jewish community, after a pro-Palestinian rally led to the vandalizing and looting of Jewish businesses and the burning of cars.
please please please spread this around, please speak up about this, please let everyone know that this is not okay, please please please protect my people from a second kristallnacht, please
Replies to this post regarding Hogwarts Legacy
This is one of the most bad faith takes I've seen on this, and I've seen some pretty bad ones.
I'm not going to argue on this. I mean, that whole post is about how there really is no more arguing to be done here, you either value people's lives or you value personal entertainment. You've gone for the latter. You just don't want to admit it so you spew out this garbage to justify it to yourself.
If you want to play the game, just play the stupid game. It's not like anyone is going to physically stop you. But for goodness sake, shut up about it. You're all just making yourselves look even worse.
BTW your transmedicalism and antisemitism are showing. Thought you might want to know
Saw a streamer claiming that it's okay for them to stream Hogwarts Legacy because they're donating money from the stream to a trans charity.
How much? Don't know. They didn't clarify that.
It's pretty clear what they're doing, though. It's not really about wanting to raise money for trans charities. If it was, they could have picked any other popular game for their stream.
They just want to play the game and use the controversy to boost their channel. The only reason they included the charity thing is to use it as a shield against anyone who rightfully calls them out.
You can't claim to support the trans community while actively promoting and supporting transphobia.
Also pretty, uh, interesting how transphobia is the only issue they saw fit to address and ignored the racism altogether
I am so done arguing with people about Hogwarts Legacy. At this point, if you don't get why supporting the game is harmful, it's because you've chosen not to.
The reasoning has been laid out in the most hand-holding way possible by so many people. Many of whom have been extremely nice and calm about it. But that doesn't stop y'all from whining about how everyone against the game is a mean ole bully harassing you for no reason. (I am begging you to read the last part of that sentence in a highly condescending old-timey prospector voice)
I could go on all day about the bad faith arguments that keep popping up about why the game is good actually. Nevermind that it's about stopping a rebellion by Jewish stereotypes because it would be disadvantageous for the oppressors Wizards to not have them be subservient. They also really want to gloss over the game having an MtF character with a fully masculine voice and face named Sirona Ryan.
(Sorry, tangent, this is a world wherein people use magic to alter the appearance of themselves or others in literally every book, but it's not possible to fully transition????)
Anyway! I don't want to, and shouldn't have to, spend any more of my time explaining why capitalism isn't a free pass to buy a game that supports a racist, transphobic, and honestly just plain evil person. If you can't comprehend why using Twitter is different from spending $80 on a game, it's because you don't actually care. It's not because the Jewish and trans communities didn't spend months explaining it to you in ways that infants could understand. You just do not care about those communities.
And I wish you would just admit it.
Just say that you value your personal entertainment over other people's actual lives.
Stop pretending that it is anything else.
It isn't. And you know it.
Hogwarts Legacy is really bringing out all the fair-weather allies, ain't it? All the people who will totally say that they support the trans community, that they're willing to fight antisemitism, and talk about how important it is for the non-marginalized to stand up for the marginalized.
But ask them to not buy one single game out of the hundreds that will be released this year? Then it's all "you can't tell me what to do; you're never satisfied with anything; this is why people don't support you; buying the game doesn't support rowling at all; no ethical consumption under capitalism"
Like, thanks I guess for letting us know that you don't actually care about marginalized people. Now we know who actually gave a shit and wanted to help and who just wanted a new space to dominate
we need to have a serious talk about antisemitism in America. yesterday, there was a hostage situation in a synagogue in Texas, where a gunman took for people including a rabbi hostage. he wanted to have someone released from prison. I forget who, but she was charged with 80 something years back in 2010. so what do you think this gunman does? does he contact the police or the president and demand the prisoner be released?
no. he tells the rabbi to call another rabbi in New York, and to have that rabbi release the prisoner. now, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that his plan was completely stupid. the rabbi in New York had no relation to with prisoner, the prison she was in, or even the justice system at all. so why did the gunman think that the new york rabbi would have the authority to release a random prisoner who was sentenced 12 years ago? one word. antisemitism
most antisemites have the insane belief that all Jews are secretly controlling the world, or the government, or the banks, or natural disasters, or... you get it. its entirely based on fake and antisemitic conspiracy theories, and it literally gets people killed. this gunman thought that a rabbi in New York had the authority and power and ability to release a prisoner who I'm pretty sure isn't even imprisoned in the state of New York (don't quote me on that though). (edit, she was imprisoned within Texas?! literally what is the logic here?!)
antisemitic conspiracy theories, even as jokes, literally get us Jews hurt or killed. those are your "lizard people". your "space lasers". your "new world order". your "George Soros money". all those insane baseless conspiracy theories, even as a joke, cause severe damage to Jews. because people will believe it.
