finally just biting the bullet and making a side blog so i can talk about antisemitism and shit without being harassed on main!
about me:
name: צבי tzvi
gender: nonbinary man-adjacent, he/they or אתה/הוא
age: a whole entire adult
location: the united states
fully transparent frame of reference for my jewry: orthoprax to the extent that i can be; my congregation is egalitarian reform. patrilineal raised secularly, converted officially to affirm my affiliation.
zionism?: i strongly support a two-state solution with long-lasting, unconditional peace between palestinians and israelis. both groups should have the right of self-determination. i oppose hamas, i oppose likud. zionism itself is a deeply complicated topic, and it seems that virtually everyone defines it differently. i believe in jews having the right to live in our ancestral homeland. i believe that it would not be safe for jews to live in our ancestral homeland without a state supporting us, something that seems strongly supported by local history. i believe that palestinians should be supported and fairly treated by their government, and that hamas seems to be a huge barrier to that end. i believe there is a humanitarian crisis in the current israel/hamas war, and pray desperately for a lasting ceasefire and the release of all hostages, whatever their current condition may be.
antisemitism will not be tolerated here, nor will any other type of bigotry. my goal will always be to have peaceful dialogue with anyone who is open to talking with me. i am here to learn just as much as i am here to teach.
Transcription below. Two words are missing from the caption, which I've replaced in brackets for ease of reading. Please be warned for sexual violence, including but not limited to discussions of bestiality and sexual abuse against children.
TRANSCRIPTION:
An Instagram post by @honestreporting. It begins with a graphic of words against a solid background reading "Palestinians are being raped. We need to talk about it."
The caption reads as follows: "Palestinians in Gaza are beginning to speak out about [what] Hamas' exploitation of power really looks like, and the testimonies are horrifying.
According to the Daily Mail, Gazan women say Hamas members and Hamas-linked charities are sexually exploiting vulnerable women in exchange for food, money, and aid. Widows, divorced women, and displaced mothers are reportedly being targeted because they have no support and rely on aid to survive. One woman who threatened to expose a Hamas member said he told her: 'You cannot expose me. I am the government here.'
Now, Gazan children are coming forward too. The Daily Mail reported filmed testimony where boys as young as 9 and 10 described being abused by Hamas-linked clerics and then threatened into silence. Fathers who tried to expose the abuse say Hamas members threatened to frame them as Israeli collaborators.
And while Western activists who claim to care about Palestinians amplify fake dog rape claims against Israel, they have nothing to say when Palestinians are legitimately raped and exploited by Hamas.
If you only care about Palestinian suffering when you can blame Israel, you were never pro-Palestine. You were just anti-Jew."
Transcript ends.
Because the Daily Mail has a very....interesting relationship with the truth sometimes, I decided to do a little research of my own. Unfortunately, the Daily Mail article says it's an exclusive, and you can read it here:
The Daily Mail has obtained filmed testimony from Jusoor News in Gaza showing the children's disturbing allegations.
HOWEVER!! They named several of their sources, which is a good sign and lets us check credibility.
Most easily, we have Hamza Abu Howidy. He's a Palestinian refugee now living in Germany, having escaped the Hamas regime after being jailed and tortured for protesting Hamas in 2019. He now works with Realign for Palestine. His story is here:
I thought I'd left Gaza behind, yet all this time, Hamas was planning to expand its extremism and intimidation.
Howidy doesn't report on sexual violence against Gazans in any of his writing that I can find. That doesn't mean he didn't say this, but I can't back it up.
Their second named source is Jusoor News, a nonpartisan pan-Arab news network, which they say provided them with the video testimony they're reporting on. Unfortunately...
Jusoor News
Good luck figuring out how to translate this video-heavy site into English. It makes sense that it's in Arabic (we aren't their target audience, after all), but it does make it harder to verify Daily Mail's claim. If anyone reading this speaks Arabic and wants to watch some news coverage to see if they can find Jusoor's reporting on this, that'd be deeply helpful.
And that...is about it for named sources.
So let's turn to what else we can know.
