let's talk Zionism

I’ve seen an awful lot of posts going around lately condemning Zionists and even condemning particular people for being Zionists.

At best, this stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what Zionism entails. At worst, this stems from outright antisemitism.

Israel has done bad things, and it’s perfectly okay to note this and speak out against the wrongs that any institution or country has perpetrated. Of course it is.

But Zionism is merely the idea that Jews have the right to have a homeland and be protected. With thousands of years of bloody persecution and oppression behind us, hatred and violence in the present, and the promise of more to come in the future, of course Zionism took root. Zionism has been and continues to be an image of hope to many Jews.

Zionists are not Israel, Zionism is not the idea that Israel should be able to do whatever it wants without consequences. Zionists can be openly critical of the modern state of Israel and still be Zionists.

When you condemn Zionism, what we hear is that Jews do not have the right to live without oppression, that Jews cannot be trusted to make decisions for their own good, that the plans Jews make must ultimately be nefarious in nature.

Being a Zionist is not the determining factor of whether any particular person is a terrible person or not.

It’s time to stop being shocked at antisemitism in the Anti-Zionism movement.

Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

End of story.

You do not treat Jews like colonists in their own homeland and get to say that you’re not antisemitic.

You do not get to wipe our history and culture and then claim that you care about Jews.

You do not get to say that we control the media and world governments and then say that you’re just ‘critical of Israeli policies’.

Anti-Zionists hide behind Zionists who support Palestinian rights in Israel.

It’s time to stop allowing that. 

If you declare yourself an anti-Zionist you declare you want to wipe out Jews. 

If you want just peace, then I hate to break it to you, you’re a Zionist. 

When you say “Cancel Israeli Pinkwashing” I can only see that as two things

So either way you’re both anti-semitic and Anti-LGBTQ rights for Israelis.

If you have some other explanation to “cancel pinkwashing” that doesn’t make you sound like an absolute monster, please, be my guest.

if ISIS simply have to be assholes about everything, can’t they at least go and do it in israel

This is the most shameful fucking thing I have seen all day and if you agree with this sentiment fucking unfollow me right now

do you want me to send you a list of the children and innocent civilians killed or maimed by israel or isn’t that ~~shameful enough

Listen up whitey don’t you come at me talking about the issues in Palestine that is my family, my kin out there suffering and dying, so don’t you dare try to put the Hamas-IDF conflict on the entire Israeli people. It makes you no better than those bigoted folks who look at ISIL and call all Muslims terrorists. No what’s happening is not right on all sides but you don’t get to pick a new group of people to suffer you are not god.

“listen up whitey”

like, i’d love to take you seriously, but a) you think you’re a witch, or a fairy or some shit and b) i strongly suspect you’re american; both of which make your opinion kinda irrelevant

lmao look at these shenanigans you have no counter argument so you went through my blog and got one of my selfies? Hey good job you proved…. what exactly? In doing so you probably saw where I have not only talked about the Hamas situation in Palestine but also the part where I’M FUCKING MIXED RACE ARAB AND MY FATHER IS AN ARAB IMMIGRANT but hey that doesn’t fit your narrative now does it? So let’s just skip over that part entirely.

Are you in Palestine friend? By your own reasoning, doesn’t that make your own opinion invalid? I’ve got more in this conflict than you do so why don’t you sit down, grown ups are speaking.

@thetrickstergoddess a) is from New Zealand b) calls herself a trickster goddess and c) looks like this:

for the record, that burnt stench you’re smelling is hypocrisy.

i like how this person is saying “ok so if isis is gonna kill people, can’t they just like, kill people in israel, bc like… obviously civilians should die bc their government did bad things”

thank fuck my grandmother isn’t here to see this lmao

this is honestly a disgrace

No, let’s be specific, “people in israel” is a copout. They don’t mean American tourists in Israel, and they don’t mean Arab immigrants in Israel.

What they’re actually saying is, “If ISIS is going to brutally murder people, I’d rather they brutally murder Jews.”

OP is openly calling for the **murder of Jewish civilians** because OP wants to play politics.

Funny, Jews have a bad history with people who demand Jewish genocide to further their political agenda.

This post is violent antisemitism. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

^^^^^^^^ Agreed.

OP is ignorant and antisemitic and makes me sick. When people say they want bad things to happen to Israel, they really mean the Jews, as if the two terms are interchangeable. And saying that Jewish civilians deserve to be attacked by ISIS is fucked up beyond belief.

But come on guys, you really didn’t have to use each other’s selfies and judge their appearances to try to discredit each other or make the other look like the “bad guy” of the post to further their own argument.

This didn’t have to devolve into insulting the individuals’ races and nationalities and appearances. That’s a way to make it petty real quick.

