Echoes Down The Corridor

FIFA buddy you really chose the wrong people to mess with lol

This implies we should go support the people who have historically supported the Nazi party in Germany (Zionist Federation of Germany with the The Haavara Agreement, as well as their collaboration and in killing Jews in Nazi Germany, remembering also their deal to deport Jews to Palestine), or the famously totally not antisemitic far right neo nazis (Donald Trump, Proud Boys, etc) currently supporting Israel and saying it "should" be the only place for Jews. If these groups, who have been notorious for desecrating Jewish graves and synagogues long before oct 7, spraying graffiti of swastikas, and harassing Jews, are now pro Israel (evidently again as said groups have vouched support for Israel and attacked activists for ceasefire continually over the past years, should we, as people who do not want to accept any intolerance from either anti Jewish OR anti Palestinian sentiment, just ignore all of this?

If supporting Israel means standing side by side with people raising their hand in a seig hail and saying "death to Jews" and "death to Arabs"? Yeah, no, I don't think the enemy here is a race or even the trauma from years of occupation that shows as defensiveness and hatred, but as always, the western Nazis who pit and have always pitted racial groups against each other. And I think I'd rather die both pro Palestinian and pro Jewish rather than live as a nazi. And evidently it is established Neo Nazi organisations supporting Israel and I will not stand besides those antisemitic, racists motherfuckers and no amount of "some of the nazis might be Jewish and hate Jews" will make me rethink that. There were gay Nazis, but they still killed us for being queer. Likewise, I don't stand with any other group who bootlick to their oppressors and side with those oppressors.

Like, there is just nothing that can be said to convince people to join the same side that are reusing nazi slogans, signal and symbols, I'm sorry but no. Many many Jews, queers and people who have any trauma around nazis fucking up their lives don't want that and calling them "the wrong kind of Jew" or "self hating" is just wrong. Jews can hate nazis, and if a nazi says "you should support Israel" damn right I'll question that.

I also want to add a bit extra in relation to people who try to use this movement for antisemitism, and those who do actually have trauma from Israeli occupation. The former are kicked out, ostracized and shunned. They are not part of this movement and, more often than not, hate Palestinians and Arabs as well. Using this movement is a convenient way for them to encite hatred towards both Arabs and Jews, they are racists fuckwits and we, those who want freedom and equality for both Jews and Palestinians, do not recognise these fuckers as much as they hold hatred and clash with our own groups.

The latter are those who, much like many people have been led to believe thanks to propaganda, that Jewishness and Zionism are one and the same when they're very different. Zionism, while originating from Jewish groups intertwining into the French academic community, it is a political movement built out of western socialism and feudalist nationalism. The genuine hope of return is a separate Jewish concept that, while has been misused to justify Political Zionism, is its own concept that has existed long before the influence of French militarism and western colonialist ideologies. Said people see the indiscriminate slaughter in Palestine and even towards other Jews and then blame Jews, thanks to that conflation. The defending of that lie only further endangers Jewish communities and risks the rise of antisemitism. Israel has, despite being warned of this, capitalised further on this and incited violence against Jews.

Literally the opposite of what actually happens but ok sure, let's assume all pro Palestinians (including Jewish Palestinians

So, I'm really curious what you mean by that, because the only Jews who can be described as Palestinian in any meaningful sense are either in Israel (the Old Yishuv and its descendants), or settlers in the West Bank, who you'll be shocked to hear are not generally pro-Palestinian. For a while there was also the category of hostages in Gaza, but, b"h, that is currently no longer a category. Like, the only self-described Jewish Palestinian I know is @aqlstar.

and antizionist Jews) have said what you just put in their mouth. Lets also assume that any and all Palestinians (again, including Jewish Palestinians) who hate Israeli Jews for the treatment of them are wrong while Jews who hate Germans for their cruelty are right. Let's assume we support, unconditionally, all Zionists in the past and present since apparently you see Zionism as Representing Jewish safety.

