Funny how in Europe Jews werenât recognized as European and always told to go back to where we came from yet when we do thatâs suddenly when we are âacceptedâ as European. Funny huh. Seems like there might be something deeper at work here. What could it possibly be? Oh I donât know maybe antisemitism?!?? To antisemites we will always be the face of what they think is evil and now that has taken the form of white European settler colonialism so that is what they paint us as. Weâve been crying out about this form of antisemitism on the left for years and now see where itâs taken us. There is an utter disregard for Jewish lives.
Probably not completely related, but this reminds me of something I read recently (post on the book coming when I finish it).
Basically the book said two things that weren't presented as being connected but actually make a lot of horrible sense together.
During the inquisition, Jews who converted to Christianity were not called Christians. They were called converts.
And nowadays, the book said, instead of trying to force us to convert to Christianity, they want us to convert to anti-Zionism.
But even an anti-Zionist Jew is never quite the same as a goyishe anti-Zionist. They're put on this pedestal, truly more like a gallows, and tokenized. Praised for being the "good Jews" and yet knowing that a toe out of line, anything that can be construed as even close to support of Israel, and they will no longer be accepted.
Just as the Europeans never saw us as European, just as even those who converted for safety where never anything more than converts, anti-Zionists can never truly distance themselves from Judaism in the eyes of today's antisemites enough to be "proper" anti-Zionists and freedom fighters.
We've repeatedly been forced to denounce our roots without being given any other group to turn to.
We will always be the "other" that is forced into boxes that make hating us more politically correct, even when those boxes do not fit.
"There's an underlying rage that comes out sometimes. And it's 'What are you getting all mad about? Nobody did anything to you.' But they wiped out my family. I would have liked to have known some of these people."
-Billy Joel, talking about his family history with the Holocaust.
This is huda. The creater and owner of Huda beauty (a billion dollar company). Making a tiktok to talk about how âall this evidence is coming out about israel being behind EVERYTHING- like WW1 and WW2â.
World War One. Israel being behind World War One. Israel didnât fucking exist.
Donât ever fucking tell me these people donât use Israel, Zionist, and Jew interchangeably.
Good Thursday morning. In todayâs edition of Your Daily Phil, we dive into new survey results from Boundless Israel on Americansâ views rega
Just a reminder that Hamas is starving and torturing David as we speak and every day he is held in captivity is in fact a war crime.
I will never fully respect the word of activists who have diminished this with their cowardly silence for almost two years now, just like I donât fully respect anyone who diminishes starvation in Gaza.
No one should be starving. No one.
David and Ariel Cunio are still there. Davidâs twin daughters - also taken hostage, with their mother, and briefly but terrifyingly separated from one another while being held captive in Nasser Hospital - have not seen their father since the day of the massacre.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian and Israeli children were displaced in Gaza, and in the south and north of Israel, areas under rocket attac
they just turned five years old.
* * *
Former hostage Sharon Aloni Cunio, whose husband, David Cunio, is still held in Hamas captivity, shares a photo of the coupleâs twin daughters, Emma and Yuli, marking their fifth birthday â their second birthday without their father.
The twin girls were taken captive with their parents from their Kibbutz Nir Oz home on October 7, 2023, and freed along with their mother in November 2023. David remains captive in Gaza.
Aloni Cunio shares a photo of her daughters taken by photographer Ziv Koren with Hanoch Daum, an Israeli comic who shares images and stories of survivors and victims of October 7, as well as stories of reservists and their families.
âHi Hanoch, my name is Sharon Cunio, the mother of Emma and Yuli, who at their young age hold the grim title of being captivity survivors, and the wife of David, who has been wasting away for 636 nights and days in the tunnels of Gaza,â writes Cunio.
âEmma and Yuli celebrated their 5th birthday yesterday without their father â for the second year in a row. The last time David saw them, they were 3 years old! They are no longer the same little girls he once saw.â
âThrough you, I want to appeal to every citizen of Israel: Please share the photo of Yuli and Emma and join us in demanding the return of their father, David, home â along with his brother Ariel and all the hostages. They need him, I need him â we cannot heal without him.
someone else wrote âHamas did NOTHING wrongâ and I hit block before I screencapped that one. (as ever, not defense of Bibi or the war, but to show the dismissal and dehumanization of the hostages.)
this is exactly what leads to and emboldens people like the ones in the podcast saying Hitler was right and trying to âsave the worldâ and should have succeeded in killing more (ie: all) of the Jewish people.
this was one of the participants in that repugnant discussion btw (opâs aunt was murdered in the Holocaust, she was a child):
âI was speaking for the Jewish government who allowed their people to die at the hands of the Germansâ if i say this level of ignorance is deadly.