I haven't seen any non-Jews talk about what happened yesterday. that's not surprising. very rarely will goyim care about Jews unless one of their close friends is Jewish. but it's still upsetting. there is still so much antisemitism and hate towards Jewish people in the world today.
ANTISEMITIC BIAS
Many antisemites don’t consciously dislike Jews. They might even think highly of Jews. For example, they might believe “positive” stereotypes of Jews, such as that Jews are good at business or good with money. They might have Jewish friends. They might like “some” Jews. But they still cause tremendous damage to the Jewish community.
“Biases” can be defined as “an inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group.”
Unconscious biases are known as implicit biases. We all have implicit biases (whether negative or positive) in the way that we interpret the world around us. Conscious biases (such as, for example, the Nazis outwardly believing that Jews were “the inferior race”) are known as explicit biases.
Because antisemitism is everywhere in our world — in our cultures, our languages, our folklore, our literature, our entertainment, our media, and more — it’s impossible for us not to internalize at least some antisemitic biases. These biases, however, exist on a spectrum: from unconsciously assuming that most Jews are wealthy (implicit bias) to believing the white supremacist conspiracy theory that Jews are enacting a “white genocide” (explicit bias) to everything in between.
Because antisemitism is so old and so deeply embedded into our society and institutions (e.g. religion, language, literature, education, and more), that means that there is a lot of antisemitic bias in our world, most of which you might not even be able to see. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
ANTISEMITISM IS A CONSPIRACY ABOUT THE JEWS
Antisemitism can be tricky to spot because it works very differently than every other form of bigotry. While other bigotries see their victims as “inferior,” antisemitism sees Jews as both “inferior” but also “superior” or all-powerful, capable of causing every calamity from wars to natural disasters to diseases to controlling the weather.
Societies project whatever they dislike most onto the Jews. In the Middle Ages, Jews were Christ-killers. In Nazi Germany and McCarthyist America, Jews were communists. In the Soviet Union, Jews were capitalists. In Nazi Germany and during the rise of the scientific racism period, Jews were the inferior race. To white supremacists, Jews are not white. To left-wing anti-Zionists, Jews are white. For centuries in Europe, Jews were untrustworthy foreigners from Palestine. But today among anti-Zionists, Jews are Europeans colonizing Palestine. We are whatever makes us the perfect scapegoat at any given time.
It’s no coincidence, then, that antisemitism tends to surge most when societies are in upheaval. After all, the leaders need someone to blame. Examples of this include the Germans’ blaming Jews for Germany’s suffering post-World War I, as well as the rise of the “Deadly Exchange” conspiracy which blames Israel for police brutality in the United States, following George Floyd’s murder.
Antisemitism moves through conspiracy theories. Most notably, since to the antisemite, Jews are all-powerful, the most prevalent and deeply ingrained antisemitic conspiracies have to do with Jews and wealth and power. In the Middle Ages, for example, Europeans believed that Jews aimed to subvert Christendom. Since the 1920s, antisemitic leaders in the Arab world have rallied their followers behind the conspiracy that Jews intend to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque and usurp Islamic lands. White supremacists — and far left anti-Zionists — today believe the “Zionist Occupied Government” conspiracy, which accuses Jews of controlling and manipulating the American government for their benefit.
Given the pervasiveness of conspiracies regarding Jews and power, antisemitism is nearly impossible to address without triggering more antisemitism. If an antisemite faces consequences for their actions, antisemites will use this as “proof” that it’s the all-powerful Jews that have imposed these consequences. This makes antisemitism a self-fulfilling prophecy.
BIGOTRY WON'T ALWAYS BE OBVIOUS TO YOU
Most of us want to do the right thing. The problem is that bigotry — whether antisemitism or something else — doesn’t come with a flashing neon sign that says “this is bigoted! Call it out!” Instead, bigotry persists because entire societies convince themselves that their bigoted worldview is somehow justified. This is especially true of antisemitism. Antisemites throughout history have long persecuted Jews under the guise of seeking justice.
