Judaism is not a religion, it’s a relationship

They use statistics about the suffering of primarily nonwhite queers in debates with each other without regard for which queers suffering they're actually talking about, they hyperbolically call upon the imagery of nazism as a handy term for bigotry against them regardless of if actual nazism is involved, they invoke the concept of lynchings and deportations as comparison to their own struggles, they center themselves as the 'primary victims' in conversations about the shoah, etc.

There's nothing wrong with different marginalized groups relating to each others oppressions, of course, but often solidarity between the marginalized isn't what's happening here, because many of them have no interest in genuine solidarity with racialized people. Often racialized violence against poc and jews are used as props, co-opted, with the original/primary victims being scrubbed out of the narrative. This violence of which nonwhite and jewish people are primary targets of become universalized so they may be removed from the conversation and their greatest suffering reduced to rhetorical devices for white queers to win arguments.

This is made worse by the fact that these same white queers are often racist and antisemitic in other ways as well. Many do not believe racism or antisemitism are even problems anymore, or if they do believe they are problems they may believe they are 'not as bad' as what queers experience, or if they do believe it's as bad they believe that they themselves as white queers are immune from committing racist or antisemitic harm because they view their queerness as neutralizing any axis of privilege they may possess.

Which of course, leads to nonwhite and jewish people feeling incredibly unsafe in many queer spaces that would gladly erase them as people and as a community in favor of turning their traumas into a symbol for the queer plight.

Vermont Conversation: Surviving and escaping the Twelve Tribes cult - VTDigger https://share.google/LSdBGNLYzhWtnwu8p

if you are CO-CHAIR OF THE DSA, a political party that has made palestine its ENTIRE PLATFORM for the past THREE YEARS—yes, i expect you to have knowledge of the stages of the peace process. if you want people to listen to your solutions, i expect you to know what has and has not already been tried, and to know why you would or wouldn't have been happy with the major proposals made at each major step. including at camp david in 2000.

In 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed, creating the framework for a future Palestinian state. In 1995, Oslo II was signed, which divided the West Bank into three parts: Area A, Area B, and Area C. Area A is under full Palestinian control. Area B is under Palestinian civil control with Israeli security. And Area C is under full Israeli control. (It also divided Gaza into Areas A, B, and C. Gaza is supposed to be Area A, but due to a little thing known as "the government in charge of Gaza killed a thousand Israelis in one day", there is substantial Israeli presence.) Jewish Israelis are barred from entering Area A, for their own safety. (Arab Israelis are also theoretically barred, but this ban isn't enforced as strictly.) Area A includes most of the West Bank's population.

This was supposed to be temporary, renegotiated after five years.

So, five years pass, and Clinton gets together the leader of Israel, Ehud Barak, and the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, at Camp David to talk it out.

The Israelis really, really, want peace. Ehud Barak is begging for a deal.

As Robert Malley and Hussein Agha write in an article fairly critical of Israel and Barak, "Barak was eager for a deal, wanted it achieved during Clinton’s term in office, and had surrounded himself with some of Israel’s most peace-minded politicians." Malley and Agha continue later that "If there is one issue that Israelis agree on, it is that Barak broke every conceivable taboo and went as far as any Israeli prime minister had gone or could go". They criticize him for, seemingly, being too flexible and acquiescent: "Yet, at the same time, he gave clear hints that Israel was willing to show more flexibility if Arafat was prepared to “contemplate” the endgame" (in a negative context). According to them Barak made massive concessions: sovereignty over all Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, a Palestinian state in over 90 percent of the West Bank with land swaps to help compensate. These were huge and changing. According to them, Arafat demanded sovereignty over the Temple Mount, as opposed to Israel's proposal for Palestinian "permanent custodianship" -- the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism (it now has the Al-Aqsa Compound on top of it), was to be in Palestinian hands, and that was a red line for him.

"Barak apparently took the view that, faced with a sufficiently attractive proposal and an appropriately unattractive alternative, the Palestinians would have no choice but to say yes. In effect, each successive Palestinian “no” led to the next best Israeli assessment of what, in their right minds, the Palestinians couldn’t turn down." Agha and Malley write. This was to be a dangerous mistake. Arafat turned down offer after offer after offer, making no counter-proposals and suggesting, contrary to the archeological, historical, and even Muslim record, that the Second Temple was in Nablus. (Previously, I have referenced him as saying it was in Hebron; this was in error, and I apologize for saying so. I do not know how the two got mixed up in my mind.) Shockingly, this did not suggest to Barak and the Israeli negotiating team that he was a reliable partner.

In late September 2000, a few months after the talks collapsed, Ariel Sharon, the leader of the right-wing party Likud (who would later unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, paving the way for Hamas' rule, but that's another story), visited the Temple Mount. Again: this is the holiest site in Judaism, and is, as basically all accounts agree, the site of the destroyed Second Temple. Sharon did not pray there. Sharon did not do much of anything there. He merely existed on the Temple Mount as a Jew.

That is what started the Second Intifada (which was, at best, tolerated by Arafat), in which over a thousand Jews died. A Jew existing on the holiest site in Judaism.

