i have a degree in history and a masters in information science. if you truly want to argue with me youâd best bring your sources. side blog to keep this off main because i donât want death threats lmao
Cool, so an Irish tourist threatened to put a bullet in the head of two Australian Jews in a French supermarket and told them he wished Hitler had finished the job, tell me again how it's about Israel and being "anti-genocide"
Question for DSA babies and their ilk worldwide: once you finish ejecting Jews from public and private life while fomenting violence against us in retribution for potentially committing thought crime and eating hummus, where would you like us to go? Y'all harassing us in Canada, the US, the UK, most of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. So, do you.....want us to go to Israel? So you can like, bulldoze us into the sea? I mean, I know MAGA wants us there so Jesus can bulldoze us into the sea.
I'm working with Between Dignity and Despair right now, and this is a genuine question.
Well, we all know what they actually want us to do, which is to return to that purely theoretical place where we come from, but where they never have to look at us, think about us, breath the same air as us or consider us human beings. That is to say, they'd like us to take "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" in its most literal sense.
That or our Martian dome cities at the foothills of Olympus Mons - you know these people are gullible enough to believe we have those.
Whatâs crazy to me is that settler violence has gotten so bad that settlers are essentially waging an extrajudicial war on Palestinians in the West Bank and Netanyahu and his coalition donât care
Settler violence has gotten so bad that it has been condemned by Mike Huckabee and Netanyahu and his coalition donât care
Violent settlers are hurting innocent people, thwarting both international and Israeli law, discrediting Israel on the world stage, and serving as an active barrier to peace and a two state solution, and Netanyahu and his coalition donât care.
The Israeli government has the authority to arrest all of these violent settlers and prevent further settler violence, but they won't because they don't care
And why donât they care? Because they need the extremist settlers to be reelected, and Netanyahu values his own political success far more than innocent lives or the future of his country.
Your Antisemitism Is Probably From Medieval Christianity
A huge amount of modern antisemitism did not appear out of nowhere. Many of the ideas people repeat today, even in "secular" or atheist spaces, are just recycled versions of medieval Christian anti-Jewish beliefs.
"Jews kill children" / "Jews thirst for blood" / "Israelis harvest organs."
This is the modern descendant of the blood libel, the medieval Christian accusation that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes, especially around Passover. Modern versions include imagery of Jews or Israelis drinking blood, killing children for pleasure, or harvesting organs.
USHMM: Blood Libel
"Jews think they are superior because they are the âchosen people.â"
This distorts the Jewish concept of chosenness, which traditionally concerns covenant, obligation, and responsibility, not racial or moral superiority. Christian anti-Jewish polemics historically portrayed Jews as arrogant or spiritually obstinate for maintaining their covenant and rejecting Christianity. The modern "Jewish supremacy" version grows out of that older framework.
My Jewish Learning: Chosen People
USHMM: Antisemitism
"The Jews killed Jesus."
This is the classic deicide charge. For centuries, Jews were collectively blamed for the crucifixion of Jesus, even though he was executed by Roman authorities. This accusation helped justify persecution throughout Christian Europe.
USHMM: Antisemitism
"Jews are greedy / Jews love money / Jews control finance."
Medieval Christian restrictions excluded Jews from many professions while pushing some into moneylending and commerce. Jews were then demonized for participating in the very economic roles they had been restricted to. This is the ancestor of modern "Jewish bankers," "Rothschild control," and "Jews run Wall Street" conspiracies.
USHMM: Antisemitism in the Early Modern Era
"Jews secretly control governments, media, banks, or the world."
Medieval Christian societies frequently portrayed Jews as an alien and conspiratorial group acting against Christian society. Later secular conspiracy theories kept the same structure while replacing religious language with political language.
USHMM: Antisemitism
"Jews are disloyal to the countries they live in."
Jews were historically treated as permanent outsiders in Christian Europe. This evolved into the modern dual loyalty trope: the belief that Jews are secretly more loyal to other Jews, Israel, or a supposed global Jewish agenda than to their own countries.
