blackbird-brewster reblogged
blackbird-brewster reblogged
Today is Oct 7th. While we’re going to our memorials and our rallies for the hostages, there will be groups all across the US that rally to celebrate and support of the terrorists who committed the Simchat Torah Pogrom.
The mainstream media will (of past behavior is any indication) likely do their best to bury their heads in the sand.
It is our job, as Jews in diaspora (and allies ❤️), not to let them. When you see open support for terrorism, violent antizionism, and other forms of antisemitism on display today, stop and take pictures, record video, or record audio. Take note of which organizations are promoting it.
Document what is really going on, and email it to your local news and your local Jewish advocacy group. If you don’t know where to send it- send it to me! We’ll figure it out together.
If America continues to sweep its antisemitism problem under the rug, it’s going to fester and spread until there is no room left for Jews in the states.
Don’t let that happen.
blackbird-brewster reblogged
And get this -- the far-right Police Department is claiming that a goy who broke into a Rabbi's home on Rosh Hashanah, held the Rabbi, his family, and his Jewish guests hostage, and threatened to MURDER JEWS DURING THE HIGH HOLIDAYS, was "only" committing a "crime of opportunity".
The Police Department are refusing to recognize this attack as the antisemitic hate crime that it was.
And the goyishe left-leaning media is colluding with the far-right Police Department, and denying that threatening to SLAUGHTER JEWS during the High Holidays is a hate crime.
Stop pissing on our feet and telling us it's raining.
This gunman knew exactly what he was doing.
Obviously this was a hate crime. Don't fucking gaslight us and tell us it was a "crime of opportunity".
Just because the gunman didn't shout "Heil Hitler" or "Glory to the Martyrs" doesn't mean this wasn't an act of violence intentionally targeting Jews.
Hate Crime: At the federal level, a crime motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.
Fuck the police, and fuck the media. They're all complicit in this antisemitic hate crime.
blackbird-brewster reblogged
sorekbekarmi-deactivated2022051
Here’s a thing about antisemitism.
Right now, a popular post I made about religion is being reposted by a dark subset of people who are literally asserting that all Jews are reptilian overlords, baby killers, ritual child murderers, satan worshipers, and animal abusers. Some are literally saying things like “we need to have a holy war to cleanse these people.” I have reported and blocked over 100 accounts for this, and I’ve seen their bios, their profile pics, and their pages. And here’s the thing.
They’re right wing, and they’re left wing. They’re men, and women, and trans, and nonbinary. Some have their preferred pronouns in their header, and some have deus vult or 14/88. They will have a post about meaningful gun reform right before a post about killing Jews for blood libel. Which it turns out people definitely still believe in today. They are from America and Germany, but also Ireland and Kazakstan, dozens of countries. They have swatzika tattoos, and cross tattoos, and bisexual pride flag tattoos. They are white, but they are also black, asian, latinx, mixed race. They are Evangelical, they are Catholic, they are atheists, they are all religions. They are all ages. They share the same viral posts you share, they laugh at the same memes you laugh at (although they do have a strange love of frogs). They work manual labor jobs in rural areas, driving trucks, but they also wear suits and live in the city and work in politics. They are diverse. They are “woke.”
I’m just so disgusted by what I’ve seen today.
The thing about anti-Semitism is that it can be transferred to just about any ideology: jews are communists or they’re bourgeois, they want to stay separate, they want to assimilate, they want to maintain their own boundaries but still take a part in community affairs.
It really stinks, and please feel free to stop by anytime for some Jewish solidarity.
And anyone can stop by anytime for any solidarity about any form of hate.
The fine results of sixty years of demonizing Israel’s governmental policies.
Hey you know what? I think you probably mean well, but no, antisemitism is not about Israel, and saying that it is gives antisemites a lot of ammunition (“I don’t hate Jews; I just have a problem with the Israeli government!”).
The modern State of Israel was founded in 1948. That, as far as antisemitism is concerned, is so modern that it barely even registers on the timeline of brutal antisemitic violence and genocide.
Let me walk you through a timeline, focusing only on some of the largest, most violent antisemitic purges:
- The Holocaust began in 1941, and left 6 million Jews dead.
- Before that, there was Kristallnacht, which occurred in 1938.
- That same year, Ecuador forcibly expelled all Jewish residents not working in agriculture.
- Four years before that, in 1934, 2,000 Afghani Jews were expelled from their towns forced to live in the wilderness.
- In 1929, the Jewish community of Hebron was massacred.
- In 1922, the Hebrew language was banned in the Soviet union, and thousands were sent to the Gulag for so-called “Jewish cultural particularism”.
- In 1921 all Jews living in Mongolia were forcibly expelled.
- In 1919, Jews were mass executed by the Polish Army in the Pinsk massacre, and the the Kiev Pogroms killed 30,000-70,000 Jews, and left half a million more homeless.
- The year before that, 3,000–10,000 Caucasus Jews were killed during The March Days.
- Between 1917–1921, Russian Pogroms killed as many as 250,000 Jews.
- In one 48-hour interval in May 1915, all 40,000 Jews living in Kaunas, Lithuania were forcibly expelled from the city.
- In 1910, Shiraz blood libel pogrom swept through Shiraz, Iran, brutalizing thousands.
- In 1891, 20,000 Jews were forcibly expelled from Moscow, Russia.
- In 1881–1884, pogroms swept through all of Russia, forcing 2 million Jews to flee the country.
- In 1864, at least 500 Moroccan Jews were massacred in Marrakech and Fez.
- In 1862, during the American Civil War, General Grant issued an order expelling all Jews from his military district, before being directed by President Lincoln to rescind the order.
- In 1815 Pope Pius VII reestablished the ghetto in Rome, and forcibly confined the Jewish population of the city there.
- On June 29, 1805, 200-500 Algerian Jews were massacred.
- In 1791 Catherine II of Russia confined Jews to the Pale of Settlement and doubled their taxes.
- Between 1790–1792, most of the Jewish communities of Morocco were destroyed.
- In 1786, Jews were forcibly expelled from Jeddah.
- In 1776, the Jewish community of Basra was massacred.
- In 1768, the Jews of the Jews of Uman, Ukraine were massacred.
- In 1766, Jews were forcibly expelled from Toruń.
- In 1753, the Jewish community of Kaunas was forcibly expelled.
- In 1744, the Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa forced the entire Bohemian Jewish community to pay for their readmission into the country every ten years, and introduced a law limiting each Jewish family to one son.
- In 1743, the Jewish community of Riga was forcibly expelled.
- In 1742 Elizabeth of Russia issues a decree of expulsion of all the Jews out of Russian Empire.
- In 1727, Catherine I of Russia issued an edict forcibly expelling all Jews from Ukraine.
- In 1718, the Jews of Carniola, Styria and Carinthia were forcibly expelled
- In 1717, all Jews living in Gibraltar were forciblt expelled.
- In 1715, Elector Max Emanuel ordered the deportation of all Jews living in Bavaria.
- In 1712, a blood libel in Sandomierz led to the forcibly expulsion of the entire local Jewish population.
- In 1691, 219 people were convicted of being Jewish in a court in Palma, Majorca, and 37 of them were publicly burned to death.
