Only we can revive our language and decolonize our homeland in successful landback and get hated for it while they rewrite history.

Only we can suffer due to Islam and Islamic extremism, have that suffering ignored or justified and everyone tell us "Arabs and Muslims have every right to kill you and oppress you"

Only we can be told that we "control the world and the narrative" when there are countless "anti zionist" books and very little books talking about the evils of Islamic colonization and oppression.

Only we can be told "Muslims hate you and have been radicalized because you oppress Palestine" while never considering how they radicalized us because our pain doesn't exist or matter.

.

I got a call from my ex’s brother yesterday, asking me to check up on the queer community that I used to organize for and was expelled from after 10/7. They had already lost people and wanted my help with suicide prevention, which is something I used to do for them almost every week.

The same people who’ve been telling Zionists to kill themselves for the past year wanted my help with suicide prevention.

And I did it. I spoke to people I hoped I’d never interact with again, and told them I was glad they were alive, which was true. They said “despite everything I feel very loved and connected to my community. We’re in this together.” That’s exactly what they said. They didn’t even treat me like a person.

The election didn’t shock me; I think I’m done being shocked by how horrible people can be. I want to live up to my values, and I want to do tikkun olam where I can. I wish it hurt less.

.

I've been resisting the urge to make a post that goes:

> Okay. We've gotten the message. The Elders have been notified, the committee has discussed, and the ruling is as follows:

Y'all on the Left? You're on your own. We've begged, pleaded, talked, discussed, voted, organized, and shown up--and as thanks, we've been ostracized, brutalized, victim-blamed, and lynched, figuratively and literally. There's all of this talk about building a coalition against Trump and the authoritarian Right? It's clear that we're not only not invited, we're actively detested and hated. So why bother trying to stand in solidarity with you when it's clear that the only reason you'd welcome us is because it gives a clear shot at our kidneys with a knife? Despite what many of you believe, we're not rich, we're not overwhelmingly powerful, we're not obscenely influential, so our resources will be rather *limited* in protecting our lives from threats from both the Right and the Left, and why share those limited assets on people who hate us? Isn't there a famous quote by a famous Jew on that topic? Something about 'pearls before swine'?

You made your beds. And shat in them. Now go lie down. We're going to be off over here, doing what we do best: _survive_.

~~

But I don’t have the courage to post it on my account.

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I just went to the icon convention in Israel (for those who don't live here, it's like dashcon, but real and happens every year), and there was a memorial piece for an organizer of the event who died in a terror attack nineteen days ago. She was gonna do a lecture on her analysis of doctor who, she was gonna participate in a panel about good omens' second season, she made BEAUTIFUL art pieces and cosplays that are on display here, and... I just know there are people on this website, who take part and joy in those fandoms every day, who are going to say that her death was justified. That her death was good. That her death was deserved.

I'm tired.

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Hello - I was impressed and extremely relieved by what you wrote in the post about the cult mentality of the Left RE Israel and accusations of genocide. You mentioned that you bought into the mindset until recently. If it's all right for me to ask, what was it that helped you break out of it? (Please feel free to delete/ignore if you'd rather not answer!)

thank you!! and no worries about asking— i think i put something in my pinned post about how people are welcome to send asks about this stuff, although my story isn’t super interesting. i fell down the typical online rabbithole, a couple weeks after october 7; i knew what had happened, at least vaguely, but the posts trickling onto my dash were all about the (undeniably tragic) loss of life in gaza, with little to no acknowledgment of the hamas atrocities that had started the war, so my narrative was pretty one-sided from the beginning. it just continued to snowball as the months went on and people became more radicalized, calling into question the reality of the 10/7 attacks and the humanity of all israelis. i never went all the way down the pipeline to full-on endorsing hamas or justifying their attacks, at least on a personal level, thank god, but i would reblog other people’s posts referring to hamas as a “resistance movement” and calls to boycott starbucks and mcdonald’s and condemnation of the “zionist media” etc etc etc. what pulled me out of it wasn’t any one thing— if someone had directly called me on my flawed logic and antisemitic biases while i was in this mindset, i doubt it would have done much, just reinforced my belief that i was on the “right side of history” and zionists were aggressors who couldn’t be reasoned with. it was mostly just passive observance and a slow exposure to other perspectives. i’m pretty sure the first post that led me to question my thinking was an ask on jewish-vents, which popped up on my dash in like, late july. this led me down another rabbithole, first scouring every single post on jewish-vents, then moving on to more popular jewish blogs that i had seen on “zionist blocklists” (applesauce42069, xclowniex, and spacelazarwolf were probably some of the blogs that influenced me the most, though i told myself i was just hate-scrolling at first, lol). i felt incredibly guilty seeing all the harm the movement i was a part of had caused to random jews and israelis just trying to live their lives and i realized how it went against everything i believed about how minority groups should be treated. from there, the aspect of actually undoing my thinking and changing my behavior for the better still took several weeks. denial of jewish indigenity to the levant in the face of tantamount archeological and cultural evidence was the first to go, as well as any ambiguity in my feelings about hamas. after that, it’s mostly been a slow process of redefining the idf’s actions from a “genocide” to a “war.” i still believe that what’s happening in gaza is unconscionable and horrific, and that too many innocent civilians have died, but i also understand how difficult it is to fight against a terrorist group that systematically embeds itself in civilian populations, and that the ratio of militant to civilian deaths is incredibly low compared to most urban warfare. i quietly deleted my old blog in early august— if i had directly engaged in harassment against jews, i likely would have kept it to make amends to the harmed parties and put a face to my actions, but as was, i had just contributed to the larger atmosphere of antisemitism on this site, and i felt uncomfortable knowing that i had a blog full of sentiments that no longer matched my values and beliefs. i decided i would be better if i took my endorsement out of the equation entirely, because when you’re looking through the notes of a post, it obviously doesn’t matter if someone who’s reblogged it no longer agrees with what was said— their notes still count as tacit approval, and i did not want approval of this “activism” attached to my online presence. i still have unwanted kneejerk reactions that crop up sometimes, particularly around the fundraiser posts from people “in gaza”; even though i know logically that they have all the markers of scams, there is still a part of me that really wants to believe i could help.