ADL: Online Antisemitism Report Card
"Jews spread disease, poison people, or contaminate society."
During the Black Death, Jews were accused of poisoning wells and deliberately causing disease. Modern conspiracy theories about Jews spreading pandemics, controlling pharmaceutical companies, or deliberately corrupting society use the same basic structure.
USHMM: Blood Libel
"Jews harm or corrupt children."
This overlaps heavily with blood libel. Medieval Jews were accused of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering Christian children. Modern claims that Jews deliberately corrupt, mutilate, sexualize, or indoctrinate children recycle that same imagery.
ADL: Antisemitism and Conspiratorial Beliefs
"Jews are demonic, satanic, or uniquely evil."
Medieval Christian art and literature often directly associated Jews with the devil. Modern descriptions of Jews or "Zionists" as inherently monstrous, demonic, or metaphysically evil descend from this tradition even when the speaker is secular.
USHMM: Antisemitism
"Jews deserve exile because they rejected God."
A longstanding Christian theological idea held that Jewish exile was divine punishment for rejecting Christianity. This contributed to the belief that Jews were supposed to remain stateless and subordinate. Modern hostility to the idea of Jewish return or Jewish self-determination can sometimes reproduce this older supersessionist structure.
USHMM: Antisemitism From the Early Church to 1400
"Jews fabricate persecution for sympathy, money, or power."
Modern claims that Jews invent antisemitism, exaggerate persecution, fabricated the Holocaust, or use accusations of antisemitism solely for political advantage build on older stereotypes portraying Jews as inherently dishonest and manipulative.
USHMM: Antisemitism
The point: a society can become less religious without automatically shedding the prejudices that were created inside a religious culture. Many modern antisemitic claims are secularized versions of much older Christian accusations against Jews.
Being atheist does not make someone immune to repeating Christian antisemitism. Sometimes the theology disappears, but the trope survives.
If you think you aren't antisemitic, BUT you do one or both of the following:
You tend to believe non-Jews when they accuse a Jew of being a "Zionist", and you understand that when they say "Zionist", they are calling that Jew a bad person, so you now believe this Jew is a bad person...
And/or
You're hesitant to believe a Jew saying "Hey, this person was antisemitic" (especially if they were criticizing Israel or "Zionists") and you just want to pass it off as antizionism not antisemitism...
And/or
You are hesitant to listen to Jews about what Zionism means to them, or what their connection to the land of Israel is, or anything about the history of Jews in Israel, because you've been told bad things about them and about Zionism from non-Jews
...
If this is you, you are unconsciously antisemitic. I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm saying that if you are quick to distrust Jews and hesitant to criticize non-Jews, you have a bias against Jews. You learned that from our society, because society is antisemitic as a whole.
mamdani says he wonât attend the israel day parade because he canât support a state that prioritizes one religion over another and then turns around and attends a pakistani independence day event lmfao what a joke
"Israel attacked first" I am begging you to look up what actions actually qualify as acts of aggression and uses of force beyond the literal "who shot first"
Just the basics of the international laws of war makes that talking point pretty silly - without even making any arguments about how broken and dated self defence as defined by art. 51 of the UN charter is (or how broken international law is in general.)
The 1967 war is a great example, because it's such a commonly accepted narrative that Israel started the war, which is laughable when you consider what actually led up to the start of the war:
Closing the Strait of Tiran to all Israeli shipping, a.k.a. a naval blockade? (see Rome statue art. 8) Not aggressive.
Constant rhetoric from Syria, Egypt, et.al. threatening and promising to invade Israel in order to exterminate the state? (see UN charter art. 2(4) Not aggressive
Israel's neighbours Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq forming an armed alliance? Not aggressive.
Trying to - in a desert region - divert the Jordan river from Israel? Not aggressive.
Funding, training, supplying and facilitating Palestinian insurgency forces to attack Israel? (see UN charter art. 2(4), Rome art. 8) Not aggressive.
