queer, hiloni, conlanger; pronouns: they/she/he
240 posts
The only Good Jews are the Jews who are self-sacrificing, who will go willingly to their deaths for the salvation of others. The Good Jew, who will willingly undergo torments unto death, is the only Good Jew.
The Good Jew will absolve their murderers. The Good Jew will 'turn the other cheek'. The Good Jew will write "I still believe that people are good at heart" when being persecuted. The Good Jew will lay down and die for the comfort and education of others.
But for all other Jews who fail to attain such lofty standards?
They are betrayers, corruptors, colonizers, genociders, child murderers, blood drinkers. Capitalists and communists. Sexually depraved and yet sexless, where even the Jewish men are emasculated. They are White, yet also still Other. They are rootless cosmopolitans, from nowhere, yet told to go back where they came from. Their mere presence is a taint, and yet they hide among the disciples of the Good Jew, waiting for their chance to betray and sell out.
The only Good Jew is a Dead Jew who goes willingly to die, on the cross of the Romans or from the knives and guns of terrorists. All other Jews, who refuse to lay down and die, who dare to say "Am Yisrael Chai", that the Children of Yisrael Live, are therefore innately evil and irredeemable, and must be shunned for daring to cling to life.
i think it is bad to say that a group of people, whose schools and places of worship get firebombed in several places around the world , talking about the danger they face is equivalent to “white people whining about reverse racism,” but hey
“The average US president has been convicted on .75 felonies” factoid isn’t true. average US president has been convicted on 0 felonies. Felonies Donld, who has been convicted on 34, is a statistical outlier adn should not have been counted
I'd like to add also that so many of those people who used to get antisemitism on the left and spoke out about it back in before October, even people who comforted me back in when Israel and Hamas were fighting in 2021 - they have now adopted the very tropes of left-wing antisemitism they used to condemn.
So a while back, a fairly left-wing friend of mine was shocked at the thought of Left-Wing Holocaust Denial, asking how it could even be possible, how can the Left even deny the Holocaust given everything (quote: “why would the LEFT be in denial? After you read Elie Wiesel, you can’t deny any of it. Same with Maus, Frieda Appleman-Jurman’s memoirs, and all that. Also, Lois Lowry won a Newberry medal for Number the Stars”). So I’ve been chewing on this for a while now.
First, Right-Wing Holocaust Denial is straight up “denial that the Holocaust happened”–often with an undertone of “But we wish that it had and it was a great idea”. They deny the number of deaths, or excuse the Nazis, or say that the Jews had it coming, or say that it didn’t happen at all, that sort of thing. It’s a very blunt, straightforward form of denial.
Comparatively, Left-Wing Holocaust Denial takes a different, more sophisticated form that functions on multiple levels–with an undertone of its own along the lines of “the Jews are exaggerating to try to portray themselves as victims”–and to talk about this form of denial, I have to explain what the Holocaust was.
So this gets a bit long, because what is being denied is long, but I will ask you to bear with me.
But, TL:DR:
Right Wing Holocaust Denial denies the body count and the atrocities…
Left Wing Holocaust Denial denies everything that built up to it, the centuries of Othering and murders, and the aftereffects.
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I'm puzzled as to some of my recent followers. Why am I, a queer secular Israeli, getting followed by an anti-Israel account and by a socially conservative Christian nationalist? Are these hate follows?
One thing I absolutely won't post on Tumblr is whether I agree with this or that military action on Israel. I talk about it on other spaces but never here - I don't want to get sucked into tumblr arguments with either anti-Zionists or Israel supporters and Israelis. And I would get into a lot of arguments definitely, as my positions broadly support Israel but also take issue with tons of actions during the war - some of which I think were criminal. I prefer to keep such arguments in less public spaces, like discord servers I trust. So I'm not going to comment here on the recent events of Rafah except to beg everyone to remember the common humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians.
I feel like every writer knows that one person who can't understand that you won't write their ideas, you'll write yours
"Yes, that's an... interesting concept. It's not how I write, it's not the way I think. Write it yourself."