As Hussein and Agha continue, in late December, in the middle of the Second Intifada, Clinton and Barak made yet another proposal, which they summarize as follows: "Palestine would have sovereignty over 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank and it would as well have land belonging to pre-1967 Israel equivalent to another 1 to 3 percent of West Bank territory. Palestinian refugees would have the right to return to their homeland in historic Palestine, a right that would guarantee their unrestricted ability to live in Palestine while subjecting their absorption into Israel to Israel’s sovereign decision. In Jerusalem, all that is Arab would be Palestinian, all that is Jewish would be Israeli. Palestine would exercise sovereignty over the Haram [Temple Mount/Har HaBayit] and Israel over the Western Wall[.]"

Israel gave and gave and gave so much, and what it got in return was suicide bombings.

That is the environment in which Sharon came to power. That is, in many ways, what destroyed the Israeli left and its promise of peace. Because they tried peace, they tried so very, very, hard for peace, they gave up so much that no one else would be expected to give up -- and what they got in return was death and terror and fear. That is what Israelis think of when they hear intifada.

And I am not excusing Benjamin Netanyahu or his actions, nor the abandonment of the peace process, nor Israel's admittedly heavy-handed response to the Second Intifada.

But if you don't understand why Israelis are skeptical of peace, if you don't understand the cause of this view, if you don't understand what caused the collapse of the peace talks -- why the hell should I listen to you? Why should I care?

You don't need to know the precise details of the negotiations. What you need to know is this:

*some countries are recognized by only themselves or by only one or two other countries. They are not on this list.

--North Korea (1949)

--South Korea (1949)

--Bhutan (1949)

--Indonesia (1949)

--Libya (1950)

--Sudan (1956)

--Cameroon (1960)

--Togo (1960)

--Somalia (1960)

--Samoa (1962)

--Burundi (1962)

--Rwanda (1962)

--Jamaica (1962)

--Trinidad and Tobago (1962)

--Tanzania (1964)

--Singapore (1965)

--Nauru (1968)

--Equatorial Guinea (1968)

--Bangladesh (1971)

--Guinea-Bissau (1974)

--Mozambique (1975)

--Cape Verde (1975)

--São Tomé and Principe (1975)

--Papua New Guinea (1975)

--Angola (1975)

--Suriname (1975)

--Marshall Islands (1986)

--Micronesia (1986)

--Namibia (1990)

--Yemen (1990, itself made up of states younger than Israel)

--Slovenia (1991)

--Croatia (1991)

--Republic of Macedonia (1991)

--Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992)

--Czech Republic (1993)

--Slovakia (1993)

--Eritrea (1993)

--Palau (1994)

--Timor-Leste (2002)

--Montenegro (2006)

--Serbia (2006)

--Kosovo (2008)

--South Sudan (2011)

Just saw a reel where someone is claiming that the bible, in the original Hebrew, had no punctuation, vowels, or spaces between words and therefore it is even more up to interpretation than you think.

@no-sex-only-gender peer reviewing you rn

Exactly!!! Because yeah there are no vowels, but it’s in a language with a writing system that typically doesn’t include the vowels. Like there are some words where the meaning is debated because of this but the way Hebrew functions and how the Tanakh has been passed down and taught through the generations means the lack of vowels really doesn’t change the meaning all that much.

Wait.

WAIT.

So, what you are telling me is that Hebrew HAS vowels.

But just...doesn't write them down?

jew (prob chabad jew): hello goy friend welcome to my home

goy: wow what a lovely home *picks up a photo* wow is this your grandpa or some family member

the photo:

the only thing that can save us is a strong, intelligent, learned, handsome Mitnaged Litvak

Just saw a reel where someone is claiming that the bible, in the original Hebrew, had no punctuation, vowels, or spaces between words and therefore it is even more up to interpretation than you think.

@no-sex-only-gender peer reviewing you rn

Exactly!!! Because yeah there are no vowels, but it’s in a language with a writing system that typically doesn’t include the vowels. Like there are some words where the meaning is debated because of this but the way Hebrew functions and how the Tanakh has been passed down and taught through the generations means the lack of vowels really doesn’t change the meaning all that much.

To an unfortunate number of aggressively ignorant westerners, "Arab" is a skin color/regional identity like "Black" or "Asian", and Kurds, Copts, Bedouin, Yazidi, Druze, Assyrians, and Persians are all subcategories of Arab. I have literally seen them claim that Sepharadi and Mizrahi Jews who fled to Israel from the MENA region are "Arab Jews" who are misled by Evil European Invaders.

And if you try to explain that Arabs are actually a particular tribe in the Middle East rather than synonymous with the whole of it, and what they are saying is the regional equivalent of claiming all Europeans are subcategories of German and any European who doesn't identify as German is either deceived or really from somewhere other than Europe, they insist that you're lying and propagandizing and cannot be trusted.

The only reason Arabs are there, that Islam is the dominate religion, and so on is because of the Arab conquest. Because of Arab Colonialism.

In fact many of the non-Arab people pre-date the Arabs and are the Indigenous People to the Lands.

Persian are not Arab. Iranians can be either Arab or Persian or both. But Persian themselves are not Arabs.