Mobilising Egyptian troops on the Israeli border? Not aggressive.
Expelling UN forces from Egyptian territory bordering Israel? Not aggressive.
Israel seeing all this, knowing that an existential war on all fronts is going to start any minute, knowing that Jordan's air force could reach Jerusalem in like 10 minutes, and therefore striking first as to not immediately get eliminated? Super duper aggressive
You'll forgive me for not taking your arguments about Israeli pre-emptive strikes seriously.
if you are a regular degular personâwhile i expect you to generally know what you're talking about if you're gonna be involved in the conversation, i don't need you to be able to outline all the particulars of what was discussed at the 2000 camp david summit.
if you are CO-CHAIR OF THE DSA, a political party that has made palestine its ENTIRE PLATFORM for the past THREE YEARSâyes, i expect you to have knowledge of the stages of the peace process. if you want people to listen to your solutions, i expect you to know what has and has not already been tried, and to know why you would or wouldn't have been happy with the major proposals made at each major step. including at camp david in 2000.
you just demonstrated for the ten thousandth time to the israeli right wing that even the most politically-involved and aware pro-palestine voices can be utterly ignored because you don't know anything and have no meaningful ideas. you're making things worse. hope this helps.
In 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed, creating the framework for a future Palestinian state. In 1995, Oslo II was signed, which divided the West Bank into three parts: Area A, Area B, and Area C. Area A is under full Palestinian control. Area B is under Palestinian civil control with Israeli security. And Area C is under full Israeli control. (It also divided Gaza into Areas A, B, and C. Gaza is supposed to be Area A, but due to a little thing known as "the government in charge of Gaza killed a thousand Israelis in one day", there is substantial Israeli presence.) Jewish Israelis are barred from entering Area A, for their own safety. (Arab Israelis are also theoretically barred, but this ban isn't enforced as strictly.) Area A includes most of the West Bank's population.
This was supposed to be temporary, renegotiated after five years.
So, five years pass, and Clinton gets together the leader of Israel, Ehud Barak, and the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, at Camp David to talk it out.
The Israelis really, really, want peace. Ehud Barak is begging for a deal.
As Robert Malley and Hussein Agha write in an article fairly critical of Israel and Barak, "Barak was eager for a deal, wanted it achieved during Clintonâs term in office, and had surrounded himself with some of Israelâs most peace-minded politicians." Malley and Agha continue later that "If there is one issue that Israelis agree on, it is that Barak broke every conceivable taboo and went as far as any Israeli prime minister had gone or could go". They criticize him for, seemingly, being too flexible and acquiescent: "Yet, at the same time, he gave clear hints that Israel was willing to show more flexibility if Arafat was prepared to âcontemplateâ the endgame" (in a negative context). According to them Barak made massive concessions: sovereignty over all Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, a Palestinian state in over 90 percent of the West Bank with land swaps to help compensate. These were huge and changing. According to them, Arafat demanded sovereignty over the Temple Mount, as opposed to Israel's proposal for Palestinian "permanent custodianship" -- the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism (it now has the Al-Aqsa Compound on top of it), was to be in Palestinian hands, and that was a red line for him.
"Barak apparently took the view that, faced with a sufficiently attractive proposal and an appropriately unattractive alternative, the Palestinians would have no choice but to say yes. In effect, each successive Palestinian ânoâ led to the next best Israeli assessment of what, in their right minds, the Palestinians couldnât turn down." Agha and Malley write. This was to be a dangerous mistake. Arafat turned down offer after offer after offer, making no counter-proposals and suggesting, contrary to the archeological, historical, and even Muslim record, that the Second Temple was in Nablus. (Previously, I have referenced him as saying it was in Hebron; this was in error, and I apologize for saying so. I do not know how the two got mixed up in my mind.) Shockingly, this did not suggest to Barak and the Israeli negotiating team that he was a reliable partner.