- Only 500 Jews survived Austrian sieged the city of Buda in 1686. Half of them were then sold into slavery.
- In 1679, a large percentage of the Jews of Yemen were forcibly expelled in the Exile of Mawza. Many died along the march to the Mawza, and more died once there due to the barren and inhospitable conditions there.
- Between 1648–1655, the Ukrainian Cossacks massacred about 100,000 Jews and destroyed 300 Jewish communities.
- In 1639, more than 60 people accused of being Jews in Lima, Peru were burned at the stake in a single Auto-da-fé.
- In 1633, Jews were forcibly expelled from Radom.
- In 1615 King Louis XIII of France decreed that all Jews must leave the country within one month on pain of death.
- In 1593, at least 900 Jews were forcibly expelled from Bologna.
- In 1593 Pope Clement VIII forcibly expelled Jews from all Papal states except the ghettos in Rome and Ancona.
- In 1591, Philip II, King of Spain, banished and forcibly expelled all Jews from the duchy of Milan.
- In 1571, the Mexican Inquisition began, leading to the trial and execution of those suspected of secretly practicing Judaism.
- In 1569, Pope Pius V forcibly expelled all the Jews of Bologna, and encouraged the vandalization and destruction of all Jewish graveyards within the region.
- In 1560, the Goa Inquisition began, and those in the region who were suspected of secretly practicing Judaism were tried and executed.
- Between 1537-1546, Martin Luther whips up antisemitic sentiment throughout Germany, leading to multiple forcible expulsions of the Jewish communities living in the region.
- In 1543, all Jews were exiled and forcibly expelled from Basel.
- In 1540, all Jews were banished from Prague.
- In 1539, all Jews were forcibly expelled from Nauheim.
- In 1535, the Spanish sold all of the Jews of Tunis into slavery.
- In 1526 Jews were expelled from Hungary, Croatia, and Slovakia following the Battle of Mohács.
- In 1519, the Jewish community of Ratisbon was forcibly expelled, and it’s synagogues and graveyards were looted for building materials.
- In 1511, most Apulian Jews were either expelled or tortured to death.
- In 1510, the Jews of Naples were forcibly expelled.
- In 1510, 40 Jews were executed in Brandenburg, Germany, and the remainder of the Jewish population was forcibly expelled.
- That same year, 38 Jews publicly burned at the stake in Berlin.
- In 1506, a massacre in Lisbon, Portugal killed over 2,000 Jews in the span of just three days.
- In 1499, all Jews were forcibly expelled from both Nuremberg and Verona.
- In 1498, Jews were forcibly expelled from most of France.
- In 1496, the Jews of Portugal, including those who had fled the Spanish Inquisition just four years prior, were forcibly converted to Christianity and expelled.
- In 1495, the Jews of Lecce were massacred and the Jewish quarter was burned to the ground.
- In 1493 approximately 37,000 Jews were forcibly expelled from Sicily.
- In 1492, the Jewish population of Tuat was massacred in a pogrom.
- In 1481, the Spanish Inquisition began, leading to the murder, torture, forced conversion, and forcible expulsion of the Jewish population of Spain.
- On Assumption Day, August 15, 1474, the Jews of Modica were massacred. During the evening, Christians are recorded to have run through the streets chanting: “Hurrah for Mary! Death to the Jews!”
- In 1473, the Jews of Cordova, Spain were massacred.
- In 1421 in Vienna, 270 Jews were burned at stake, and all remaining Viennese Jews were forcibly expelled.
- In the single year of 1391, more than 400 Jews were massacred in Barcelona, another 250 Jews were massacred in Valencia, and all the Jewish inhabitants of Palma, Majorca were killed or forced to convert.
- In March of 1389, approximately 3,000 Jews in Prague were killed in a single massacre.
- In 1370, the entire Jewish population of Brussels was massacred, completely eliminating the Jewish community there. The event was commemorated by local Christians as “the Sacrament of Miracle”.
- In 1354, approximately 12,000 Jews were massacred throughout Spain.
- On August 4, 1349, 6,000 Jews were burned to death in Mainz as a part of the Black Death Jewish persecutions. Around 3,000 more Jews were massacred in Erfurt for the same reason, 600 were burned at the stake in Zurich, 600 more were burned at the stake in Basel, and the entire Jewish population of Speyer was destroyed.
- In 1336, roughly 1500 Jews were killed in Franconia and Alsace.
- In 1328, approximately 5,000 Jews were massacred following antisemitic preaching by a Franciscan friar.
- In 1321 the Jews in central France were accused of ordering lepers to poison wells. After a massacre which killed an estimate 5,000 Jews, King Philip V admitted that the rumor was false and they were innocent.
- In 1298, German knight Rintfleisch claimed to have received a mission from heaven to exterminate “the accursed race of the Jews”. Under his leadership, approximately 100,000 Jews were massacred, often by mass burning at stake.
- In 1290, the Jews of Baghdad were massacred.
- In 1290, the Edict of Expulsion forcibly expelled all Jews from England.
- In 1285, a blood libel in Munich, Germany resulted in the massacre of 68 Jews. Following the massacre, 180 more Jews were burned alive inside synagogue which was lit on fire.
- In 1275, King Edward I of England passed the Statute of the Jewry, forcing Jews over the age of seven to wear an identifying yellow badge, and seizing Jewish assets. Scores of English Jews were arrested, and 300 were publicly hanged.
- In 1236, Crusaders attacked the Jewish communities of Anjou and Poitou and slaughtered an estimated 3,000 Jews.
- In 1232, over 1,000 Moroccan Jews in Marrakesh were killed.
- In 1203, the entire Jewish quarter of Constantinople was burned down by Crusaders.
- In 1190, the Jews of York were massacred by departing Crusaders.
- In 1171 the Jews of Bologna were forcibly expelled.
- In 1146, an estimated 100,000 Jews were massacred by the Almohads in Fez and 120,000 more were massacred in Marrakesh.
- In 1124, the Jewish Quarter of Kiev was burned to the ground by antisemitic arsonists.
- During the First Crusade, more than 5,000 Jews were murdered in the Rhineland. Another 1,200 Jews committed suicide in Mainz to escape torture and forcible conversion.
- In 1066, the Granada Massacre killed more than 4,000 Jews in a single day.
- In 932, the Jewish quarter of Bari, Italy was destroyed.
- In 694 King Ergica of Toledo ordered the kidnapping of all Jewish children over the age of seven, and the raising of those kidnapped children as Christians.
- In 469, half of the Jewish population of Isfahan was put to death.
- In 325, all Jews were forcibly expelled and banned from Jerusalem.
- Between 132–135, the Bar Kokhba revolt was crushed, and 580,000 Jews were killed. Hadrian then ordered the forcible expulsion of all Jews from Judea, which was then merged with Galilee in order to form the province of Syria Palaestina, renamed in order to suppress the Jewish people’s connection to their historic homeland.
Sixty years?! Sixty years is nothing.
Antisemitism is one of the oldest forms of bigotry that still exists, and it exists in largely the same form that it always has. Non-Jews persecute Jews because we refuse to assimilate, because we emphasize literacy and education, and because we are an ethnic minority. These thousands of years of violent murder, torture, expulsion, exile, and degradation have nothing whatsoever to do with the modern State of Israel.
