Landwalker

Ophir Sheriff | Creative Director, Concept Artist and Illustrator

[landwalker]

Wishful thinking

[landwalker]

Self contained

[landwalker]

Seer of Tears / Collapsing Pathways

Witness the horror and beauty of reality and the space between it emulsifying into a dream about a sunset at the end all things.

[gingerswagfreckles]

"Criticizing Israel isn't antisemitism" yeah but accusing Jews of making up hate crimes to derail the conversation around Gaza is. Claiming that the media is controlled by a secret group of all powerful Zionists is. Acting like the Holocaust is something Jews use to get out of trouble instead of an actual genocide that happened within living memory is. Telling us to go back to where we came from is.

"Criticizing Israel isn't antisemitism" yeah well a lot of you aren't being accused of antisemitism because you are criticizing Israel. You're being accused of antisemitism because you are being antisemitic and do nothing but evade and double down when it gets called out.

[daughterofstories]

You know, pointing out specific antisemitic tropes is important when speaking to someone acting in good faith. But someone who is determined to convince themselves that they are on the right side without having to actually do any critical thinking could just as easily treat is as a cheat code: If I avoid these phrases, I'm not being antisemitic, even if I still think and act exactly the same way.

So I'm going to make this very simple.

Criticizing Israel isn't antisemitism. Hating Israel is.

If you criticize Israel in ways that you don't criticize other countries who take similar (or worse) actions and have similar (or worse) histories, that's antisemitism. If you go beyond criticizing the establishment of the State to saying the State should stop existing, that's antisemitism.

(And don't give me any "but I think all states/all colonial states should stop existing" bullshit. Dreaming of an eventually utopia without nation-states is fine and all, but it's not a practical goal in anything but the extreme long term. If that's your only take on geopolitics, kindly keep your mouth shut while the serious people are talking.)

If you think any bad thing that happens or has happened to Israelis or their ancestors is irrelevant or deserved, that's antisemitism. If you hear about something bad happening to Israelis and immediately dismiss it as propaganda, that is antisemitism.

The Israeli government doesn't speak for all the world's Jews, and not all Jews are Israeli citizens, but half of the world's Jews live there, and Israel is the Jewish State. If you hate Israel, you hate the Jews.

And if you see yourself in any of this, and it doesn't cause you to do some serious soul searching, than you can fuck right off. There is a long, long history of people hating the Jews, and there is a long, long history of us still being here after they're gone.

[daughterofstories]

And, frankly, if you have not been to the Middle East and worked with the people there for an extended period of time, than I 100% guarantee you that there are Israeli Jews (and Israeli non-Jews, because believe it or not, they exist) who have worked harder, sacrificed more, and accomplished more to oppose the wrongdoings of the Israeli government, address flaws in Israel as a State, improve the lives of Palestinian people, and move towards peace in the Middle East than you have.

If that concept surprises you, than you have been making sweeping negative judgements about people you know nothing about based on the fact that they are Jewish or associated with something Jewish, and that is the definition of antisemitism.

[landwalker]

On a personal level, one of the harshest, most cruel things that came out of this horrible war was the realization that many people in this world will never accept my right to simply exist, and will find the most infuriatingly avoidant and pseudo-intellectual rhetorics to do dismiss my existence as a lesser, evil being.

What starts, in many cases, as virtue signaling, leads down a rabbit hole of flat-out antisemitic behavior that bears frightening resemblance to processes we've seen before - ones that lead to the murder of many of my ancestors. They're colored differently now, with academic talks about viewing the world through the colonialist lens and an attempted, hateful deconstruction of half-truths, but at the root of it all - it's the same. In the hearts of those who engineer and curate many of those so called "radical" thoughts, live the same little devils that still see the jews as the other, the greedy, power-hungry, cynical abuser of the world.

Being critical of Israel (and trust me, I am much more critical than most of you since I have way more on the line here) is not the same as hating a people. And if you have that burning hate for a people in your heart - have a talk with yourself, and ask yourself how did you turn into the devil you thought you were fighting.

[hazel2468]

Seems like a good time to remind people that the phrase "from the river to the sea" - while apparently popular on this hellsite, is basically a call for the total eradication of not just the Israeli state (and by that I don't mean the government, I mean EVERYTHING) but of every Jew in that area.

SO. If I see it on your blog? Bye. I do not trust you to have anything even remotely approaching a nuanced take to this fucking tragedy.