For instance, since the Middle Ages, Jews have been periodically persecuted on the accusation that they killed a Christian or Muslim child for ritual purposes. In other words, antisemites were seeking “justice” for these children that the Jews allegedly killed. This antisemitic trope is called “blood libel” and has led to the deaths of millions of Jews. It’s safe to say that these murderous antisemites fully believed that they were doing the “right thing.” Some examples of historic blood libels that have resulted in violence against Jews include the William of Norwich blood libel (1144), the Damascus Affair (1840), and the Kielce Pogrom (1946).
During the Bubonic Plague, Jews were persecuted under the false accusation that they were “poisoning the wells” and sickening the gentile population of Europe. Once again, the persecution of Jews was seen as just.
During the Nuremberg Trials, high-ranking Nazi officers testified that they believed that Jews were a danger to the safety of the German people and the German nation. In other words, they justified their mass extermination of Jew under the guise of “protecting” the people of Germany.
The list goes on and on. Is it possible that today you too have been made to believe that violence against Jews — Zionists, Israelis — is a just cause?
THE NAZI FALLACY
A few years ago, the notorious antisemite Shaun King argued with a Holocaust survivor on Twitter. When accused of antisemitism, he retorted, “I can’t be an antisemite. I fight Nazis every day!” But anyone even remotely familiar with antisemitism or Jewish history will know that Nazis were far from the Jews’ only historic oppressors. You don’t have to be a Nazi to be an antisemite. In fact, most antisemites are not Nazis.Not even close.
Nazism is just one manifestation of antisemitism. It’s a deadly one, certainly, but it’s also far from the only deadly manifestation of antisemitism. Jews have been killed by the thousands — sometimes by the millions — by a multitude of other oppressors. Some, like the Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacists, are far-right. Others, like the Soviet Union, are far-left. Others are somewhere in the middle, and others oppressed us so long ago that their ideologies long predate the left-right political spectrum as we know it today.
The horrific images of Nazism and the death camps are seared in the world’s collective memory. It’s easy to think that if it doesn’t look like Nazism, if it doesn’t look like Auschwitz, then it’s not actually antisemitism, or perhaps it could be antisemitism, but it’s not serious antisemitism. In reality, though, antisemitism doesn’t go from zero to Auschwitz. Instead, antisemitic tropes, conspiracies, and stereotypes fester and proliferate, operating under new euphemisms and adapting to whatever society they’re in. Many of the same antisemitic conspiracies that drove the Nazis nearly 100 years ago are the exact same conspiracies that are driving “protestors” to violently harass Jews in the streets of New York City today.
For many years before the gas chambers, antisemitism in Germany, which once was home to the most assimilated, well-integrated Jewish community in the Diaspora, proliferated in university lecture halls, justified and explained away in academic language. It wasn’t deadly yet, but it soon would be. When you dismiss any sort of antisemitic rhetoric because it doesn’t mirror the deadliest days of the Nazi regime, what you are actually doing is that you are contributing to the sort of hostile, conspiratorial environment that eventually made the Holocaust possible in the first place.
THE GASLIGHTING
Antisemitism and the gaslighting of Jews go hand in hand. If an antisemite faces consequences for their antisemitism, it simply reinforces their antisemitic beliefs. Because antisemitism always places Jews in the role of oppressor, it’s nearly impossible for Jews to seek accountability or justice without being accused of exaggerating, crying wolf, playing the victim, or otherwise having nefarious intentions.
After the Holocaust, for example, the second in command at the Red Cross, Carl Jacob Burckhardt, decried the Nuremberg Trials, calling them “Jewish revenge.” Others, like the Palestinian newspaper Falastin, did so as well.
Antisemitic bias oftentimes makes it impossible for some people to see Jews as victims. If an antisemite loses their job for espousing antisemitism, they will then blame the “powerful” Jews — or Zionists, or another euphemism — for taking their job. In that way, they turn the victim into the victimizer. This is a classic gaslighting tactic, which creates a catch-22 and is one of the reasons antisemitism can be so hard to combat.
For example, in the lead up to the Holocaust, American isolationists of various political persuasions accused Jews sounding the alarm on the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany of trying to instigate a war with the Germans.
Sometimes we are even accused of provoking or exaggerating antisemitism for our own benefit. There are a number of conspiracies, for example, that the Zionists worked with the Nazis to instigate the Holocaust to justify the creation of a Jewish state.
An example of the accusation that Jews play the victim is when we are told that we talk about the Holocaust “too much” — contrary to the statistics that demonstrate people are woefully misinformed about the Holocaust — or that we should move on because we “got reparations” (not exactly true, but that’s a different topic).
