You can't fire me, I don't work in this van!

"So you think x!"

"No, I'm explaining what they think."

"You're making excuses for it and arguments that support it!"

"I'm laying out the arguments they give. I'm not making them, I'm showing them. I broke down why it's wrong and how it became a prevalent view."

"You're an x-apologist!"

ethnicity = shared cultural characteristics including but not limited to language, food, music, dance, religion, and shared ancestry; learned through cultural transmission; can be changed throughout one's life provided that the ethnic community one is trying to join accepts them

race = a bullshit system of human categorization based solely upon looks; literally invented by europeans trying to sort humans like we are all different species; can also change over the course of someone's life if the necessary conditions are met (see: my great-great-grandparents being marked as non-white "Hebrew" immigrants in 1904 and then passing away right as Eastern Ashkenazi Jewish people began to fully assimilate into whiteness, eg the post-war period; also see the treatment of SWANA Muslims before and after 9/11); also a legal system in the US wherein those deemed "white" receive certain privileges denied to others based upon race science

nationality = one's country of origin and where they hold citizenship; those are sometimes the same and sometimes not; see for example a naturalized US citizen whose nationality might be both Dominican and American

now. why would someone get race and ethnicity, in particular, confused? you see, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, the word "race" both referred to the bullshit system and also to ethnic groups. additionally, in the post-colonial context, some ethnicities are based upon the system of race that was imposed upon settler colonies (for example, Black Americans, who were forcibly removed from their original ethnic communities and, in a show of remarkable resilience, created new and beautiful cultures). this has led to a lasting confusion on the two concepts.

you may be wondering: tzipi, why are you posting this?

because i need you to know that ethnoreligious groups are real. and i need you to know that jewish people are an ethnoreligious group with subethnicities (like Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, Persian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, etc). but that none of these groups are the "real Jews." and that we do, in fact, meet the definition of a distinct ethnic group with some similarities and differences across the many subethnicities that are contained within our ethnicity. we accept converts, who then become ethnically jewish, because ethnicity is not all about blood ties. AND ALSO. someone can be ethnically jewish without being religiously jewish, because they may share in the cultural practices that jewish people do and (usually, in this case,) have jewish heritage. such a person does not need to be Israeli to be ethnically jewish. "Israeli" is a nationality, not an ethnicity, at least right now.

Cyberwell has alerted X/Twitter of a new wave of antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming Jews for wildfires across Europe, the NGO announced in a statement on Monday.

The organization, whose goal is to combat online antisemitism, identified “nearly identical narratives” regarding recent wildfires in Norway, France, and Spain, reinforcing what Cyberwell describes as a “recurring pattern of event-driven antisemitism, in which major crises are exploited to spread hate toward Jews.”

Posts in English, French, and Spanish claiming that Jewish people deliberately sparked the fires or orchestrated them for political or financial gain were identified by the organization’s analysts.

Cyberwell found that content on the Norway wildfires surpassed 2 million views on X, “helping transform an isolated conspiracy into a broader wave of antisemitic content,” according to the company.

Meanwhile, content on Spain’s wildfires reached more than 69,100 users, according to Cyberwell’s numbers.

Antisemitic conspiracy theories also emerged following the Los Angeles wildfires in 2025 and the Patagonia wildfires earlier this year, the company said.

Other theories have emerged following the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting and the hantavirus outbreak.

“CyberWell found that bad actors and antisemites repeatedly inserted Jews into breaking news through familiar antisemitic tropes portraying them as secretly responsible for disasters or as profiting from human suffering,” the statement read.

“As false claims spread,” it noted, “posts increasingly incorporated dehumanizing language, calls to expel Jews, and well-known antisemitic imagery, including the ‘Happy Merchant’ caricature.”

The “Happy Merchant” depicts a Jewish man with exaggerated stereotypical facial features greedily rubbing his hands together, popular among white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Cyberwell CEO and Founder Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor said that “the same scapegoating stories, once popular in Nazi propaganda during the Third Reich, now trend on every major social media platform after a crisis. Any major event can become a vehicle for blaming Jews online.”

“Whether the story involves a wildfire, a disease outbreak, a shooting, or another international crisis, we repeatedly see the same conspiracy theories emerge within hours,” Montemayor explained.

“The details change, but the underlying message does not: Jews are maliciously portrayed as secretly orchestrating disasters or profiting from human suffering. This pattern demonstrates how antisemitism continuously adapts to the news cycle while recycling centuries-old myths.”