First, I'm Jewish! A lot of Jewish newspapers show up pretty prominently when I search for news (thanks, algorithm, I guess). So let's see what the Jewish world says about Jusoor:
"Jusoor News" emerges as post-war “bête noire” for Islamic terror group still running half of Gaza.
Hey hey! JNS is....okay. Not my favorite source by far. But I like them here because take a look at all those explicitly named sources. We have multiple named members of Juhoor News' staff and this article isn't reliant on the Mail's article, but goes directly back to Juhoor's video and indicates we should be able to find it on Juhoor's website. (I am once again asking: if you speak Arabic, please help me with this fact check!) That's a more concrete source than "they sent us a video."
Next, let's see what else I found. I...honestly? Don't bother reading this article. It's the New York Post and like once a year they luck into a piece of actual half-decent journalism (this is not that piece), and the rest of the time it's the 21st-century equivalent of "woman has Elvis Presley's alien baby." No, what we want from this article are the screenshots.
Harrowing interviews from the Gaza Strip reveal the scope of the rampant sexual abuse by the Iran-backed terrorists as they target vulnerabl
These are not the same screenshots as the Mail article. That bolsters the JNS claim that the video is available on the Jusoor News website, since their logo is visible in these screenshots. I assure you the Post does not have the level of give-a-fuck necessary to add a logo to fake screenshots to add credibility, because they don't care about credibility. The laziness of this being a tabloid actually works in our favor here.
And finally, at long FUCKING last, I found this:
MSN
The link goes to an MSN news aggregator, but the article itself is from bne Intellinews, which has a rating of Least Biased and Mostly Factual, the latter designation because they occasionally post stories that don't have both sides of a narrative.
In other words: this is a trustworthy source.
And they confirm the reporting by Jusoor, and appear to have viewed the video themselves. Although one of the stories in the Post's article (yes, I read it, reading non-credible sources is a pretty important part of fact-checking) is mentioned in the coverage here, most of the stories Intellinews is highlighting are different from the other three English-language sources.
The English-language reporting appears to be mixed and questionable. But there are good indicators in the JNS article and supporting proof in the NYPost article (now there's a sentence I never thought I'd type) that the video of Gazan testimonies is a real primary source, and that we should be able to find it on Juhoor News if an Arabic speaker can review the videos. The Intellinews article further supports this claim.
I regret to say this story is very, very real, and indeed also lines up with previous stories we've heard out about Hamas and sexual violence.
Free Gaza from Hamas. May there be peace in our lifetimes.
If u had to pick 5 educational videos about Jews/zionism/israel/palestine that u really like /that helped u deradicalize what would u pick
I kind of made this very hard for myself, because I never actually saved the videos I watched back then that I found thought-provoking - but I looked around for a couple of videos that I remember being either thought-provoking or convincing. This isn't perfect list, it's made with hindsight, and more importantly, what I found convincing isn't going to convince everyone. (OBS! I'm not saying I endorse or agree with all things said in them, what I am saying is that they in retrospect where important to my deradicalization process)
1. Haviv Rettig Gur: The Great Misinterpretation - how Palestinians view Israel
The most memorable one, that was incredibly crucial for my deradicalization and which I find incredibly important and fully endorse, is this video by Haviv Rettig Gur about the Palestinian view of Israel
2. Dr Einat Wilf: Antizionism is Antisemitism
This speech by Dr. Einat Wilf is just... great, and I highly recommend it. So many of her videos resonated with me, and still do (especially the video of her talking about why she believes it was wrong for Sweden to recognize Palestine in 2014)
3. Anti-Zionist Jew Vs. Rudy Rochman
This campus debate between Rudy Rochman and an antizionist jew, among others, was pretty memorable
My sincere apologies for including a video featuring both Destiny and Finklestein, but this debate was pretty interesting and informative, mostly because of Benny Morris- it also finally made me loose all respect for Finklestein (finally)
5. Pro-Palestinians Can't Debunk this Israeli Video
This one I also remember (partly for the cringey title (imo)- I found it very hard to stomach, but true to the title, I couldn't really counter anything said in the video, and it helped me realise that I knew much less than I thought I did
I'll say again that it isn't like, a list of the "most convincing videos" or whatever, just a few that stuck with me. שבת שלום 🧡
+ Bonus judaism video!