This is a good point. I am reblogging about the antisemitism relating to the war rather than what is happening in the war itself, but I can see how this is can be unfair to those who are looking for positivity or trying to avoid the negatives rn. There should be discussion about where are the appropriate boundaries for the tags. Maybe people like me should stick to other tags (I am lately using #judenhass and #queer antisemitism because those are far less likely to be co-opted than #antisemitism), or maybe they should use other tags themselves. But it isn't fair to people's mental health to leave them without a safe space where they aren't constantly retraumatised. There's also of course the perennial question of what aspects of hiloni life and Israeli life outside of religion should count as part of Jewish tumblr.
Guys. If you’re gonna make a post about Israel or Gaza, and just Israel or Gaza, can you get off the #jumblr tag
That’s a tag for Jewish tumblr. Yknow, Jewish stuff. Mezuzot, stories from the mikrah, converts talking about the process. The politics of one Binyamin Netanyahu and his cronies is a different topic and for the love of god I want to get a break from this shit sometimes.
Imma start blocking people who do it istg
I can't believe one of my posts went viral on jumblr. People are paying attention to me. I don't know whether to shrink out of sight or to celebrate.
They are also erasing Jewish history of Israel from before the foundation of the state, and en masse rewriting articles on Zionism and Jews in the Middle East, getting rid of any context that justifies Israel and sometimes adding conspiracy theories. Israeli right-wing sources are considered unreliable due to being propaganda (which they are, but they also sometimes tell the truth) yet Qatari outlets are considered completely okay to use despite many many instances of outright fabrication. They should either ban both or ban neither if they want consistency. I have to constantly go to archived revisions for almost any page relating to Israel's history. Even on the summary page of Israel itself, they erased the link to the "Land of Israel" but kept the "Holy Land" and "historic region of Palestine".
This kind of stuff was happening on other topics than Jews long before October 7th, and is due to an inherent issue in English Wikipedia's editing culture. I remember how the decision making process worked years ago in a debate about deadnaming; trans people were outright ignored not just by transphobes but by "allies" because anyone with a personal stake in an issue is viewed as untrustworthy. Rules are made by consensus, which isn't a terrible idea on its own - but key part of how consensus is built is to marginalise the very people affected. I know from a friend this is also how Wikipedia operates on Romani issues.
I love the *idea* of Wikipedia so much, but the editing culture there is really toxic.
Another Jew on here commented that people were going onto Wikipedia and removing references to certain people's Jewishness, and I just saw for myself that this is true. As a Jew and a fan of old movies and history, I was looking up a list of Jewish actors on Wikipedia. I saw Tina Louise (you know, from Gilligan's Island) pop up. So I popped over to her actual page on Wikipedia. And there were zero references to her being Jewish. So I hopped on over to the Wayback Machine (bless you, Internet Archive) and put in the URL for her Wikipedia page. And wouldn't ya know it: before 10/7, there were at least 3 to 5 references to her Jewishness at any given time on her Wikipedia page. Wtf is happening.
It is May but it is still October.
It is still October whenever another hostage's body is found. It is still October whenever another IDF casualty is announced. It is still October whenever the red alert shows up on my phone. It is still October when people chant for "intifada". It is still October when people call for our home to be destroyed. It is still October when people deny what was done to our brothers and sisters. It is still October when people show support for Hamas. It is still October when a new lie about us is believed and spread. It is still October when a former role model wishes us dead.
It is still October.
When will it stop being October?
When October 2024 arrives, will it still be October 2023?
it's so annoying seeing posts about Jewish culture—cutesy posts about fighting with g-d that appeal to Christian atheists' religious trauma, posts with Jewish music, posts with pictures of beautiful Jews—getting tens or even hundreds of thousands of notes, but the moment someone makes a post about antisemitism—about how it's built in to Western society, about how it's insidious and creeping, about how you've probably internalized it, about the difficulties we face and the grief we feel—they fail to break jumblr containment. Don't get me wrong, I love that goyim are celebrating Jewish culture as something beautiful and wonderful, but that can't be all we are to you. We're real people with real problems that you can't just ignore in favor of reblogging posts about bagels or whatever
you know what, i’m about to say it
it’s not just expecting jews to be or proclaim to being pro-palestine/anti-israel/antizionist that is antisemitic, it’s also expecting them to hold or proclaim to holding perfect pro-palestine/anti-israel/antizionist views and politics all the time. and by ‘perfect’ i certainly don’t mean sensible, nuanced, or productive views and politics, i mean views and politics that unchallengingly espouse the mainstream narrative of a solidarity movement riddled with antisemitism. pro-palestine jews become agents of zionism the second they express the slightest discomfort at the unchecked and rampant antisemitism in the movement, the tokenization of their activism, the exterminatory rhetoric surrounding israel, the use of material produced by people with a history of antisemitism, the abuses of bds, the support for deeply antisemitic & armed religious movements, the celebration of people who killed civilians, the erasure of jewish diversity, history and culture, the denial of antisemitism from the holocaust to the jewish exodus from muslim countries, the inappropriate and ahistorical nazi comparisons, the toxic strategies used to dodge accusations of antisemitism - i could go on. expecting jews to be uncritical supporters of a movement in which antisemitism - that is, for those who forget, anti-jewish racism - has such a large audience and amount of offenders, that’s antisemitism, always.
