does the far left even know that they have effectively alienated massive numbers of regular folks who’ve seen protesters chanting “burn tel aviv to the ground” and “globalize the intifada” or watched jewish people all over the world be subjected to harassment from antizionists

personally, speaking as a long-time leftist, i have lost all trust in leftists as a whole

for the record, I keep trying to understand their point of view and how they see and understand the history and current events of the conflict - am I being fed biased information? are they being fed biased information? if so, how can we reach them? - and there's such a massive discrepancy between the far left's framing of the conflict and pretty much everyone else's that it's been threatening to trigger my psychosis again. I'm not even saying that disparagingly, either; they have such a dramatically different perception of reality that listening to them makes me feel like I'm literally going insane.

and they don't seem to be aware of how others perceive them and how others perceive the conflict, which imo is absolutely devastating to their cause.

this isn't even respectability politics either; we're well past that. we're at the point that the far left seems to conflate 'persuading others to support the cause' with 'respectability politics.' at that point, why even bother?

non-jews only

answer honestly, there's not really a point to this poll except remind people to check on their Jewish friends.

keep your answers anonymous while reblogging, and be honest while answering. no-one can see what you voted so being honest is only for your own sake.

When South Africa dismantled apartheid, it did not end with the expulsion of all white South Africans. They became part of the new South Africa, just without the criminal discriminatory oligarchic powers the apartheid goverment had. When Bolivia recognized its indigenous heritage and became a plurinational state, it did not mean that people of European descent were expelled in masse. It meant the recognition of the previously discriminated indigenous and mestizo people of Bolivia and the beginning of a path of integration and revalidation.

What I mean is that it's ridiculous to think that decolonization inherently means mass suffering and relocation, that's what colonization does. Decolonization is recognizing the crimes of colonization, but more importantly, material, political and social steps to give power and self-determination to the exploited native people who were victims of colonialism and imperialism.

In multicultural societies, you don't go like in that Peter Griffin meme with a skin tone chart and saying 'well, you go back to Europe, you go back to Africa, you stay here'. You build a new society on the paradigm of dignity for exploited people and equality under the law. People are acting like this is some sort of fantastic utopia instead of real initiatives that were done in living memory, with successes and failures, as all such initiatives have. One must ask why are some so insistent that multicultural societies can't thrive, especially when for most of history, societies were indeed like that. Consider why you think like that.

I largely agree, and -- I also want to answer "consider why you think like that." I know it was rhetorical, but there are reasons.

One reason is history. Historically, Jews have at multiple points experienced extreme violence as well as ethnic cleansing and displacement when we have lived as a minority in a number of societies. In the twentieth century almost the entire global Jewish population was uprooted, some from places they had lived in for thousands of years. Also, before the Holocaust, immigration restrictions in countries Jews were trying to flee to prevented them from doing so, which led to Jews being unable to flee a genocide. Jews are suspect of the idea of our fate being in someone else's hands again.

The other thing, specific to Israel/Palestine, is that I am unsure of how many Palestinians actually do hold the vision you're suggesting. For example, I attended a ceasefire protest at which one of the chants was "settlers, settlers, go back home, Palestine is ours alone." I imagine there a multitude of different opinions, but the point is, I'd didn't just imagine from nowhere that decolonization means relocation to a lot of people.

The Palestinian national movement, for understandable (although still bad) reasons has been built on both the exclusion of Jews from a Palestinian national identity (so Jews whose ancestry in the land is as old as most Palestinian Arabs are definitionally excluded from what it means to be “Palestinian”—-except to evoke a time of religious and cultural tolerance and equality in pre-Mandate times that is perhaps…conveniently nostalgic) and also a denial of the Jewish self-identity (“just a religion”, all Jews are Ashkenazi-and all Ashkenazim are culturally and genetically identical to European Christians, all aspects of Jewish and Israeli culture are either made up or stolen, etc.). These would both be barriers to any sort of binational or multicultural society, and no one who is passionate about a one state solution seems particularly interested in dismantling them—-the people who seem the closest seem to be Standing Together and supporters of Hadash, who want to create a multicultural society *within Israel* while simultaneously allowing for Palestinian Arab self-determination in the WB & Gaza, and Ra’am which is seemingly trying to carve a niche in Israeli society for the “Arab sector” similar to the one that exists for Haredi Jews (ie support for the government in exchange for welfare and funding directed at their marginalized communities). At least that’s what I, an American Jew who tries to keep up with English-language Israeli media, am getting (I fully admit there are probably elements of this that I am unaware of).