Antisemitism, much like the original post highlighted, transcends modern politics. It transcends most modern cultural divides.
Antisemitism is religious bigotry and racial hatred all rolled into one, and virtually no group on Earth has clean hands.
How the FUCK is this list so long. What the fuck. What the Fuck. How is there SO MUCH HATRED for them what the Actual Fuck
like what did Jewish people ever do to you????? like seriously???? like I understand animosity. I have some strong personal hatred for individuals and some disdain for a group of people (billionaires) but even if someone did do something to me, that is absolutely not grounds for maiming or irreparably harming or killing them, much less killing their family, their friends, their friends’ families, and anyone else that shares a particular association with them!!!! like what the actual shit?????
edit: I will however gladly throw the FUCK down with anyone who wants to hurt jewish people for being jewish
sorekbekarmi
Hi!
A lot of it is/was motivated by money. Yes, even the holocaust.
The justification for hating is classically based in the Christian religion, but antisemitism is now definitely also political. It’s about blaming everything on us and having a scapegoat.
But the motivation? Money. Pogroms, expulsions, killings, all of these were and are forms of real estate and property liquidation.
If anyone who is unfamiliar with historical and modern antisemitism and how it functions and wants to educate themselves as an ally, I recomend reading the book Why the Jews?. Some of the language is a bit outdated but it’s a short and informative introduction to the topic. It is an emotionally difficult read though, so keep that in mind before cracking it open
minerfromtarn
I’m gonna add on that the origins of left wing antisemitism, the whole thing they try to gaslight with the explination of “I’m not antisemitic, I’m just antizionist” has a direct line connecting it to Stalin and Russian Orthodox/Tsarist antisemitism.
Stalin had hoped that the freshly created state of Israel, which was a very left leaning nation when it was reconstituted, would side with the Soviet/Communist bloc. When it didn’t he felt personally slighted, and so started trying to take that petty grudge out on Russian/Soviet Jews. That whole Doctors Plot conspiracy was actually just an excuse to added Jewish doctors to the list of dead in Stalin’s purges. Thankfully he died before it could be fully started, but it started the ball rolling. His hatred of Israel tapped into the latant Russian antisemitism left over from the Tsarist period and twisted it from the recent antisemitism that birthed that conspiracy book Protocols of the Elders of Zion and into a whole gaslighting thing of “we are just opposing a settler/colonial state, not just blindly hating Jews for fake reasons again.” This led to various levels of Soviet/Russian antisemitism, ranging from passing over Jews for various jobs in various fields to outright denying Soviet Jews the ability to even visit Israel (the Refuseniks).
And so that soon became party line for many left leaning groups around the world, never really realizing that all Zionism is is just an indigenous people that have been targeted and hated and oppressed for millennia living with security and autonomy in their indigenous homeland. The fact that western society focuses so much on Ashkenazi Jews (Jews that went to central/Eastern Europe in the diaspora after Rome expelled us after we failed to expel their occupation of Ancient Israel and so have become white-passing over the near 2,000 years in Europe) as what all Jews look like doesn’t help either. Cause that ignores Jews of color, such as all of those that got ethnically cleansed or expelled from Arab lands, who make up two thirds of Israel’s population.
Left wing antisemitism that’s hidden behind “antizionism” is definitely another link in the chain of baseless hatred directed at us. 60 years is definitely enough time to have another “reason” to hate us. Stalin was a master manipulator, and he took the leftover Tsarist era antisemitism and twisted it into the beginnings of what we recently saw in UK Labour under Jeremey Corbyn and in the US with people like Linda Sarsour. To ignore what it is is to let it continue.
What the fuck did Jewish people do to receive any of this hatred?? I know that there had been Christian propaganda written about jewish people throughout history. But why? Why did that happen?
sorekbekarmi
Historically, our homeland was a VERY important trade route, connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe. Control trade, and you control food imports, and you control empires. That’s why Rome invaded. (Actually, it’s also why Greece/Macedonia, Medeo-Persia, Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt invaded. Its been a very strategic land to control since the dawn of civilization. Location location location.)
The two largest religions in the world (Xianity, Islam) are later derivations of OUR religion. That makes that piece of land MORE attractive to them, because controlling it gives them a sense of religious authority.
A big reason that Xianity as a (technically heretical) sect of Judaism split off and became their OWN religion is that VERY early Xians and mainstream Jews were allied during a revolt against the Romans (who again, wanted that land because location location location). The job of Mashiach in Judaism is to free Israel and establish a safe home for Jews there, and to establish world peace. (Jesus obviously did not accomplish this, hence the need for a “second coming.”) Because the leader of this revolt looked like he was about to succeed in DOING THOSE THINGS, most Jews said “hey, maybe THIS guy, Bar Kokvah, is the Mashiach!” Xians DID NOT LIKE THIS, because they thought that their dead guy (who again, did not accomplish the things) was the Mashiach. So we already didnt LIKE each other because they were heretics, but it boiled over when…
They betrayed Jews at a crucial point, thousands died, and the revolution failed. Jews got mad and said “you can’t be part of our synagogues anymore because you BETRAYED US AND WE DIED,” and Xians said “fine, we hated you anyway because you didnt accept our weird Mithras cult” and ran directly to the Mommy, the remainders of Roman Empire, and said “can we be the state religion now?” Mommy Byzantium, seeing an oppprtunity, said yes, Xianity separated from Judaism and rose to POWER, and held a bunch of official meetings and added things to their own writings (even they will admit this). They added theology that is 100% not compatible with Judaism, and they also outlawed Jewish practices and shit talked Jews a lot. Many verses in their books before ecumenical councils are also antisemitic. The Byzantine royal family (at this point, all that’s left of actual Rome) had sensed a shift in religion and power, and capitalized on this new and upcoming religion by making themselves very important figures in it, solidifying their political power through divine authority. (Later, Germans and Italians would say “hey, that’s not a bad idea, and copied them, creating the Holy Roman Empire, famously neither holy, nor Roman, nor an actual empire. Popes did not like this, and constantly tried to squash the HRE and Byzantine Empire, and I guess ultimately they did, but they also lost all political power in the process.)
Xians also then decided that they would blame Jews for killing Jesus forever, and would constantly murder and punish them for it, even though A) according to Xianity Jesus HAD TO DIE for them to be “saved,” so really they shouldn’t be mad about it and B) Jews literally DID NOT have the authority to sentence people to death, especially by crucifixion, literally ONLY Rome could do that.
Then, Xians decided that they needed to control Ye Holee Lande™, so they slaughtered a bunch of Jews and Muslims to get it and promptly lost it again, but they didn’t stop trying to get it back, and they killed thousands on all sides in the process.