Okay, so these are some really interesting assumptions, but I will accept that I have made weirder and less accurate premises. Sure. Sake of argument.

This implies we should go support the people who have historically supported the Nazi party in Germany (Zionist Federation of Germany with the The Haavara Agreement, as well as their collaboration and in killing Jews in Nazi Germany, remembering also their deal to deport Jews to Palestine),

Okay.

Let's talk about that.

At the end of the day, Jews who were not otherwise going to live, lived. Specifically, sixty thousand Jews lived.

We had no one else who was willing to defend us. Moreover, Weimar-era Germany had been fairly good for Jews, anti-immigrant and antisemitic sentiments were rising in the US and globally, and so it would be very dangerous to advocate for more Jewish immigration.

It's also worth noting that in this phase, Hitler's plans were more flexible, and he was still okay with the idea of "only" deporting all the Jews. Death camps were still years down the line, and it was cancelled in 1939, after the invasion of Poland.

Books about Allied and world governments and refugees have titles like none is too many (Canada), no haven for the oppressed (United States), while six million died (United States), the lifeboat is full (Switzerland), under his very windows (the Vatican/the Catholic church), the jews were expendable ("free world"), welcoming the undesirables (Brazil) why we watched (Europe and America) the jews should keep quiet (United States) barred (United States) et cetera, et cetera.

Was it a deal with the devil? Yes, absolutely.

But it was a deal that saved lives. And yes, dignity was hurt, and yes, it provided funds to the Nazis, and yes and yes and yes, but we were in a very, very, hard place, and if no one will help you fight the devil, sometimes you have to make a deal. and it's really fucking hypocritical to sit and criticize them for doing their best to save jewish lives.

meanwhile, the leader of the palestinian arabs, haj amin al-husseini, was schmoozing -- no, actually, he wasn't, he doesn't deserve the word -- with hitler for no reason other than a shared hatred of jews and the british

or the famously totally not antisemitic far right neo nazis (Donald Trump, Proud Boys, etc) currently supporting Israel and saying it "should" be the only place for Jews.

Right. So. Er. About those proud boys...

No, seriously:

I really don't think this is helping your argument.

real horseshoe theory here:

anyway. yeah.

If these groups, who have been notorious for desecrating Jewish graves and synagogues long before oct 7, spraying graffiti of swastikas, and harassing Jews, are now pro Israel (evidently again as said groups have vouched support for Israel and attacked activists for ceasefire continually over the past years,

Trump has not desacreted Jewish graves and synagogues, his allies have -- and they aren't fond of Israel. That's how we wind up in the kinda funny position of David Duke, a far-right neo-Nazi, endorsing Jill Stein, a lefty Jew, for president over her stance on Gaza.

should we, as people who do not want to accept any intolerance from either anti Jewish OR anti Palestinian sentiment, just ignore all of this?

No, we shouldn't, but. Uh. That. Kinda. Doesn't seem to really be happening at any major scale? The "Neo-Nazis supporting Israel", I mean

If supporting Israel means standing side by side with people raising their hand in a seig hail and saying "death to Jews" and "death to Arabs"?

Name one incident of that happening, please.

Yeah, no, I don't think the enemy here is a race or even the trauma from years of occupation that shows as defensiveness and hatred, but as always, the western Nazis who pit and have always pitted racial groups against each other. And I think I'd rather die both pro Palestinian and pro Jewish rather than live as a nazi.

One out of three ain't bad! (I don't know if you're a Nazi, but your seeming support of Hamas disqualifies you from being pro-Palestinian IMO, and as for "pro Jewish". Well.)

And evidently it is established Neo Nazi organisations supporting Israel and I will not stand besides those antisemitic, racists motherfuckers and no amount of "some of the nazis might be Jewish and hate Jews" will make me rethink that. There were gay Nazis, but they still killed us for being queer. Likewise, I don't stand with any other group who bootlick to their oppressors and side with those oppressors.