Since my decision to convert to judaism preceeded my antizionist brain-cleansing, I wanted to throw in a little bonus video from a channel I watched and found very informative/thought-provoking in this regard, which is Rabbi Tovia Singer's channel - dedicated primarily to countering Christian missionaries in Israel. This video isn't particularly, specifically important, but the channel was, to me learning more about why Jews reject Christianity
(Please note, for any of my Christian followers: No disrespect intended 🧡)
Smth else I'm curious: do you think it would be necessary for Israel to give up making Jerusalem as its capital in a two state solution?
If it was necessary to give up Jerusalem to have peace, then I don't want peace.
That's my honest opinion. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and it will always be. It is the holiest place in all of judaism - much more so than for either islam and christianity. To claim that it is equally holy for all three religions is laughable and insulting.
I’ll add a corollary, which is: I believe that Israel should give away the same % of Jerusalem as it gets of Mecca.
Not because Mecca has Jewish significance, yes because there are Israeli Muslims and Baha’i for whom Mecca is sacred and who have difficulty visiting it because of hostility against anyone with an Israeli passport, but mostly because that’s fucking ridiculous, right? You intuitively get it.
It could well be the third holiest site to Israelis since they’re like 30% Muslim. But why should they get someone else’s first holiest site? 
And that’s before you factor in Arab destruction of Jewish holy sites, including but not limited to Jordan using ancient synagogues as livestock pens or garbage dumps where it did not entirely destroy them the last time any part Jerusalem was under Arab rule.
#not even get ownership of mecca atp let us INTO mecca#can you believe if israel stopped allowing muslims and christians to enter jerusalem?? can you imagine the outcry this would cause?#but silence when it comes to mecca apparently
We don't even have to imagine it! There WAS an outcry quite recently when Israeli police and the IDF wouldn't let Christians in Jerusalem celebrate Easter as they liked - even though they did that because they couldn't guarantee the physical safety of those Christians, because there's a war going on and the part of Jerusalem that has most of the Christian churches doesn't have bomb shelters!
wild how western leftists will revert to maga levels of racism about immigrants as soon as jews are involved. they understand that if someone says that an immigrant who wasn't born in the us but who became a us citizen "isn't a real american" than is super gross and racist. but they're perfectly ok saying that israelis who weren't born in israel but moved there don't belong there and aren't really israeli. yes they are. they are immigrants who moved there and are now israeli. or they'll say converts aren't "real" jews. yes they are. they joined the jewish people and are now part of the tribe. it's all the same concept. why is this hard?
I can't people say if they could they would go back in time and kill Hitler, yet are mourning a fucking dictator who stripped woman and girls of their rights, murdered, raped, imprisoned them and wanted them as slaves.
They would mourn Hitler too. I am going to say a harsh reality, but sometime violence is the answer and is the only ways to make it stop. If you continue abusing, bully, harassing, etc and not expect retaliation.
Israel is not committing a genocide, what Israel is doing is responding to being attacked constantly, it is a war. People die in war too. Just saying if a Canadian terrorist group invaded and kidnapped and murdered and raped and enslaved a bunch of American civilians, The US would have destroyed Canada already fully, they would have sent troops, guns, you name it.
I could fucking argue Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was committing an actually genocide on women and girls. And what the Taliban is doing to women and girl is a genocide, I don't see massive social media out pour for them, wanting to send them aid, wanting to get them out of there, wanting destroy the terrible evil men who are causing this. If there was a fucking outrage maybe the world powers would actually do something to help them.
Just because you think someone is similar to you, doesn't mean they have the same struggles as you, in fact they might actually be the oppressor, they might actually be similar to "the white bigoted Christians."
Stop applying Western ideas to none Western none Christian countries. Just because one group of people is a minority in US or Canada or The UK, doesn't mean it is true for other countries.
I recognized I am privileged as an American. If I lived in one of those countries that hated women and to that extreme, I might frankly have killed myself already. I am wowed by the strength of those women and girls that chose to continue living even in those horror movie levels of living.