Jews at this point have no homeland, having been kicked around by Romans, Xians, and Muslims. The latter of whom actually usually treated us way better than Xians, in general, especially in Al-Andalus, which you might unfortunately know now as “Spain,” because a bunch of important Xian families married and united their armies and killed all the Jews and Muslims there and said “this is our country now, get out and/or we will kill you.” They erased a powerful and prosperous Emirate of universities, poets, scholars, artists, musicians, and theologians, which had flourished all through the Dark Ages in Xian lands. (They then promptly sailed to the Americas, so that they could forcibly convert, rape, steal from, and murder those people too. )
But anyway, no homeland, which means that we often lived in OTHER peoples countries and didn’t get to participate in society or government. General xenophobia turned people against these Jewish “outsiders.” Painting us as dangerous, disloyal, christ killers, immigrants, was an easy way to create fear and fighting and keep the poor poor and the rich in power. (We see this today all the time. Think about it with other groups. I’m sure you can think of how leaders in your country have exploited public fear and xenophobia to stay in power.)
Xians, who had by this time been stealing and mistranslating our holy books for >1000 years, saw a verse that said “Jews may not charge other Jews unfair interest rates.” But Xians are “uncomfortable when we are not about me,” so THEY decided that this meant “Xians are not allowed to charge other Xians ANY INTEREST AT ALL.” But that would have made their economy collapse. So they had an idea. “What if we make it illegal for Jews to own any property or land or normal businesses, BUT, we let them run banking guilds, and THEY can charge US interest, and the economy will work.” It was a great idea for everybody but Jews, because the side effect was that A) poor people suddenly saw JEWS as the ones taxing them and taking their money when really it was the Kings, and B) whenever Jews got too successful, the government would kill them all (or kick them out, if it was a nice day), and poof - all that money (and land they were renting) was “liquidated” and could go to the government. (This was a super easy score for the Church, largely synonymous with the government for many centuries, because the idea that Jews are greedy money grubbing thieves is baked into the literal text of the New Testament, so they didnt even need to be creative to get people to accept this lie.)
This trope of Jews running things and making money off everyone and being greedy eventually led to a conspiracy theory that we wanted to/did already secretly dominate the Entire World, which is where the Elders of Zion/Illuminati/Lizard people/“Global Elite” trope comes from. That’s why you get FUCK-OFF RIDICULOUS things like DC councilmen saying “well we all know Jews control the weather and cause natural disasters to make money off them” from. Yes, that really happened. (And then, they made him go on an apology tour of the DC Holocaust Museum, where he played games on his phone and stormed out halfway through. Yes really.)
Again, because xenophobia, lots of other nasty aspects of Jew hatred popped up. The formula goes: Jews killed Christ -> Satan is the enemy of Christ -> Jews are in league with Satan -> Jews are witches and evil. This isnt even a stretch for them, because this kind of language is ALSO literally found in the Xian bible. A particularly nasty and pervasive part of this cycle was the idea that Jews (in a perverted version of holy communion, because Catholics and Xians view of witchcraft was just “upsidedown/backwards Xianity”) was the idea that Jews kidnapped Xian babies and used their blood to make bread. That one got a LOT of Jews killed.
Even the Holocaust is fundamentally part of this whole pattern. Post WWI Germany owed MASSIVE unpayable debts to the world for their role in the great war. They were bankrupt, disunified, and unstable. Hitler used fear and propaganda to rise to power by appealing to a base who were economically suffering and already super racist and xenophobic (like… many modern politicians… do the math…) and then the Holocaust itself was again, super super about real estate and property liquidation. (Bonus, they were invading the rest of Europe, so they ALSO got to steal art and money and national treasures from conquered governments, not JUST Jews.) Nazis really liked shiny things, and they really liked taking them to Berlin.
Later, Russia, who got to Berlin, also admitted to really linking shiny things, having made off with a LOT of international treasures and pretending they didnt have them for decades. They still have them, and they basically announced “there’s nothing you girls can do about it.” They also killed millions of Jews during the USSR days, made our religion illegal, and the current Russian government and Orthodox Church officially blames Jews for the revolution and murder of the Romanovs. Yes really. Let me say, unequivocally, fuck Russia.
There you have it, a VERY BREIF overview of antisemitism.
sorekbekarmi
I should add, a VERY BRIEF history of antisemitism IN EUROPE, because I’m too exhausted to even get into the rest of the world right now, but it’s really a continuation of those same themes and cycles.
Compare to the list above if you’re curious about specific historical events you can google to learn more.
i really fucking hate how many ppl here are like “what did jews do???????” as if bigotry is a punishment for an ancient crime. we existed. that’s what we did. and that was, and still is, a crime punishable by death.
spot on @king-shit-thembo thank you
I shared this earlier but the part that I can’t stop thinking about is:
After all the expulsions, where do we go? Each time we are forced to leave somewhere, the expelling nation doesn’t really care what happens next. Where do we go though?
Most of these events aren’t even 20 years apart. Nobody has time to mourn or establish themselves anywhere safely before being fucking yeeted again.
And how are Jews supposed to keep themselves safe? I’m not sharing this to excuse any Israeli violence, so don’t come at me. I’m just literally asking, based on our history, how on earth are Jews supposed to trust anyone to consider our best interests while they advocate for whatever adjacent issues are entangled with us… when literally nobody ever has? It’s so much. It’s overwhelming.
The fact that leftists now basically only talk about Ashkenazim because they “look white” (and there are plenty of black and brown Ashkenazim as well but obviously these people don’t understand that lol)
holds very little water when u realize that 70% of Israel is Arab, sephardic and Mizrahi AKA very much not white. Most Israelis today if I put an Arab and Israeli side by side without talking and dressed the same you couldn’t tell which was which.
So this idea that they are only angry with privileged Jews and thus its fine to spew Nazi blood libel is entirely fucking made up. Even these populations were ethnically cleansed from places like Russia. Most Jews who live in the middle East are in fact middle eastern Jews, believe it or not.
And yes a lot of these Jews harbor deep distrust of Arabs because they remember the abuse and mistreatment that resulted in them being expelled from their homes, their families murdered, etc.
Here is a fun thought experiment. For every antisemite who wants to claim that Israeli Jews have no right to live in their homeland and should go back to where they came from, look at how often those people actually advocate for countries like Yemen and Iraq to repatriate their Jewish populations.
It’s zero. Zero times. Also, look at their actual behavior toward Israeli Jews who actually have left Israel and moved to Europe and America. Most get death threats regularly so obviously they really don’t mean it when they say they want Israelis to go back “where they came from” because when they do leave its still not good enough, they must be punished for the actions of a country they don’t live in.
Because then their “well this is all about Zio Europeans” wouldn’t make any sense if they actually acknowledged how many Israelis are in Israel because they quite literally have nowhere else to go. In the 30s Nazis told European Jews to go back where they came from, too. Israel. So the real question is simple: where do these people think Jews came from and where do they expect them to go?
And you can’t say Europe because Europeans already decided Jews aren’t from Europe. And you can’t say Yemen, Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, turkey, etc etc etc etc, either.
Palestinians used to hit up Vietnam and ask how they expelled the Americans and give them advice, and many of these ppl still talk about Algeria as a successful ward against the French and they 100% fail to understand the most basic tenet of this conflict and refuse to listen to the dude who gave them the answers to their face.
“the Americans went back to America. The French went back to France. Jews have nowhere else to go. You will not expel them.”
