I do not do the "if you don't reblog this" blah blah blah because yuck and don't tell people what to do and don't guilt people.
This isn't about guilt. Nobody has to reblog this post. I'm not asking you to and don't expect you to.
But I'm going to use it to make a point.
It's been very telling, over the past two years, how many hundreds of thousands of reblogs pro-Palestinian posts get (including from me so don't start that shit), and how very very very very few reblogs "hey maybe let's not go down this road again with Jewish people who are doing nothing other than standing around being Jewish" posts get.
Like, it's an order of magnitude fewer and yeah, we notice when it's not you. We notice when you don't speak up for us too.
When we see you reblog a million posts about the horrors Israel is perpetuating against the Palestinian people, and zero posts about rising antisemitism and antisemitic violence -- we notice.
People we thought were our friends and allies - people we thought believed "Antisemitism is Bad and Shouldn't be Perpetuated" - they don't look so much like friends and allies anymore. They look like people it's no longer safe to associate with.
We're frightened. The numbers here are incredibly telling.
"Well, reblog numbers on Tumblr aren't directly correlated to political action so this is a stupid comparison to make."
100,000 reblogs of every permutation of "This is genocide! Free Palestine!" out there.
100 reblogs of "Jewish people are being violently attacked in broad daylight because they're... standing there being Jewish."
Imagine for a moment being Jewish. Try.
Over the past two years, your friends and acquaintances on Tumblr who used to celebrate your Jewishness with you -- wishing you a happy Rosh Hashanah, reblogging fun Hannukah posts -- have gone hard supporting Palestine. As they should! What's being done to the Palestinian people is criminal and horrific and Netanyahu should stand trial in the Hague for war crimes.
But none of those friends has reblogged anything about the violence being perpetrated against Jewish people. Ever. Anywhere. None of the post you blog or reblog about this is ever reblogged by anyone except for other Jewish people.
As the voices for Palestine have grown and grown, they've become nearly indiscernible from antisemitism - even if the posters/rebloggers themselves don't see it that way, because they don't feel the build-up of those posts on their shoulders and backs. The never-ending barrage of posts grows overwhelming and antisemitism continues to rise - and yet, no one you thought cared about you or your safety has a single post, a single reblog.
Where are the posts about what's happening to Jewish people because of the steep spike in worldwide antisemitism? Jews are posting them, reblogging them, trying to bring your attention to the violence being done to us. Nobody who isn't Jewish reposts. Nobody who isn't Jewish contributes.
The silence adds to the violence.
The silence feels like hatred.
Your silence feels like hatred.