Then there are the accusations that we brought antisemitism or antisemitic violence onto ourselves — something that we’ve seen on a grand scale following the Hamas massacre on October 7.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
(1) Listen to Jews. I don’t mean just listen to your Jewish friends, or to the Jews you personally agree with. I mean listen to the Jewish community as a whole. Jews don’t often agree on much, but at the end of the day, we are a community, and only the Jewish community can fully describe our own experience.
Don’t listen just to the Jews who validate your views. Listen to the Jews that challenge you. Don’t shut yourself off from learning because it might contradict whatever ideology you follow. Learning is a lifelong process. I promise you you don’t know everything there is to know about antisemitism (I don’t either! I’m always learning). But it’s your responsibility to open yourself up to new information so that you can do better.
(2) if Jews are telling you something is antisemitic, then your first instinct should never be to distrust us.Can Jews weaponize accusations of antisemitism? Sure. Anyone can weaponize anything. Is it likely that that’s what’s happening? No. Antisemitism worldwide has skyrocketed to the highest levels since the end of the Holocaust. It’s a very real threat taking lives. You should take accusations of antisemitism just as seriously as you take accusations of other bigotries…even if initially you don’t see it.
(3) I can’t stress this enough: do your best to educate yourself about antisemitic conspiracies, stereotypes, and tropes throughout history. The euphemisms may change — sometimes we’re “globalists,” other times we’re “Zionists” — but the formula remains the same. To be able to spot antisemitism, you have to learn to spot it. I recommend reading my post “The World’s Oldest Hatred” for more.
if the sight of a jew doing culturally jewish things and/or practicing the religion makes a person go 🫵 POTENTIAL EVIL LYING CHILD KILLING ZIONIST, APPROACH WITH CAUTION🫵 they are already antisemitic. and it’s going to take a lot of research and self-reckoning and uhh talking to jews in good faith for them to come back from that mindset. and many won’t undergo that process because it’s uncomfortable and shame-producing. and i honestly can’t show grace to folks who have unknowingly fallen down that rabbit hole because the conflation of “jewish” with “evil and bad” has already gotten jews killed this year. and it’s gotten jews killed for thousands of years. and unless gentiles start unpacking that long-ingrained cultural assumption that Jew = Suspicious, Probably Evil, Destroy Now we’ll see more pogroms in the future.
and before you come into my mentions with “but israel,” please understand that gentiles have never needed proof to believe jews are evil and murder them. right now, antisemites are gleeful that they have a “reason” and too many of y’all are just following their lead because you refuse to engage with this information. because you’re not an antisemite, right? you just hate zionists, not jews. and you definitely know what zionism is and you definitely can surmise when zionist is being used as a dogwhistle. right! of course! there is no historical precedent that would lead me to not believe a single word you say.
so like. if you truly want to help fight antisemitism, you have to engage with these ideas even if the process is uncomfortable and shame-producing. you have to unlearn 2,000 years of lies about us and the deeply ingrained instinct to believe we are evil. idk why i’m making this post i just wish gentiles would be believe us when we say It’s Really That Fucking Dire.
I can remember, a few years back, getting in a taxi with my grandfather in New York City. He’s one of the kindest, most courteous to strangers people I’ve ever known and was able to establish a good rapport with the taxi driver until the taxi driver put his subtly Jewish name and face together and started blasting a radio channel saying that “all Jews are donkeys”. Even then, even in New York City, you could turn your head and there was antisemitism.
In middle school, I had been spat at and called slurs—but only after I told the other students that I was a Jew. My father’s Scottish surname and ambiguous appearance give me the option of invisibility. I’ve never chosen to hide who I am, but it’s also not immediately obvious, and that made a difference even before the current horrific spike in antisemitism.
Non-Jews, yes, it really is a serious problem. It really should go without saying at this point. It should have gone without saying an incredibly long time ago, but my cousins are receiving death threats and there was a pogrom in California and a twelve-year-old girl got raped and the people doing these horrific (that word doesn’t seem strong enough but I can’t think of a stronger one) things still somehow think they’re in the right and all I can do is try striking metaphorical matches in the dark while knowing the matches are almost certainly dead and that even if they light it’s unlikely that anyone will open their eyes whose eyes weren’t open already.
Jews, stay strong. We will survive this. I hope.