I have bad news for you about JVP...

(to be fair, they're majority Gentile, I think.)

>Like, there is just nothing that can be said to convince people to join the same side that are reusing nazi slogans, signal and symbols, I'm sorry but no. Many many Jews, queers and people who have any trauma around nazis fucking up their lives don't want that and calling them "the wrong kind of Jew" or "self hating" is just wrong. Jews can hate nazis, and if a nazi says "you should support Israel" damn right I'll question that.

And if a Nazi says "you shouldn't support Israel"?

I also want to add a bit extra in relation to people who try to use this movement for antisemitism, and those who do actually have trauma from Israeli occupation. The former are kicked out, ostracized and shunned. They are not part of this movement and, more often than not, hate Palestinians and Arabs as well.

Hang on a second.

Holy fuck your movement is bad at "kick[ing] out, ostraciz[ing] and shunn[ing]"

Quoth past me!

Have multiple (2009) peer-reviewed (2006) studies (see study 2; 2022) shown (2015) that (2007) antisemitism (2012) and (2020) anti-Israelism/antizionism [“In fact, anti-Israel attitudes are the strongest sole determinant of antisemitism when compared with political preferences, religion, place of birth, age, education and violent tendencies.”; 2020] (which are not the same thing) are (2024) closely (2016) associated (2012)? Also yes. Did Daniel Allington and David Hirsh write that “So many experimental and survey-based studies have found a correlation between negative attitudes towards Jews and negative attitudes towards Israel that this may be considered one of the most solidly established facts of political psychology” (The AzAs (Antizionist Antisemitism) Scale: Measuring Antisemitism as Expressed in Relation to Israel and Its Supporters, 2019)? Yes. Did I not cite that in my links above? Yeah.

But actually, fuck those studies.

You are a demonstration of the non-ostracization of avowed antisemites.

You follow Spaceshipspeaking999.

Here is a quote from them:

That's not ostracization. That's the opposite of ostracization.

Maybe you don't know! But if the movement really does ostracize people like that, how come it didn't catch that? How come you didn't know?

(At a certain point, when they say "Zionists are the Nazis of Palestine!!" one wonders if they intended it as a compliment.)

Using this movement is a convenient way for them to encite hatred towards both Arabs and Jews, they are racists fuckwits and we, those who want freedom and equality for both Jews and Palestinians, do not recognise these fuckers as much as they hold hatred and clash with our own groups.

Okay, so, uh, quick question, why do you follow spaceshipspeaking999 then?

The latter are those who, much like many people have been led to believe thanks to propaganda, that Jewishness and Zionism are one and the same when they're very different. Zionism, while originating from Jewish groups intertwining into the French academic community, it is a political movement built out of western socialism and feudalist nationalism. The genuine hope of return is a separate Jewish concept that, while has been misused to justify Political Zionism, is its own concept that has existed long before the influence of French militarism and western colonialist ideologies. Said people see the indiscriminate slaughter in Palestine and even towards other Jews

CITATION. FUCKING. NEEDED.

and then blame Jews, thanks to that conflation. The defending of that lie only further endangers Jewish communities and risks the rise of antisemitism. Israel has, despite being warned of this, capitalised further on this and incited violence against Jews.

CITATION. FUCKING. NEEDED.

How so? by its very existence? hot take: you shouldn't be provokable into committing a hate crime, and if you are then you were going to commit one anyway.

Despite all of this, all evidence, and all logic, even if we assume that all Jewish and Arab Palestinians somehow are to be blamed more than any far right Nazi standing by your side for 1939,

hitler took power in 1933 but who's counting

it cannot be denied that the obsession of race being the determining factor of ones morality is a dangerous standpoint to base your stance on. If this really is an argument of "pro Arab or pro Jew" with no allowance to accept all races as equal, then there is no argument to be had; if you think anyone born as any one race or ethnicity is to blame then your own identity cannot claim innocence over the inherent racism of that stance, both towards Arabs and the racist assumption of othering Jews, even and especially as a Jew.