Because that long list of antisemitic events starts before the founding of Israel, it doesn’t even encapsulate what could be considered the beginning of protracted Israel/Palestine warfare (or less charitably, the beginning of “Israeli aggression” towards surrounding Arab countries).
Have you heard of the Naqba? 700,000 Arabs expelled and/or emigrated from Israel when the state was abandoned by England founded?
Yeah, a main reason all those Arabs left is because on the literal first day of Israeli Independence, SIX POWERFUL SURROUNDING ARAB NATIONS launched a full-scale invasion of Israel, with the intention to wipe it off the map and claim all it’s territory for themselves (remember, this is *after* the Palestinian authorities rejected the creation of an independent Palestinian state, precisely because it wouldn’t allow them to claim all of Israel for themselves).
At the same time, those six Arab nations forcibly expelled their entire Jewish populations, over 800,000 people total. (The only reason this isn’t considered a “Naqba” in its own right is because Israel offered citizenship to those 800,000 refugees; conversely, the surrounding Arab nations refuse citizenship to Palestinian refugees, because they recognized that a massive refugee population “caused by Israel” was a good political football.)
So these six nations launch a war of annihilation against the Jews in the middle east, which at this point is the vast majority of the remaining Jewish population of the world. And thank G-d, they fucking lost. Embarrassingly.
In fact, when repelling Egyptian forces, Israel actually gained some land! Including Gaza. But annexing land in warfare is kind of a no-no in the modern day, so they gave the captured land back to Egypt. …Except, except, Egypt didn’t want Gaza back. They refused it. Gaza was full of Palestinian refugees, so Egypt said, hey free political football! This is your responsibility now, Israel.
And the region has been in basically constant conflict ever since.
blackbird-brewster reblogged
people stop being antisemitic for one fucking second challenge (impossible)
blackbird-brewster reblogged
edit: thirteen hours later and I know it doesn’t matter except for my own documentation, but his bluff got called. he’s definitely too much of a coward to take them up on this:
“if you are too afraid to witness the truth of what took place, we beg you to stop speaking on the matter.”
blackbird-brewster reblogged
People who refuse to associate with Israelis unless our criticism of the government is "abolish Israel and bomb Tel Aviv" are super xenophobic and they have a childish view of the conflict and politics in general. You can't even begin to view Israelis as human beings, just conduits for what you consider evil.
"Racism is bad unless it's towards the bad people who deserve it" is becoming the norm in leftist spaces unfortunately
I saw a post with thousands of likes that said Israelis are ugly and look like rats. There's a big sentiment that there are no innocent Israelis, that Israeli tourists are especially vile, that Israeli society is especially bloodthirsty, and that Israelis shouldn't be welcome in any country.
This war is bringing out the antisemitism in people who hid it because it wasn't socially acceptable. It is now. They can reword Hitlerite language to talk about Israelis and it's suddenly okay because Palestine. They mock our looks, our culture, our religion, our history, and even our dead, but it's acceptable because Israelis are the devil apparently.
It is impossible to separate antisemitic violence from the motive, people do this to cause terror and silence anyone who thinks Israel should exist at all. Jews abroad are being attacked and Jewish businesses are being vandalized but it's okay because this violence has Palestine plastered on it, and they're punching up at the evil tyrannical bloodthirsty Jews.
What happened to it being categorically wrong to decide which culture is fake and shouldn't exist? When did it stop being wrong to dehumanize any group of people? History repeats itself.
blackbird-brewster reblogged
I felt like this would resonate with a lot of us. I know we’d rather talk about culture and history (though Jewish history is unavoidably shaped by violence and oppression done to the Jewish people, there are beautiful things too) and Jewish joy. or maybe we’d just rather not have to explain and discuss Jewish identity at all, because we’d be safe in it and be able to have our lighthearted fandom blogs and our friendly interactions without worrying about disinformation about our existences and if the people we’re conversing with want to kill us. unfortunately that’s no longer our reality, if it ever was (it wasn’t, we only got the illusion for awhile), so we’re here, fighting our way through, as our ancestors did in their unique ways in decades and centuries and millennia past. may we see better days.
blackbird-brewster reblogged
Casual suggestion for those who feel guilty about their Christian and/or gentile ancestors’ participation in antisemitism:
Donate to a local synagogue and/or Jewish community center’s security fund.
this original post is from August 2023. security concerns at synagogues have gotten much worse since. I saw this yesterday:
if you have a local synagogue or Jewish community center, and you want to help, check in with them and see if they need donations or any other support. Jewish communities are typically small as is, but losing access to synagogues and services would be devastating, and not only in those local places, it would ripple out and affect the broader fabric of the Jewish people. it would be a loss of connection and culture, from which it might be difficult to recover, and when many need it most.
blackbird-brewster reblogged
do you think if we all asked really nicely they would stop making movies about the holocaust
[id: reply by @isabeau276 reading "When exactly did the last movie about the Holocaust, which is for historical purposes as well as to inform people, including idiot people, about what happened—The stories are endless and need to be told. How bizarre and offensive to label it a fetish—come out and what was its/their name/names. Please help clear my memory; the last I remember is Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both were extremely important productions. I guess *you* "forget." Thanks. 🙅🏻♀️💜🌷🩷🌷" /end id]
hi! thank you for your reply. in my response, i'm going to be pretending i didn't notice the smug, sanctimonious, and sarcastic tone in this reply, and will instead be addressing these points as though they were being presented in good faith:
When exactly did the last movie about the Holocaust
well one recent example was the zone of interest from 2023, which won an oscar. [x] if you need more examples, might i recommend this wikipedia page: [x]
which is for historical purposes as well as to inform people, including idiot people, about what happened
i have some bad news for you about the movies you mention later. i want to bring up an important book that i think will be very enlightening in this conversation: people love dead jews by dana horn. i've already taken the liberty of transcribing and posting some of my favorite quotes, which i will be linking: on the sanitization of holocaust narratives and which narratives end up successful [x, x (oh hey look this one mentions one of your examples), x], on what current holocaust media and education is actually teaching [x, x]
The stories are endless and need to be told
nobody is denying the importance of the preservation and education of these stories. however, it's important that we discuss what narratives are most popular and why (hint: some answers include antisemitism and capitalism)
How bizarre and offensive to label it a fetish
i'm assuming this is referring to @baroque-hashem's reblog containing the phrase "i want goyim to stop fetishizing our trauma." fetishization as a term refers to the act of ascribing value to an object (in this example, a group of people) not because of the object itself, but rather because of what it represents. in this instance, the meaning of this phrase is found in the second half of the sentence: "i want goyim to stop fetishizing our trauma as if we exist solely as a moral allegory for goyim"—meaning, goyim don't actually care about jews or jewish trauma, they only care about their ability to use it as a metaphor for their moral education. refer to people love dead jews to learn more. (also, the sexual meaning of the word "fetish" came after the original meaning [x], which has a very anti-indigenous slant to it but that's for another post. either way, baroque-hashem's usage of the term was correct)
Schindler's List and The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both were extremely important productions
important, maybe, but anything but representative of the holocaust, and they're honestly piss poor education tools. the latter is especially criticized for the literal harm it has done to holocaust education [x, x, x], however that certainly doesn't mean that the former was without rebuke [x (this one lists more films for your list), x, x]
i made the original post while searching for good jewish films to watch that weren't about the holocaust and just treated the jews as normal people. every list of iconic jewish films i encountered had holocaust films on it, every streaming service i searched "jewish" or "judaism" on gave me almost exclusively holocaust films. it's impossible to try to find jewish stories about jews being jews without being inundated by a mountain of media about one example of jewish suffering. (which is another thing—we have a LOT of examples of jewish suffering that aren't the holocaust, why is it that the holocaust is the only event goyim care about, and why is it that holocaust narratives are the only stories about jewish pain that sell?) does it have to be so hard to just find some jewish stories??? it doesn't even have to be about jewish joy—i think i ended up watching the 2009 movie "a serious man"—i just want to watch something that isn't about the fucking holocaust for once! and why are so many movies about the holocaust made by fucking goyim!!! (read people love dead jews to find out)
blackbird-brewster reblogged
In my own experience as a Jewish Leftist, and corroborated by the similar experiences of other Jewish Leftists, there are, roughly speaking, five to six broad categories of Leftists in their attitudes towards Jews. This is a tangential categorization in terms of precise political affiliation; in other words, one's position in these categories is not dependent on what precise type of Leftist/Progressive an individual is.