"Ashkenazi" doesn't mean "white-passing." My mother's husband has pale pink skin, blue eyes, and light brown hair. And he is INCREDIBLY visibly Jewish, even before he opens his mouth. His hair is a super curly mess and his facial features are very, very obviously Jewish. When he says anything at all, you can tell that he's a New York City Jew. No kippah, no Magen David (though that might change soon), but his appearance is JEW.
I have been living in fear every day since October 7th. It never occurred to me before then to be afraid for my mother and her husband because of his visible Jewishness in New York City. Yeah, if they were driving through Alabama or something. But in NYC? If someone had suggested it to me, I'd have laughed.
Now I just want to cry.
The problem with antisemitism and anti-Zionism
Someone recently reblogged this post I shared that called out antisemitism in pro-Palestinian rallies. An action I was initially happy about, until I went into this person's blog, and saw a lot of posts that I, as an Israeli-Jewish person, find incredibly antisemitic. I found myself utterly baffled by that. Because this person clearly recognized the things said in these rallies were extremely antisemitic, and yet, they posted a lot of things that were rooted in the same antisemitic worldview. Can't they see it? And I think the main problem with the current pro-Palestinian movement is that they honestly can't see the line between being on the side of compassion and humanity and being critical of Israel's actions, to spreading horrible lies and dehumanizing Israelis and Jewish people. And the ugly truth these people refuse to face is that the reason they can't see when they cross this line is probably unconscious antisemitism.
You don't need to hate Jewish people to be antisemitic
Antisemitism, like many other forms of racism, often works on an unconscious level. Maybe you have Jewish friends. Maybe you fought for better Jewish representation in media. Maybe you are even Jewish yourself. But over the years you have been exposed to a lot of antisemitic ideas and stereotypes that altered your worldview and made you more vulnerable to believing Jewish people are the bad guys.
If your gut reaction to this is- "but Israel is actually doing bad things, so I'm actually right about hating them." Please keep reading.
Your idea of Israel and what it stands for is based on the worldview of the most radical right-wing Israeli activists at best, and blatant lies at worst.
Imagine if we took the words of the most radical Republicans out there, the ones that go after trans kids and believe women should have no right over their own bodies, and believe all Americans are supporting this idea. That wouldn't have been very fair of us, right? Because there are a lot of people in America who are fighting for a better future. A lot of people who are standing up for human rights.
Just like the United States isn't a homogeneous entity, filled with only trump supporters, Israel is also an incredibly diverse place, with people who have radically different ideas about how Israel should look. Even the current Israeli government, which is extremely right-wing, and has people in it I personally believe should have never been in a position of power, is probably a lot less evil than you were led to believe by ill-intent strangers on the internet. Mainly because this is still a democratic government, in a democratic country, which has a lot of checks and balances that (for the most part) manage to prevent people with radical ideas from making them into official policies.
I don't blame you for believing the reports you see from Gaza. As a pacifist, and as someone who voted for left-wing parties ever since I was eligible to vote, someone who truly believes the Palestinians has a right to self-determination and sees how problematic the occupation is, I struggle a lot when I see posts about the suffering of the people in Gaza. Wars are horrible. I never want to see other people suffer. Let alone children. I wish I could go there right now and take all of them somewhere safe. I wish none of this was happening.
But I also know who my people are, and the values they stand for. And what I noticed about these anti-zionist posts is that they are often written in a biased, misleading way. They often attribute malicious intentions to Israel's actions. And they often jump to conclusions, without giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. Without asking the right questions. And often, without any sort of proof. Some of these posts are outrageous lies. Others are incredibly biased and fail to mention the terrorist organization Israel is fighting against.
Only a small amount of them are coming from unbiased sources that describe the reality of the situation without giving in to personal interpretation.
But most of you can't tell the difference. You are seeing lies about how IDF soldiers are targeting children, or about how Israel is lying about their true evil intentions, and you accept them as the truth, without questioning the intention of the person who wrote that post. Without stopping to think this is incredibly dehumanizing to think Israeli people are capable of such monstrous actions. Without examining your own biases. And that's incredibly problematic, and yes, this is antisemitic. Because you would have never spread this kind of accusation about any other group of people without definitive proof.
This isn't to say our soldiers are never wrong, and that there aren't any bad apples, or even systematic problems in the IDF and every allegation should be thoroughly investigated, because any harm to innocent people is terrible, unavoidable as it may be. And ideally, even terrorists should get a fair trial.