In late September 2000, a few months after the talks collapsed, Ariel Sharon, the leader of the right-wing party Likud (who would later unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, paving the way for Hamas' rule, but that's another story), visited the Temple Mount. Again: this is the holiest site in Judaism, and is, as basically all accounts agree, the site of the destroyed Second Temple. Sharon did not pray there. Sharon did not do much of anything there. He merely existed on the Temple Mount as a Jew.
That is what started the Second Intifada (which was, at best, tolerated by Arafat), in which over a thousand Jews died. A Jew existing on the holiest site in Judaism.
As Hussein and Agha continue, in late December, in the middle of the Second Intifada, Clinton and Barak made yet another proposal, which they summarize as follows: "Palestine would have sovereignty over 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank and it would as well have land belonging to pre-1967 Israel equivalent to another 1 to 3 percent of West Bank territory. Palestinian refugees would have the right to return to their homeland in historic Palestine, a right that would guarantee their unrestricted ability to live in Palestine while subjecting their absorption into Israel to Israelâs sovereign decision. In Jerusalem, all that is Arab would be Palestinian, all that is Jewish would be Israeli. Palestine would exercise sovereignty over the Haram [Temple Mount/Har HaBayit] and Israel over the Western Wall[.]"
Israel gave and gave and gave so much, and what it got in return was suicide bombings.
That is the environment in which Sharon came to power. That is, in many ways, what destroyed the Israeli left and its promise of peace. Because they tried peace, they tried so very, very, hard for peace, they gave up so much that no one else would be expected to give up -- and what they got in return was death and terror and fear. That is what Israelis think of when they hear intifada.
And I am not excusing Benjamin Netanyahu or his actions, nor the abandonment of the peace process, nor Israel's admittedly heavy-handed response to the Second Intifada.
But if you don't understand why Israelis are skeptical of peace, if you don't understand the cause of this view, if you don't understand what caused the collapse of the peace talks -- why the hell should I listen to you? Why should I care?
You don't need to know the precise details of the negotiations. What you need to know is this:
In 2000, Israel tried peace and was rejected, and then a Jew visited the holiest site in Judaism, and a thousand Jews died for that, and, as that was happening, Israel still tried again with even better terms for Palestinians, and was still rejected.
I feel like I should note here, because I didn't clarify:
The reason Oslo is still what the West Bank operates under today is because of the collapse of Camp David 2000. The reason the West Bank is all patchy and pockmarked is because it was supposed to be temporary and revised later. But then what I described above happened, and now we're stuck with it. This wasn't supposed to be the status quo for thirty years.
New York Magazine spent an issue mapping Southwest Asian and North African New York and could not find the Jews of Aleppo, Baghdad, or Sana'
Itâs something that you can only do in New York City. At least, thatâs my opinion. Explore any culinary scene in the world, and you can do it within the five boroughs. When I lived in the city, I ate my way around the Middle East without once thinking about the politics. It was my way of being in the region from afar.
Miznon or Taim on the way home, Miss Ada or Laser Wolf when someone else was paying, 12 Chairs when I wanted jachnun on a weekend. Not only Israeli places. There was also King of Falafel and Shawarma in Astoria, the most Palestinian establishment I have been to in North America, where I was careful not to talk politics.
Israeli food tells the story of where Jews were forced to leave and where they found new homes. It might be the only cuisine where someone thought to put hummus on an Austrian schnitzel, and it works. Not only does it work, but itâs delicious.
There is also kubbeh in beet soup, which you have to eat with rice, at a spot on Sixth Avenue called Kubeh. Iraqi Jewish food, my familyâs food, sold in Manhattan to people who mostly had no idea. It reminded me of my grandmotherâs kitchen, though hers was always better.
I was once brave enough to try rolling kubbeh in our apartment on the Upper East Side, but the dumplings came apart in the pot. I wanted to impress my girlfriend (now, my wife) and failed miserably.
That was when I understood I did not have my savtaâs technique, and neither does my father. He settles for the occasional omelet and challah French toast.