Here, the only hostage with dual British citizenship bravely takes the Daily Mail back to her harrowing time in Gaza in a world exclusive ne
For almost four months of her 471 days in captivity, Emily Damari was incarcerated in the Hamas terror tunnels under Gaza, where the stench of human waste permeated the fetid wet air and the floor crawled with cockroaches.
Throughout it all she was in constant, searing pain after gunmen shot off two of her fingers the day she was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, while the remains of another bullet was lodged in her right leg.
But there was something even worse than the hunger, the stench, the pain and the lice that infested their clothes and hair: the cages.
Describing for the first time the inhumane practice in which they were treated like animals, Emily says: 'Sometimes there would be up to six of us at a time, squeezed in a tiny cage just two metres by two metres.'
The 29-year-old was finally freed alongside 32 fellow hostages in a ceasefire deal in January and propelled to international fame after an image of her posing defiantly with her wounded hand went viral â a symbol of freedom and courage.
Ever since she has tried to rebuild her life as she undergoes multiple complex surgeries on her fingers and to remove the bullet from her leg.
But today, the only Israeli hostage with dual British citizenship bravely takes the Daily Mail back to her harrowing time in Gaza in a world exclusive newspaper interview from her new home near Tel Aviv, Israel.
The last place Emily wants to return to is the tunnels. But she reveals the full horrors of what she suffered there for one reason: while she got out, there are others who still remain.
These include her best friends, twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman, 27, with whom she was snatched from their kibbutz, before being separated in the early days of captivity.
'They are probably in a cage,' Emily tells me. 'They are abusing them. There isn't a lot of water. It is probably unimaginably hot for them.'
Visibly angry, she adds: 'Come on already! What is taking so long?'
Some 50 hostages remain, of whom 20 are confirmed to be alive, including the twins, and Donald Trump, who helped secure Emily's release in January, said this week he should secure the release of ten more 'very shortly'.
But tonight Mr Trump has said Hamas don't want a deal and it appeared the latest Gaza ceasefire talks are on the verge of breaking down, with Washington accusing Hamas of not 'acting in good faith'.
Emily is urging the US President and her own Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu 'to do everything in your power to bring my Gali and Zivi home'.
She says: 'You saved my life, now you must do the same for the last 50 hostages. Only then can we start to heal.'
That Emily survived at all is in large part to her astonishing strength of character that meant she refused to be cowed in the face of the worst of humanity.
Today she reveals she grabbed the barrel of a Hamas terrorist's gun and pointed it at her own face, begging him to kill her rather than be taken hostage.
And how, on another occasion, she persuaded a guard to give her his weapon and debated killing her captors â knowing she too would be killed.
She also talks about having to hide the fact she is gay from her captors who said they would kill their own family members if they found out they were homosexual.
Emily credits her mother's British stoicism, manners, and sense of humour with making her 'resilient'.
Her Surrey born mother, Mandy, 64, was in southern Israel on a gap year in her 20s, when she met and fell in love with charismatic Yemeni-Israeli Avihay, now 66, from whom Emily says she has inherited her energy.
Emily enjoyed a '95 per cent perfect' childhood at the Kfar Aza kibbutz, though endured '5 per cent hell' from rockets and threats from neighbouring Gaza. Mandy taught at the nursery and Avihay coached football, with her three older siblings Sean, 32, Tom, 35, and Ben, 38. Proud of her Anglo roots, and football mad, she supports both Maccabi Tel Aviv and Tottenham Hotspur.
Then there were her 'other' brothers â Gali and Ziv. Life on the kibbutz meant they were rarely apart from the very first day they met at kindergarten.
'It was always us together,' she said. 'I love them both, and I miss them.'