But if you think soldiers in Israel defense forces, who are mostly 18-21-year-old Jewish men and women from all sides of the political spectrum, are inherently evil and baby killers, you are in fact antisemitic.
Even if you believe your type of anti Zionism isn't antisemitism being anti-zionist is still not a great position to take.
I never defined myself as a zionist before. But it was more to do with my own disconnection with Judaism and my ideas about the place of religion in modern society than my belief about the right of Israel to exist.
I think it would be amazing to live in a utopian world where we have one multicultural democratic state where everyone lives together in harmony. But I’m also a realistic person. And someone who wants to keep living as a free woman with full rights in my home country.
And while I never felt particularly zionist, I was never an anti-zionist, and I never believed zionist was a bad word.
I'm probably not the first person who tells you this, but Zionist isn't a synonym for "everything I hate about Israel". It doesn't mean "a person who supports the occupation", or even "a person who only cares about the life of Israelis" or "someone who fully supports the Israeli government".
So what does it actually say? Let's look at a dictionary definition.
Do you notice what the definition doesn't say? Anything about Israel's borders or about the idea of a Palestinian state. There are many types of Zionism, some more radical than others. But as I said before, is it really fair to judge an entire group of people based on the idea of the most radical of them?
The truth is, most of us just want to live in peace. We want to go to work without finding ourselves at the scene of a terror attack or running to the shelter because of rockets. We want all the hostages to come home. We want to feel safe in our own homes. This is what it means to be a zionist. This is what you are standing up against. Not the "occupation," or the "settlers" or the extremists in the government. Just regular people who want to live their lives.
Zionism isn't colonialism
Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel. This was the land we dreamed of in 2000 years of exile, and it's a huge part of our religion and our culture. This doesn't mean the Palestinians don't have a claim to the land as well after living on it for so many years, or that what they went through in 1948 wasn't terrible, but it doesn't magically make Israelis into white colonialists who woke up one day and decided to take over a random land.
A lot of mistakes were made. In 1948, and especially in 1967. And we are paying for them now. But the idea that Israel is a colonialist state that represents everything that's wrong with society is entirely false.
If you support the existence of a Palestinian state but don't believe Israel deserves the same right, you need to ask yourself why that is the case.
Is that because you don't believe Jewish people when they tell you about their connection to the land of Israel? Because you think there is something inherently wrong with the existence of a state that is only for Jewish people? (But have no problem with all the Muslim and Christian states out there) Because you think Palestinian deserves to live from the river to the sea and Israelis should have nothing, or whatever the Palestinians would be willing to give them? Because you are more comfortable with the idea of Jewish people as a minority in a Palestinian Muslim state than the idea of them having their own free country? Because you think you know better than us what our future should look like?
Because all of these reasons are antisemitic.
So on the matter of this absurd deflection tactic I'm seeing from antisemitism apologists, where they're like: "Um sweaty, if you play a game with a race of short, hook-nosed goblins who all work at the fantasy bank, and immediately see them as Jews, then that's a YOU problem," I would just like to be crystal fucking clear about something:
We are not "seeing Jews" when we look at the goblins in the Harry Potter universe (or the reptilian Illuminati overlords and diminutive, rat-faced hagglers in your beloved science fiction franchises). Most of us are Jews, and are therefore pretty fucking familiar with how actual Jewish people look and behave (we do not have horns; we do like to share our very strong opinions about how to garnish latkes and hummus). None of us are seeing a Ferengi merchant from Star Trek, or Gargamel from The Smurfs, and thinking "Oh wow, he's the spitting image of my Great Uncle Moishe, and I'm mad about that!" This is not, and has never been, about seeing genuine reflections of the Jewish people.
No, what we're seeing are characters and tropes bearing a strong resemblance to the grotesque antisemitic caricatures that have been used in efforts to dehumanise, disenfranchise, and decimate us for centuries. We know damn well the goblins or dwarves or greedy reptilian space overlords aren't accurate depictions of real Jews—but they are evocative of age-old antisemitic stereotypes, and that's the actual fucking issue here. This isn't some weird thought exercise where we just free associate random things with Jews based on our own skewed self-perceptions. We're saying to you, "Hey, the imagery in this piece of media is uncomfortably reminiscent of the bigoted tropes constantly wielded by our oppressors to hurt us, and that's a problem, because it's both compounding our trauma and subtly reinforcing people's unchecked antisemitic biases," and you're effectively telling us to fuck off in response.