As an American, there are a lot of things I do not like about this country but it doesn't mean everything single thing is horrible about it.
Inside Tel Aviv’s 'bomb-shelter raves,' where Israelis gather during missile alerts and dance to electronic music — a defiant act of surviva
In the sleek, detached comfort of a Brooklyn loft or a London flat, the idea of a “bomb-shelter rave” sounds like grotesque performance art — a desperate, neon-soaked cliché. In Tel Aviv, it is something else entirely.
This week, as I was visiting Israel for a conference and to meet my family and friends in Tel Aviv, I experienced it first-hand. In Israel, every building is required to have a reinforced bomb-shelter. Ours is a bare concrete bunker underground. That night, someone dragged in a speaker. Someone else switched on a small strobe light. Within minutes, what had been a tense room of strangers waiting for the authorities to tell us we are safe to go back home, turned into something else entirely. As Iranian ballistic missiles were intercepted in the sky above us, our shelter became something resembling a nightclub.
Similar gatherings happened throughout the city — some in below-ground parking lots, others in train stations. There was even a wedding. All had one thing in common: the instinctive, almost stubborn insistence on living.
You might be wondering: How can anyone dance while war— and the loss of so many lives— hangs overhead? But this isn’t bravado, and it isn’t a celebration. No one here calls it ‘partying.’ It’s something closer to release. A way through the fear rather than around it. We aren’t dancing because we’ve forgotten the conflict, we are dancing because it has stripped us of every other form of agency. When cornered, the human body refuses to stay passive. It moves. It resists. It asserts life in the face of a sky that tells you to cower.
In the mamad, the fortified safe room, which I’ve visited more than 40 times this week, the air is thick with recycled oxygen, and heavy with metallic adrenaline as 20 bodies are squeezed into a space meant for four. Normally, this is a sensory warning: “Prepare to die.” Then someone, a stranger in a dusty hoodie and worn sneakers, hits play on a JBL boom box.
The track is relentless, 128 beats per minute, a heartbeat that overrides the erratic thrum of our own pulses. In that moment, Purim — the Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient attempt by a Persian madman to annihilate the Jewish people — isn’t a holiday, it’s a call to action. When sirens scream “hide,” we rise. When the world demands smallness, we take up space. The bassline repairs the city’s psychic infrastructure, one four-on-the-floor bar at a time.
Israelis have always had a special relationship with dance music. Decades before this war, electronic beats were part of the country’s rhythm, from late night in Tel Aviv’s clubs to massive festivals that draw thousands of young people looking for a few hours of freedom under the open sky. I remember dancing in the desert when I was younger, arriving with my friends after midnight and leaving only once the sun came up over the Mediterranean — soaked and exhilarated — the city slowly waking around us.
On Oct. 7, 2023, that culture of joy was shattered when Hamas militants stormed the Nova music festival in the south of Israel, murdering hundreds who had gathered simply to dance. Since then the act of dancing has taken on a deeper meaning for Israelis. Nova survivors used the slogan “we will dance again” as a promise, to never give in to hate and darkness.
When I was dancing in that mamad, the fear which usually paralyzed me — the way my chest would tighten, teeth rattle, prayers repeat — evaporated. Inside the concrete cocoon, explosions become percussion, the track becomes therapy. Violence and music collide, destructive energy reframed into something creative, collective, and alive.
I found myself dancing to trance music I grew up with. Beside me was a young woman with dark, curly hair. Her family is from Iran, she can only speak to them over the phone once in a while, since the internet is often blacked out. They are safe but she worries for them. She spoke with terrifying, beautiful clarity about watching the regime’s power flicker, about relatives she hasn’t seen in years, and about her dream of dancing in Isfahan one day. She laughed softly at the irony: Here, in a Tel Aviv shelter, she was reclaiming the very freedom that had been denied her, and that upsets the Iranian regime to no end.
“They will dance again,” she said, voice cutting through the bass. The sentiment wasn’t one of surrender, but rather pure, unbridled hope. Her words hung in the recycled air, defying gravity and expectation alike. Around us, strangers joined hands, jumped, spun — tiny acts of courage multiplying, forming a tribe in concrete.