Type 1: Open And Unapologetic Jew Haters
These Leftists hate Jews and don't try to hide it at all. According to them, Jews are the Problem, and they know what type of Solution they want enacted.
The archetypal example that I'll currently use is Cynthia McKinney, former US Congresswoman and US Green Party presidential candidate, who, well...
But this is also the class of Leftists who say that there is no room for Judaism in their ideal, imagined perfect world, that they picture everyone assimilating and giving up their ethnic and cultural identities to just be "human", and often single out Judaism as a particular problem in that regard.
Type 2: Closeted Knowing Jew Haters
These Leftists hate Jews, know that they hate Jews, but know that it's bad optics to openly praise Hitler or cozy up to the KKK to satisfy their hatred of Jews, so they try to find the barest veneer of plausible deniability to hide behind. "Anti-zionism" is a particular favorite on the Left, but the hatred has a way of slipping past the mask when they get questioned.
A classic example here is the Boston Mapping Project, who literally made up a list of every Jewish institution in Boston, Mass, on suspicion of them being "Zionist"--including elder homes, Jewish high schools, and Kindergartens, and including scary "links" on the map to various government agencies, no matter how tenuous or outright imaginary, thereby invoking old conspiracy tropes about "Secret Jewish Control of the Government". (And BDS, as the parent organization, also gave the lie that they're just antizionist, not antisemitic, when they disavowed the Mapping Project for bad optics, not the rank antisemitism and conspiratorial thinking they were promoting). Another example would be the organizers of the Chicago Dyke March, who explicitly expelled Jews from the March and crowed about "zio tears" (which is a slur originally used by the KKK, no less).
However on first encounter, Type 2 are indistinguishable from and camouflaged by...
Type 3: Undereducated And Unknowing Traffickers In Antisemitism
These Leftists don't hate Jews per se... they're just unaware of the deep antisemitic history of repeating claims that "Jews have too much power", or stating that the Holocaust was "White on White violence", or that "Jews are just White People from Europe", or any of a host of other antisemitic beliefs that are endemic on the Left. They're initially indistinguishable from Type 2, as they say the same things, and can only be told apart by their reactions; a Type 3 will go, "Oh, I didn't know and I'll try to learn!", while a Type 2 will typically double down, or let the mask slip in some other way.
The problem is that, from the perspective of Jews, Type 2 and Type 3 are indistinguishable from each other at first glance, and rather than try to engage and risk the emotional harm, a lot of Jews tend to write off all of them as Type 2, and there's a lot of debate on the ratios between the two.
Also worthy of mention, as a midpoint between Type 2 and Type 3 are:
Type 2.5: Openly Antisemitic "I'm Not An Antisemite, I Just Refuse To Learn, Listen, Or Let Jews Define Antisemitism"
As a midpoint between types, these Leftists openly traffic in antisemitic motifs, conspiracies, and attitudes, all the while insisting that they're not antisemitic. They're a midpoint between types 2 and 3 because they've had plenty of time and opportunity to learn about the bigoted attitudes they're espousing, but refuse to do so... but at the same time, they genuinely seem to think that they're not antisemitic. They just think that there's a vast Jewish conspiracy out to get them personally, or any of a number of other antisemitic beliefs, and refuse to accept or learn that what they're saying is antisemitic. They can believe that they themselves are not all they want, saying that Jews have too much money and power and run the world's politics is still trafficking in antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The archetypal example of this type, assuming we can take his word for it, is Roger Waters. Waters is openly and explicitly antisemitic, saying that there is a widespread conspiracy of Jews running the world's politics... but he has been insisting for over 40 years that he's just "antizionist, not antisemitic."
But these are just the outspoken ones. None of them would get anywhere without the tacit support of...
Type 4: The Silent Majority
These Leftists are, being blunt, hypocritical cowards. They don't want to get involved in issues on antisemitism. When a Leftist Jew is being harassed by one of Types 1 to 3, they don't speak up, they don't get involved, they just say nothing.
Maybe they agree with one of the above types. Maybe they just don't want to get involved. Maybe they're afraid of seeming sympathetic to Israel. Maybe they're afraid of getting the social backlash that the Jew is experiencing. But ultimately, their motivations don't matter, their actions do—and their actions give tacit social support to the antisemite in the Leftist group, not to the Jew being harassed and chased out.
And the reason they're hypocritical cowards?
Well, if your ideology claims that you want a better life for everyone and social progress and being against racism and bigotry... but yet they don't speak up when it's happening right in front of them...
Well.
That says a lot, doesn't it? Both on what their ideals actually mean to them... and how highly they value Jews. And we know that it is possible, because of...
Type 5: The Pro-Jewish Leftist
These Leftists are, in my experience, a minority outside of Leftist Jews, but they do exist among non-Jewish Leftists. They stand up to Types 1, 2, and 3 when they express antisemitic views, and try to shame and cajole Type 4 into standing up as well.
And, just to point out how normalized antisemitism is on the Left...
Some people in this category might object to being labeled as "Pro-Jewish", as if they're biased for Jews. But I have to ask... do you think that they would also object to being labeled "Pro-LGBTQ"?
I wrote this in September, 2023, and posted it October 4, 2023. Three days later, the worst mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust occurred...
And Leftists celebrated.
In the weeks since, I have seen so many outright Type 1s that I am literally unsure of what examples I would use now, for fear of creating a bias by making them seem less prevalent than they actually are. The sheer number of people who openly are calling for Jewish genocide--not using coded language, not chanting slogans, like Types 2 and 3, but openly saying that Hitler should have "finished the job" or that Jews "deserved the Holocaust", or saying that every Jew/Zionist needs to die horrible deaths--is staggering.
And the number of Type 2s and 2.5s...
Well, it's gotten to the point that I just block anyone who tags, "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free", "Globalize The Intifada", or other such slogans, not to mention the sheer romanticization of Hamas. I've gotten burned enough this past month alone.
And as for Type 3s?