Indeed, on October 6, 2023, Emily threw one of the barbecues she loved to host for her friends, attended by the twins. Just hours later, at 6.30am, the rockets started and it soon became apparent terrorists were inside the kibbutz.
Emily, at home alone, was terrified.
'I sent Gali a message: 'I'm not ok.' I couldn't move because my body was just ice. I was shaking â it was insane.'
Such is their friendship Gali risked his life to sprint to be with her.
Three hours later they heard Arabic voices approaching.
Then, a window smashed. Within seconds about ten terrorists stormed into her room, where Emily and Gali were lying arm-in-arm face down on the bed praying, with Choocha her cockapoo between them.
'I hugged Gali and both of our faces were on the pillow,' Emily said. 'Then they shot my left hand.'
Seconds later they shot Choocha dead, the same bullet smacking into the back of her right leg.
The terrorists dragged them outside and made them sit on a sofa while they tried to find her car to take them into Gaza.
'I just sat there and I said, 'Oh my God, what are they doing to us?'
She saw Ziv marched out of his apartment blindfolded; her peaceful kibbutz had 'become hell'. 'There was fire all around, doors open, everyone dead,' she said.
'We saw RPGs. We saw submachine guns. They were so happy in what they were doing.'
One of the terrorists turned to Emily, who was bleeding heavily and in shock, and said he was going to take her to hospital.
'I understood this was not going to be an Israeli hospital so I told them, 'No, no, no, shoot me!' I didn't want to be kidnapped, I would prefer to die. I took his gun, put it to my head and said: 'Shoot me! Shoot me!'
'Then someone put his gun on Gali's head, so I immediately said, 'No, no, don't kill him.'
On arrival in Gaza, Gali was separated from them. She has not seen him since.
While Emily and Ziv were kept together, within minutes Emily was driven to Al-Shifa Hospital after the terrorists informed her she was worth more to them alive than dead.
She was in a hospital room surrounded by 15 fanatics armed with Kalashnikovs when a tall bespectacled doctor entered and, with a smirk, addressed Emily: 'Hi, I'm Dr Hamas.'
Dr Hamas amputated her damaged fingers under general anaesthetic then stitched the nerves in her hand together. Whether he did so intentionally, or through incompetence, she will never know. But it left her in excruciating pain.
Returned to Ziv and other hostages in the house of a Hamas member, his wife and their six children â including a 14-year-old who carried a gun â the weeks that followed were hellish. Emily says she only had the clothes she'd been kidnapped in and was allowed to shower just once, leaving her caked in grime.
Their stay in this house was terminated when it was hit by a bomb and flattened â 'I thought I was in heaven. I saw one big fireball, and then I didn't see anything any more. Everywhere was dust.'
But at least she and Ziv were still together. Then, after 40 days in captivity, a commander told her she was going home, but that the boys and girls were being separated.
It was the last time she saw Ziv: 'I gave him a hug and said, 'Zivi, keep safe', and then they took him.'
Ordered to cover her clothes with traditional dress while she was moved, she heard the sounds of Israeli planes and drones above and it quickly became clear the war was not over â she was being driven to a tunnel entrance, not being released.
Of the network built by Hamas that stretches for hundreds of miles she recalls her first impression: 'It is like a city. I walked in and said: 'Oh my God, it's huge!''
Herded down the narrow passages, she had to feel her way in the half-light of her guards' headtorches, until they came to a clearing.
There, illuminated by the dim glow of battery-powered lanterns, she saw something utterly chilling.
'There was one cage, a very small cage,' she recalls, 'and there were five girls sat in the cage.'
Then, as she approached the bars, a familiar voice shouted: 'Two fingers?' Among the group, which included an eight-year-old, was 24-year-old Romi Gonen, shot in the right arm as she was kidnapped from the Nova festival on October 7 and whom Emily had met briefly while they were both being treated in hospital.
Emily's time underground has blurred into one single nightmarish memory, punctuated by periods incarerated in cages, but she says: 'It was stinky, hot, humid, damp. You don't get used to it.'
The details are haunting. She recalls the floor of the cages was sandy, wet and crawling with cockroaches. Everything, in fact, was wet from the humidity underground.
'They let you go to the bathroom once or twice a day â you have a hole in the ground. It stinks.
'There is no running water, just a gallon jug with water in it.'