...that's not zionism? this is a great argument against somethin completely separate? antizionists do not form an ethnic group? and it's not even really expressing hatred per se?

This image is funny, I'll give you that, but maybe part of the reason no one ever knows when conservatives are talking about trans men is because its never taken seriously.

"Haha, they're talking about men being pregnant, isn't that funny. Anyway, its like conservatives always forget that trans men exist. Wonder why that is?"

Read theory. Read the commentaries on the theory. If you don't understand, that proves you haven't read enough. If you disagree with any of it, that proves you're a bad person.

Follow the right influencers. Support the right politicians. Follow the leaders of our movement. Until we decide they're bad people, anyway.

March in our protests. Commit to our boycotts. Donate to our causes. Don't ask what we hope to achieve or how we think we're going to get that effect from what we're doing. Only a bad person would ask those questions.

...my child, tumblr has been advertising the "save Gaza from genocide" community to me daily for the past two years and somehow I have not ONCE gone onto their posts to start fights. Even though, you know, they ARE actively weighing in to a conflict they don't understand, instead of just trying to live their fucking lives.

Anon is saying: Israel has them, therefore it's unfair to deny the Iranian regime the nuclear weapons it seeks.

The fairness argument sounds intuitive until you ask what 'fair' actually means in a world where states have different intentions, different records, and different legal obligations

In geopolitics, morality isn't about ensuring everyone has the same toys. It's about harm reduction.

If you apply a consistent moral principle like "it is wrong for a state to explicitly call for the mass murder of another people," the deceptively simplistic fairness assertion falls apart.

Iran's regime hangs protesters from cranes, murders ~40,000 of its citizens in a couple days, and routinely calls for genocide of another people...which makes it awkward to argue they should have the most destructive weapons in human history bEcAuSe FaIrNeSs.

This isn't a rational argument, let alone a moral one.

Which of these is not like the others?

The US's nuclear deterrence threat: "Don't attack us with nukes or we'll take you with us"

France's/UK's nuclear deterrence threat: "Don't attack us with nukes or we'll take you with us."

Israel's nuclear deterrence intent: "Don't wipe us out, or we'll take you with us"

The Iranian regime's explicit, publicly-stated intent for their weapons: "Death to Israel".

The Islamic Republic has made "Death to Israel" and the destruction of the Jewish state a core pillar of its identity for nearly 50 years. It funds proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas on the basis of this shared, explicitly genocidal goal.

When a regime that regularly executes its own citizens for protesting and that calls for the erasure of another country wants nukes, the world sees a high-risk actor shaped by an apocalyptic theological faction whose doctrine holds that engineering chaos accelerates the return of the Mahdi. It's an actual operational framework that treats civilizational catastrophe as a goal.

No country officially supports Iran acquiring a bomb. No sane leader even approves of the idea in private.

Since antizionists are fond of citing internal law they haven't read, let's look at the legal angle:

Iran is a signatory to the NPT. By signing it, they legally committed to never developing nuclear weapons in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology. When the regime pursues a bomb, it isn't just making a weapon, it's also breaking a legal contract it chose to sign - and it has already violated the NPT repeatedly.

Israel did not sign on to the NPT and is not, therefore, bound by it.

The "fairness" framing of the Ask also ignores how Israel actually holds its weapons.

Israel has never officially admitted to having nukes - it has conducted no nuclear tests and made no announcements in a policy called amimut (opacity). The purpose of amimut is to prevent a regional arms race. A confirmed arsenal might force every neighbor to seek to match it, but an unconfirmed one deters without triggering an arms race.

Iran, by contrast, has been openly enriching uranium toward weapons-grade while chanting "Death to Israel" at state functions.