This is context at its most extreme. How can you explain a group of strangers spontaneously dancing in a bomb shelter? In terror, we can become victims. In a room where bass drowns blast, we are a tribe. We are not ignoring the missiles — we are refusing to let them set the tempo of our lives. Every movement is a claim: Life, freedom, joy, and defiance are not negotiable.
The track faded long after the all-clear. We emerged into the tense, quiet night of Tel Aviv. Smoke trails from the air defense lingered like ghostly brushstrokes, fading into clouds. Rhythm still pulsed in our bones. In a city under siege, the dance floor isn’t escape — it is survival. Every beat, every jump, every flash of light is a reminder that even under fire, we remain unbroken, moving, alive.
Oh wow, the country with the most technological advanced weapons can’t minimize civilians casualties? Wonder why that might be.
The organization with not even a proper military, no western backing or financial & military support, is the actual imperialist? Color me surprised, I didn’t know imperialists are suddenly this weak! Wonder what happened to those countries US, France, Britain, Spain just ran over and stayed there for a couple of years.
First of all, they DO minimize civilian casualties. They are well within the bounds of what is acceptable for urban warfare. They actually have one of the best combatant to innocent ratio of all time. War is just that bloody. Blame war. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but it’s true.
Let’s be clear: if Israel didn’t have its military, nuclear technology, and the iron dome, there would be a genocide, it would be a Jewish genocide. Read the Hamas charter. Read the mission statements of literally any terrorist group in the region. The only reason why they don’t go all the way is because they can’t.
The difference between Israel and Hamas is Israel would stop the moment the threat to their existence is gone. Hamas on the other hand, will not stop until every single living Jew is wiped off the face of the earth, even if they have to bring themselves down to do it. That doesn’t make everything Israel does okay, not in the slightest. It is still unequivocally the truth. Deny it all you want but that’s the situation.
Shaun King's got me up here defending Benjamin Netanyahu (ugh) but this argument is so actively stupid I have to refute it. Putting aside the Jewish self-conception of being a people whose origins are in the Levant (something that we not only believe, but which has been proven over and over again by genetic testing, archeology, and historical research):
1) Benjamin Netanyahu is not and has never been a citizen of Poland. He was born an Israeli citizen and has lived there for most of his life (aside from two extended stretches living in the US). As far as I can tell Benjamin Netanyahu has never stayed in Poland for any signficant amount of time
2) the Netanyahu family has not had the name "Mileikowsky" for an actual, literal century. Benjamin Netanyahu was born Benjamin Netanyahu
3) The Netanyahus changed their name around the same time they moved to Mandate Palestine, meaning there have been Netanyahus in what is now Israel for about a century.
At some point these people are either a) making an argument so bigoted that it makes "Kamala Harris is not a US citizen because her parents weren't US citizens when she was born in the US" look enlightened or b) making an argument so delusional that it makes the situation described in the Tumblr meme of "grandpa I have D-cups, the waitress thinks you have dementia" look rational.
Gonna add to this because I think it's important, and I hate defending the man as well, but while bibi might not be a practicing Jew, he raised his son to be one. Back when I could still walk to shul regularly on Shabbat, I went to shul with him. Heck bibi even came with him on Purim once. Frankly this would be like saying half the Christians in the us government aren't practicing Christians. It's a bullshit poit that was unnecessary.
Yeah like half the time when Israeli Jews are described as “non-practicing” or “ atheist”, they’re very much practicing Jews, just in a way non-Jews can’t recognize
“It is completely unacceptable,” said one Jewish resident of Andorra.
An annual festival in Andorra drew condemnation from the country’s small Jewish community after an effigy bearing the Israeli flag was staged in a mock trial and then hung and shot.
The incident was part of the traditional Catalan festival Carnestoltes, which occurs yearly before Lent, the 40-day period that precedes Easter. At Monday’s festival in Andorra, where a mock king is typically tried and burned, organizers instead used an effigy wearing blue with the Israeli flag painted on its face.
During the festivities, the Israeli effigy was symbolically tried, hung, shot and burned, according to social media posts and a report in the Israeli outlet YNet.