At times, there would be six of them crammed into a cage, making it impossible to lie down, and they could barely see.
'The battery lamps give you light, but it's a very low light,' Emily recalls. 'It makes your eyes water.'
All the time, they were under the gaze of at least three armed terrorists.
Worse than the guards, though, was the silence. 'It makes you deaf, Emily says. 'It murders the ears⊠You go crazy in it.'
Initially, Emily was among a group of 11 women and girls and a week later the first November ceasefire was agreed. Six of the group were freed.
Unfortunately, the ceasefire ended before any more could be released.
Asked how she got through, Emily said they had no choice but to accept it: 'We just continued to survive.
'We were totally surrounded by terrorists. Five girls. They have weapons. They are stronger than you. They can do whatever they like, whenever they like.'
For Emily there was the fear that her sexuality would be uncovered: 'I hid that about myself because I knew it was worse than them knowing I was Jewish or Israeli â they would kill me.'
She had to fend off advances from guards, enquiring why she wasn't married.
'I told them I have three brothers, they don't allow me to go out on dates with guys â I need to wait for the one,' she joked.
But she was under no false impressions over what would happen if they discovered she was gay.
On one occasion she asked a guard what he would do if he discovered his brother who he loved was gay.
'He said, 'Well, I would kill him.' I said, 'Ok, but it's your brother?' He said, 'No, he's sick.'
After around three months without seeing daylight, their routine changed and they were switched between the tunnels and houses, staying in almost 30 different locations and moving without warning lest the IDF discover their position.
Car dash cams were used as improvised security cameras to monitor them, and later the terrorists lined the homes with explosives that could be activated in case a hostage rescue was attempted.
Emily stayed with dozens of different male, female and child hostages, but the one constant for nearly all her time in captivity was Romi.
She has spoken powerfully of the 'twin-like' bond they formed, as Emily's left fingers had been shot while Romi's right arm did not work.
They used their working limbs in synchronicity to wash their clothes, eat, and dress one another. Both woman had to tend to their agonising wounds which festered in the tunnels.
Emily tried to stay sane with a routine she started in the first days with Ziv.
'I would do sit ups every morning,' she said. 'The most sit ups I did was 600. But most days it was 400, 450.'
It caught the attention of her guards, who nicknamed her John Cena, after the Hollywood actor and wrestler, for her physique.
'The terrorists would call me Sajaya, it means you are very confident, very strong,' she recalls. 'I did everything just to survive. If they sat with me now and I could kill them â of course, I would be happy to do it.'
Emily even once managed to convince a tunnel guard to give her his gun 'to play with'.
'Then he walked away,' she said. 'I said to the girls, maybe I should kill him? I started getting really excited about the idea.
'But then the girls said, 'yeah, but then what? Then we're all going to die.' '
While she didn't care about her own safety, she backed down.
But while Emily outwardly appeared strong, inside she was in turmoil, not only over the fate of the twins but her mother, brothers, and father who had been diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer's 12 years ago. She feared they had been killed on October 7.
'I didn't want to talk about my family because it would break me,' she says. 'But you start thinking about all the people, especially at night when you are trying to fall asleep.'
At night, though, she often had agonisingly vivid dreams of returning home. 'Then I woke up, and I was still in Gaza,' she said. 'It was s**t. But what can you do?'
When they were being held above ground, she occasionally caught glimpses of television and often saw images of Romi's family protesting â but never any of her own.
Then, one morning, Romi said there was a woman holding a picture of Emily in the Israeli parliament on television.
'I didn't recognise her for a second and then I was likeâŠ. Mum!' Emily said. 'Then I started to cry. I was shaking. It was the opposite of an anxiety attack. It was this relief, my mother is alive. Everyone was crying. '
But with no sign of any chance of release it was a rare high point.
In particular, there was one family in whose house they were billeted for a period who pushed Emily to the brink of suicide.
'They were the worst people,' she said. 'The worst family. They would make fun of us and laugh at us. They would tell us: 'Nobody cares about you.' They would hide food from us and tell us we were never leaving Gaza.'
When, after 13 months in captivity, she was returned to them, Emily could take no more.
'I said I'm not staying here. Either I'm going to escape, or I'm going to kill myself.' She and Romi made a suicide pact.