Some of the most important Jewish heritage sites in the Middle East have now been rebranded as Islamic heritage sites by UNESCO. Israeli archaeological activity has been condemned. Regardless of your stance on the political conflict, this should anger you. The deliberate erasure of Jewish heritage sites in the Middle East, rebranding them as “Islamic” is ahistorical and antisemitic. Barring Jews from our places of worship and denying Jewish historical connection to our holy sites is the antithesis of progressive activism. If Palestinian self-determination is hinged on the elimination of millennia of Jewish presence in the region, then it only serves to actualize Jewish fears. It should anger the many archaeologists and historians that follow me, regardless of their stance on the political conflict, that Israel is being condemned by UNESCO for archaeological digging in Jerusalem. What are they so afraid of us finding?

The bid to have the Western Wall has been dropped! http://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinians-drop-bid-to-name-western-wall-part-of-al-aqsa/

This isn’t about the Western Wall, it’s about Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs. I request that you please do not reblog with the “this is okay because the Kotel is safe!” commentary. Jewish historical sites aren’t limited to the western retaining wall of the foundation built by Herod the Great.

You can’t depoliticize this though. While it’s important that historical Jewish religious sites be recognized, one must keep in mind how the Israeli government uses these designations to continue their disenfranchisement, and oppression of Palestinians.

I’ve not heard much about the controversy regarding Qever Rachel Imenu, but the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque is definitely used as a political tool by Israel, especially to assert the occupation of Hebron/al-Khaleel, and repress the rights of non-Jews to worship there, despite a common reverence for those interred within.

It’s a moot point, really. The Israeli government is going to do whatever it wants without impunity, saying that it’s acting in the best interests of Jews the world over.

What a joke.

This is another prime example of people caring about literally anything and everything more than they care about Palestinians and then hiding that under a “despite what you feel about the issue, here is another way that Palestinians suck” type statement.

Let’s take Qaber Youssef in Nablus as an example. The Palestinians living in that area are mostly refugees in an already crowded and terrible refugee camps. And every night settlers want to perform their right to prayer, they come in on the depth of the night protected by a ton of military and terrorize the neighborhood. Clashes break and my friend in the area spends the whole night suffocating because of a tear gas induced asthma attack. Or oh, settlers on their way to prayer break into a school, break glass windows, pee and throw dead pigeons in the water tanks of the near by school.

Don’t kid yourself and act as if that’s not political and this is just another example of oh look at Palestinians being sp antisemitic jew haters, when this is much more than that.

Also, how hypocritical talking about right to prayer for Jews in Palestine but coming up with 1000 excuse why it’s ok to prevent Palestinians from going to their holy sites and praying.

What a joke indeed.

“Jewish sites shouldn’t be Jewish because settle extremists. History should be rewritten for modern political conflict.”

Revisionism is apparently fine when it comes to Jews.

Of the 3 times I’ve been to Israel only on two of those times I was not a baby and each of times I wanted to go to the Tomb of Rachel because she was a source of strength to me when I was going through hell. 

But I couldn’t go because it was so unsafe that I was not to get the people I was staying with to take me there. Many times when you go to the Tomb of Rachel you get shot at. You go under armed escort and in a bullet proof bus and are still not 100% safe.

I could not go to my own heritage because it was unsafe and I could have been killed. 

Seriously fuck you all who are telling Jews that it is okay for us to get harassed, hurt, killed, and erased from our own heritage, history, and land because ‘Israel’.

Go fuck yourselves. 

people on tumblr: *are incapable of interacting with any jewish content without mentioning israel*

The Judaean Hills, as viewed from YadVashem. We will forever honor the memory of those lost.

#YomHaShoah

Tonight, Israel celebrates its 67th year of Independence!

“The Nazis didn’t just kill the Jews; they made use of every inch of them. Women’s hair was shaved off and weaved into blankets for Nazi soldiers. Fat from Jews’ bodies was used to make soap. Gold teeth were pulled out to make gold bars for the Reichsbank. 384,000 pairs of men’s shoes were sent to Germany from Auschwitz. 646,000 men’s suits. 184,000 pairs of eyeglasses. The most frightening thing is not the gas chambers or the crematoria. It’s the rooms piled to the ceiling with children’s shoes. That gives you have an idea what the Holocaust was. Shoes. Once worn by real people.” - via jewishhistory.org

In the Holocaust Museum in DC, they have a room just for the shoes and hair of the victims. It’s really startling to see it so up close since it makes you realize the sheer scale of this. The pile of hair in the museum weighs several tons, and bear in mind that this several ton pile of hair is only but a small fraction of all of the horrible things found in the camps.

Somewhere in those shoes were the shoes of my great aunts and their children. 