I've had a handful, including one person who contacted me privately to try to understand the full context of what's going on.
But the number of Type 3s I've seen are outnumbered a hundred to one by Types 1, 2, and 2.5.
I’m disappointed in my fellow leftists. Why are y’all so against Jewish people?!
Because antisemitism is endemic in the cultures, philosophies, and ideologies of most of the Western world, which often use "The Jew" as shorthand for "The Bad Thing We're Not And That We're Against".
For Christianity, Jews are The Ones Who Rejected Christ And Killed Him.
For White Supremacists, Jews are The Ones Out To Corrupt And Undermine The White Race.
For Capitalists, Jews are The Creators And Promotors Of Communism And Socialism.
And on the Left...
Jews are either Capitalists or White Colonists, depending on whether the specific flavor of Leftist is anti-capitalist or post-colonialist.
It doesn't matter where on the political spectrum you are, there are antisemitic beliefs at the foundation, and for those people who want a quick, black-and-white answer to "what is wrong with the world?", the answer of "The Jews are what is wrong with the world" will always be easily at hand...
And as we see, people will Eat. It. Up.
blackbird-brewster reblogged
I'm gonna put it as simply and blatantly as possible.
Russia in 2022 attacked another Eurovision participant and made a whole bunch of other contestant countries scared of being attacked next, after already having attacked a fellow competitor in 2008 -> Russia got banned from Eurovision
Ukraine in 2022 got attacked, had its civilians targeted intentionally, did not choose to start the war, has no record of past attacks against ESC contestants, and is not currently posing a threat to any other Eurovision participating country -> Ukraine did not get banned
Israel in 2023 got attacked, had its civilians targeted intentionally, did not choose to start the war, has no record of past attacks against ESC contestants, and is not currently posing a threat to any other Eurovision participating country -> Israel did not get banned
There isn't a double standard, except for people who insist on not following the geopolitical logic. Same ones who didn't use Ukraine's retaliation activities against Russia as justification to get Ukraine banned, but are doing that to Israel, usually with a side dish of false, hyperbolic accusations that have nothing to do with reality.
Also...
The only flags allowed are of participating countries and the pride flag. The American flag is therefore banned. The Mexican flag. The Japanese, the Korean, the Nigerian flags. The world doesn't actually revolve around Palestinians, they're not actually the ultimate victims, and honestly, it's offensive they're cast that way when there are conflicts far worse and bloodier than the current war in Gaza, not to mention it takes away attention and help from them, to make everything constantly about the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, this is supposed to be the rule. Outside the performance hall, but within the borders of the Eurovision village, a visiting Israeli comedian called Guy Hochman was assaulted for walking around with the Israeli flag. Swedish police intervened, but they didn't act against the anti-Israel protesters who attacked and spat on Guy, they stopped him from openly carrying the Israeli flag. He asked why are they not allowing it, even though the flag is of a participating country, in accordance with the rules. He was told it's too dangerous. He then asked why are Palestinian flags not being removed, if they're banned according to contest rules, and was told that in Sweden, freedom of speech is above anything else. He was also grilled about whether he's Jewish by the Swedish policemen. Why was his flag denied, then? Why was his freedom of speech not protected, why was his Jewish identity a matter for questioning?
Another thing, the Swedish singer who ended up in third place in 2011 Eric Khaled Saade went on a childish rant crying over the Palestinian flag being banned (again, as if it's the only one), and as he was invited to perform this year, he got on stage live with a kaffiyeh tied to his left hand, even though he knew that was considered political, and therefore not allowed. Once more, he whined about it as if this is specifically against Palestinians, but you know what? The dress designers wanted to have a Star of David on the dress of the Israeli singer. She's a Jewish woman, that's a Jewish symbol, so why not represent her identity? But they were told that's "political." And you know what the Israeli delegation did? Followed the rules. You won't see the Star of David on Eden's dress. When they were told not to wear the hostage pin, because that's "political"? They followed the rules. When the Israeli song writers were told that their song, expressing Israeli pain, is "too political," what did they do? Followed the rules, they changed the lyrics. And you don't hear them crying about it all over social media and the news.
Not to mention, Eric Saade had no problem kissing the ass of Israeli fans back in 2011, when he competed and needed their votes. Was his dad less Palestinian back then? By the way, Israeli fans didn't hold his identity against him, they didn't demand he be questioned about Palestinian terrorists, or what his stance is on Hamas, they didn't drag politics into it, they focused on music and culture connecting people across borders and identities (as the ESC is supposed to do), and Israel gave its 12 points in both the semi and the final to Eric Saade that year. How did he repay those fans? Campaigning to ban Israel (and therefore them) from the contest, because he's incapable of seeing them as people first, and political rivals second, or maybe even (God forbid!) not at all...
It all smells like hypocrisy to me. But we all know this post won't get anywhere near the exposure (through likes and reblogs) that the lying, self-centered, hypocritical anti-Israel posts do. Doesn't matter. I'll still be here, speaking the truth.
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
blackbird-brewster reblogged
Look you can say that the students with Hezbollah flags quoting hitler are "not part of your movement" all you want but they ARE in fact sitting at the protests long enough for people to take pictures of them and post them on the internet without getting told to leave so ??????
blackbird-brewster reblogged
Modern antisemites really don't have anything original. This is just a remix of a Nazi classic:
My sibling in tumblr. This is absolutely not what is happening. Are there Nazis? Yes, probably. Are they “taking advantage of the situation?” No. These protests are ALREADY violently antisemitic even WITHOUT Nazis showing up. The students themselves, the self-proclaimed anti-imperialist leftists sticking up for innocent Gazans and fighting back against “occupation” and “colonialism,” are the ones spouting their very own home cooked vicious left-wing Jew hatred and threatening Jewish students for simply existing on campus. Right-wing neo-Nazis don’t even factor into this equation. The call is coming from inside the house. And if you’d ACTUALLY LISTENED to any Jews at all over the past six months, you’d already know that.
blackbird-brewster reblogged
A Chabad synagogue in Pomona, New York, burned to the ground on April 17th, along with its three Torah scrolls.
Torah scrolls are hand-written, hand-made, and kept in elaborately decorated cases or wrappings.
Many of them have long histories; my synagogue has two, I think, that were smuggled out of villages being destroyed in pogroms or in Nazi attacks. One of them is the only remaining piece of that village on earth.
Sometimes, the Torah scroll doesn't even belong to the synagogue, but is on loan from a place like the Memorial Scrolls Trust:
There's an entire Jewish holiday just for taking them out and dancing with them: Simchat Torah, "The Joy of Torah."
In fact, that was the holiday on which Hamas's invasion took place.
So it's a particular tragedy when a Torah is destroyed.
Chabad itself has a page about what goes into making just one Torah scroll:
"An authentic Torah scroll is a mind-boggling masterpiece of labor and skill. Comprising between 62 and 84 sheets of parchment -- cured, tanned, scraped and prepared according to exacting Torah law specifications -- and containing exactly 304,805 letters, the resulting handwritten scroll takes many months to complete.
