Y’all. I’m just. So fucking tired of watching antisemitism get minimized and ignored because it’s coming from “the good guys” so no one cares. I’m tired of charges of antisemitism being used as political weapons by people who don’t give a shit about jewish lives or suffering. I just want the people who stand up for the human rights and safety of other marginalized people to do the same for us. To kick the nazis out of their spaces. To listen to us when we talk abt dogwhistles. To just. Just show any shred of decency that they care about us and are willing to stand up and call out antisemitism, even when it’s inconvenient. I’m just. So. Fucking. Tired.
Goyim who want to be allies, if this post somehow reaches you. Step up. Please. The jewish community is scared and desperate. We need your help. We just want to be safe, but we can’t be without real allies helping us. No one ever trusts marginalized people at their word about their oppression. Not at first. We need allies to help make people take us seriously. Educate yourselves. Ask the jews in your life questions. Find blogs that do education. Anything. If you’re an activist or a leftist and you’re saying to yourself, “I don’t see antisemitism in my spaces,” I promise you, it’s there. Of course you aren’t seeing it. You aren’t jewish. You’ve only been taught what antisemitism looks like when it’s nazis or goblins in a children’s book. You wouldn’t know because you don’t know jewish life. That’s not a moral failing, we’re a small community who’s been subject to deliberate campaigns to make our experience invisible. But, it does mean you cannot trust your own perspective here, because you simply don’t know what to look. To gain that needed perspective, you need to take some time to listen to jewish voices on jewish issues. You need to find out what we have to say about antisemitism. You need to learn what to look for by finding jews who educate on this very subject. This includes ensuring you don’t look exclusively for jewish voices you already agree with. While it is possible to find jews who deny antisemitism is a modern problem, or say it doesn’t exist on the left, they are a VAST minority of jews. I’m very glad those people feel they haven’t seen it but they don’t represent the rest of us and they are not a good metric to use. In my personal recommendation the best introductory resource for leftists, and particularly leftist activists, can use to start learning how to keep jews safe is a pamphlet by April Rosenblum called, “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” (Available free on her website. Link at the end.) This was written in 2007 but all the problems it highlights have only gotten worse. In addition, this resource is, as I said, introductory. The work that needs doing to maintain an antisemitism free space is just as repetitive and changing as it is for any other form of bigotry. Bigots adapt, learn new dogwhistles, try new methods of approach, and the affected marginalized people catch on the fastest. This means that, while this is a great start, your best tool for protecting jews will be to listen to us and actively seek out our voices. As I said, we are small, only abt .25% of the world. Our voices will not be heard alone. We need allies to amplify them for us. So, I beg of you all. Help us. Listen to us. Spread what we have to say. Only with your help do we have any chance of making the world safer for jews. We cannot do this alone. Please. We need you.
The Left manual on antisemitism. Making resistance to antisemitism part of all of our movements since 2007.