Same with eyeglasses.

It’s something I can never, ever forget.

The above are photos I took at Auschwitz. The shoes and suitcases were each encased in a hallway - kept behind glass on both sides. And again comprise only a fraction of what the Nazis took.

Now the significance of these collections can not be understated or undermined, the horrors of the Holocaust, the Shoah, are embodied in these piles of stolen clothing and cases.

We look at them and recoil, promising that we’ll never forget and yet the systematic slaughter of human beings continues around the world.

In different places, for different reasons. Who didn’t learn the lesson? Who still needs to be reached? Who needs to be protected?

Do not forget. Remember and react. Radical evil is not a memory of the past, it is a present and continuous force.

Reblogging in honor International Holocaust Remembrance Day: 70 year anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. 

There’s a huge collection of shoes at the Yad Vashem museum in Israel too

The display is under the floor so you can walk over it, and it feels like you’re literally walking in their footsteps. I remember taking a good look at all the shoes, wondering about the people they belonged to.

You know how you can tell a lot about a person based on their shoes? Well, on the top of the pile there was a woman’s shoe that was probably once very nice and white, and the tour guide asked us “do you think the woman who wore this one knew where she was being taken?”

It’s so devastating to look at all those shoes right below your own feet, knowing what happened to the people who wore them.

BDS is the new Anti Semitism.

Mass Stabbing on Tel Aviv Bus

I just arrived home (safely, as always) on a SEPTA bus three hours ago.  At no time during my trip (which also involved a trolley from Center City, and then an MFL subway / El car, back home here to Kensington) did it ever cross my mind that I would possibly be stabbed by terrorists at any point. Nine people were stabbed on a Tel Aviv bus this morning, by a Palestinian-Arab terrorist, who initially attempted to flee on foot, but was soon, fortunately, shot and is now in custody.

Some will surely tell us that this is just a confused young man who was so oppressed that he couldn’t help but stab as many Jews as possible once the bus picked him up, and “the incident began.”  Certain others may even wonder if the driver, who was apparently attacked first, might have done something to provoke this surely peaceful, knife-wielding gentleman, into attacking him and then being involuntarily forced into a wild, Jew-stabbing frenzy? Meanwhile, people with brains will recognize and acknowledge the fact that Israel is still very much fighting a terror war on all fronts at all times, and that the constant incitement from its alleged “peace-partners,” which produces bus riders whose purpose is to stab Jews, rather than to get from home to work or restaurant or shopping or vice versa, is very much more of a problem, than Jews building apartments in places where some would prefer they not live. Tomorrow, I’m going to once again board numerous subways and buses, and later this weekend even a few SEPTA regional rail trains.  And not once during any of those trips will I worry about being stabbed, even though I just wrote about this right now. Is it too much to ask for Israelis to eventually be able to one day expect the same?

Israel Thrives

Now that I have a lot of popular leftist/sj bloggers following me I’m going to say this: INCLUDE JEWS IN YOUR ACTIVISM. Don’t assume we’re all Zionists. Don’t assume that because a Jewish person is a Zionist, you can say antisemitic things to them. There’s a way to criticize Zionism without being an antisemitic piece of shit. Do not compare Jews to nazis when you talk about Israel. Do not think that antisemitism doesn’t exist anymore because of Israel’s political actions. Do not brush over our tragedies by saying we deserved them because of Israel. Do not blame diaspora Jews for the actions of Israel. Do realize that antizionists can live in Israel due to a variety of circumstances. Do not reblog political cartoons where we look like nazi caricatures. Do spread awareness of terrible things in this world happening to us. Do call people out for saying that we control media/banks/world government. DO INCLUDE US, CALL OUT ANTISEMITISM WHEN YOU SEE IT. Thanks.

Morning in Jerusalem

returnofthejudai (via ladywindupbird)

My contribution to that classic category of Jewish humor, “Poke fun at the frightening hate of us.”

Ideas and examples taken from numerous examples from the news and tumblr from just the last week.  See my blog, as well as auteesteet and returnofthejudai, for examples (and a thank you to auteesteet with the Things Not To Do In Israel/Palestine Discourse list, which helped inspire this)

This is much nicer than my thrown together job from a month ago. Also more relevant to stuff that’s happening outside of the tumblr bubble.

HEY NONNY HERE YOU GO

Hamas breaks Ceasefire, Media headlines claims Israel did.

Well, what do you know. Hamas has broken the ceasefire (As only Islamic terrorists can) and started firing missiles into Israel again. After 18 missiles came Israel’s way, they retaliated. The funny thing is the media doesn’t acknowledge the fact that Hamas and not Israel started this and no doubt their biased coverage will have thousands on the streets tomorrow protesting against….Israel.

Eye on the World