Typically strong-willed, Emily grabbed the least cruel guard and demanded he bring his commander, telling him: 'If you don't do something and get us out of here, you are going to have two dead hostages.' The commander assured her she would be moved but two months passed and nothing happened.
But at the beginning of January this year Emily had a premonition they would be released.
She remembers adamantly saying to her fellow hostages: 'I'm telling you. We are going to get out.' She even shaved her legs and made Romi do her eyebrows in preparation.
On January 19, Emily was proved right. She was not quite done with bossing her guards around, however. When they handed her a red top to wear for the release ceremony, Emily refused to wear the colour of her Israeli football team's rivals.
'Tell your commander, Emily Damari doesn't wear red,' she insisted. They agreed to give her a green top instead.
Images from the handovers shocked the world, with released hostages stumbling out in the sunlight surrounded by a baying mob of Hamas supporters.
Pictures of Emily staring into the faces of Hamas and smiling in defiance as she was released were a defining image of the day.
She was handed over to the IDF in Israel who confirmed all three of her brothers and her parents were alive, and tried to get her to talk to psychologists and therapists on standby.
'I said, 'fine, fine, but where's my mum?' Emily recalls. 'They said this is your room, and I said 'great, whatever, where is my mum?'
'And then she came! I said: 'Mum, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' '
Incredible footage shows the moment they embraced.
That hug, she says, was: 'Perfect.' Pausing, she adds: 'My greatest hope is that Gali and Ziv will have that experience too'
itâs truly insane to me how the hostagesâ accounts of the horrors and agony they endured in captivity never get much traction and are absolutely never read outside of Jewish/allied circles, it makes me actively feel like Iâm losing my mind and screaming into an empty void, but today I am thinking very painfully about the abandonment of someone like Emily, who, were she not Jewish and Israeli, would have her story shared everywhere.
I donât mean this in a cynical way, the reality of what happened to her is painful, but her story is perfectly made to appeal to social media. from her lifelong friendship with Gali and Ziv, to the miraculous bond she forged with Romi, from the death of her beloved Choocha to the injuries she sustained and fought her way through - and because of her identity and remarkably courageous, forthright personality.
the feminists and the LGBTQ+ activists of the world are silent, as they have been this entire time. Emily is nothing to them. a gay woman captured and tortured by terrorists for 471 days, and she does not exist for them.
her perseverance and strength should be uplifted by people who claim to represent those movements and hold those ideals, and yet they either ignore her or would prefer she was dead.
itâs just really striking how hollow and meaningless every âsocial justiceâ movement of the world seems now.
like all of the hostages and the victims of 10/7, she doesnât count.
Every time I see one of these "antizionist Jewish texts" that have been twisted around for ideological reasons, the memory of my first "Islam Bashing" reviewer comes bubbling up. And the reason for that is because of the following mental association:
He defined "Tahrif" (i.e. Islamic supercessionism) as being not antisemitic (because clearly non-Jews gets to decide that, not Jews) because, to quote, "The concept of tahrif is that people, any people, are liable to change their scripture over time to fit their own ends, if there are not safeguards in place against that."
The fact that the Jewish religion and culture have extremely effective safeguards is just ignored.
So there's a deep and abiding irony in seeing that, on some level, he was right, that yes, there are people within Judaism who will try to change our scripture to fit their own ends...
But the irony comes from the fact that their ends are fundamentally in service to Islamist Supremacist outlooks, same as his.
"It's not antisemitic to accuse Jews of distorting their texts and that we have the one true interpretation!"
*group of self-hating Jews shows up with distorted versions of their texts twisted specifically to support his ideological stream*
Her mother is not Jewish and her fatherâs father was Jewish (unclear about her fatherâs mother). She grew up with no connection to the Jewish community. Her father never practiced any Jewish rituals with her, but was a âvocal proponent for Palestinian human rights.â
Sheâs literally just not Jewish according to Reform, Conservative, or Orthdox Standards.
Itâs hard for Rabbi May Ye to say how her identity as a Chinese American weaves into her practice of Judaism and her Jewish identity.
I would go so far to say she is not actually a rabbi. Because she did not receive Semicha which every branch of Judaism had for their Rabbis.