Like, if you don't care about antisemitism I can't change that, but you don't get to accuse Jews of being "the real antisemites" simply for pointing out the similarities between the short, hook-nosed, child-stealing, banker goblins in your shiny new video game and the blatantly anti-Jewish stereotypes used to demean us throughout the course of human history.
I really really REALLY don't want to be the antisemitism mutual again bc y'all do not know how much damage that did to my mental health. But the fact that goyim only ever mention the antisemitism in what is literally blood libel: the game as an afterthought, sometimes not even expressing it by name, and instead focusing on the trans issue - I'm saying this as a trans Jew: fucking stop it. Even if not one single penny ended up in jkr's hands bc of this game it would still be extremely harmful. Stop saying "even ignoring the game's moral problems" or "not even mentioning the antisemitism". MENTION THE ANTISEMITISM. This is a game teaching fascist ideals to PRETEENS. It is teaching them that Jewish caricatures deserve to DIE for the crime of wanting their cultural artifacts back, it is teaching them that Jewish caricatures wanting to no longer be oppressed is equal to murdering "wizards" (aka white goyim) (while the main character literally discovers they're pure bloods...) and kidnapping children - THE OLDEST FORM OF BLOOD LIBEL. Jewish lives MATTER. I'm saying this as a trans Jew, but cishet, able bodied, white, neurotypical Jews also deserve to be safe. We all deserve to be able to exist as Jews without being targeted. Antisemitic hate crimes has been on the rise by hundreds of percentages worldwide, especially in the US and Europe. Stop treating us as afterthoughts.
JK Rowling didn't write Hogwarts Legacy.
Moira Squier did.
JK Rowling wrote about a short and swarthy ethnic minority legally denied the right to own certain kinds of property, excluded from most careers apart from finance, oppressed for hundreds of years but still ignored by equality activists, perceived as duplicitous and bloodthirsty, speaking a guttural language and having a culture considered inferior by mainstream society.
The film franchise gave them big hooked noses.
Moira Squier created a new character from this minority who was the victim of a brutal, life-threatening hate crime in his youth, which radicalised him against the society that oppressed his people. She wrote a narrative in which a marginalised person's resentment of their oppressors causes them to become morally corrupt, and the only "good" members of the marginalised group are the ones who can overcome that resentment. She created a story in which the protagonist must prevent a marginalised group from reclaiming their property, because doing so would make them too powerful, and that might threaten the status quo.
Troy Leavitt was the lead developer for the first several years of this game's creation. He runs an alt-right YouTube channel in which he defends cultural appropriation and sexual harassment apologism, among other things. He oversaw the design of a marginalised minority which bears an uncanny resemblance to Nazi propaganda:
JK Rowling is a bigot, but she's not the only one.
Hogwarts Legacy update!
We've confirmed the plot: there's an uprising among the race of hook-nosed bankers who control the economy. (Note that the more evil they are, the bigger their noses are. There's a good one who has a big nose but he used to be evil when he was younger.) They're "rebelling" because they want their stolen cultural artefacts to be returned to them and want to not be oppressed anymore, which for some reason means they also want to massacre their oppressors' entire race, because of course marginalised people asking for liberation actually secretly want to kill you. As part of this sinister cabal's nefarious plot for white—I mean, wizard—extinction, they want to kidnap a child, because that's what hook-nosed bankers like to do, right? And their leader is willing to do anything for material gain, up to and including teaming up with fascists who hate his race.
You guys know that conspiracy theorists think Jews funded the Holocaust, right? They claim we did it so we could milk it for reparation money afterwards. And did you know they think we kidnap children? Or that we actually want supremacy rather than equality, and plan to subjugate the rest of the world for our own gain? Presumably you've at least heard the claim that we control the banks. And you know this is all very popular with the alt right, don't you? Have you also heard that this game's original head developer was an alt right YouTuber?
Don't act like this is a fucking coincidence.
No, JKR wasn't involved in the game, and it's actively intended to be trans-positive. Yes, she gets money from it, and will likely donate some of that to anti-trans causes. But even if you pirate the game so she doesn't make any money off of it, you're still going to be be playing the fucking Protocols of the Elders of Gringotts.
Fucking TALK ABOUT THIS.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is anarchist propaganda because all of the problems are caused by both capitalist bureaucracy and a weird insistence from everybody with power that “the rules,” no matter how silly, must be followed.
someone commented this under the post
Israel IS a terrorist state. They are terrorists.