The other thing is that 99% of the times the “multicultural society” people seem to be proposing is 1) called Palestine and ruled by Arabs 2) built over an Israel that has been “destroyed” (not one that has been incorporated into or fused with the Palestinian state) and 3) it is assumed that the Jews will either leave willingly or be deemed “worthy” of living in this society. Nothing is said of Jews who are not “worthy” but can’t or won’t leave. You can understand why a lot of Jews don’t view this as being a situation in which they will thrive.

a lot of people don’t care about bigotry that doesn’t personally affect them but they do want to posture about fighting it. this is why they act like you killed their cat when you say they’re being bigoted in a way they claim to oppose

I mean this in good faith but i’m not entirely sure how exactly protesters want a ceasefire at the same time they’re calling for an intifada. A ceasefire is a temporary cessation of conflict. An intifada is an armed uprising. You…can’t really have both at the same time unless what you really mean is “my team gets to act while the others can’t react in turn,” which, in any conflict, is prima facie absurdity

Why is this year different from all other years?

On other years, we dance joyfully with the Torah. But this year, we are brought from Devarim to ein milim.

On other Shabbatot, we lock away our phones and tear the challah with our hands because cutting it with a knife is too violent for the peaceful sanctity of Shabbat. But these Shabbatot, we carry our phones for safety and some even carry weapons.

On other years, Chanukah is primarily about sacred oil and miracles. But this year, it is about war and the cost of Jewish survival.

On other years, Tu b'Shvat celebrates the new year for trees and environmentalism. But this year, we think about crops left unharvested by hands no longer living.

On other years, we celebrate Purim with costumes, candy, drinks, and the purimspiel. But this year, we ask ourselves about the nature of Haman and of self-defense.

On other years, we shout-sing Dayeinu with raucous cheer. But this year, we self-consciously skip the shefokh khamatkha and we wonder if the gentiles know that we spill wine drops from our glass because all human life has value.

This year, we ask ourselves the meaning of "divine" and "liberation."

When you think about it, it isn't really all that surprising that the "burn it all down" style leftists turned out to have so many open, unapologetic antisemites among them.

"Burn it all down" only works if you've convinced yourself that whatever rises from the ashes will be significantly better than what we have now.

That implies that something significantly better is the natural state that the world will default to.

But if it's so natural, you need to be able to explain why we aren't living in that better world already.

The obvious answer is that some group is actively preventing that better world from existing.

And "the Jews" have been filling that rhetorical role for a very long time.

“Burn it all down” types also tend to be VERY okay with collateral damage in general.

These are often people who are very dismissive about practical concerns of disabled people, poor people, etc. for plans that amount to “I want to destroy the current system/s and have little concrete ideas of how we’ll actually make a new system after that.”

I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising that they would consider Jews acceptable collateral damage as well.

reblog because I'm jewish so my followers are jewish and we all know the answer so I need non-jewish people to do the thing

I haven't checked this user to see if they're okay, but I like the poll. I think I may have responded to a post that wasn't a poll about this before but it's interesting to know where tumblr thinks the population is.

I'm surprised that 15.1% of people said 2%. That's like 160 million people. Does anyone really think there's that many Jews left? Maybe if +90% of them weren't murdered in pogroms & genocides we might have had that many Jews. We aren't just talking the Shoah. The Bar Kohkba Rebellion in the Roman Era & the Rhineland Massacres in Medieval times were both individually worse for Jewish population than the Shoah (which itself wiped out half of all Jewish people). Than there's all the other pogroms in between these three that mean the Jewish population never had chances to really recover.

2% represents a world where people didn't scapegoat the Jews for everything from losing wars, to disease outbreaks to the weather (I still can't figure out why medieval people blamed other humans for that). Where missionary faiths were actually tolerant of other faiths & traditions.

Perhaps a world with 160 million Jews would also be one where Aboriginal people are not a mere 3% of Australia's population. Where Native Americans were given time to recover from smallpox outbreaks rather than deal with colonisation & deliberate massacres. One where Berbers & Assyrians are more plentiful. Because it would be a world where rulers wouldn't use religion as a cover for massacres or genocide.

To the accumulative +40% who answered higher than 2%, how is that supposed to happen? Judaism isn't a missionary faith & unlike Hinduism (the largest non-missionary faith), Judaism emerged in a region that could never support the numbers to be 5% or more of the population.

I know what the answer is.

I’ll give you a hint: there are more asexual people in this world than there are Jews. BY A LOT.

There are a lot more *intersex* people in the world than there are Jews, BY A LOT.

There are more Papa John’s loyalty rewards program members than there are Jews in the world.

The most painful thing about being treated like a bloodthirsty demon on stupidblr is that I deeply care about Palestinian lives. I care more than these internet warriors ever could, because these people are my neighbours. It would be so easy to face the other way, to ignore their suffering and comfort myself with hatred. But I refuse to do that. I'd rather be naive than hateful.