Every person is inherently bad because they [are tainted by Original Sin / have privilege and benefit from colonization]. Some people are good, however, because [they became Christian / are oppressed minorities], and these people cannot do any wrong. The problem is the remaining people, who are [minorities and Jews / oppressors and capitalists and Jews], who cause all the problems in the world. But the [Democrats and Zionists / Democrats and Zionists and Republicans] have a vested interest keeping them in power. We should ally with [Russia / Russia and Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthis] to take down the true enemy, [immigrants and Arabs and Jews / America and Jews]. Once we kill all the bad people, the [Rapture / Glorious Revolution] will come, and everything will be better.
When a ceremonial monarch who largely didn't do anything died, tumblr cheered about it because she symbolised colonialism and imperialism. Not because of anything she personally did, but because of her *symbolism*.
When someone dies who personally presided over mass executions of political dissidents, oversaw as a political leader massive repression of women, religious minorities and ethnic minorities and helped organise genocide and civil war throughout the Middle East, only Iranian and Jewish tumblrs are saying anything.
Skewed priorities much?
i hate how antizionists bring up respected historical figures who hated israel and zionism as some kind of gotcha and you can tell they’ve never had to acknowledge that, yeah, a lot of the most beloved historical figures of all time were massive antisemites
SINCE WHEN CAN BOTS CREATE POLLS??? EXCUSE ME?? ALSO WHAT ARE THESE OPTIONS?
I think something that is at the top of my of list for things that frustrate and upset it about all of this how Jewish victimhood is talked about and treated in non-Jewish spaces.
There is this very nasty and insidious way that Jewish victimhood gets talked about in both Left and Right spaces. And it categorized and spoken about as victimhood and "victimhood"
Where as in Jewish spaces is treated and spoken as Jewish survival and Jewish trauma. One that we more and more recognizing that we don't fully understand the full scope of said trauma and a trauma we know we have never had a chance to fully work through because of the many traumas that been built over each other.
We are fully aware we have not worked through our trauma from the Holocaust and we know that we never gotten a chance to work multiple other traumas.
We also know that we will never get anything close being able to have something like restorative justice because that involves the offenders participating and taking responsibility and that just doesn't happen.
Rather the Left and the Right claim that we like to be "perpetual victims" as a get out of jail free card and/or to score brownie points.
Just ask consistently online Jewish person if the have heard "eternal Jewish victimhood" "perpetual victims" "always a victims" etc and they will ask you which side's comments are looking for, the Right or the Left because they've got for both.
This sadly has only gotten worse after Oct. 7
Western queer radicals: Here's how Israel's gay-friendly image is used to cover oppression of queer Palestinians.
Israeli queer radicals: Agreed! They also erase how we in Israel don't really have the same equality as in the West, or the systemic racism faced by queer Arabs within the Israeli LGBT community. We should work in solidarity to improve queer lives everywhere, here's a bunch of Israeli orgs that you can work with to pressure our government. We can end pinkwashing together!
Western queer radicals: Actually the best way to ensure queer liberation in Palestine is to promote Islamist terrorism.
“Is fighting leftist antisemitism really the hill you want to die on?”
Not particularly. But, since that’s where you’re trying to kill me, I’d rather go down swinging.
I have long wanted my tumblr to be free of politics and focus on creative things I love. But I just can't keep my anger and fear under wraps anymore. I'm saving most of my divisive commentary for discord and still straying from most subjects (including my beliefs about the current war), but I'm not going to be silent anymore about how the hate affects me as an Israeli Jew who was raised in and still lives in the United States.