And someone who is not Jewish by the standard of pretty much every branch of Judaism is not going to be going through any of those branches process of Semicha.
I know that we often compare JVP to Autism Speaks and that is good comparison.
But I want to make another one.
JVP is as Jewish as Messianics are.
Which is to say not at all.
And just like Messianics there may be people involved who are ethnically Jewish, but overall most are not. Both groups re-write and reinterpret both the Tanach and Judaism as they see fit. They speak over Jews all the time. Appropriate Jewish terms and culture and traditions without understanding or care for the meaning behind them.
And both groups are actively participating in a cultural genocide because that is what they are doing. They do not want to actual Jews to exist nor our way of life.
They want their version to be the only one that exists that is why they proselytize to us so much and when we refuse to convert we are met with harassment and degradation.
JVP do not want Jews nor Judaism nor Jewish culture to exist. They are doing their very best to make sure that only version is their version even though they have nothing to with actual Jews, Judaism, or Jewish culture.
like shouldnât it be a sign to any Jews in JVP that this whole worldview theyâve made their entire horizonâmaybe, just maybeâmight be a little antithetical to Judaism & perhaps even extremely heretical if they need to manufacture a new altered version of the Torah to fit it?
Yes. I would like to emphasize that she is not Jewish by the RRCâs publicly listed standards. Iâm not out here imposing non-Reconstructionist standards on Reconstructionist Jews or anything.
Anyway, the RRC is in crisis, and itâs a big point of conflict within the Reconstructionist community. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association officially doesnât seem particularly eager to do anything about the JVP members teaching future rabbis, or the pervasive anti-Israel culture reported by students (except brush off the issue and blame the people who bring it up for being trouble makers).
Just this week the largest Reconstructionist congregation announced its intent to officially split from the Reconstructionist movement over whatâs happening at the RRC.
A letter to congregants by California's Kehillat Israel cites concerns over ordination of anti-Zionist clergy and 'hostile' atmosphere towar
I feel like this should have a trigger warning, but I canât articulate what for, I have no words.
Lucy is a Holocaust survivor, Iâve shared posts from her and her story before. it is so painful knowing she and other survivors have to witness this.
reading the hatred and the Holocaust denial online in comments and tweets is one thing, but I canât describe the visceral reaction I had seeing and hearing this coming directly from peopleâs mouths. beyond being physically nauseating, a cold ache of fear and despair crept in. it is unfathomable that people say and think whatâs on display here.
the huge grin the host has as his guest says that very obviously the Jewish people did something that caused Hitler to validly want to kill them all, and the further glee exhibited the deeper it goes, when the truth comes out - that they think he was right, and the world still has an imperative to kill us all because itâs the Jewsâ fault that âthe world is collapsing.â
âIâm telling you - how do we take them down? gotta kill the motherf*ckers.â
â(Hitler) did what he had to do. he was trying to save the world.â
this isnât Holocaust denial, by the way, even with the blame theyâre putting on its six million Jewish victims. they are very clearly acknowledging that it happened - and that it wasnât enough, and they want it to happen again.
Iâve never heard of them before (and wish I hadnât today), itâs staggering that stuff like this can gain traction and popularity. awful, but thank you for the context :(((
most people seeing this are reacting in appalled horror, though, as far as I can tell (I only have the energy to scroll so far before I start to lose it).
Creating identifiable villains like Exxon Mobil should help in the battle of public opinion, but it could also lead to further polarization.
The first article is about the April 15 hearing, where ceo's did testify they believed cigarettes were not addictive.
The second article has the image, with the caption that this is the moment the ceo's were sworn in for a House Energy subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in April 1994
While this is not the exact moment the claim was made it was made under oath and it was at this hearing.
letâs put our thinking caps on. which is more likely?
a) when the Nazis claimed there was a Jewish Zionist plot to genocide & control goyim as a pretext to genocide Jews, it was a lie, but âïž it became true later, and the sharp rise in violent hate crimes against Jews at the same time this narrative is mainstreamed again is entirely coincidental and/or Jews are making it up
or
b) you live in a society that has been steeping in a hundred years of propaganda accusing Zionist Jews of plotting to genocide goyim, which makes you and the people youâre getting your information from susceptible to believing it, and we are seeing a rise in violent hate crimes against Jews because the narrative that exists as a pretext for violence against Jews is doing its job.