They are just allowed to say this and continue their genocide and no one can stop them? I knew the world we live in, is a total fire dumpster but this? what Israhell is doing and getting away with? this is a whole new level of fucked up.
And the hypocrites who used to say "never again", who now side with the oppressors, i just want you to know you would have sided with the Nazis too.
Fuck Israel, fuck anyone that supports them and fuck Zionism which is the root of all of this.
This will make you cry.
This was 100% a dogwhistle. I don’t believe they bought the sword in a “Nazi way” but it’s definitely a joke to them to show something Ethan will “crash out” over and then they get to call him paranoid again. Definition of a dogwhistle.
Article about this. If anyone “controls the media,” it’s them.
Also this. There are more for both but the creator of this only used subs with more than 5000 members, if I remember correctly.
Seriously, read the article though. It goes into how these people are fully attempting to skew public opinion.
Number of Jews in the world: around 15 million
Number of members of a subreddit which auto bans anyone who has posted in a Jewish sub: around 20 million
I don't think people on this website understand what "you should love jewish people more than you hate nazis" means
do you hate nazis because they're fun to hate on and easy to ratio? or because of the material harm they have caused, are causing, and will continue to cause? when you see a nazi, do you see an acceptable target? or do you see an active threat? what do you do to help jewish people outside of these situations? anything at all? do you have positive views on judaism? do you try to better yourself by listening to jewish voices on topics of bigotry?
I'm not going to complain about a nazi getting punched for being a nazi, but the issue isn't as simple as just punching nazis. you need to love jewish people more than you hate nazis if you want to address the root causes of antisemitism
In the Jewish calendar, the anniversary of the Simchat Torah pogrom hasn't happened yet. Simchat Torah is in a few weeks. But if the rest of the world is going to desecrate the memories of those we lost on this day, we must commemorate the pogrom on the Gregorian calendar as well.
I will never be the same person I was before October 7th. We as a people will never be the same. But that's what has allowed us to survive all these millennia - we don't try to go back to how we were: we rebuild, we move forward. When the first Beit Hamikdash was destroyed, we began to set our calendar. When the second Beit Hamikdash was destroyed, we began to record oral Torah. Through thousands of years of successive colonization, genocide, and exile, we have recontextualized and reiterated to ourselves and to the world what it means to be a Jew.
We are Ivrim- people from the "other side", never fully part of the dominant society, but proud of who we are.
עברי אנכי ואת ה' אלוקי השמים אני ירא
"I am an Ivri and I revere YHVH the Lord of the Heavens"
[Yonah 1:9]
We are Yehudim- descendents of the majesty of the united sovereignty of Malchut Yehudah, yearning to return to the time of peace and unity under David and Shlomo.
ליהודים היתה אורה ושמחה וששן ויקר
"The Yehudim had light and joy and happiness and esteem"
[Esther 8:16]
We are Bnei Yisrael- all descendants of the man who wrestled an angel and conversed with G-d
ושמרו בני ישראל את השבת לעשות את השבת לדרתם ברית עולם
"And Bnei Yisrael shall observe the Shabbat to establish the Shabbat for their generations as a forever covenant"
[Shemot- Ki Tisa 31:16]
We are a small nation scattered across the globe, united time and time again by immense loss. But there will come a day when we are united with one heart and one soul not by tragedy, but by joy.
We will rebuild. We will survive. We will dance again.
✡️עם ישראל לעולם חי🎗️
I’m slowly realising that almost nobody thinks that antisemitism is a real problem. They only think nazis are a problem (if that even), because they were conditioned to hate them.
But they don’t consider their own antisemitism to be antisemitism - they just consider it to be common sense, or justified political activism!
Every day I think about how I opened up to a friend about a threat that was sent to my synagogue, and her initial response was confusion, followed by a statement that whoever sent the threat should know that “Judaism is not the same as zionism.”
I’ve never felt more scared realizing that people I know and work with could rationalize threats of attacks at local American synagogues if the synagogue was ✨Zionist✨
And I think about it all the time, because that was supposed to be a statement of comfort in her mind. With the implication was that I was a good, non Zionist conversion student and had nothing to worry about.
It’s not that people can be grossly antisemitic. Their intention and values were just aimed at the wrong place?? 🤨🙄
I know this isn’t a new line of thinking. But it was jarring to hear it said to my face.
If you can understand that it is wrong to misgender a trans person you don’t like, but can’t understand that it is wrong to be antisemitic to a Jewish person you don’t like, well… good luck, Charlie.