Melanie Shurka, who opened Kubeh, did the smart thing. After she looked for that technique in cookbooks and found almost nothing, she flew to Israel to learn it from Kurdish, Iraqi, and Persian women, because their kitchens are the only places it survives. Their expulsion is the reason it does.
New York Magazine has now published an entire issue about that world, and it has a rule about which Jews belong to it.
The issue is called Habibi City, and the cover story is by Zaina Arafat. Partway through, she stops to define the term on which the whole package rests. Belonging to the SWANA community (Southwest Asia and North Africa), she writes, meant holding a set of common beliefs: Palestinian human rights, Gaza as a genocide, social justice over capital, caring as nonnegotiable.
Neither Kimia nor El Atigh risk their place in the SWANA community by speaking out against their regimes, nor would they lose it by staying silent. Israel is, of course, the only country where that determines membership.
In the essay, every Jew is described as anti-Zionist, an Arab Jew, or as someoneâs non-Zionist partner. That label comes first and is what lets them be included. To be a Jew in Habibi City, you have to answer the Israel question the âright way.â Criticizing the Netanyahu government isnât enough for Arafat; most Israelis I know do that all the time. The real test is about the state itself, whether it should exist at all, and no other group faces that kind of standard.
Arafat knows this. She grants that Israel is geographically part of the region, but that is where it ends: topographic acceptance. Whether Israelis can claim a connection depends on the politics surrounding SWANA, and on a personâs ethnic background. She has just raised the Mizrahi question, and she leaves it where it fell.
Many Ocean Parkway families are more religious and keep to themselves, which someone will point out. Tens of thousands of Israelis in New York City do not, many of them Mizrahi, running restaurants, throwing parties, and filling the same rooms Arafat counts as a scene. They are not in the essay either.
My family was forced out of Iraq in 1951, along with almost all of the countryâs Jews, a community that had been there for 2,500 years. Their belongings were confiscated on the way out. They moved to Beâer Sheva in the Negev Desert; the city was built mostly by immigrants who arrived the same way
Arafat writes about exile and expulsion throughout the piece. El Atigh Abba, who cannot go home to Mauritania. The Yemenis picked up at the airport and fed on Atlantic Avenue, but not once about the 850,000 Jews displaced from âSWANA.â
Listing what SWANA New Yorkers still face, Arafat names xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Zionism. Two bigotries and a national movement, filed together without comment.
About half of Israeli Jews have roots in the Middle East and North Africa, and they are in Israel because the region threw them out. Netanyahuâs government is a disgrace, and there are things Israel has done in Gaza that are unacceptable, and growing settler violence in the West Bank is a disgrace to Zionism and to Jews. I can hold all of that and still notice exactly what listing Zionism beside Islamophobia is.
The one person I felt a connection to in the piece was El Atigh. He is different. He hosted a Hebrew-Arabic language exchange only to see his comments flooded with people telling him to cancel. He refused.
In July, he hosted a Palestinian singer and an Israeli musician on his stage together. He spends the essay pushing back on his own side. Arafat clearly admires him, but she does not seem to notice they disagree.
So 20 pages celebrating the SWANA diaspora in New York City. The Jews of those countries appear only if they publicly disown the state that took many of them in.
And that brings us back to the Syrian families living on Ocean Parkway in South Brooklyn. They have lived in New York longer than most SWANA countries have existed, and are not mentioned at all. I donât think it was intentional; they were simply not considered, and most would not have passed Arafatâs test anyway.
Arafat ends her piece on sumud, the Palestinian Arabic word for steadfastness, referring to a quiet refusal to disappear. She should know she has spent thousands of words asking us to do just that.
The Jews of Baghdad had a word for it too. In their Judeo-Arabic, ážÌŁall meant to stay, and when put in front of another verb, it meant to keep doing something. Staying and persisting were the same word. They were there for 2,500 years, and spoke Arabic for the last 1,300 of them. They were in Baghdad before the language was.