"An expert pious scribe carefully inks each letter with a feather quill, under the intricate calligraphic guidelines of Ktav Ashurit (Ashurite Script). The sheets of parchment are then sewn together with sinews to form one long scroll. While most Torah scrolls stand around two feet in height and weigh 20-25 pounds, some are huge and quite heavy, while others are doll-sized and lightweight."
I learned all of this on Tumblr.
Once upon time, in people's "punch Nazis" days, I would've been able to find some mention on Tumblr of this synagogue burning.
There is none, so I'm posting about it.
And I'm going to quote Daniel Weiner, Rabbi of Temple de Hirsch Sinai in Bellevue, Washington, when his own synagogue was vandalized last November:
"It’s horrific and heartbreaking.... [Taking out your feelings about] what's going on in the Middle East by defacing a sacred space of a synagogue -- that’s the very definition of antisemitism."
I'm also posting about the Kehillat Shaarei Torah Synagogue in Toronto, whose windows were broken on Friday, April 19th, by someone who also tried to break the front door down.
And the April 15 graffiti outside a Bangor, Maine synagogue that said, "Nazi Israel 30K murdered," next to a crossed-out Star of David. The same synagogue faced pro-Hamas flyers plastered around it in November.
I was going to include all the synagogues vandalized over the past six months. But there are way too many. Several every week. Lots are swastikas.
I'll go back to just doing attacks on and near synagogues.
Someone has to talk about the 1-year-old who was stabbed outside Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel (BZBI) synagogue, in Philadelphia, on April 13th.
The man who, on April 9th, screamed at the rabbi at Moldova's Great Synagogue, "What are you doing here? How come no one has finished you off for everything you are doing to the Palestinians?" Just one week after people had vandalized a Holocaust memorial in nearby Soroka, and sprayed "Free Palestine" on it.
The Florida Las Olas Chabad Jewish Center, which on March 16 burned, but not to the ground. The Torah scrolls were safe, and no one was hurt, but the back of the building was severely damaged.
The planned-but-thwarted-on-March-7th ISIS massacre in a Moscow synagogue.
The stabbing of an Orthodox Jew in Switzerland on March 5th. (He was badly injured, but expected to survive.)
People set the courtyard of a synagogue in Sfax, Tunisia on fire on February 27th. Firefighters managed to put the fire out before it consumed the inside of the building.
The synagogue is no longer used; there are no Jews left in its area, and fewer than 1,000 Jews left in Tunisia overall.
(Thousands of Tunisian Jews were sent to work camps during the Holocaust. Antisemitism across the Middle East continued to increase rapidly for decades. By the 1970s, 90% of Tunisian Jews had fled to France or Israel.)
On February 18, an Orthodox Jew leaving Synagogue of Inverrary-Chabad in Lauderhill, Florida, was beaten by an attacker yelling racial slurs.
Someone deliberately chose International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, to smash all the windows in the front of Sgoolai Israel Synagogue in downtown Fredericton, New Brunswick.
On December 29, Turkey arrested 32 people linked to ISIS who were planning attacks on synagogues and churches.
On December 17, a man drove a U-Haul truck up onto the sidewalk between a barrier and the front door of the Kesher Israel Congregation in Washington D.C., got out, and started yelling "Gas the Jews." He also sprayed a foul-smelling substance on two people leaving the synagogue.
On December 11, a man attacked an elderly couple on their way into a synagogue in Los Angeles, screaming, "Give me your earrings, Jew!!" and beating one of them bloody with a belt. (Happily, he chased the guy down the street, and caught him when his pants fell down.)
On December 8, on the first night of Hanukkah, 15 synagogues in New York State received bomb threats. And someone screamed, "Free Palestine," and fired shots outside of Temple Israel in Albany, NY. Which has a preschool that was in session.
Meanwhile, the five Jews left in Egypt were canceling public Hanukkah candle-lighting at their synagogue out of fear of reprisals. Particularly after two Israelis in Alexandria had been gunned down by terrorists on October 8. (While Israel was still fighting Hamas in Israel.)
On November 15, a terrorist group set the only synagogue in Armenia on fire.
Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) has a history of working with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
(PFLP is part of Hamas's network of groups. Samidoun is their nonprofit arm - which is why Germany banned Samidoun last year, although it's still active in many other countries.
PFLP is also actively supported by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a diaspora nonprofit group, and Within Our Lifetime (WOL), an SJP spinoff in NYC.)
On November 11, halfway through Shabbat services, police asked Central Shul in Melbourne, Australia to evacuate "as a precaution" due to a "pro-Palestinian" protest that had chosen the neighboring park as its gathering place. Australia has seen some very outspoken antisemitism at protests, including the march shortly after October 7 that chanted "Gas the Jews."
Also on November 11, protesters targeted a synagogue along a march route. They sat in their cars, spraying green smoke and shouting at people leaving the synagogue. The march itself featured a record number of horrifying signs and chants.
On November 7th, Congregation Beth Tikvah in Montreal was firebombed, and the back door of the Jewish organization across the street (Federation CJA) was set on fire.
On November 4, protesters chanted "Bomb Israel," and burned an Israeli flag outside the only synagogue in Malmo, Sweden.
During October, there were 501 antisemitic acts under investigation in France in just three weeks, including groups gathering in front of synagogues shouting threats, and graffiti such as the words “killing Jews is a duty” sprayed outside a stadium.
On October 18, people firebombed a synagogue in Berlin after homes all over the neighborhood were graffitied with stars of David.
And also on October 18, hundreds of "pro-Palestine" rioters attacked the Or Zaruah Synagogue, in the Spanish enclave of Melilla in North Africa, while worshippers were inside.
Based on the video, they seem to have blocked the synagogue entrance completely, while screaming "Murderous Israel" and waving Palestinian flags. (Melilla is an autonomous zone belonging to Spain. It borders Morocco.)
On October 17, during pro-Palestinian protests, hundreds of rioters set fire to Al Hammah synagogue, an abandoned house of prayer in central Tunisia. They hammered down the building’s walls and raised a Palestinian flag on the building. Police did not intervene.
The Facebook page "Tunigate", which has around 88 thousand followers, published a video of the assault. So did "Radio Bousalem”, with 83 thousand users. The vast majority of comments on these videos welcome these acts. The building was severely damaged and almost completely razed to the ground.
On October 15, bomb threats were sent to many East Coast synagogues. Attleboro synagogue Congregation Agudas-Achim received one of the emails, which read, "The bombs will blow up in a few hours. A lot of people will die. You all deserve to die."
On October 8 -- again, while Hamas was still in Israel -- Madrid’s main synagogue was defaced with graffiti that read “Free Palestine” next to a crossed-out Star of David.
And on October 7, an assailant in Rockland, NY fired a BB gun at two women entering a synagogue. Later in the month, a banner at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in the area was vandalized with the words, “Fuckin kikes."
blackbird-brewster reblogged
I have some family friends. They have two children in their late teens/early twenties. One of them is in Israel right now, taking a gap year and volunteering. The other one is at a university in the US that has been a hotspot of anti-zionism/antisemitism as of late.
They feel more worried about their child in the US than they do about their child in Israel. Even though their child in Israel regularly has to hide from rockets in shelters. They think they are the safer one.
This is the reality of young jews in the US. It is even worse for Jews in the UK, Sweden, and other countries.