The incident drew outcry from the microstate’s tiny Jewish community, which only just got its first full-time rabbi, a Chabad emissary, in the last two years.
“This is a ritual they perform every year as part of carnival, where they mock many things,” Jewish Andorra resident Esther Pujol told YNet. “This time they dressed the effigy in the colors of the Israeli flag, with a Star of David on its face. They put it on trial, sentenced it to death and carried out the sentence by shooting and burning it. It is completely unacceptable.”
Pujol told the outlet that it was the first time she had seen the festival include anti-Israel or antisemitic elements, and that she had contacted Andorran lawmakers to express her outrage. The mayor of Encamp, the city where the incident took place, and local politicians took part in the ceremony, according to YNet.
The European Jewish Congress also decried the display in a post on X, writing that the mock-execution was a “deeply disturbing act that risks normalizing antisemitism and incitement.”
This incident requires unequivocal condemnation, full clarification of responsibilities and concrete measures to ensure that antisemitism is never tolerated in public celebrations or institutions in Andorra or anywhere in Europe,” the post continued.
Other Lent festivities have also been the site of antisemitism in recent years, with Belgian celebrations in 2019 featuring antisemitic caricatures and a Spanish parade in 2020 featuring a Holocaust-themed display.
The incident marks a rare instance of open turmoil for Jews in Andorra, which is nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. While France and Spain have seen widespread pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitic incidents in recent years, Andorra has largely avoided similar tensions.
In September, Andorra formally announced its recognition of Palestinian statehood alongside a host of other European nations during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
But local Jews have also sought to remain under the radar, considering that Andorra officially prohibits non-Catholic houses of worship. The Jewish community calls their gathering place a community center rather than a synagogue. In 2023, Andorra’s parliament elected a Jewish lawmaker for the first time.
* * *
A large blue-and-white effigy bearing a Star of David is hanged and set ablaze during carnival festivities in Encamp, Andorra, …
The former Chief Executive of Oxfam in the UK is taking legal action against the charity, accusing it of racism, sexism and antisemitism.
The former Chief Executive of Oxfam in the UK is taking legal action against the charity, accusing it of racism, sexism and antisemitism.
In an exclusive interview with this programme, Dr Halima Begum – who is Muslim – says she was forced to resign at the end of last year in a process she describes as a ‘witch hunt.’ She is now taking the charity to the Employment Tribunal.
She spoke to us about her battle with Oxfam, which risks plunging the charity into a renewed crisis.
* * *
The former head of Oxfam in the UK says she is taking legal action against the charity, accusing it of racism, sexism and antisemitism.
Halima Begum is asked by Channel 4 News about her claims to an employment tribunal of a “toxic antisemitic culture” at the charity.
“We have to show consistency with other crises that that are taking place in the world. and it always felt as though we were disproportionately working around the crisis in Gaza,” Begum says.
“But other examples include quite strong push back when we were not ready yet to use the word genocide. Because to use the word genocide, it has to be something that we arrive at with consultation and evidence and good legal advice. And to try and use that term before we’re ready as an organization feels quite risky to me,” she says.
“Essentially, it was very hard to hold on to neutrality and impartiality, and I say that as a Muslim woman,” she says.
In December, Begum was forced to step down. The BBC reported that Oxfam’s trustees said Begum’s position was “untenable” because of an “irretrievable breakdown in its trust and confidence” in her ability to do the job amid accusations of bullying.
In a statement to Channel 4 News, Oxfam GB says it refutes Begum’s allegations.
Oxfam works in over 70 countries, helping people in developing countries out of poverty and providing emergency aid during humanitarian crises.
Mark Goldring resigned as CEO of Oxfam GB in 2018 following revelations that the charity’s aid workers used sex workers while in Haiti following a 2010 earthquake. The British government halted funding for Oxfam in 2021 after it reported it had suspended staff members in the Democratic Republic of Congo over claims of sexual misconduct and bullying.
Former Oxfam UK CEO Halima Begum is taking the charity to an employment tribunal, alleging antisemitism, racism, and pressure to label the G
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