a) the global Palestinian population increased from <600K in 1925 to >13 million in 2025 in the middle of a hundred-year-long genocide, committed by a much more powerful military force & backed by the wealthiest, most powerful Colonial nations on earth
b) in the 1920s-2010s, Zionists/Israel werenât genociding Palestinians yetâdespite anti-Zionists claiming the entire time that they were/were about toâbut then just suddenly got around to it in 2023, after a hundred years of procrastinating
c) the people accusing Zionist Jews of committing genocide were crying wolf in the 1920s and theyâre crying wolf now
Shapiro is one of the most prominent Jewish politicians in the United States.
One of the most prominent Jewish politicians in the United States said Zohran Mamdani, New Yorkâs Democratic mayoral nominee, should curb âblatantly antisemiticâ language among his supporters.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is among the establishment Democrats who have hesitated to embrace Mamdani, a democratic socialist and vocal critic of Israel. Mamdani also has yet to win the endorsements of Jewish Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, though both congratulated him on his primary win.
In an interview with Jewish Insider, Shapiro said Mamdaniâs campaign âleft open far too much space for extremists to either use his words or for him to not condemn the words of extremists that said some blatantly antisemitic things.â
Mamdani faced backlash during the primary for refusing to condemn the phrase âglobalize the intifada,â though he has since said he will âdiscourageâ it.
Almost every conversation with a leftist anti-Zionist:
Them: Israel is literally the same as Nazi Germany.
Me: I don't think that makes any sense, the Nazis carried out the industrial slaughter of 6 million completely helpless people who had never attacked them, whereas-
Them: OMG, the Holocaust was a 80 years ago, stop trying to use it to justify anything, Israel is a uniquely evil state.
Me: Are you familiar with some of the things other countries are doing? Israel has problems but I don't think you can say it's uniquely evil in a world where Russia is-
Them: Enough with the whataboutism. The point is that Israel is destroying the Palestinian people in the name of settler-colonialism.
Me: In the name of settler-colonialism? Don't you think the 10/7 attacks had something to do with-
Them: History didn't start on October 7th!
Me: I 100% agree, it's a complicated conflict going back many generations. For instance, during the 1929 Hebron Massacre-
Them: Stop bringing up old stuff, it's irrelevant now. The point is that Israel needs to be dismantled immediately.
Me: I don't agree with that, what's going to happen to the millions of Jews who live there if their country is "dismantled?" The recent treatment of non-Arab or non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East is pretty bad, not to mention the treatment of Jewish minorities pretty much everywhere. I'm worried that-
Them: So that makes everything Israel is doing the to the Palestinians okay?
I understand (and feel and agree with the validity of) the anger within the Jewish community towards other Jews whoâve fallen for anti-Zionist rhetoric. Thereâs a valid feeling of betrayal that they sided with people who hate us when we needed them most. Itâs painful, even traumatizing.
I am not saying you personally need to welcome them back with open arms or forgive and forget. But there needs to be a path back from that ledge. If an anti-Zionist Jew takes a step back, reflects, and realizes, âoh shit, Iâm in a room full of antisemites,â there needs to be a way for them to return.
Theyâre not going to just disappear & cease to exist because theyâre dead to you. Theyâre going to go somewhere. And we cannot afford to make it harder for them to come back to us than to return to anti-Zionists who hate them and will use them to harm us.
Actively chasing them off and beating them over the head with shame may feel justified and cathartic, but it is counterproductive.
We are a tiny people, surrounded by people who hate us, and not a lot of people standing up to take our side.
Would that it were not the case, but we live in a world where antisemitism is the norm. Being able to resist internalizing that bigotryâeven as a Jewâis the exception, not the rule. We need to have room enough to not treat any Jews who cave into that as burned.
I get that itâs hard. Itâs painful. Itâs scary and messy. But we are all we have. We cannot afford to treat each other as disposable.
Deradicalization & deconstruction are processes that take time, patience, and compassion for people who sometimes say, believe, & do awful things.
If you arenât in the place to facilitate that process, and you canât meet Jews whoâve internalized antisemitic beliefs where they are, thereâs no shame in that. Just please donât get in the way of it.
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