Anon's framing falsely assumes the only relevant variable is who has the weapon.

In reality, the relevant variables are (1) who holds it, (2) what they've said they'll do with it, (3) what legal obligations they've accepted, and (4) what their actual record of behavior looks like.

By every one of those measures, Israel and Iran are not comparable cases.

Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx)

I grew up in Sydney. Like so many Australian children, I remember singing songs about our beautiful country in kindergarten. Some of my most cherished early memories are long summer afternoons with family and friends on the Bondi shore.

I grew up in Sydney. Like so many Australian children, I remember singing songs about our beautiful country in kindergarten. Some of my most cherished early memories are long summer afternoons with family and friends on the Bondi shore.

Bondi was not just a destination. It was childhood. It was family. It was freedom. It was Australia.

Almost every day, I catch myself hoping it has all been a terrible mistake. That I will wake and discover none of it was real. That my father will walk through the door and everything will go back to how it was.

But it won't.

My father, Reuven Morrison, came to Australia from the former USSR, where Jewish life was suppressed and hidden. Australia was something entirely different: a land where you could live openly and proudly as a Jew.

He loved this country. He loved Australian mateship. He loved the way people looked out for one another. He loved the belief that wherever you came from, you could build a life here and belong.

To have his life taken while he celebrated his heritage at Bondi is a wound our family will carry forever. But the Bondi massacre did not take one life. It took 15.

Fifteen Australians who woke expecting an ordinary day. Fifteen people with families waiting for them to come home. Fifteen people with plans, dreams, responsibilities and futures.

When we speak about Bondi, I hope we never reduce it to headlines, statistics or political talking points. For the families of the victims, Bondi was not a news story. It was the moment life split into before and after.

One of the reasons the "One Mitzvah for Bondi" campaign has moved me is that it recognises something we too easily forget: our loved ones should be remembered not only for how they died, but for how they lived.

When Australians perform an act of kindness in their memory, they do more than honour the people we lost. They ensure that hatred does not have the final word.

The word mitzvah is often translated as "good deed." It means more than that. Mitzvah means connection.

When we do something good for another person, we create a bond between ourselves and someone else. We step outside our own needs and become part of something bigger.

Perhaps that is the lesson our society needs most. We live in an age that tells us to look inward, to chase what feels good, to seek the quick reward.

Yet the deepest meaning we ever find comes from the opposite direction. It comes from caring for others, from building families, communities and a society where people feel seen, valued and safe.

My father understood that. All his life he looked for ways to help others, whether family, friends or complete strangers. He wanted to leave every situation better than he found it.

In his final moments, that instinct did not leave him. When terror arrived at Bondi, he did not think of himself. He tried to save the people around him. That is who he was.

It is also who so many Australians are. There are many lessons to take from Bondi. One stands above the rest. We need each other.

Australia has always been made up of people from different cultures, faiths and perspectives. That diversity is not a weakness. It is one of our greatest strengths. We do not have to agree on everything. We do have to remember that we share this country.

I believed Bondi would be a turning point. That, after seeing the consequences of unchecked hatred, we would say together: enough.

The answer is not more division. The answer is choosing each other. Conversation over condemnation. Curiosity over assumption. Humanity over ideology.

That is the work I now share with the Combat Antisemitism Movement, alongside Australians of every background. Our focus is fighting anti-Semitism, but the larger aim is a society where every person can live as who they are, without fear.

I believed Bondi would be a turning point. That, after seeing the consequences of unchecked hatred, we would say together: enough. Yet half a year on, polarisation is only growing.

The greatest tribute we can offer the victims of Bondi is not only to remember them. It is to build the country they deserved to grow old in. A country where difference is not punished. Where communities stand beside one another. Where hatred is confronted before it becomes violence.

Despite everything, I still believe in that Australia. The Australia of neighbours helping neighbours. The Australia of mateship. The Australia that refuses to let hatred define who we are.

We must keep choosing it.