Pakistan has accelerated its drive to expel Afghans who are undocumented or had temporary permission to stay.
Pakistani authorities have sharply escalated abusive raids, arbitrary detentions, and forced returns of Afghan refugees following renewed bo
Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, delivers remarks while campaigning at the Hanson Place Seventh-Day Adventist C
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has drawn backlash for attending the cityâs annual parade celebrating Pakistan â after refusing to attend a parade commemorating Israel over alleged human rights concerns.
âYesterday, I gathered with residents at the Allama Iqbal Community Centerâs Mela to commemorate Pakistanâs Independence Day and honor the contributions Pakistani New Yorkers have made to our city,â Mamdani posted on X/Twitter on Monday.
âToday and everyday, we celebrate this community whose open arms, determination, and dreams for a better life have helped shape the city they call home,â he added.
Pakistan Day Parade in New York City typically takes place in Manhattan in late August to commemorate Pakistanâs Independence Day. The parade featured live music, speakers, community leaders, and cultural programming.
Mamdaniâs presence at the parade raised eyebrows among observers due to his refusal to attend the cityâs annual Israel Day Parade in late May, pointing to what he repeatedly described as Israeli human rights abuses.
âI said on the campaign trail that I wouldnât be attending the parade, and Iâve made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,â Mamdani said in May.
The mayor has repeatedly accused Israel of committing âgenocideâ against civilians in Gaza and erecting an âapartheidâ regime in the West Bank. He also stated in a CNN interview last month that he wonât express support for Israel because he canât âsupport any state that privileges one religion over another, whether it is Israel, Saudi Arabia, or anywhere else.â
Israel does not have an official state religion, and non-Jewish Israelis enjoy the same equal rights throughout the country as Jews. In contrast, Islam is the official state religion in Saudi Arabia, and non-Muslims face certain legal and religious restrictions.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, State Attorney General Letitia James, and former City Mayors Eric Adams and Michael Bloomberg all attended the parade.
Critics of Mamdani questioned why the mayor attended the Pakistan Day Parade, given the countryâs human rights record.
Religious minorities such as Christians, Shiâa Muslims, Hindus, and Ahmadis are often the subject of persecution within Pakistan.
Pakistan, officially an Islamic state, imposes strict blasphemy laws, which criminalize any commentary about the Prophet Muhammad contrary to the Quran, effectively restricting public expressions of non-Muslim faith. Pakistanâs constitution discriminates against the Ahmadi minority specifically, banning the group from self-identifying as Muslims, preaching their faith, or inviting others to join their faith.
Under the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan initiated in 2023, Pakistan has expelled a reported 2.68 million Afghans from the country, alleging that the minority group represents a security threat. Human rights organizations have called on Pakistan to cease the forced deportation of Afghans.
Pakistan is also accused of maintaining strict restrictions on speech and media, having allegedly arrested journalists and targeting media organizations critical of the government. This year, the government implemented a new policy restricting foreign journalists from reporting outside of Islamabad without securing government approval.
Mamdaniâs decision to participate in festivities commemorating a country embroiled in a variety of human rights scandals raises further scrutiny as to whether the mayor imposes a double standard on Jewish people. The mayor has been accused by several local Jewish leaders of fomenting antisemitism through his incessant anti-Israel rhetoric.
Anti-Jewish hate crimes continued to dominate New York Cityâs bias-crime landscape in the first half of 2026. The police recorded 178 confirmed anti-Jewish hate crimes â 55.3% of all confirmed hate crimes citywide â even though Jews comprise only about 10% of New York Cityâs population. By comparison, police confirmed 21 anti-Muslim hate crimes and 33 targeting sexual orientation, meaning anti-Jewish incidents outnumbered anti-Muslim incidents by more than 8 to 1.
Iâm going to say that I couldnât care less that he refused to attend the Israel parade. I do care that his standards and his criticisms are discriminatory and hypocritical and inconsistent.
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