[spacelazarwolf]

leftists on tumblr have been so fucking bold the past few days like literally just blatantly calling for genocide:

like????? hello??????? half the world's population of jews lives in israel, whether you like it or not. calling for all israelis to "die brutally" is calling for jewish genocide. ironically, it would be about the same percentage of jews who were killed during the shoah. this isn't activism. this isn't helping palestinians. this is making things actively worse for them just so you can get your antisemitic reactionary rocks off.

[traycakes]

People will make posts saying "land back doesn't mean we will kill all the white people" when talking about the US then say genocide is necessary for Palestinians to return to their homes.

People will make posts calling out Israel's use of collective punishment then say all Israeli citizens should be punished for the sins of their government and far-right movement.

A lot of people have convinced themselves that everyone living in Israel is a rich (not true) Jew (not true) who moved there as an adult (modern Israel has existed for nearly a century lots of the people living there were born there) which means it's ok to wish them dead because they are oppressors actively stealing land.

The double standard is obvious.

[noparlpf]

Also, many of the people who did move there as adults were refugees from ethnic violence and expulsion from, not just the European diaspora, but also from all those Arab Muslim nations western leftist historical revisionists keep claiming would be happy to have peace with Israel if Israel would just stop defending itself from attacks funded by some of those nations.

[athingofvikings]

Just to give some hard numbers on @noparlpf's point. Oh, and just to really ram it home on the "they can go back where they came from!" line?

Yemen, to give one example, has passed laws making it legal to murder Jews.

Not only is the double standard obvious, but the intent is obvious, in that there are only two places where it is acceptable for Jews to exist.

Crushed under the boot as a subjugated minority, or in the grave as a moral lesson.

[landwalker]

Over the last few days I have seen some insane messages and callouts from people who knew me fairly well basically calling my existence a rot and saying me and my country should be wiped off the earth.

I am an Israeli. I was born here, and so were my friends, family and community. A lot of us have spent many years of our life advocating for peace and a two-state solution, that will end the occupation and cease the suffering of the Palestinian people. I believe that a peace agreement is the only sane argument in the face of the insanity we are facing and the complexity of the situation. And yet, so many people choose not to call for peace, but for the eradication of my country.

That phrase you're chanting? means my death. Those calls for "Intifada"? means my death as well. Both my uncle and grandfather were severely injured by terrorist bombings in the last intifada. Both never recovered. You're not calling for a solution - you're calling for more war and death. I want to attribute this to ignorance and not to antisemitism, but honestly, I don't even know anymore.

Do you want a good, positive and important message? call for peace, call for the return of hostages and peace talks, don't call for more death. Call for a viable future for all the people who live in this land.

[landwalker]

If I want to use your art as the basis for a tattoo would you be ok with that?

Of course, go ahead! Just make sure to send me a photo, I'd be very happy to see the result.

[landwalker]

The little demons of grief came to live with me, in the space between the shadows and the floor.

I can't hear what they're telling me, even though I try.

[landwalker]

Birth by Dream / Lamenting the Endless Spiral

[landwalker]

The Sleeping Throne

[landwalker]

Dreamweaving

[landwalker]

The Rooted Seer / Between Autumn and Spring

[landwalker]

I’m happy to share my thesis project here! 

The Nowhere is a comic story, created especially for mobile reading. It tells the story of a monk's past lives through bits of his memories stored in his belongings. Each memory tells a short story from his life, and each offers a unique reading capability enabled only in this format.

The comic is available for Android phones at the moment and will be accessible to iPhone users as well in a couple of weeks. Here’s a link to the Google Play download.

My Tumblr page hasn’t been updated in a while, sorry about that. I’m more active on my instagram nowadays.

[landwalker]

Isles of Repression / The Deep Sea

[landwalker]

New website!

I haven’t been posting here as much, but if you want to view some of my latest works you can head to my new web portfolio, at:

www.ophirsheriff.com

There’s plenty of stuff there I haven’t posted here (or anywhere else, really, some projects that were under wraps for a while due to various reasons). 

[landwalker]

Contamination / Ignition

[landwalker]

The Mask Trader from the Rusty Valleys

[landwalker]

Over the last three months our small team crafted this little mini-game called “Welcome to Stanistan” for the Israeli PrintScreen Festival. I was in charge of the art and the visual creation of Stanistan, the stan country you’ve never heard of because of it’s terrible PR.