But that can never come at the cost of denying the suffering of my own people. When antizionist leftists deny our pain, deny our mourning, our fear, they push us away. They do not allow us to participate in the conversation. Essentially, they want a solution that doesn't involve us. But peace comes only from compromise, from dialogue, from an exchange between two sides.

You know what it's called when peace is dictated by one side only? It's called conquest. Capitulation. Antizionists are not asking for peace, they're calling for victory for their chosen side and the destruction of ours. They're calling for more war and more death and suffering, but this time with their side having the advantage.

They're not upset about the situation. They're upset that we're not the ones being killed.

Leftists are very, very good at talking the talk of social justice - of fighting for the oppressed, uplifting the marginalised, using all the correct buzz words and slogans and phrases - but a lot of them are significantly less so at actually walking the walk of doing the work involved.

Instead of uplifting and supporting and protecting Jewish people - arguably the most oppressed and persecuted minority group in recorded history - in the wake of Hamas committing the most appalling and brutal crimes against over 1,000 innocent Jewish civilians and the subsequent massive rise in antisemitic rhetoric and violence worldwide, most leftists not only didn’t even attempt to talk the talk, but they power ran in the opposite direction, engaging in truly alarming levels of atrocity denial and victim blaming.

Even women’s rights groups who ostensibly fight for the rights of survivors of rape and sexual assault everywhere regardless of politics, completely and totally betrayed Israeli women who were victims of nauseating brutality with their silence.

Speaking as a non-Jewish leftist and as a woman, I cannot stomach the hypocrisy and I won’t ever forget it.

The Being Jewish Online Experience is like. Oh hey I like this post let me view this person’s other posts.….Ah, ok this person would probably kill me with their bare hands if they could get away with it. And it’s just that same thing happening over and over every day.

Yesterday I had a very sincere conversation with a European leftist friend who was asking me questions about the conflict in good faith. But she did say something that made me pause: “it sucks that the Palestinian cause has become so mixed up with antisemitism”.

Because the thing is, that there cannot be any discussion about Israel without a discussion about antisemitism, no matter how hard the pro Palestinians try to divorce the two by rebranding as “antiozionists”.

Why? Because Israel wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for antisemitism. You think all those diaspora Jews would have left to build cities in the desert if their homes in Europe and MENA were welcoming and comfortable? Israel exists by necessity. And the last two months have only confirmed that. So yes, denying us the right to a home is intrinsically antisemitic. It’s not just some surface contamination.

Dear Free Palestine fans,

If you want to combat the inherent antisemitism in your ranks, don't say shit like "Israel wants jews to feel hated/unsafe". Israel didn't make you chant "Gas the jews" at Sydney hours after a bloody massacre of innocent civilians. Israel didn't make you celebrate and then deny the gruesome murders and mass rapes of men, women and children. Israel didn't make you carry Isis flags, or wear Hamas symbology and call Hamas freedom fighters. Israel didn't make you chant to globalize the intifada, to push 7 million jews and 2 million arabs into the sea, or one solution (how that last one did *not* remind you of Hitler's final solution I have no idea). Israel didn't make you excuse the slaughter and say that Hamas shouldn't be destroyed. Israel didn't make you rewrite Jewish history. Israel didn't make you attack and harass diaspora jews and bar them from using Cafe bathrooms (segregation much?). Israel didn't make you attack Jewish businesses. Israel didn't make you deny our right for self determination instead of advocating that both sides have a right to a state. Israel didn't make you call for a ceasefire WITHOUT the stipulation that Hamas stop shooting as well and release ALL the hostages, among which there is a 10 month old BABY and toddlers as young as 3 years old.

I could go on. Point is, Israel didn't make you do any of that. You did that. On your own. Take some fucking accountability and clean up your movement.

This seems controversial because the common way to appeal to the Tumblr audience has been to say "well, there are Israelis who are peace activitists, who've been protesting the government, Israelis who aren't Jewish at all, look at all these good Israelis who were victims of oct 7, don't you feel they deserve to live?" and to be so fucking clear. The most racist, horrible, bibi-supporter Jewish Israeli still deserves to live. They still deserve to exist free of the risk of antisemitism and bigotry, the risk of rape and sexual violence, the risk of torture and being burned alive, the risk of being a victim of a bomb in the new intifada some of y'all are calling for. They deserve that because they're people, period, and all people deserve that, period. Human rights are not dependant on goodness.

the speed at which misinfo has been spreading on this webbed site since october is unbelievable. unsubstantiated claims, often rooted in antisemitic tropes, are getting thousands if not tens of thousands of notes. and those who correct them are ignored at best, harassed at worst. i’m barely exaggerating when i say that people here are on track to become as bad as qanonnies wrt misinfo.